Home · Articles · News · Q & A · Brian Ferriso November 8th,
2006 Stephen Marc Beaudoin | Q & A  Brian Ferriso  New Portland
Art Museum executive director says what he really thinks about
football fans and art snobs.   Brian Ferriso comes to his new
job as executive director at the Portland Art Museum from a
similar post in Oklahoma, where he remembers battling stiff
competition for the entertainment dollar.  That competition:
rabid Sooners fans who support University of Oklahoma football.
(Oregonians got a taste of how fanatic Sooners are when even
Oklahoma school president David Boren complained about a
terrible ref's call that gave the University of Oregon the
opening it needed to beat Oklahoma 34-33 this season.)  Ferriso,
40, spent the last three years as executive director of the
Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. There, he revitalized the
contemporary art collections and curatorial department and
oversaw the renovation of the Philbrook Gardens. But before
starting his new job Oct. 30 in Portland, Ferris