Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Press Release Written for James Lavadour: Land of Origin Exhibition

The University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Opens Five-Decade Retrospective of James Lavadour

James Lavadour: Land of Origin will be on view from August 9, 2025, to January 11, 2026. 

EUGENE, Ore. — (July 31, 2025) — On August 9, the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art will open a career retrospective of James Lavadour. “James Lavadour: Land of Origin,” includes painting and printmaking and spans over forty years of Lavadour’s art, celebrating his status as one of the Pacific Northwest’s most original and powerful painters. The art and its accompanying catalog highlight his connection to the Blue Mountains region of northeastern Oregon, where he has spent most of his life. The exhibition will be on view in the JSMA until January 11, 2026, and then travel to additional museums in the western United States, thanks to a partnership with Art Bridges.

As an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Lavadour expresses the vibrancy of the land and sky he observes on daily sunrise drives and walks on the Umatilla homelands. Brushed, poured, scraped, and dripped, his painting echoes the movements of earth, water, and stone, reflecting the elemental energy of the land and sky. Lavadour’s work makes visible the extraordinary events and elemental power of the natural world without seeking to be a literal representation of it.  

“Lavadour’s studio practice demonstrates his deep connection to the land and his understanding of his place in it,” says Danielle Knapp, JSMA’s McCosh Curator and curator of the exhibition. “The opportunity to view works from different periods of his art-making, especially works that have never previously been exhibited together, reveals how Lavadour’s approach to painting evolved over the course of his career.” 

The nature of that artistic journey is the story “Land of Origin” tells, fully visible in the paintings themselves. The exhibition focuses on Lavadour’s painting, particularly the multi-panel grids he began exhibiting in the late 1980s. Utterly original and viscerally convincing, those works make a unique contribution to contemporary art.

Oregon-born Lavadour has been a full-time artist since the 1980s and attained his first major museum exhibition in 1990. Soon after, he co-founded Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, a nonprofit center that provides printmaking facilities and training in traditional Indigenous art forms. The self-trained painter was a part of the group exhibition “Personal Structures” during the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and he was awarded a Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts in 2019. 

“James Lavadour: Land of Origin” presents an opportunity to study Lavadour’s artistic development over the past five decades. Two of Lavadour’s newest grids, made in 2024, “Lucky Star” and “Bold as Love,” will be debuted in the exhibition.  

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full catalogue that includes essays by Knapp and guest writers Meagan Atiyeh, Rebecca Dobkins, and Marie Watt. It also includes an anthology of Lavadour’s own commentary on his work, drawn from published interviews and a new interview with JSMA Executive Director John S. Weber, a fully illustrated checklist with additional images of representative works, and a comprehensive artist’s CV.  

“James Lavadour: Land of Origin” draws on significant loans from the artist, major museum collections, and private lenders. The spectacular retrospective will be on view in the Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery and the Focus Gallery from August 9, 2025, to January 11, 2026. 

The museum gratefully acknowledges that “James Lavadour: Land of Origin,” its catalogue and related programs are made possible with the generous support of The Ford Family Foundation in Oregon, the Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Endowment at the museum, the JSMA’s Hartz FUNd, and the JSMA Patron Circle and museum members. Support for this exhibition’s national tour is provided by Art Bridges.

Land Acknowledgment 

The subject of this exhibition makes the JSMA especially cognizant of the Indigenous people who are the original stewards and protectors of this continent. The University of Oregon is located on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people. Following treaties between 1851 and 1855, Kalapuya people were dispossessed of their indigenous homeland by the United States government and forcibly removed to the Coast Reservation in Western Oregon. Today, descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon, and continue to make important contributions in their communities, at UO, and across the land we now refer to as Oregon. 

About the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art 

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon is a leading Pacific Northwest museum for historic and contemporary art exhibitions and collections. The museum aims to support the academic objectives of the University of Oregon while also encouraging public understanding and enjoyment of thought-provoking visual arts. The JSMA houses important collections galleries devoted to art from China, Japan, Korea, Europe, and the Americas, as well as rotating special exhibition galleries. The JSMA is one of seven museums in Oregon and the state’s only academic art museum, according to the American Alliance of Museums. 

About Art Bridges Foundation

Art Bridges Foundation is the vision of philanthropist and arts patron Alice Walton. Founded in 2017, Art Bridges creates and supports projects that share works of American art with communities across the United States and its territories. Art Bridges partners with a growing network of over 250 museums of all sizes—impacting more than 20 million people nationwide—to provide financial and strategic support for exhibitions, collection loans, and programs designed to educate, inspire, and deepen engagement with local communities. The Art Bridges Collection represents an expanding vision of American art from the 19th century to present day and encompasses multiple media and voices. For more information, visit artbridgesfoundation.org.

Media Contact: Debbie Williamson Smith, 541-346-0942, debbiews@uoregon.edu 

Links: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, http://jsma.uoregon.edu