The collection was originally displayed at the Multnomah County Library located at Southwest Seventh and Stark streets in downtown Portland.

The exhibition featured artwork that had been on display earlier that year at the famous 1913 New York Armory Show, which introduced American audiences to modern art.

The exhibition included works by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Manet, Renoir, and the controversial Nude Descending a Staircase, No.

In 1923, Lewis organized an exhibition at the museum that included 44 paintings by Picasso, Matisse, André Derain and American modernists, such as Maurice Prendergast, Charles Burchfield, and Max Weber.

The success of her first exhibition led to her second, more daring endeavor a year later that juxtaposed paintings, drawings, and sculptures from Europe with African masks.

The museum's final location opened to the public on November 18, 1932, at the corner of SW Park Avenue and Jefferson Street.

It is situated along downtown Portland's South Park Blocks and remains a landmark in the city's Cultural District.

It was constructed with a lead gift of $100,000 from Winslow B. Ayer, the same patron who selected the museum's collection of plaster casts 40 years earlier.

But the following year in 1943, staff completed the museum's first full inventory, which counted a permanent collection of 3,300 objects and 750 works on long-term loan.

More than 80,000 people visited for a Vincent van Gogh exhibition in 1959, the proceeds from which were used to purchase a 1915 Water Lilies (catalog #1795) by Claude Monet.

Pietro Belluschi served as the architect again, and the project allowed him to realize a complete vision for the museum that he had conceived nearly 40 years earlier.

The expansion created classroom and studio space for the Museum Art School, a sculpture mall, a new vault for the collections, and an auditorium.

[citation needed] PAM renovated the former Masonic temple, renamed it the Mark Building, and opened it to the public in 1995.

The Mark Building also houses the 33,000 volume Crumpacker Family Library, meeting spaces, ballrooms, and administrative offices.

In 2001, PAM purchased the private collection of New York art critic Clement Greenberg consisting of 159 works by artists such as Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Anthony Caro.