The Portland Art Museum‘s $111 million Mark Rothko Pavilion is nearing completion as construction crews work to meet a Nov. 20 opening date.

Museum Director Brian Ferriso pointed to “punch list” items on Monday that need finishing before the museum’s renovation and expansion centered on a landmark glass pavilion opens to the public.

On a recent visit, workers led by construction manager/general contractor Mortenson Construction were touching up paint, removing tape and sweeping floors.

The project was ambitious from the start: Constructing a new glassed-in pavilion sandwiched between two separate existing buildings, renovating the older structures, and melding it all together into a cohesive and seismically resilient 21^st century museum.

Designers from Hennebery Eddy Architects and Chicago’s Vinci Hamp Architects had to join 11 distinct floors among the three structures. Previously, there were no above-grade connections between the Pietro Belluschi-designed 1932 Main Building and the Mark Building, formerly a Masonic temple, built in 1927. Only an underground passageway joined them, requiring an elevator trip. Visitors complained of getting lost.

“If you’re looking at a map and feeling lost, you’re not looking at art and you’re not feeling welcome,” said Donald Urquhart, the museum’s director of collections and exhibitions.

Soon, a grand staircase will allow patrons to freely circulate around the museum, and additional elevators for both humans and large art pieces have been installed.

The project adds nearly 100,000 square feet of new and renovated public and gallery space. Museum officials have acquired nearly 300 new works to display.

The museum’s design takes transparency literally. Inspired in part by Apple stores, architects made liberal use of fritted glass that was expensively imported from Germany and fritted in Spain before its journey to Portland. It hangs 28 feet high, forming what museum officials call the “jewel box” of the Rothko Pavilion at the museum’s center.

Museumgoers will be able to view the downtown surrounds from indoors. During a tour this week, visitors could see the Portland Streetcar as it trundled by and daily activity at the Eliot tower and Park Blocks on either side of the museum.

“You can feel the city here,” Ferriso said.

Visitors don’t need to go inside the museum to get a taste — a glass passageway through the Rothko Pavilion allows pedestrians to see in. “Everyone will have a museum experience, whether they’re inside or out,” Ferriso said.

Other changes include relocating the loading dock to Southwest Jefferson Street and moving the library to a 4,200-square-foot space on the ground floor of the Mark Building to make way for the Crumpacker Center for New Art, an experiential contemporary art space. A state-of-the-art security center is hidden from view.

On the museum’s West Plaza, Coquelico, a café from Providore Fine Foods, will open in September.

Throughout, museum officials sought to uphold universal design principles to ensure patrons with disabilities can seamlessly experience the exhibits. No longer will patrons in wheelchairs have to enter the museum through a side door.

The design also pays attention to basic human comforts. More bathrooms are being constructed, and additional seating will be installed throughout the museum in response to feedback. “These areas for relaxation and contemplation are so important,” Ferriso said.

Construction crews were challenged by the complexity of linking HVAC and other building systems across the three structures, Ferriso said. Heating and cooling are provided by water tubes located under the slate gray stone floors. In other areas, the flooring is white oak.

No large construction project comes without surprises, and one arrived when workers discovered asbestos in the Main Building. “We ran into asbestos in the 1930s building,” Ferriso said. “That cost us some money.”

Now the project is on track to open to the public Nov. 20 with four days of free admission. Ferriso himself has announced he’ll be leaving shortly after that to take over as director of the Dallas Museum of Art after nearly 20 years helming the Portland museum.

Ferriso sounded a contemplative note as he discussed the Portland Art Museum’s collections. “We’re just stewards for a moment,” he said.

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By Holly Meyer

The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Jerry Lamb could not maneuver his wheelchair into the rows of pews at his church. It wouldn’t fit. Nor could he sit in the aisles without awkwardly blocking the way.

So, he adapted. It’s a regular part of his new life with limited mobility that requires near-constant calculations of how to navigate a world no longer set up for him. Until recently, that included his longtime church in Camden, Tennessee – one of the many U.S. houses of worship with accessibility limitations.

Instead, on Sundays, he worshipped in the narthex at the back of Camden First United Methodist Church, separated from the rest of the congregation, with his family at his side in folding chairs. It didn’t really bother Lamb, 66, who “was already over it.” He’s struggled to walk since 2019 due to a worsening spine condition.

But it bothered the Rev. Adam Kelchner, the new pastor: “I was preaching one Sunday and was rather distraught that one of our families literally could not be in the same worship space just because we didn’t have a seating arrangement that made sense.”

So Kelchner made one that did. He secured trustees’ approval and hired a company to cut two pews, making space for Lamb – and anyone else using a wheelchair or walker – to worship alongside the rest of the congregation.

“It blew us out of the water,” Lamb said.

Except as employers, religious entities are exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act – the 32-year-old landmark civil rights law that includes access requirements for public spaces. Nonetheless, most have made their buildings accessible in some fashion.

But there is much room for improvement, said Scott Thumma, a sociology of religion professor and director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

Thumma also co-leads Faith Communities Today, a research project that surveyed more than 15,000 U.S. religious congregations for its 2020 report and found that 76 percent have wheelchair access. Thirty percent offer large-print worship materials and about the same portion have hearing assistive devices.

“That’s not terrible,” Thumma said. “But then when you start to ask the questions of how are they accommodating all the other challenges and disabilities? … Then it just almost drops off. They don’t make the full accommodations to allow all of their people to actually worship to their fullest in the service.”

The pandemic and the sweeping rise of online worship that followed was a catalyst for a more expansive understanding of what it really means to be an accessible church, said the Rev. Kelly Colwell, who leads digital and hybrid ministry at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, United Church of Christ, in California.

She had an eye-opening virtual coffee chat early in the pandemic. A congregant with multiple sclerosis explained how her online event-packed calendar finally allowed her to participate in ways her physical condition wouldn’t otherwise permit. It made Colwell realize the church had been excluding people with accessibility challenges all along.

Today, Colwell continues to assess whether the church is physically accessible to all congregants on an equal basis. Now she also considers how to make the online and hybrid experience meaningful.

“We’re not providing a sort of separate and unequal service for people who can’t come in person,” Colwell said.

Maria Town, the American Association of People with Disabilities’ president and CEO, has seen progress. She pointed to congregations adding inclusion events and playgrounds for all as well as an activist-created, easy-to-read Quran translation for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

“It’s slow, but I do think more and more entities are beginning to realize that this is a need, and I also hope that more and more people with disabilities are actually saying, ‘We deserve to be here,’” Town said.

Omer Zaman, a Muslim wheelchair user near Chicago, is one of the disabled faithful pushing for acceptance and accessibility. He focuses on inclusion at mosques as a volunteer and board member with MUHSEN, a nonprofit advocating for accommodations and understanding of disabilities in the Muslim community.

“Individuals with special needs can be on a board; they can contribute; they can give you a perspective,” said Zaman, 37, who has muscular dystrophy. “We are not defined by our special needs. It’s just a part of who we are … but there’s more to us than that.”

MUHSEN recognizes mosques making progress through its tiered masjid certification. To earn it, they must meet requirements like having disability awareness events, support groups, specialized child care, braille Qurans and ramps.

“It’s not just the ramp,” said Lamb, who has confronted accessibility problems in many types of venues.

Lamb wants to invite policymakers to what he thinks would be an eye-opening outing in wheelchairs. They would experience firsthand just how hard it is to do basic activities, like using public bathrooms and finding restaurants with enough space between tables for a wheelchair, he said.

His family also sacrificed what they thought was their forever home to move into a fully accessible house. They skipped church for a while as they juggled the pandemic, Lamb’s health problems, and new duties as foster parents.

“It wasn’t even the fact that church didn’t have a place for him in the chair,” said Laura Lamb – Jerry’s wife. “It was difficult for us. We were just learning this new kind of lifestyle.”

Dignity is needed in accessibility as well, said Amy Asin, the Union for Reform Judaism’s vice president of congregational engagement and leadership experiences.

Anybody who’s “had to go through the kitchen to get to the sanctuary has experienced what congregations need to do,” Asin said. “Some of it is about getting around … some of it is about making sure that path has dignity.”

Accessibility shouldn’t be treated as only a disability community issue either, she said.

“If we’ve had the blessing of living long enough, we will all be disabled,” she said. “This is not about them. This is about all of us.”

Accessibility updates can be pricey, but so can a congregation’s other needs, Asin said. These projects also can go through the annual budget process, knowing that some years, replacing a leaky roof or other critical need will take precedence.

Sometimes financial help is available. Donors may be interested in funding a particular accessibility project, Asin said.

ENCORE Ministry provides grants for congregations making accommodations for older members in the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference of the United Methodist Church, executive director Kent McNish said. Of the conference’s roughly 1,000 congregations, more than 60 percent of congregants are 60 or older, he said: “Most churches see that as a given and they don’t do anything for their senior adults.”

ENCORE is trying to change that with training and resources. As examples, they have funded sound systems that make worship easier to hear and screens that are more readable than hymnals.

At Camden First, the sanctuary layout now sends an important message.

“This is a place where we have thoughtfully made decisions to invite folks in” that need mobility assistance, Kelchner said.

The Lambs rejoined the congregation in the sanctuary this past fall. It just so happened that a newly-halved pew was near what once was their usual Sunday seat before everything changed.

“It felt like coming home,” Jerry Lamb said.

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