PORTLAND, OR.- The Rental Sales Gallery at the Portland Art Museum is moving in order to create more gallery space for itself and for the Museum. Located across the street from the Museum at SW Jefferson and 10th on the ground floor of the Eliot Tower, the new gallery will be more than 800 square feet larger than its previous location in the Belluschi Building. The Museum will convert the vacated space into an additional gallery for the Museum's distinguished Asian art collection.

The Rental Sales Gallery expects to open its new location by November, and will host a Grand Opening party on Friday, December 1 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. with complimentary champagne and refreshments. New work from artists in its collection will be on display, and many of the artists will be on hand to meet the public and discuss their works. The Rental Sales Gallery has more than 2,000 works from nearly 250 regional artists. They include oil, acrylic, and watercolor paintings, wood, metal and stone sculptures, drawings, collages, photography, and framed prints, and can be rented for three-month periods by museum members for as little as $40. The artwork in the gallery is chosen by a juried selection process, and is available for purchase as well as rental.

The Rental Sales Gallery had temporarily occupied the Goodman Gallery space on the main floor of the Belluschi Building during the construction of the Museum's North Wing. During the special exhibition The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt (Nov. 5-Mar. 4), the Museum's Education Department will use the space as an orientation area for school and group tours. In the spring, the gallery will be converted into exhibition space for works from the Museum's Asian art permanent collection, focusing on objects from its Chinese Cultural Group, which will mirror and extend the context of the exhibition directly opposite it, Mysterious Spirits, Strange Beasts, Earthly Delights: Early Chinese Art from the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Collection.