— 4 — RAPS tours LincolnHall RAPS members, including Steve Brannan (right foreground), Joy Spalding, and Dawn White, Diane Sawyer, Brent Schauer, and Diane Schauer, don hard hats for the March 24 tour of Lincoln Hall. The 100year-old building is receiving a makeover that addresses deferred maintenance projects, including bringing it up to current seismic and building code standards. The project got under way in fall 2008 and the academic departments of the School of Fine and Performing Arts plan to move back into Lincoln in August. The $29.1 million required for the project was approved by the Oregon Legislature in 2007. An additional $1.5 million from the Oregon Stimulus Initiative allowed Portland State to replace Lincoln Hall’s original windows with high-efficient (but historically correct) Oregon-made products. For more on the tour, see Larry Sawyer’s president’s message on page 2. Orloff’s vision is to bring together museums from Shanghai, Paris, Buenos Aires, New York and elsewhere—there are about 33 worldwide. “These are wonderfully rich collections, some of them gathered over hundreds of years,” he said. “But they tend to be somewhat staid and conservative, so the idea of how a city museum can collaborate with another city museum is somewhat strange for them.” Despite the diplomatic headaches, Orloff sees a great opportunity for Portland State to bring together large groups of people from several countries around the museum of the city concept. The online museum would not be unlike the limestone-and-marble variety. Orloff sees the site architecturally, with a lobby and various wings, and within each wing several galleries. The range of possible exhibits is immense—urban planning, architecture, art, war, history, government, homelessness, natural catastrophes, transportation. With half the world’s population living in cities, little has happened elsewhere that hasn’t happened in a city. And most cities share many traits. Exhibits could come from other city museums, of course, but anyone could submit an exhibit for consideration of the director or a curator. “You want things that are intellectually honest, interesting, and provocative,” Orloff said. In fact, in most of the courses he’s teaching, students are creating exhibits for the museum. Although the students have no background in museums or developing exhibits, they’re “figuring it out,” Orloff said, and some of the student-designed exhibits will probably make the cut. The site is a work in progress. You can find it at www.museumofthecity.org. Museum of the city . . . continued from page 1
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