Come on bro, we know you hid our armor somewhere around here. I promise well give you your concubine back if you tell us where you put it.
  • Portland Art Museum
  • "Come on bro, we know you hid our armor somewhere around here. I promise we'll give you your concubine back if you tell us where you put it."

Mall air-conditioning is overrated. This sweaty weekend, escape into a cool, clean gallery space while you can! Or attend an outdoor play. Or bring a book to the river. Here, some gentle suggestions for your dose of weekend culture, from this week's arts section:

—Shane Joaquin Jimenez reviewed DW Gibson's oral history of NYC's gentrification, The Edge Becomes the Center. From Shane's piece, here's what Gibson's book—and what happened in New York—could mean for a city like ours:

A recent study by Governing magazine found that Portland has seen more gentrification than any other city in America this century. In many ways, Gibson's oral history is not specific to New York, but a warning of a possible future where displacement and institutionalized inequity have redrawn and resegregated the boundaries of our communities. As one interviewee puts it: "It's all money, money, money, money. We flee to New York because we know it's the place where there's freedom. But it's not going to be free for too much longer."

We should probably all read this book.

—The old and new art worlds emerged in Portland this month, with two new shows at PICA and PAM. PAM's Gods and Heroes unearths works in classical painting from Paris' Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Here are some alternate titles I came up with for the exhibition, drawing from Women Laughing Alone with Salad for inspiration:

"Ladies Being Kidnapped and/or Murdered"
"Princely Men Resting Comfortably Among 1,000 Attendants"
"Serious People Struggling to Keep Their Togas on While Flying and Shooting Arrows"

No shade. Art from the 1800s is like that. (And to be fair, the safety pin, fixer of festive togas henceforth, had, like, JUST been invented.) Old-school art not your thing? I see you. Treat yourself to PICA's No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting, up now through August 16. Among the first works to be designated as contemporary art, these paintings have the dual purpose of invoking Australian Aboriginal mysticism while keeping its content secret. It's abstraction to be enjoyed, not perfectly deconstructed. Which, finally—art is too often cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. Here, opacity actually adds meaning.

—In other art news, here's design firm Snøhetta's concept for a new public market on the waterfront. Poetry Press Week AND LitHop PDX joined the book-loving masses with booze and reading out loud. Cemetery Macbeth is a thing. You're welcome!