2020 • Oregon ArtsWatch

Oregon Children’s Theatre to pause all shows and activities

March 25, 2025Linda Ferguson

Due to financial troubles, the nationally recognized company will suspend its productions and educational programs beginning in September. In the meantime, it's begun a $1 million fund drive.

Elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services would be felt all over Oregon

March 25, 2025Amanda Waldroupe

The Trump Administration's proposed shutdown of the IMLS would be felt across the nation, including the Northwest: A quarter of the State Library of Oregon’s budget comes from the embattled federal agency.

Stumptown’s ‘Tootsie’: Naughty and nice

March 25, 2025Linda Ferguson

Theater review: Stumptown Stages presents a salty, witty, and musical update of the comic 1982 movie.

Love, death and power: Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell’s “The Shining” at Portland Opera

March 25, 2025Angela Allen

The Stephen King adaptation captured the book’s spooky mood and emotional complexity–and found an enthusiastic audience.

The Cultural Landscape: Part 20

March 25, 2025K.B. Dixon

Photographer K.B. Dixon continues his series of cultural profiles with portraits of choreographer Linda Austin, actor/director William (Bill) Earl Ray, visual artist Rebecca Boraz, novelist/translator Daniel Nieh, and Corrib Theatre artistic director Holly Griffith.

At the Oregon Arts Commission, “Sustaining Arts” means asking nonprofits what they need

March 24, 2025Claire Willett

A simplified grant application and unrestricted funding gives each arts organization the flexibility to use grant money where it can make the most impact.

The gift of song: Yoko Greeney and Amelia Lukas perform “Music of the Birds”

March 24, 2025Lorin Wilkerson

The pianist and flutist performed bird-themed music by Japanese and Oregonian composers at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Crystal Meneses: Raising ‘A Thousand Hands’ for art as spiritual healing

March 24, 2025Lori Tobias

The Lincoln City artist honors her Pacific Islander heritage and relationship with Kuan Yin in an exhibit opening April 4 in Newport.

Dance Review: ‘FLOOR’ is a plastilina wonderland of depth and dialogue

March 24, 2025Amy Leona Havin

At Performance Works Northwest, three dancers, a rush of words, a flight of balloons, and a beautiful straddling of metaphoric balance between fantasy and reality.

New season, new day: Oregon Symphony’s president talks about what’s coming up

March 23, 2025James Bash

Isaac Thompson discusses a concert switch from Mondays to Thursdays and revitalizing downtown in a 2025-26 season that starts with violin superstar Joshua Bell and ends with a percussive bang.

Former Major League Baseball player Dave Baldwin of Yachats has gone from pitching to poetry, and now, big bold paintings

March 21, 2025YachatsNews.com

The retiree, whose resume also includes work as a geneticist and engineer, is one of three artists in a new venture: Little Art Museums of Yachats.

FilmWatch Weekly: ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,’ ‘Magazine Dreams,’ and more

March 20, 2025Marc Mohan

Also this week: a strange dystopia in "The Assessment," plus the sci-fi flick "Ash" and the baseball film "Eephus."

Portland Art Museum sets the date: After 9 years, transformed campus to open Nov. 20

March 20, 2025Bob Hicks

The museum will unveil its $111 million renovation and its new Rothko Pavilion with a four-day free celebration and a rethinking of how it displays its art.

It’s a family affair: The Norman Sylvester Band at Alberta Rose Theatre

March 20, 2025Lynn Darroch

A local hero celebrates 40 years as a leader with a concert featuring guest artists from throughout his career.

Sale of federal buildings across nation imperils U.S. public’s vast art collection

March 19, 2025Bob Hicks

News & Notes: Also, Cultural Trust tax credit nets $5.2 million; Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center grants; Broadway in Portland announces new season.

Consistency and nuance, solidity and lightness, strength and suppleness: Choirs welcome the spring

March 19, 2025Daryl Browne

From Bach Cantata Choirs “kinda-sorta Lenten concert” and Couperin’s “Ténèbrae” with In Mulieribus to Portland Gay Men’s Chorus in collaboration with Portland Lesbian Choir and Bridging Voices.

For three decades, Newport Paper & Book Arts Festival has been doing things by the book

March 18, 2025Lori Tobias

The three-day festival in April offers 10 workshops on a range of paper arts — and the opportunity for bookmaking friends to reconnect.

DramaWatch: A bevy of absorbing and socially significant shows

March 18, 2025Linda Ferguson

Portland Center Stage presents a stirring production of "The Light." Fuse prepares "Great White Goes Down" for Fertile Ground. Twilight chronicles the beginnings of gay activism with "The Temperamentals." Plus more openings and continuing shows.

Dancing in the gaps: Vijay Gupta with 45th Parallel Universe

March 18, 2025Charles Rose

The violinist joined Pyxis Quartet for a concert centered on Osvaldo Golijov’s somber “Tenebrae”

‘Seeking Warmth’: A Romani artist who survived the Holocaust paints memories gentle and harsh

March 17, 2025Friderike Heuer

At Art at the Cave gallery in Vancouver, Wash., the work of Ceija Stoika is haunted by harsh realities: "I fear that Europe is forgetting its past and that Auschwitz is only asleep."

PuzzleWatch: Electrifying Conductors

March 16, 2025Daryl Browne

Test your knowledge of some of the world's greatest conductors in this musical March crossword puzzle.

Keeping it reel: The Nyback film archive finds a new home and a community of caretakers

March 15, 2025Marc Mohan

The analog film collection of the late Dennis Nyback moves to the basement of a Southeast Portland community center, where a crew of dedicated cinephiles takes on the monumental task of cataloguing its over 5,000 titles.

Music news & notes: March 2025

March 15, 2025Brett Campbell

Happenings in Oregon classical music, including news about a nationally acclaimed Oregon radio station, a rising young Oregon musician, a new orchestra leader in Eugene, the impending end of a couple of beloved musical traditions, and more.

Susan Seubert’s ‘Fragile Beauty’: Icebergs and the passage of time

March 15, 2025Brian Libby

The Portland photographer has led a dual career, traveling the world as a photojournalist and showing fine art in museums and galleries. At PDX Contemporary Art, her new iceberg show brings the two together.

August Wilson & Kevin Kenerly help kick off Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 90th season

March 14, 2025Jim Flint

Kenerly, a 26-year veteran of the Ashland festival who has starred in other works by the great American playwright, digs into Wilson's world of "Jitney" as the season begins.

You belong somewhere you feel free: Music in Our Schools month promotes music education and personal development

March 13, 2025Daryl Browne

The 40th anniversary of the National Association for Music Education’s annual celebration finds Oregon choirs, orchestras, arts organizations and schools embracing this year’s MIOS theme, “United Through Music.”

Oregon author Willy Vlautin is a finalist for the $50,000 Joyce Carol Oates Prize from the New Literary Project

March 13, 2025Karen Pate

The award, to be given in mid-April, recognizes a mid-career fiction writer of “national consequence.” Vlautin calls the nomination a lucky break.

FilmWatch Weekly: Lame comedies ‘Opus’ and ‘The Parenting’ lead a lackluster week

March 13, 2025Marc Mohan

An uneventful week for new releases is led by two star-studded but pointless comedies, but a Blu-ray collection of unheralded films noir from Kino Lorber offers a silver lining.

Center Stage’s searing ‘Virginia Woolf’: Why now?

March 13, 2025Darleen Ortega

Edward Albee's 1960s masterwork of two toxic marriages gets a bold and skillful new performance. Sixty years later, does its evening of drink and destruction still sting?

April Waters’ ‘Sheroes,’ big and bold

March 13, 2025Dee Moore

The Salem artist's giant portraits of activist women including Dr. Helen Caldicott and water rights advocate Maud Barlow stare forthrightly out of their frames.