Museum expands into renovated Masonic temple.

Byline: The Register-Guard

While you're visiting ``Hesse'' at the Portland Art Museum, be sure to check out the newly refurbished Mark Building and its six-level Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art.

The Mark Building, which sits just north of the museum's main Belluschi Building, was a 1925-vintage Masonic temple. The museum acquired it in 1991 and has spent $40 million converting it to gallery, library and office space in the past couple of years. It re-opened this fall.

The 28,000-square-foot Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, which occupies the south side of the building, is an airy and modern creation of concrete and glass hidden inside the original Masonic structure.

The center now houses the museum's art collection from Impressionism forward in time. You enter underground from the main museum building, find yourself in a display of abstract welded sculpture by Anthony Caro on the bottom level, and then can tour galleries from bottom to top:

The first floor houses the museum's Impressionist works, with the best known example being one of Claude Monet's ``Waterlilies.''

The second floor has the Clement Greenberg Collection, largely abstract paintings that the museum acquired from the late critic's estate in 2000.

From there, check out the 2,200-square-foot mezzanine, dedicated to showing photography from the museum's permanent collection.

The third floor has pop art and other contemporary forms that bring story-telling - purged by the abstract expressionists from their work - back into art.

On floor four, find contemporary and post-conceptual works, including video.