Few architects have influenced so many facets of a region as John Yeon (1910- 1994). Yeon is most widely remembered as an architect, in particular for a series of innovative houses—most prominently, the 1937 Aubrey Watzek House—that drew an international spotlight to regional modernism in the Pacific Northwest. Yet Yeon had equal vision and influence as a planner, conservationist, historic preservationist, urban activist, and, perhaps most of all, connoisseur of elegance and craft.

The exhibition’s architecture and landscape section surveys two dozen projects and buildings designed between 1927 and the mid 1950s including:

• A dynamic 1934 scheme for Timberline Lodge

• Original drawings and a dynamic new model of Yeon's masterpiece, the 1937 Aubrey Watzek House

• The nation's first commercial plywood houses which Yeon designed in the 1930s

• The 1950 Shaw House, which elegantly anticipates the stylistic eclecticism of Postmodernism.

The exhibition features original models and drawings, along with images by a trio of the midcentury’s greatest architectural photographers: Ezra Stoller, Maynard Parker, and Roger Sturtevant. Newly developed models and axonometric drawings will invite a greater understanding of Yeon’s careful siting of buildings and his cutting edge construction and sustainable design techniques. A high-definition time-lapse video records the changing seasons at The Shire, the stunning 78- acre preserve in the Columbia Gorge that Yeon shaped over 25 years and where the successful movement for the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act was launched.

The exhibition features a wide selection of art, decorative arts, and historic materials lent by Richard Louis Brown, who founded the John Yeon Center in 1995 with his gift of the The Shire and Watzek House to the University of Oregon.

The exhibition is the museum's largest presentation of the work of a single architect in its history. Presented by the Portland Art Museum and the University of Oregon John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape.

The Portland Art Museum is closed on Mondays and on Tuesday, July 4.