Inside 'Prince Of Prints' Jordan Schnitzer's Sprawling Collection

In Portland, Jordan Schnitzer has turned collecting into an infrastructure of access. His holdings now exceed 20,000 works, stored in a 4,000-square-foot warehouse that relies on a floating bin system, and managed through a foundation designed to keep art moving into public view rather than locked away.

The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, founded in 1997, functions as a lending collection and exhibition organizer. Works from the collection are placed at museums, where they can be studied and seen in new contexts. That approach has helped make Schnitzer one of North America's foremost print collectors, with holdings that span Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Richard Prince, David Hockney, and Judy Chicago.

The collection's reach is visible across the Pacific Northwest. Schnitzer's name anchors the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at both Washington State University and Portland State University. The Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center at the Portland Japanese Garden, designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates, extends that presence into a different cultural register. The Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design at Portland State University is set to become one of the largest academic buildings on campus when it opens this fall.

That institutional footprint reflects a family legacy. Schnitzer is the son of Arlene Schnitzer, a prominent gallerist, and Harold Schnitzer, a real estate developer and civic benefactor. He has described his role in terms of stewardship rather than ownership, a distinction that helps explain why the collection is structured to travel.

The model is on view now at the Portland Art Museum, where“David Hockney: Works from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation” runs through July 27. The exhibition ranges from sunlit pools and portraits to iPad drawings and later digital experiments, including“The Cardplayers” (2015), showing how Hockney's practice has continued to test the boundaries of perspective.

The collection will also travel internationally this fall, when selections appear in“Judy Chicago – On Print” at the Queen Sonja Art Stable in Oslo, Norway. In 2024, a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art established the Jordan Schnitzer Curator title in the Department of Drawings and Prints, now held by Jennifer Farrell.

Taken together, the collection, the foundation, and the exhibitions form a rare kind of cultural system: one built not only to preserve art, but to circulate it.

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