Williams Ave. was once the vibrant heart of Portland’s Black community. Formerly known as the “Black Broadway,” the corridor included a concentration of Black churches, businesses, social service organizations and nightclubs that were thriving and active community institutions. Although the landscape has changed, there is much to remember, celebrate and build upon. In 2012, the […]

House for Summer, artist Helen Lessick’s living tree sculpture located within Portland’s Hoyt Arboretum, is turning 30 years old! This captivating installation of birch trees, part of the City of Portland’s public art collection, has been pruned and shaped to take the form of a house, a house that changes with the seasons and is […]

PORTLAND, ORE – RACC is pleased to present a new work by sculptor and installation artist Crystal Schenk in the Installation Space located adjacent to the Portland Building lobby. I’m Not a Barnacle, I’m Just a Boy, opens June 5 and features an arresting sculpture that asks the viewer to look beyond their common understanding […]

Night Lights is a monthly public art event that promotes digital media, urban intervention, and technological innovation through site-specific outdoor art experiences. This is a call for five artists for the $1,000 honorarium and for a residency for one artist who will receive a $5,000 honorarium. On the First Thursdays of October through April, juried […]

Local artists will paint temporary murals at Open Signal over the next year PORTLAND, ORE – Fresh Paint, a temporary mural wall project, begins in mid-May as part of a new professional development initiative of RACC’s Public Art Murals programming. Three artists have been selected to paint a temporary mural on an area of the exterior […]

On April 21st, PGE employees supported RACC’s Public Art department and volunteered to perform maintenance on the Oregon Holocaust Memorial in preparation for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Through a variety of public-private partnerships, RACC helps acquire and maintain community-owned artworks in public places. The Oregon Holocaust Memorial is part of the City of Portland’s Public Art […]

fresh paint, a temporary mural pilot project, begins in mid-May, 2017- April 2018 as part of a new professional development initiative of RACC’s Public Art Murals programming. For the first year, three artists have been selected to paint a mural on an area of the exterior west wall of Open Signal, 2766 NE Martin Luther […]

Click here for a Spanish version of this press release. PORTLAND, ORE – Pochas Radicales, a queer Latinx art collective located in Portland, will present a timely, site specific installation in the exhibition space at the Portland Building beginning May 2. The project, titled Nuestrx espacio;soy otro tú, will transform the compact gallery adjacent to […]

Pochas Radicales, a queer Latinx art collective located in Portland, will present a timely, site specific installation in the exhibition space at the Portland Building beginning May 2. The project will transform the compact gallery adjacent to the building lobby into a platform that offers an engaging narrative of a young, queer Latinx living in […]

PORTLAND, ORE – A special exhibition focusing on new acquisitions to the Visual Chronicle of Portland collection opens at the Portland Building on March 28th. The Visual Chronicle of Portland, a collection of original works-on-paper that portray artists’ perceptions of what makes Portland unique, has been steadily growing since its inception in 1985 and now boasts […]

A special exhibition focusing on new acquisitions to the Visual Chronicle of Portland opens at the Portland Building on March 27th. The Visual Chronicle of Portland, a collection of original works-on-paper that portray artists’ perceptions of what makes Portland unique, has been steadily growing since its inception in 1985 and now boasts 356 works by […]

PORTLAND, ORE – Open Signal and the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) have partnered to support an artist-in-residence, Kalimah Abioto. The residency is part of Night Lights, a monthly digital media event in which artists project their work onto the north exterior wall of RACC’s downtown offices on First Thursdays. Abioto will produce a new […]

On Friday, 2/3 the Northwest Public Art Collective (NoWPAC) – which is comprised of artists, curators and Public Art administrators from the Pacific Northwest – gathered at Portland State University for Public Art Reboot, a day-long series of conversations where the group discussed practices, curation, growth, excellence and new ideas in the field of public […]

PORTLAND, ORE – Drawing on her previous work exploring materials with unusual and interesting physical properties, Stephanie Simek will install her deftly crafted, hand-built “table of holograms” in the Portland Building Installation Space beginning February 21st. Simek’s project, titled Table of Elements (and Minerals), was designed with the architecture of the Installation Space in mind. Her […]

In preparation for the repair and renovation of portions the brick plaza at Pioneer Courthouse Square RACC staff, working with Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland Parks & Rec, and project contractor Howard S. Wright, removed  J. Seward Johnson’s iconic Allow Me (a.k.a. “Umbrella Man”) sculpture from its location in the square’s southwest corner. The 460 pound […]

PORTLAND, ORE – For February’s installment of Night Lights, artist Laura Heit will present Hypothetical Stars II on RACC’s north exterior wall at 411 NW Park Avenue in Portland on February 2 between 5:00 and 8:00 p.m. This month, Night Lights is an affiliate site for The Portland Winter Light Festival, which is now in its […]

PORTLAND, ORE – Architect Aaron Whelton will present his Stacked Toroid project at the Portland Building beginning January 17th. This room-sized installation is part of Whelton’s design research at Portland State University’s School of Architecture and his ongoing investigation of the physical manifestations of digitally designed architecture. The installation, titled Stacked Toroid, is site-specific and is […]

The new sculpture River Guardian by Lillian Pitt with Mikkel & Saralyn Hilde will be dedicated on Friday, January 27 at 2:00 p.m. The sculpture is located on the South Waterfront Greenway adjacent to where SW Penoyer Street meets the Greenway. Additional information will be posted on the RACC Facebook page or call Kristin Calhoun […]

Portland Community Media and The Regional Arts and Culture Council invite artists to participate in a one night projection event. We provide: power source, walls for projection and limited rain coverage. You provide : A Beamer and content to project through your beamer. A beamer can be any type of projector or light source. All […]