Free First Thursday

Overview

Portland Art Museum invites the community to join a Free First Thursday event, offering free admission to the museum for all, plus DJs from Basement Sessions, screenings of Monterey Pop, artmaking, and Look With Me tours.

Schedule

12 - 2 p.m. and 3 - 5 p.m. Artmaking, Finley Learning Studio. Join us in the Finley Studio for a hands-on cassette design activity! Visitors will create artwork based on cassette tape cover art and decorate them to craft custom little wallets inspired by our participating DJs’ very first childhood cassette tapes.

12 - 7 p.m. Museum Sessions DJs on 4th floor. In this special Museum Sessions edition, DJs will play a set in response to an exhibition/artworks, weaving their own reflections through their designed playlists. These sets will be recorded live and streamed directly from the galleries. Schedule and bios below.

3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Monterey Pop screenings, Whitsell Auditorium. On a beautiful June weekend in 1967, at the beginning of the Summer of Love, the Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward, capturing a decade’s spirit and ushering in a new era of rock and roll.

4 - 6 p.m. Look With Me: 20 minute guided slow looking session with a single artwork, every 30 mins, look for signs in the galleries

About Basement Sessions DJs

Basement Sessions are hosted by a rotating roster of respected Portland DJs. The series was created to contribute to and preserve the long artistic legacy of vinyl DJ culture - from early 1940s radio DJs spinning records on single turntables to the evolution of modern sound systems shaped by Reggae and Hip-Hop innovators of the 1960s and 70s. At its core, Basement Sessions celebrates music as a tool for connection, cultural exchange, and community gathering across genres and generations.

DJ schedule:

12 - 1 p.m. DJ Velvet Ginger 

1 - 2 p.m. DJ Tobias 

2 - 3 p.m. DJ Queen Amygdala 

3 - 4 p.m. DJ Chris the Dad 

4 - 6 p.m. DJ Rejekt  

6- 7 p.m. DJ ATM 

DJ Bios & Exhibition Inspirations

DJ Chris the Dad / Christopher Hanson

DJ Chris the Dad got his start DJing on vinyl as part of the Basement Sessions, having previously produced music digitally. He gained a deep appreciation for the tactile nature of mixing on vinyl and the connection it provides to the way music was played at the foundational Paradise Garage and Warehouse nightclubs.

Inspired by An Honest Day’s Work: Photographs of Labor, DJ Chris the Dad has selected a collection of dance songs centered around work and labor to explore the concept of the dancefloor as a site of liberation from the drudgery of wage labor and one where the terms “work” and “sweat” are transformed to refer to the act of dancing. In this way, the music celebrates hard work on the dance floor, a form of physical labor that deliberately produces no tangible outcome.

DJ Tobias / Tobias Berblinger

Tobias is a musician, audio engineer, DJ, and designer living in Portland, OR, who’s been DJing, producing, and engineering music for 30 years. Tobias got his start spinning house music at Portland raves and La Luna’s Queer Night in the ’90s, hugely inspired by house music DJs from Chicago. He eventually made his way to Chicago via a recording program at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences, where he worked at the seminal deep house label Guidance Recordings and released a label-based mix CD, Midnight Express vol. II, in 2003. During this time, he also formed Synesthesia, an art/anti-genre-based series of dance parties that incorporated House, Italo Disco, New Wave, No Wave, Protohouse, Goth, EBM, and other underground dance music with some of his regular collaborators. Tobias moved back to Portland in 2006 and began playing in bands that played country, garage rock, punk, and synth-pop, most notably with Kassi Valazza, Sylphide, Roselit Bone, and the Verner Pantons. He continues to DJ exclusively on vinyl and is most often found at the Coffin Club.

For Museum Sessions, DJ Tobias will curate a set of clean, rhythmic, and geometric musical pieces interspersed with audio samples inspired by the exhibit A Long Unbroken Line by the artist Mary Henry.

DJ Queen Amygdala / Rhea Morais

DJ Queen Amygdala is an all-vinyl DJ, synth musician, and therapist living in Portland, OR. She has been DJing for eight years and has a weekly DJ residency on Friday nights at the Midnight PDX, a gothic cocktail bar and music venue on Belmont St. She also spins at Dark Mansion, Portland’s longest-running Italo disco dance night at Coffin Club on the first Wednesday of each month, as well as a dark dance night there called ALCHEMY.

Amygdala’s sets weave a thread through a variety of moods and genres, often featuring heavy synthesizers and danceable beats. She loves Italo disco, ’80s new wave, darkwave, goth, EBM, electro, synth-pop, disco, funk, and more. In addition to DJing, she makes her own music inspired by these genres as part of a synth-pop band called Sylphide, co-created with her partner, Tobias Berblinger.

For Museum Sessions, DJ Queen Amygdala will curate music selections inspired by Marco Brambilla’s Maximalist Dreamscapes exhibit, particularly Brambilla’s piece Heaven’s Gate. Her set will be a closed-loop musical collage featuring cinema, opulence, history, futurism, and collective imagination.

DJ Rejekt / Jesse Johnson

DJ Rejekt is a Portland transplant by way of southern Arizona. He is Indigenous, of Hopi and Tohono O’odham descent, who has been spinning vinyl in Portland for almost four years under the guidance of DJ Dali, a recurring Basement Sessions guest, and DJ LoS of Tucson, AZ. His style encompasses an array of genres, particularly the darker, moodier sounds of Goth/Post-Punk; however, he incorporates a distinctive blend of synth-y New Wave and Electronic/Techno music, as well as the early R&B and Hip-Hop he grew up listening to with his siblings and cousins.

For Museum Sessions, DJ Rejekt will curate music selections inspired by the TO GATHER YOUR LEAVING - Themes of Diasporic Experiences in the Northwest exhibit, which illustrates multiple experiences of home, memory, movement, and loss. DJ Rejekt intends to use these illustrations to create an auditory experience riddled with mechanical, synthetic, angular, and beat-driven sounds.

DJ ATM / Richard Tapia

DJ ATM is a Chicano DJ from Phoenix, AZ, with over 29 years of DJing experience, spinning in both AZ and Portland. Since he was young, he’s been fascinated by DJ culture, beginning with the purchase of Run-DMC’s Raising Hell LP at age 10, then, in his teens, discovering the group Gang Starr and being influenced by DJ Premier to get behind the decks himself. In his years of spinning vinyl, DJ ATM has never stopped evolving his sound, continuing to incorporate new music while also drawing on his Chicano culture and roots in his sets.

For Museum Sessions, DJ ATM will curate a set inspired by the exhibit A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY - The Portrait to speak to photography from the perspective of a DJ, which requires a form of vulnerability, just like the portraits captured by the artists.

DJ Velvet Ginger / Clancy Feahr

DJ Velvet Ginger is an exclusively vinyl DJ based in Portland, Oregon. Known for their smooth transitions and spicy song selections, they bring a heat that builds throughout the night. Their sets seamlessly blend disco, funk, electro boogie, early house, and Hi-NRG. With a handful of long-standing residencies in Rose City, you can almost guarantee a chance to catch them spinning around town every weekend.

For Museum Sessions, DJ Velvet Ginger has selected the artist Patti Warashina’s Bad Doggie to curate music for, which they believe truly speaks to them and evokes a distinct 1980s aesthetic while maintaining a modern appeal. The underlying surrealism is both dark and deeply interesting, which mirrors the sonic atmosphere they aim to create. Their set will explore these themes, blending nostalgic textures with contemporary beats to reflect the artwork’s unique balance of humor, tension, and intrigue.

Tickets

Free First Thursday tickets can be reserved online one week in advance and are also available at the door. Tickets to Free First Thursday programs at the Tomorrow Theater are available online.

Free First Thursdays at the Museum and PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater aligns with the revitalization of the long-standing Portland art galleries’ tradition of opening their doors for openings, receptions, and events on the first Thursday of each month. In recent months art and culture organizations have joined to bring back this popular activity, including the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education in the North Park Blocks.

Generous support provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.

Learn more about other discounted and free opportunities.