2024 in Review: All around Oregon

From OSU's new PRAx arts center to libraries both energized and threatened, Nehalem's Trash Bash Art Festival, a fresh start at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and much more, a look at the arts year around the state.

Oregon ArtsWatch takes the “Oregon” in its title seriously, striving to cover arts and culture not just in the Portland metro area but as much as possible around the state as well.


2024: A Year in Review


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With regular correspondents Lori Tobias on the Oregon Coast and David Bates in McMinnville and the surrounding wine country, plus an overflowing handful of other writers who get out to explore what’s happening outside of the big city, we try to take the cultural temperature of the state and region as a whole.

Karen Pate, our regional and literary editor (and lead editor for our Cultural Hubs series, which roams around the state), along with music editor Matthew Neil Andrews, arts education and special projects editor Beth Sorensen, visual arts editor Laurel Reed Pavich, senior editor Brett Campbell, and executive editor Bob Hicks, keep tabs on what’s significant and interesting throughout Oregon.

ArtsWatch has published roughly 100 stories from around Oregon and the Washington edge of the Columbia Gorge during 2024. You can see all of those stories here.

If you build it, they will come

Entryway to the new Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts, at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Photo: Blake Brown
Entryway to the new Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts, at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Photo: Blake Brown

PRAx IN CORVALLIS: One of 2024’s biggest cultural stories in Oregon was the opening of the $75 million Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts, or PRAx, on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. Named for the same philanthropist and arts advocate as Beaverton’s highly successful Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, PRAx is a combination performance and visual arts center that serves both the university and the city and surrounding countryside.

On April 3, arts and architecture writer Brian Libby kicked off ArtsWatch’s coverage with Corvallis’s PRAx of life opens its doors, a deep dive into the architecture, construction, and educational and artistic purposes of the ambitious cultural center.

ArtsWatch followed wih a series of other stories about PRAx and its impact:

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Cascadia Composers and Delgani String Quartet Portland Oregon

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The Chehalem Cultural Center's new 250-seat LaJoie Theatre begins to fill up at its Sept. 7 grand opening. Officials expect it to be busy year-round. Photo: David Bates
The Chehalem Cultural Center’s new 250-seat LaJoie Theatre begins to fill up at its Sept. 7 grand opening. Officials expect it to be busy year-round. Photo: David Bates

CHEHALEM CULTURAL CENTER IN NEWBERG: “Shortly after 8 p.m. on the first Saturday of September, a tuxedo-clad Sean Andries stood on the stage of the Chehalem Cultural Center’s new LaJoie Theatre to welcome an invitation-only crowd of supporters, financial backers, artists, and staff filling the 250 plush seats,” David Bates writes in his Sept 26 story Lajoie Theatre adds new jewel to the Chehalem Cultural Center crown.

Bates continues: “’For 20 years people have been dreaming about this brand-new theater,’ said Andries, the center director, his infectious enthusiasm ramped up to 11. ‘When was the last time you saw a dream come true? For 20 years, people have been wondering what this would look like, what this would sound like; for 20 years, people have been dreaming about how it would feel tonight. So how does it feel?’

“Whoops and applause from the audience.”

The new theater is part of a $5 million project to renovate the second floor of the former school in Newberg that’s been transformed into one of Oregon’s leading regional arts and cultural centers. Bates tells the full story of this major new chapter in the life of a center that serves 85,000 visitors a year.

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Nate Sandel (right) helps Warrenton Middle School students build a vessel in the Columbia River Maritime Museum’s miniboat program. The boats are launched from Astoria or Japan and tracked across the Pacific Ocean by GPS for up to two years. Photo courtesy: Columbia River Maritime Museum
Nate Sandel (right) helps Warrenton Middle School students build a vessel in the Columbia River Maritime Museum’s miniboat program. The boats are launched from Astoria or Japan and tracked across the Pacific Ocean by GPS for up to two years. Photo courtesy Columbia River Maritime Museum.

MARITIME MUSEUM IN ASTORIA: Another significant construction project is the major expansion of one of Astoria’s most important cultural attractions, which broke ground in the fall. In her June story Stuffed to the gunwales, Astoria’s Columbia River Maritime Museum prepares to launch $30 million expansion, Lori Tobias broke down the museum’s plans to nearly double in size, increase its exhibits, and add classroom space to serve maritime enthusiasts, children, and researchers alike.

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“The Columbia River Maritime Museum had a problem,” Tobias wrote. “Two warehouses, totaling just under 26,000 square feet, near bursting with priceless maritime history – and no place to share it.

“’We love that we have two full warehouses,’ the museum’s executive director, Bruce Jones, said. “And we hate the fact the public doesn’t get to see them.’

“This fall, the Astoria museum will move one step closer to fixing the problem when it breaks ground on a $30 million expansion, the largest in the museum’s history.”

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OREGON FILM MUSEUM IN ASTORIA: In another construction story, this one also from Astoria, ArtsWatch film columnist Marc Mohan wrote in June 3’s Oregon Film Museum in Astoria plans massive expansion following $1 million state grant about the new, 13,000-square-foot building that will celebrate Oregon’s cinematic legacy (and the 39th anniversary of The Goonies, which was filmed in Astoria).

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ARTS AND MOVEMENT CENTER IN ASTORIA: And in yet one more construction revival in culturally booming Astoria, Lori Tobias writes in May 14’s Astoria Arts and Movement Center: Historic Odd Fellows Building becomes a center for dance and community about how a national contest helped pay for the transformation of the old building into a vibrant new community center hosting classes ranging from ballet to Zumba. “We just put our heads together and rallied a ton of community support,” Jessamyn West, founder of the nonprofit Astoria Arts and Movement Center and a belly dance instructor, said. “We connected with a banker. … I knew his family. I knew our real estate agent. … It was a very small-town endeavor where everybody knew each other and we all kind of pulled together to be able to make it happen.”

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Portland Opera The Shining Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon

The joys of (and challenges to) libraries

During Maupin’s Holiday Festival last December, more than 200 people crowded into the Southern Wasco County Library. The library gave out 65 copies of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” running out of books and craft supplies by the end of the night. Photo courtesy: Southern Wasco County Library
During Maupin’s Holiday Festival last December, more than 200 people crowded into the Southern Wasco County Library. The library gave out 65 copies of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” running out of books and craft supplies by the end of the night. Photo courtesy: Southern Wasco County Library

Reading and writing and the status of books in our culture were on our writers’ minds in 2024, too. Amanda Waldroupe explored the subject in three well-researched stories, beginning with Jan. 3’s Oregon’s rural libraries: Crossroads of community, which looked at how libraries in Maupin, Burns, Clatskanie, and elsewhere are expanding their offerings to include community gatherings and activities that help bring kids and adults in the doors. Waldroupe wrote also about the financial problems many libraries face, and who’s helping to underwrite their new initiatives.

Waldroupe followed up with Feb. 23’s Josephine Community Library receives financial support for new building, even as it faces controversy, describing how the library in Grants Pass received financial assistance from the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and the Oregon Legislature to replace and double the size of its 65-year-old building, which had become inadequate for the needs of the county’s growing population.

On April 30 Waldroupe took on a critical issue in Violent, aggressive, and personal attacks — language used to challenge books has changed dramatically, research presented at Oregon Library Association conference shows, in which she describes the increasingly strident nature of book banners’ campaigns to restrict or strip books from libraries’ shelves. Books most challenged: children’s, young adults’, LBGTQ+.

“There has been an increase in rhetoric that complains about books featuring LGBTQIA-plus themes, racial issues, and political themes,” Jessi West Zumwalt, one of the presenters, told the audience.

And just before Christmas, Waldroupe followed up with a fresh three-part series, FREEDOM TO READ: Library book bans in Oregon, again looking at the issue in school and public libraries across the state: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Galleries and museums

Jan. 7: In Lane County History Museum: Connecting objects and their stories, Ester Barkai writes about how the Eugene museum, which began with a collection of pioneer memorabilia, has evolved into a more inclusive institution, as evidenced by recent shows on the history of racism in Lane County and the fight for farmworker rights. 

Pixies aplenty, including home movies and a scale model, are in the museum’s display on Pixieland and Pixie Kitchen. Photo courtesy of North Lincoln County Historical Museum.
Pixies aplenty, including home movies and a scale model, are in the museum’s display on Pixieland and Pixie Kitchen. Photo courtesy of North Lincoln County Historical Museum.

Feb. 26: In North Lincoln County Historical Museum contains multitudes, from pioneers to Pixieland, Lori Tobias explores the quirky museum, which includes what might be the largest glass fishing float collection in the Northwest and an exhibit about a 1930s celebration of redheads (and pixies, of course).

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Black and white loggers worked side by side during the early 1900s in the Wallowa County community of Maxville. A traveling exhibition that visited the High Desert Museum in Bend, “Timber Culture,” explores that history. Photo courtesy Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center.
Black and white loggers worked side by side during the early 1900s in the Wallowa County community of Maxville. A traveling exhibition that visited the High Desert Museum in Bend, “Timber Culture,” explores that history. Photo courtesy Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center.

March 1: In ‘Timber Culture’ exhibit at Bend’s High Desert Museum spotlights history of Maxville logging community, Carolyn Lamberson covers a traveling exhibit from the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center in the Wallowa County town of Joseph about Maxville, a company logging town in which white and Black loggers and their families worked and mingled freely together at a time when it was technically illegal for Black people to live in Oregon.

More stories by Lamberson about shows at the High Desert Museum:

The many faces of trash  at the Trash Bash Art Festival. Photo courtesy of Trav Williams, Broken Banjo Photography
The many faces of trash at the Trash Bash Art Festival. Photo courtesy of Trav Williams, Broken Banjo Photography

March 11: In Heart of Cartm’s Trash Bash Art Festival in Nehalem makes recycling fun — and fashionable, Lori Tobias writes about the recycling-worthy “Rising from the Trashes” event, which included an art gallery, fashion show, and storytelling, all spotlighting trash.

Lunar rover in the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, in McMinnville. Photo: K.B. Dixon
Lunar rover in the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, in McMinnville. Photo: K.B. Dixon

March 16: In Photo First: Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, writer and photographer K.B. Dixon  takes a camera tour through the McMinnville museum, from the Spruce Goose to the world’s fastest jet to replicas of the Spirit of St. Louis and Apollo Lunar Rover and more.

Erik Sandgren, “Drift Log,” Fort Seal Rock State Park, 2023, at OSU's Giustina Gallery.
Erik Sandgren, “Drift Log,” Fort Seal Rock State Park, 2023, at OSU’s Giustina Gallery.

Sept. 23: In Art on the Road: On the Oregon Coast, a crossover of art and nature, writer and photographer Friderike Heuer writes about the “PaintOut” tradition of taking artists to paint directly from nature, begun by artist Nelson Sandgren in 1978 and carried forward by his son Erik, and its lively retrospective at Oregon State University’s Giustina Gallery.

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The central panel of Sandow Birk’s “American Procession” (woodblock print on kozo paper, 48 by 72 inches, in collaboration with Elyse Pignolet and Mullowney Press) shows a crumbling arch surrounded by imagery of American decay, violence, and artifice.
The central panel of Sandow Birk’s “American Procession” (woodblock print on kozo paper, 48 by 72 inches, in collaboration with Elyse Pignolet and Mullowney Press) shows a crumbling arch surrounded by imagery of American decay, violence, and artifice.

In Nov. 7’s ‘A Democracy of Multiples’:  Linfield University displays political works by Mullowney Printing, David Bates dives into the McMinnville university’s gallery exhibit of boldly political prints from Mullowney Printing. ” It’s a tapestry of the historical context draped behind this knife-edge political moment,” Bates writes. “Perhaps even more importantly, it stands as a tribute to the power of ink on paper and how that power has functioned as a political tool — and still can.”

Jason Hill’s photographic portrait of AfroPop musician I$$A, in Bush Barn’s exhibition “In My Skin.” Photo: Dee Moore
Jason Hill’s photographic portrait of AfroPop musician I$$A, in Bush Barn’s exhibition “In My Skin.” Photo: Dee Moore

In Nov. 27’s Jason Hill’s superheroes of Afrofuturism, Dee Moore writes about the  Portland photographer’s vibrant portraits of Oregon Black “superheroes,” which at the same time filled two galleries at Salem’s Bush Barn Art Center and Bush Barn Museum and a third at Portland Center Stage.

“The colors are bold. They grab you. They capture the power and essence of the people wrapped in them,” Moore writes. “Jason Hill creates superheroes. … With each image he creates a mythos that hints at the subject’s origin stories. Growing up, Hill said, he loved sci-fi movies, especially Star Wars, but he only saw himself reflected in the face of Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams. Now he creates his own heroes: ‘With this you are in the presence of superheroes’.’”

Art can come from almost anything. Krista Eddy, visual arts director of the Lincoln City Cultural Center, launched the art kits project during the pandemic so children could complete free art projects – including cats made out of toilet paper rolls – at home. Nearly 20,000 of the kits have been distributed. Photo: Lori Tobias
Art can come from almost anything. Krista Eddy, visual arts director of the Lincoln City Cultural Center, launched the art kits project during the pandemic so children could complete free art projects – including cats made out of toilet paper rolls – at home. Nearly 20,000 of the kits have been distributed. Photo: Lori Tobias

In her Nov. 28 story Lincoln City Cultural Center: Plaza party celebrates milestone along bumpy road, Lori Tobias writes about the coastal arts center’s celebration of its new $3 million outside plaza complete with Poetry Path and more, and also the many bumps in the road to keep the center and its many activities going. “The path has wound through COVID closures and cancellations, devastating wildfires, $1.5 million in Oregon Lottery funds pledged and then rescinded,” Tobias writes. “The future once again brightened with the receipt of $1.8 million from the American Rescue Plan Act. It was one roller-coaster of a ride”: At the plaza’s opening festivities, “there was no doubt it had been worth it.”

The art of quilting: a stitch in the fabric of time

Crossroads Quilt, Late 19th Century. Photo: Friderike Heuer
Crossroads Quilt, Late 19th Century. Photo: Friderike Heuer

COLUMBIA GORGE MUSEUM: In her June 15 story Art as Witness: Quilting a slave’s story, Friderike Heuer wrote about the exhibit “Ms. Molly’s Voice” at the Columbia Gorge Museum, a collection of family quilts that reveals beauty, pain, remembrance, and secret signs along the Underground Railroad.

“The accumulated heirlooms in the exhibition Ms. Molly’s Voice: Freedom and Family Spoken in Fabric are part of a collection created and persevered by a family dedicated to witnessing history, including that of their very own ancestor(s),” Heuer wrote. “The current generation is represented by Jim Tharpe, who realized that the quilts, made by five different seamstresses across four generations from 1850 to 1960, were of enormous significance and able to tell a story that resonated beyond what we know theoretically about quilting during slavery. His insights and persistence to bring something of significant historical value to our eyes made it possible that these quilts are now making their rounds in museums keen, among other things, on teaching history.”

The West Room of the Latimer center is filled with spinning wheels and looms – some with works in progress – as well as displays of hand-woven textiles, tatting, beading, and knitting. Photo courtesy: Latimer Quilt & Textile Center
The West Room of the Latimer center is filled with spinning wheels and looms – some with works in progress – as well as displays of hand-woven textiles, tatting, beading, and knitting. Photo courtesy: Latimer Quilt & Textile Center

TILLAMOOK’S QUILT & TEXTILE CENTER: In her Oct. 21 story Latimer Quilt & Textile Center: A little-known hive of fiber-arts activity near Tillamook, Lori Tobias profiles the old schoolhouse that has been converted into a center containing looms, a library, a gallery, and gift shop, and that makes space for the creation of fiber art ranging from quilts to tatting, beading, and knitting. The center is one of 10 working fiber arts museums in the United States.

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High Desert Museum Frank Matsura Portraits from the borderland Bend Oregon

Reading & Writing

May 6: In Poet Q&A: Portland’s Valerie White on the pleasures of collaboration, poetics of the strange, and going beyond the written page, David Bates has an invigorating conversation with the poet about the poetic life and her reading at McMinnville Public Library’s monthly Poetry Night.

Young writers in a Wordcrafters Blackout Poetry class taught by Jorah LaFleur (third from left) discover poems by redacting “uninteresting” words in the pages of books and magazines. Writer Austin Kleon says blackout poetry is “sort of like if the CIA did haiku.” Photo courtesy: Wordcrafters
Young writers in a Wordcrafters Blackout Poetry class taught by Jorah LaFleur (third from left) discover poems by redacting “uninteresting” words in the pages of books and magazines. Writer Austin Kleon says blackout poetry is “sort of like if the CIA did haiku.” Photo courtesy of Wordcrafters.

In her Aug. 3 story The wonder of Wordcrafters: A Eugene nonprofit helps people find their inner writer, Ester Barkai describes how Wordcrafters helps people find their stories and the ways to tell them. Writers of all ages, genres, and experience levels find a home in the group’s classes, retreats, and writing studio, Barkai writes. “We’re all storytellers to some degree,” says one instructor, “even if we don’t know it.”

In her Aug. 16 story Poet and author Ellen Waterston to serve as 11th Oregon poet laureate, Amy Leona Havin profiles the Bend poet, writer, and teacher who is the state’s newest poet laureate. Waterston, who’s had several volumes of poetry and literary nonfiction published, bases much of her writing on her love for the high desert. She also founded the workshop and retreat program Writing Ranch, the Bend nonprofit The Nature of Words, and the Waterston Desert Writing Prize for nonfiction book proposals.

Destruction & Renewal

Along North Fork Road near the Little North Fork of the Santiam River, new growth can be seen on old trees. Many of the burned trees that survived the 2020 fire have begun to flourish again. These survivors stand amid those that did not make it. Photo: Dee Moore
Along North Fork Road near the Little North Fork of the Santiam River, new growth can be seen on old trees. Many of the burned trees that survived the 2020 fire have begun to flourish again. These survivors stand amid those that did not make it. Photo: Dee Moore

SANTIAM CANYON: In Sept. 14’s Four years after, a slow revival takes root along the Santiam Canyon, writer and photographer Dee Moore returns to the scenes of 2020’s devastating wildfires, in many cases taking photos from the same places she shot just after the fires four years earlier. What she discovered, in a rural place loved for its rugged beauty and hiking and camping opportunities and notable for its sprinkling of resident artists, was an in-betweenness — a place still deeply scarred, yet slowly regenerating and being rebuilt.

“Returning from tragedy is a herculean struggle,” Moore writes. “Pretty similes and metaphors, hollow condolences and trite euphemisms, none of these things can sum up the suffering and loss that people endured during and after the Santiam Fire. That hope remains was apparent from the efforts made by the communities and the people who live in them. Tourism has returned and new businesses have sprung up on the sites of old ones.”

Onstage & Behind the Scenes

Amy Kim Waschke and John Tufts as the sparring partners Beatrice and Benedick in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” with Al Espinosa, Mark Murphey, Uma Paranjpe, and Cedric Lamar. Photo: Jenny Graham
Amy Kim Waschke and John Tufts as the sparring partners Beatrice and Benedick in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” with Al Espinosa, Mark Murphey, Uma Paranjpe, and Cedric Lamar. Photo: Jenny Graham

In her July 4 story Ashland on the big stage: light yet bright, Darleen Ortega reviewed the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s two big-stage performances of its 2024 season, Jane Eyre and Much Ado About Nothing. Ortega reviewed most of the Ashland festival’s season for ArtsWatch.

In his July 23 story New plays from an old place: Northwest Theatre Workshop’s ‘Fragments,’ Brett Campbell tells the tale of how the Portland company and Salem’s Theatre 33 got together in an old rural general store near Salem — now an arts center called Hopewell Hub — to produce “an interactive series of site-specific, devised short plays that explore the stories inspired by the artists, lovers and friends that have left their mark at Hopewell Hub.” Ciji Guerin, Theatre workshop’s producing artistic director, told Campbell: “It is only the site, the text, the performers, and the audience. It is work-in-the-raw — intimate, personal, and intense.”

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“Silk and Steel,” an audience favorite, returns at Eugene Ballet for Toni Pimble’s tribute year. Photo: Ari Denison
“Silk and Steel,” an audience favorite, returns at Eugene Ballet for Toni Pimble’s tribute year. Photo: Ari Denison

In Oct. 24’s A remarkable swan song: Toni Pimble enters the last of her 46 years leading Eugene Ballet, Jean Zondervan celebrates the distinguished choreographer’s long reign as the company’s artistic leader, a position Pimble will leave after the current season. Pimble “might be the most prolific ballet choreographer Oregon has ever known,” Zondervan writes. “In her 46-year tenure in Eugene, she has choreographed more than 60 works and has been instrumental in growing EB from a small ballet school into an internationally respected ballet company.” 

In Nov. 15’s One brick at a time: Rebuilding the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, first published on Ashland News, Lucie K. Scheuer sits down with artistic director Tim Bond and board member Amy Cuddy to talk about the festival’s plans to overcome the setbacks of the Covid years and prepare for OSF’s 90th season in 2025.

The Jazz Station, on West Broadway in Eugene’s entertainment district, offers a 70-seat all-ages venue for professional, student, and amateur musicians to play together, and jazz lovers to hear them. Photo: Daniel Heila
The Jazz Station, on West Broadway in Eugene’s entertainment district, offers a 70-seat all-ages venue for professional, student, and amateur musicians to play together, and jazz lovers to hear them. Photo: Daniel Heila

In Dec. 1’s The Jazz Station: Willamette Jazz Society creates a place to play and connect in Eugene, Ester Barkai celebrates the pleasures and possibilities of the music club, which started to help students get into University of Oregon jazz camps, and is now the only full-time community-run jazz club in Oregon. “It’s a place where people come to connect,” says Steve Owen, president of the club.

Clara-Liis Hillier (left) teaches adults dance at Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre in Salem. Although her “greatest joy” is teaching upcoming performers, Hillier says, “there is something exceptionally beautiful and inspiring about teaching adults who are … just doing it for the love of performing.” Photo: David Bates
Clara-Liis Hillier (left) teaches adults dance at Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre in Salem. Although her “greatest joy” is teaching upcoming performers, Hillier says, “there is something exceptionally beautiful and inspiring about teaching adults who are … just doing it for the love of performing.” Photo: David Bates

In Dec. 2’s Portland’s Bridgetown Conservatory of Musical Theatre expands acting, dance, and vocal classes to second location in Salem, David Bates writes about the musical theater school’s new center in the Salem Arts Building on Liberty Street, and how its expansion south is bringing new opportunities to young and older performers in the state’s capital and nearby communities.

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