Willamette University, the first university in the West, was founded in 1842. Willamette has developed a large collection of European, Asian, Native American, and historic and contemporary regional art. In 1998 the university opened Hallie Ford Museum of Art to showcase its growing collection.

Willamette’s art collection began with Native American baskets that were given to the founders by Clatsop Indians on the Oregon Coast and Kalapuyan Indians in the Willamette Valley. Over the years, other objects were donated including: works by Barbizon painters Camille Corot, Charles-Francoise Daubigny, Victor Dupre, and Diaz de la Pena; works by Constance Fowler and Carl Hall, both of whom taught at Willamette and many others.

This exhibition begins with the story Oregon’s pioneers through the present day. On view are works created in the 1930s by artists C.S. Price, Charles Heaney, Amanda Synder and Constance Fowler, Willamette Valley and Central Coast artists Carl Hall, Nelson Sandgren and Ruth Dennis Grover, along with well-known mid-century Oregon modernists such as Michele Russo, George Johanson, Louis Bunce, Lucinda Parker, Lee Kelly and Manuel Izquierdo. The gallery also includes a rotating selection of works by contemporary artists from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.