Author: bhmsalem

Bush House Museum Architecture Tour: History and Mysteries

Posted on by bhmsalem in Uncategorized

SUNDAY August 17, 2025 From 1:30 P.M. to 2:30 P.M. | BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

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Back by popular demand!  We will conduct the Bush House Museum Historic Architecture tour.

Are you curious about the architecture of the Bush House Museum? What’s with that door to nowhere? Why is the basement mostly above ground? What’s with those two steps up from the servants level? What style is this architecture and who was the architect?

Take a deep dive into the architecture of the Bush House.  Learn about its Italianate style of architecture, rooted in Italian villa design and the Romantic movement in 19th century art. Explore finely crafted wood and metal details and exquisite marble fireplaces throughout the house.

Join us for an interesting and enlightening tour of the oddities of Bush House Museum. and enlightening tour of the oddities of Bush House Museum.

Date: Sunday, August 17, 2025

Time: The tour will begin promptly at 1:30pm and will conclude at 2:30pm.
Please meet your tour guide, Kathy, outside on the east side of the House to view the exterior architecture before heading into the Museum as a group. 

Location: Bush House Museum, Mission Street Southeast, Salem, OR, USA

This tour is capped at 12 guests, so please be sure to register to hold your spot! 

Tickets

BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM EXTENDED 90 MINUTES TOUR

Posted on by bhmsalem in Uncategorized

SUNDAY july 27, 2025 From 1:30 P.M. to 3:00 P.M. | BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

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But Wait! There’s More!
During the standard Bush House Museum (BHM) tour, we run out of time before we run out of stories. What to do? An extended, 90 minute tour, of course. Let’s snoop in some closets, whisper some rumors and might there be a scandal? And how does that contraption work?

Date: Sunday, July 27th, 2025

Time: The tour will begin promptly at 1:30 pm and will conclude at 3:00 pm.
Please meet your tour guide, Robin Cunningham, outside on the front porch before heading into the Museum as a group. 

Location: Bush House Museum, Mission Street Southeast, Salem, OR, USA

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We plan to schedule more tours in the future. To be notified of future tours, please join the waitlist!

BLACK ARCHIVE | NIKESHA BREEZE

Posted on by bhmsalem in Current shows in our new America Waldo Bogle Gallery

JULY 11-October 30, 2025 | THE AMERICA WALDO BOGLE GALLERY AT THE BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

RECEPTION AT THE BUSH BARN ART CENTER: FRIDAY, JULY 11, FROM 5:30 – 7:30 P.M.

“Pictures, like songs, should be left to make their own way in the world. All they can reasonably ask of us is that we place them on the wall, in the best light, and for the rest allow them to speak for themselves.”  ~ Frederick Douglass from Pictures and Progress

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Nikesha Breeze is an international artist working across a diverse range of media—including oil painting, clay and bronze sculpture, installation, performance art, and film. Grounded in a global African diasporic and Afro-Futurist perspective, her layered, immersive works draw on African diasporic research, reclamation, and memorial, forging otherworldly spaces rich with storytelling and historical education. Her practice employs multiple materials and methodologies that call upon ancestral memory and archival resurrection to revive stories long erased from the global narrative, engaging directly with themes of grief, sanctuary, power and presence, visibility, and erasure.

Breeze’s innovative approach has garnered national acclaim. In 2021, her expansive 5,000-square-foot solo exhibition “Four Sites Of Return” was featured in American Art Collector, Hyperallergic, Metalsmith Magazine, and The New York Times. Her collaborative work, “Stages of Tectonic Blackness,” earned her the National Performance Network Creative Fund and Development Fund Grant. Earlier, at the 2018 International ARTPRIZE exhibition, she received the juried 3D Grand Prize Award and the Contemporary Black Arts Award for her sculptural installation, 108 Death Masks: A Communal Prayer for Peace and Justice—a work that in 2024 was included in the permanent collection of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama, honoring the six million lives lost in enslavement in the United States.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Nikesha Breeze now lives and works in the high desert of Taos, New Mexico, on the unceded land of the Taos Pueblo People. As an African American descendant of the Mende People of Sierra Leone and Assyrian American immigrants from Iran, her multicultural heritage infuses her work with a dynamic range of perspectives. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as MoCADA Museum, The Albuquerque Museum, University Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, and the NkinKyim Museum of Ghana, as well as at fine art galleries and art fairs around the globe.

https://nikeshabreeze.com

https://www.instagram.com/nikeshabreeze

Bush House Museum Architecture Tour: History and Mysteries

Posted on by bhmsalem in Current shows in our new America Waldo Bogle Gallery, Events

SUNDAY June 22, 2025 From 12:15 P.M. to 1:15 P.M. | BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

tickets

Are you curious about the architecture of the Bush House Museum? What’s with that door to nowhere? Why is the basement mostly above ground? What’s with those two steps up from the servants level? What style is this architecture and who was the architect?

Take a deep dive into the architecture of the Bush House.  Learn about its Italianate style of architecture, rooted in Italian villa design and the Romantic movement in 19th century art. Explore finely crafted wood and metal details and exquisite marble fireplaces throughout the house.

Join us for an interesting and enlightening tour of the oddities of Bush House Museum.

Date: Sunday, June 22, 2025

Time: The tour will begin promptly at 12:15pm and will conclude at 1:15pm.
Please meet your tour guide, Kathy, outside on the east side of the House to view the exterior architecture before heading into the Museum as a group. 

Location: Bush House Museum, Mission Street Southeast, Salem, OR, USA

This tour is capped at 12 guests, so please be sure to register to hold your spot! 

Tickets

Art Lover’s Tour of the Bush House Museum

Posted on by bhmsalem in Current shows in our new America Waldo Bogle Gallery, Events

SUNDAY APRIL 27, 2025 From 1:30 P.M. to 2:30 P.M. | BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

There’s never enough time on the standard tour to do justice to the Bush family art collection. Here’s your chance to satisfy your curiosity and fundraise for Bush house museum.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to experience a private tour with a focus on the Bush family art collection in the historic Bush House Museum.

Tour Sign-ups

This tour is capped at 12 guests, so please be sure to register to hold your spot! 

Date: Sunday, April 27, 2025

Time: The tour will begin promptly at 1:30pm and will conclude at 2:30pm.

Location: Bush House Museum, Mission Street Southeast, Salem, OR, USA

Favorite Things II | Jason Hill

Posted on by bhmsalem in Past show and installations

NOVEMBER 8, 2024 – JUNE 29, 2025 | THE AMERICA WALDO BOGLE GALLERY AT THE BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

Favorite Things is a portrait and short film series depicting regional artists with items that are precious to them. Developed by Portland filmmaker and photographer Jason Hill, this work documents a collaboration wherein artists were instructed to share and speak about a favorite item in a studio setting. The results are an experiment with light and color to create magical portraits and filmed testimonials.

ABOUT THE Artist

Jason Hill (born 1976) is an artist and educator currently living in Portland, Oregon. Born in the Midwest to a father in the military, he moved constantly with his family until settling down in Southern California. His relationship with photographic imagery began with his love of record album covers. He started working with a camera during adolescence and is largely self-trained. His practice today is focused on portraiture with an emphasis in the mechanics of light, vibrant color, emotion, and natural beauty.

Vista Piano Quartet in Concert at the Bush House Museum

Posted on by bhmsalem in Past show and installations

Saturday, November 9, 2024 | BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

Doors open at 6:00pm, show will begin promptly at 6:30pm.

Join us for an unforgettable evening of live music with the Vista Piano Quartet at the Bush House Museum!
Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to experience the magic of chamber music in the historic setting of the Bush House Museum.

Location: Bush House Museum, Mission Street Southeast, Salem, OR, USA

Reserve your ticket today!

ABOUT Vista Piano Quartet

Chamber Music can simply, and most aptly, described as “the music of friends”.

In between the sacred music of the Medieval Era to the contemporary concert halls
seating hundreds of listeners, was the nineteenth century idea of the Salon; amateur
and professional musicians alike gathering in the home to share an evening of music
and camaraderie. It is not out of the realm of imagination to envision an evening of
chamber music at the turn of the 20th century in the historic Bush House.

The Vista Piano Quartet is thrilled to take you on a journey back to that time, with a
twist. Our program consists of nineteenth and early twentieth century works which
would have been the new music of the time. While Schumann or Brahms may
immediately come to mind, we have chosen a different path for this recital.

The number of compositions by women of that, or any era, goes largely unrecognized and
undoubtedly underperformed. It is our aim to shed a ray of light on four highly skilled
and respected composers/musicians of that time whose names and accomplishments
have been nearly lost to history. We’ll present selections from Elfrida Andree,Mel Bonis,
Dora Pejacsevich, and Luise Aldolpha Le Beau in hopes their names will someday
become standards of the musical canon.

We look forward to sharing an evening of music, a little history and friendship with you.

Vista Piano Quartet Members: 

Violin – Cathy Heithaus
Viola – Karen Vincent
Cello – Jenny Gleason
Piano – Brenda Winberg

Reserve your ticket today!

Bush House Museum Concert with MaCHADO Mijiga

Posted on by bhmsalem in Events

saturday, OCTOBER 18, 2024 | BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

Doors open at 6:00pm, show will begin promptly at 6:30pm.

Join us for an unforgettable evening of live music with Machado Mijiga at the Bush House Museum!
Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to experience the magic of Machado Mijiga’s jazz drumming in the historic setting of the Bush House Museum.

Location: Bush House Museum, Mission Street Southeast, Salem, OR, USA

Reserve your ticket today!

ABOUT mACHADO

Multi-instrumentalist and Portland native Machado Mijiga wears many hats, both literally and metaphorically. Classically trained, jazz-weathered, and eclectically inclined, Mijiga left the proverbial creative “box” at a very early age, with access to many instruments and a diverse musical background brought about by an intercultural heritage. Mijiga is a musical polymath; composer, producer, bandleader, educator, gear fanatic, and audio engineer, to name a few. Authenticity and uniquity assume the locus of Mijiga’s artistic identity. Self-expression is the prime directive and the medium of choice changes like the weather.

Reserve your ticket today!

LINKS: 

Bush House Museum Concert with AMENTA ABIOTA

Posted on by bhmsalem in Events, Past show and installations

saturday, NOVEMBER 18, 2023 | BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM

Amenta is a singer, songwriter, producer and performance artist from Memphis, TN. In her own woman show, she builds vocal and instrumental loops from kalimba, synthesizer, drum machine and guitar creating atmospheric textures. Boldly mystical and soul-fired, join us for a magical evening in a historic house.   

This concert is part of our initiative to reimagine the Bush House Museum as an intimate space in which artists and performers can transform the burdens of history into hope, healing and joy – a space, in other words, that lies at the intersection of history and art. 

ABOUT AMENTA

Yawa is a songwriter and producer from Memphis, TN. She is currently based in Portland, OR. In her one-woman performance, she builds vocal and instrumental loops from synth, drum machine, and  kalimba creating atmospheric textures. Yawa surprises and tantalizes audiences with mind bending ideas while skipping vocally from soul-shaking gospel to smooth jazz.

LINKS: amentaabioto.com

https://yawamusic.bandcamp.com/music

JULY 21-23, 2023 | FREE GUIDED TOURS OF THE BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM AND THE AMERICA WALDO BOGLE GALLERY

Posted on by bhmsalem in Current shows in our new America Waldo Bogle Gallery

July 21-23, 2023 | FREE GUIDED TOURS OF THE BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM AND THE AMERICA WALDO BOGLE GALLERY

Enjoy a free tour of the Museum and Gallery, July 21-23 every half hour from 12:30 to 4:00 p.m. Built in 1878 for Salem’s Bush Family, this historic house museum features original furnishings, fixtures and fine art. A second-floor gallery celebrates Oregon’s rich Black history with paintings by Jeremy Okai Davis and sculpture by brothers Santigie and Sapata Fofana-Dura. Tour tickets are available at the Bush Barn Art Center on a first-come basis. The first stop on the 45 minute tour is the America Waldo Gallery for those who only want to see the artwork of these contemporary Oregon Black artists, then exit the Museum. Visitors will enter through the front door and exit through the Library. The Bush House Museum is operated by the Salem Art Association on behalf of the City of Salem.