‘Being Present’: Experimental art in Portland

Image Courtesy of Triple Candie.

‘Being Present’: Experimental art in Portland Portland Art Museum presents ‘Being Present’, an exhibition revisiting, somewhat unfaithfully, Portland’s most experimental art experiment, the Portland Center for the Visual Arts (PCVA). November 16, 2019 – June 14, 2020.]]>

Source: Portland Art Museum

From 1972 to 1987, the Portland Center for the Visual Arts (PCVA) was a major force in the Pacific Northwest, introducing progressive forms of contemporary art from around the country to Portland audiences. Temporary site-specific installations by major, mostly New York-based sculptors, announced its early ambitions. Later, an impressive schedule of avant-garde performances signaled a turn towards a more socially inclusive model—one that, unfortunately, proved financially unsustainable. More than thirty years after its demise, this artist-founded organization remains an inspiration for both the art it brought to the area and the impact it had on this city’s cultural scene.

But PCVA’s mythology as a leading-edge organization in one of the country’s most liberal cities is paradoxical. The exhibitions that brought it national attention reflected the social biases of an American art world that has long been less “progressive” than it has purported to be. Simultaneously, while Portland was being celebrated as a leader in urban planning—adopting urban growth boundaries and investing in bike trails and public transportation—it was engaged in the disinvestment in, and displacement of, its black and working-class communities. Given this layered context, how do we celebrate the PCVA’s extraordinary achievements while acknowledging that it bore some of the troubling qualities of its age? And in doing so, at what point do we risk falling victim to presentism; judging the past through current-day values and expectations?

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