the museum hosted one of its most important early exhibitions. The exhibition featured artwork that had been on display earlier that year at the famous 1913 New York Armory Show, which introduced American audiences to modern art. The exhibition included works by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Manet, Renoir, and the controversial Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 by Marcel Duchamp. The museum continued to grow during the years following World War I. In the 1920s, the museum hosted two memorable exhibitions organized by Sally Lewis, the daughter of a prominent Portland family. Lewis had befriended many well-known artists on trips to New York and Europe. In 1923, Lewis organized an exhibition at the museum that included 44 paintings by Picasso, Matisse, André Derain and American modernists, such as Maurice Prendergast, Charles Burchfield, and Max Weber. She was also one of 22 patrons who purchased Derain's Tree for the museum's permanent collection. The success of her first exhibition led to her second, more daring endeavor a year later that juxtaposed paintings, drawings, and sculptures from Europe with African masks. Among the sculptures was Brâncuși's A Muse, which Lewis owned and donated to the museum in 1959. Beginnings The museum's final location opened to the public on November 18, 1932, at the corner of SW Park Avenue and Jefferson Street. The building was designed by architect Pietro Belluschi. It is situated along downtown Portland's South Park Blocks and remains a landmark in the city's Cultural District. It was constructed with a lead gift of $100,000 from Winslow B. Ayer, the same patron who selected the museum's collection of plaster casts 40 years earlier. For this reason, the original portion of today's larger main building is referred to as the Ayer Wing. In April 1938, the museum was registered as a tax exempt nonprofit organization. That same year, construction began on a new wing expansion project. The Hirsch Wing, also designed by Belluschi, was funded largely through the bequest of Ella Hirsch in honor of her parents, Solomon and Josephine Hirsch. The new wing opened on September 15, 1939, and doubled the museum's gallery space. Post war In 1942, the Portland Art Museum celebrated a subdued 50th Anniversary due to World War II. But the following year in 1943, staff completed the museum's first full inventory, which counted a permanent collection of 3,300 objects and 750 works on long-term loan. The next