(steps tapping) - [Narrator] At a secret warehouse in Northwest Portland, (door set clanks) sits one of the region's most impressive collections of art.

(soft intriguing music) Nearly 20,000 pieces of art, housed in a state-of-the-art, 50,000-square-foot facility.

(soft intriguing music) This is the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation Collections.

The collection focuses on post-war prints, looking at all the key figures from that period.

(soft intriguing music) - The best names, locally, and the best names nationally.

Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Frankenthaler, Lichtenstein.

Rick Bartow, Sherrie Wolf.

- And you've got Picasso.

You've got Martin Puryear.

You've got Louise Bourgeois.

You've got Robert Rauschenberg.

- Frank Stella.

Andy Warhol.

All of the top artists of our day are really in the collection.

(soft intriguing music) - [Narrator] To have this world-class collection in Portland, Oregon, is a unique thing.

We have become an important stop in the study of post-war art because of The Schnitzer Collection.

(soft music fades) (paper crumbles) - [Narrator] But unlike most private collections of art, work from this collection is loaned out, free of charge, to museums across the country.

(cardboard scraps) (truck whirs) - I have such passion for the art, but it is so exceeded by my passion for sharing the art.

- The idea that you do not have to pay a rental fee.

I can't even begin to describe the pressure that that takes off museums.

It frees all of us up to put the money into the way we're presenting the show, the programming we're doing for the show.

(joyful music) - [Narrator] The foundation tours 20 full exhibitions a year, each one featuring anywhere from 25 to 200 pieces of art.

- [Judy] About a year ago, in June of 2022, we put together an exhibition, which we called "JUDY CHICAGO: Turning Inward," and it was entirely from the works in the collection.

- It had 36 works that really pointed to a lot of her practice as a feminist artist, and crossed over into many different areas of her career.

- For my museum to be able to show works by Judy Chicago was perfect for an organization with a mission like ours.

The show was incredible.

(joyful music fades) - [Narrator] One of the early great successes of the foundation's traveling exhibition program was the Andy Warhol print show.

(upbeat music) The collection has almost every print that Andy Warhol ever made.

(upbeat music) It has traveled widely over the course of the last decade.

It is popular beyond belief, because Andy Warhol is one of the most important artists in the post-war period.

He changed the look and the context of art in a way that this collection reveals in its fullness.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music stops) (soft piano music) - [Jordan] I was lucky I grew up with art around me.

My mother, Arlene Schnitzer, when I went to first grade at Ainsworth Grade School, she enrolled in the Portland Art Museum Art School.

(soft piano music) Three years later, she, along with my grandmother, Helen Director, opened the Fountain Gallery of Art.

- [Narrator] The Fountain Gallery was one of the region's first professional galleries.

It helped pave the way for a robust art scene in Portland.

- I would go to the openings at the gallery every month or two, and it was a fun time for me.

So it was only natural for me to sort of follow in those footsteps.

But I just became so enamored, and enjoyed the incredible artists we have in the Pacific Northwest.

This is the study by Louis Bunce that I bought when I was 14.

So it all started with this.

And it says on the back, "Bought on the night of June 23rd, 1965, the first piece of the Schnitzer Collection."

I've had this with me ever since.

(intriguing music) - [Catherine] One of the unique things about the collection is that it's very broad and also very deep.

- I've always found it easier to see a retrospective show, a show that shows decades of an artist's work, 'cause I find it easier to get into their mind and see, "Oh, this is how they started, then this period, and this period, and this period.

- For Andy Warhol it's not just collecting the "Marylins," which anyone would recognize, (soft intriguing music) but it's also collecting very early work from his days of being a graphic artist.

(soft intriguing music) - So if an important art museum called up and said, "We wanna do a Lichtenstein show," I'd say, "Okay, I've got some early work from 1952, when he was just teaching, and 270 works all the way through the 1997 Tel Aviv Benefit print, and every period in between, it's all framed, when do you want it?"

(paper crumples) - [Narrator] 11 full-time staff members work to catalog, ship, maintain, and care for this collection.

(tool whirring) The warehouse includes a wood shop for building custom shipping crates.

A photo studio to document each piece of art in the collection, and multiple workstations for evaluating and maintaining the art.

- I've always felt if you're lucky enough to have the art, then you have an obligation to take care of it, because it will go on beyond your life.

'Cause these have to stay around for hundreds of years, for thousands of audiences.

- Right now we're working on a David Hockney print retrospective that's being organized by the Honolulu Museum of Art.

We've been working on for over a year.

There's 142 pieces in the exhibition, and the registrars have been looking at the work really closely to examine its condition, readiness to be displayed for the exhibition.

(inspiring piano music) (camera roll clicks) - The foundation's outreach program to students and children.

It was an important innovation that Jordan brought to the table very early in the formation of the foundation.

His choice to make available the funds to open the world of art to children, through his program and the exhibitions, is unique among collectors and foundations.

(inspiring piano music) - It's not like a calculus class or a chemistry class where one and one have to equal two.

And just maybe, if we can get enough kids in to see art and let it be part of their life, they won't think, "Well, that art stuff's for some elitist few, for somebody else."

(cardboard scraps) - [Narrator] In 2004, the foundation began publishing its own books for use by museums, galleries, and researchers.

- It's really an important way to create scholarship around the work of the artist and the exhibition.

But beyond that, he's published a couple of catalog resumes, which is basically an encyclopedia of every print that an artist has made to date, with all of the technical information and academic research around that work.

(visitors chattering faintly) - In the last month I've had five openings around the country.

There must be maybe 5,000 or 6,000 or 7,000 people a day that go through our exhibitions.

So we've had hundreds of thousands of people a year.

That makes me feel good to help get amazing work to museums that otherwise would probably not be able to have these exhibitions.

(soft joyful music) I still find myself as taken away when I see all this art, each single piece.

There's still that same joy from the first moment I saw that print in my mother's soon-to-be open gallery.

It's the most joyous thing.

(piano key rings) Magnificent.

Wow.

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