{"id":326856,"date":"2025-12-02T22:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T22:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/326856\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T22:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T22:37:07","slug":"portland-art-museum-evacuated-twice-during-opening-weekend-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/326856\/","title":{"rendered":"Portland Art Museum Evacuated Twice During Opening Weekend Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Willamette Week is in the middle of our most important annual fundraiser. As a local independent news outlet, we need your help.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\"> Give today. Hold power to account.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Turns out the Portland Art Museum can party. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">One sculpture was broken and someone set off smoke alarms by vaping in a restroom at the museum\u2019s grand reopening celebration, a four-day, free-admission extravaganza that welcomed 30,000 guests to the newly renovated downtown campus. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The party fouls caused two evacuations of the museum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThese incidents did cause minor and brief disruptions to the opening weekend, and the museum is taking measures to prevent similar issues in the future,\u201d museum spokesman Ian Gillingham said in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019re grateful to our visitors for their patience and understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The vaping incident occurred the evening of Nov. 20 in a first-floor restroom. That\u2019s the day PAM <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wweek.com\/arts\/visual-arts\/2025\/11\/20\/portland-art-museum-opens-to-the-public-kicking-off-four-days-of-free-admission\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">first welcomed guests back<\/a> to the museum after a $111 million project that added or updated 100,000 square feet of space. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">On Nov. 22, a child bumped into Marie Watt\u2019s 26-foot-long neon sculpture A Shared Horizon (Western Door) in the new Mark Rothko Pavilion\u2019s Grand Gallery, breaking a neon tube. A Shared Horizon is like a poem in lights, consisting of pairs of repeated words that reflect the Pacific Northwest, starting with \u201cDeer Deer Sky Sky Water Water.\u201d The patron broke the bottom right edge of the sculpture, \u201cBear Bear.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The break triggered the museum\u2019s safety protocols for a potentially hazardous material and staff evacuated the building. It was quickly determined that neon is nontoxic and guests were brought back inside, Gillingham says. The sculpture was restored before opening on Nov. 28. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cIt was sad to know that people had to leave the museum, even temporarily,\u201d says Watt, a PAM board member. \u201cThere\u2019s so much art to see and I hate the idea of anyone having to exit for any sort of fire drill.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willamette Week is in the middle of our most important annual fundraiser. As a local independent news outlet,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-326856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}