City announces $4 million+ in arts grants
General operating grants from Portland’s new Office of Arts & Culture aid 80 organizations – and some smaller groups say the grants are going disproportionately to the city’s big companies.
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General operating grants from Portland’s new Office of Arts & Culture aid 80 organizations – and some smaller groups say the grants are going disproportionately to the city’s big companies.
As the critical November election approaches, City Hall candidates weigh in on how they would approach vital arts issues and policies.
The actor, director and writer, whose professional career spanned almost 60 years, is dead at 87, leaving a brilliant legacy ranging from Hollywood to Portland to Pakistan.
Portland-based artist Wendy Red Star wins a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship; In commemoration of October 7th, poet Mimi German will read poems to mourn lives lost; Mona Huneidi’s installation at PCC honors the war’s missing journalists.
The Portland author of five books, including “The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon,” wrote about race, sexual identity, and making a family of choice.
Other authors scheduled to appear at the Nov. 2 event include Robert Samuels, R.O. Kwon, Rachel Kushner, Willy Vlautin, Carson Ellis, and many, many more.
An adjacent restaurant fire Aug. 5 poured smoke and soot into the blue-chip gallery, coating everything. Now restorers are beginning to clean 1,500 artworks, and the gallery hopes to reopen in December or January.
A Labor Day weekend fixture in downtown Portland since 1997, the free festival offers booths for more than 100 artists, plus food, music, demonstrations, and hands-on activities.
Recent reports about opera, classical radio, choral achievements, young artists on the rise, and other Oregon arts news.
Riswold, known for his groundbreaking work at the ad firm Weiden+Kennedy, also made his mark as a visual artist creating sharply pointed and often deeply comic satiric works deflating notorious autocratic strong men.
The Bend-based author, poet, educator, and nonprofit founder begins her term immediately, succeeding Anis Mojgani.
The frequent ArtsWatch contributor, who has died at 83, was also a quiet, generous advocate for Oregon arts and a role model for continuing creativity to the very end.
How best to replace Portland’s busy east-west span? Bridge designer Keith Brownlie of Britain’s BEAM Architects parses the best choice from a sextet of arches and cable-stays. Now the bridge committee has selected an inverted “Y” cable stay design.
With many new faces taking the helm, arts leaders make a case for why culture plays a significant role in the city’s economy.
As the city puts its parks and arts programs under the same umbrella, it considers replacing the arts tax with a new levy for both. And one of Keller Auditorium’s major tenants comes out staunchly in favor of PSU’s proposed replacement halls.
Sitka’s success has inspired a new dance program in the Knappa School District to be taught by Astoria Arts and Movement Center instructors.
The beloved Portland actor, known over his 40-plus year career for his distinctive voice and his devotion to family, friends, the stage, and radio theater, leaves a giant legacy.
The design team proposes a new welcome center, colorful paint jobs, bold signage, and justice-oriented collaboration to transform the university campus and help revitalize downtown.
Portland’s four-day blues bash at Tom McCall Waterfront Park beats the heat — and photographer Joe Cantrell catches the sights and sounds and free-flowing joy of it all.
Tips for staying cool during yet another apocalyptic heat wave while enjoying the best in Oregon music.
All right, much more than a snap. Photography is history and documentation, truth and illusion, high art and a creative tool for everyone. Celebrate its day on June 29.
A new degree program at PSU by Darrell Grant and Suzanne Savaria will be the only one of its kind in the country.
K.B. Dixon and his camera take in the wetness and the glory of Sunday’s splashy race, a Rose Festival favorite since 1973.
The 61st annual Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts brings a feast of art and music to town. Plus: Portland’s 18th Dolly Parton Hoot Night celebrates the pop icon and defies the naysayers.
During Pride Month, Oregon’s fifth largest city celebrates openness and diversity amid recognition that the quest to overcome fear and repression is far from over.
As Broadway revs up for this year’s Tony Awards, Misha Berson takes in the tales of “Stereophonic,” “The Outsiders,” “Water for Elephants,” “Uncle Vanya” and “Patriots” – and wishes for more.
For four days, the Portland garden joins others around the world in the artist and peace activist’s almost 30-year project of creating and adorning Wish Trees in pursuit of peace.
The Beaverton arts center is throwing a free party. Plus: Grants make the cultural world go ’round; new leadership in the Oregon Legislature’s Arts and Culture Caucus.
Two longtime stalwarts of the Northwest theater world have died: Oregon actor Cronin, in Eugene; and Portland-born director Dillon, in Seattle.
The ninth annual festival remembers the flood that wiped out the city of Vanport on Memorial Day 1948 and carries the vanished city’s history and vital cultural significance into the present.
The tribal museum, closed since December for upgrades, reopens May 14. Plus: Indigenous artists at High Desert Museum, “Matrilineal Memory” & Cherokee art in Portland.
After hiring a musician accused of sexual misdeeds, then reversing course, one of Oregon’s most prominent classical music institutions faces lingering questions.
Esperanza Spalding, Acosia Red Elk, and Nataki Garrett win major arts awards; Red Star is the latest Bonnie Bronson fellow; Timberline Lodge art survives fire; May 3 is a discount day.
The award from the National Endowment for the Humanites will help the Bend museum revitalize its permanent collection dedicated to Indigenous peoples of the region.
The Portland artist’s paintings are steeped in American pop-cultural images and deal satirically with race relations. Plus: Hannah Krafcik’s “Gender Deconstruction”; Portland arts tax due.
As Portland’s sprawling 10-day festival of new performance prepares to hit the stage running, the creators of half a dozen fresh shows talk about what they’re doing and why.
Other winners during Monday’s Literary Arts event included Waka T. Brown for young adult literature and poet Daniela Naomi Molnar.
Our Creative Future, which is shaping the Portland metro area’s public approach to arts policies, will have a Virtual Town Meeting April 9. And the City of Portland shifts its cultural lineup.
The gift, which continues the Schnitzer family’s longtime support of Portland State University, will help fund a new home for the School of Art, support PSU’s Schnitzer Art Museum, and provide outdoor art and other enhancements on campus.
News & Notes: Portland’s biggest theater company is one of three nationally to win $1 million grants from the Mellon Foundation. Plus: Center Stage’s new season; new faces at the Oregon Arts Commission and Oregon Cultural Trust.
The Oregon Community Foundation and James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation invest $20 million each to boost cultural groups, adding to $11.8 million pledged by the state Legislature.
A $300 million gift of more than 200 artworks jump-starts the Seattle University Museum of Art. Plus: Maryhill Museum season begins, Asian American writers, Andrew Proctor returns, jazz at Milagro, Billie Holiday tribute night.
The 2024 session improves on a dismal ’23 session for the arts, with allocations for several large organizations, less for smaller ones, and an unwelcome surprise for the High Desert Museum.
Sure, there will still be books, but get ready for big changes in the libraries emerging from 2020’s $387 million bond.
The performance space by the railroad tracks in North Portland and the Butoh-inspired company Water in the Desert whisper their farewell to the Portland scene.
As Central Library reopens in downtown Portland, The Library Foundation takes on new leadership. Plus: A new leader for the Parks Foundation; talking Nevelson and Neel at PNCA.
The 65-year-old Grants Pass library has not kept pace with the city’s growth; funds from the Cow Creek Band and a bill before the Legislature would help pay to replace it.
Portland’s festival of new works is back after taking a year off; the Bellevue Arts Museum faces a “dire financial crisis”; the Eugene paper is back in print following an embezzlement.
The choral ensemble starts their semester-long residency at Linfield University in McMinnville. The recently shuttered jazz club has changed management and is making plans to reopen.
As greater Portland’s arts and cultural system continues a slow structural evolution, a gathering at PSU hears information but not yet the shape of a completed plan.
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