The Portland Art Museum has opened a new permanent gallery dedicated to Black artists, named for local artist, dancer, and educator Thelma Johnson Streat. The gallery, which opened on the first day of Black History Month, features a variety of works by Black Oregon artists, including multimedia installations, paintings, drawings, and a large photographic grid.
Oregon artist Sherrie Wolf opens a new exhibition of large-scale still life paintings at the Pendleton Center for the Arts on August 21, 2025. The show features works from the collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family foundation, marking the center's eighth collaboration with the foundation and its first showcasing an Oregon artist. Wolf will attend the opening reception, and a coffee table book of her retrospective will be available for purchase.
Ashland artist Crystal Proffitt's interactive installation 'Don't Touch My Hair: An Interactive Crowned Experience' at the Langford Art Gallery in Phoenix, Oregon, invites viewers to touch the braids and locs attached to portraits of local Black models while listening to voice recordings about hair as cultural identity and resilience. The work, supported by the Oregon Cultural Trust and the Black Alliance & Social Empowerment (BASE) Southern Oregon, debuted January 3 and runs through January 24, after which it will join BASE's Black Cultural Legacy Series at the Rogue Gallery & Art Center in Medford. Proffitt intentionally allows the hair to show wear from handling, treating the erosion as part of the artwork's meaning.
Art Center East in La Grande, Oregon, opens a solo exhibition titled “The Warmth Within My Shadow” featuring self-reflective paintings by Pendleton-based mixed-media artist Jason Hogge. The show runs from May 1 through June 27 in ACE’s Main Gallery, with a free opening reception on May 1 from 6-8 p.m., including an artist talk at 6:30 p.m. Raffle tickets for Hogge’s original acrylic painting “Emerging” (valued at $700) will be sold to support the center’s gallery programs, and a virtual tour is available online.