The City of Portland’s first-ever dedicated Office of Arts & Culture officially launched on July 1, 2024. Led by Director Chariti Montez, the office’s goal is singular—to put arts at the center of public life for all Portlanders through an unwavering commitment to arts education, grantmaking, public art, cultural planning, and performing arts venues.
In this article, we're taking a look back at the Office's first four months of work to highlight some of its key milestones so far, which include:
- Launching a refreshed brand identify for the Office of Arts & Culture.
- Providing all essential arts services without disruption amid the transition into a new form of government.
- Introducing two new partners, MusicOregon and Friends of IFCC. Together with Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), a new small grants initiative was launched.
- Taking over management of the City’s General Operating Support (GOS) program, bringing that function in-house for the first time.
- Onboarding 80 General Operating Support organizations, assessing how they serve K-12 students and/or underrepresented communities, and announcing Arts & Culture's intention to award $4+ million to these local arts organizations for 2025.
- Bringing together the first cohort of arts cultural equity grantees, a subset of GOS organizations.
- Strengthening the oversight of the Arts Access Fund, including publishing an arts oversight report, sending newsletters to teachers and principals, and coordinating promo of Arts in Education Week.
- Supporting 200+ local artists and businesses at Picnic in the Pearl, Coraline’s Curious Cat Trail, and the MusicPortland City Sessions series.
- Moderating a panel discussion on historical preservation with Restore Oregon.
- Establishing nearly a dozen new partnerships on the Portland Monuments Project, including nonprofits, arts organizations, business leaders, and Tribal governments.
- Hosting the Portland Monuments Symposium in October, a two-day event that explored art, history, storytelling, and the role of monuments in public space that brought out out roughly 150 attendees.
- Working with the City's Latinx PDX affinity group to install a Día de Muertos ofrenda on the second floor of the Portland Building, which was available for the public to visit through late-November 2024.
- Partnering with Literary Arts on the main stage at the Portland Book Festival on November 2.
- Presenting two performing arts venues-related resolutions to City Council, including the P'5 resolution to establish a performing arts workgroup and the future of the Keller resolution that approved a two Broadway-capable-venue strategy.
- Sending the statute of Abraham Lincoln to the conservator to begin repairs.
- Transferring the temporary bust of York to artist Todd McGrain, who is in the process of making a permanent bronze bust.
It has been a busy few months for the new Office of Arts & Culture, and the team looks forward to doing more meaningful work to elevate Portland’s arts and culture ecosystem into the next 120 days and beyond. If you'd like to stay updated on the latest news and information out of the Office of Arts & Culture, consider subscribing to its monthly newsletter, which hits email inboxes on the last Monday of every month.