Maxville & Vanport: Hidden Histories of Everyday Life 

Maxville & Vanport: Hidden Histories of Everyday Life  

When: February 27 - April 11, 2026

Where: Arts Corridor, Lightboxes, and Mezzanine Gallery 

Viewing Hours: 

• Monday - Friday, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. 
• Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 
• Closed Sundays 
• During scheduled events at PRAx

Parking: Don't have a campus parking pass but want to visit visual arts exhibitions at PRAx? Ask the Box Office for a pay code upon arrival, on us! 

On April 2, 2026, Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble presents their jazz song cycle From Maxville to Vanport at PRAx. In the weeks before and after the one-night performance, we welcome audiences to learn more about both Maxville and Vanport from a multimedia exhibition installed throughout the building. 

Maxville, a racially segregated logging company town in rural Eastern Oregon in the 1920s-1930s, and Vanport, a massive multiracial housing complex created for defense shipyard workers outside of Portland in the 1940s, each only existed for a few years. Both towns are now gone; lost to time, disaster, displacement. But the communities and legacies remain. 

Co-curated by OSU faculty and community partners, Maxville & Vanport: Hidden Histories of Everyday Life draws on existing descendant-led community archive projects and new research to amplify the experiences of everyday life in these two multiracial, worker-housing communities — on their own terms and in conversation with each other. By focusing on the faces, the stories, and the land, this exhibition seeks to collapse the distance of time and humanize the ordinary people who lived and worked in Maxville and in Vanport.