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 Takohachi was among 79 organizations receiving General Operating Support in FY2025-26
In fiscal year 2025-26, the Office of Arts & Culture awarded more than $5.87 million in grants to 178 arts organizations and 227 individual artists. These investments support performances, exhibitions, arts education, community events, public art, and creative projects in neighborhoods across Portland.
From flexible operating support for 79 organizations to small grants for artists and community-led Portland Monuments Project programming, this funding helps sustain the arts in our vibrant, connected, and creative city.
Explore a new report from SMU DataArts showing that the City’s General Operating Support arts grantees continue to demonstrate resilience while navigating ongoing financial challenges.
 This summer, artists and arts organizations across Portland are bringing people together through live performances, exhibitions, festivals, movies, concerts, family-friendly activities, and community celebrations. From neighborhood parks to museums, theaters, galleries, gardens, and public spaces, discover free and low-cost opportunities to experience the arts across the city.
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 This summer, the Youth Arts Biennial at Multnomah Arts Center celebrates the creativity of more than 200 young artists, ages 3-18. Featuring work across visual art, writing, music, theatre, and community engagement programs, the exhibition highlights the imagination and unique perspectives of young Portlanders.
Visit the free exhibition in MAC’s Front & Center Galleries July 3-August 1, and join a family-friendly reception on Saturday, July 18, from 1-3 p.m., with an art-making activity for youth.
Portland Arts & Sports Week is July 9-12
 Pearl (Walt) by Portland artist Jeremy Okai Davis honors his uncle, Walt Davis—a six-time NBA All-Star who spent one season with the Portland Trail Blazers. The work is among the many sports-inspired artworks featured in galleries across the city during Portland Arts Week. Image: Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Photo by Mario Gallucci.
This July includes the kick-off of Portland Arts Week, a new annual celebration of Portland’s arts community, and the inaugural theme is Arts & Sports. Galleries, museums, nonprofit arts spaces, and community partners will come together July 9-12 to present special programming and you are invited!
Highlights include a Symposium on Arts, Sports, Culture and Business at Portland Art Museum and the Tomorrow Theatre, the First Thursday Art Walk, Park Blocks Activations, and an evening performance at the new Darcelle XV Plaza in north downtown.
 Entering the Portland Building, visitors and City staff are greeted by Ka’ila Farrell-Smith’s “Predecessor Bundle” on their way to the elevators. Farrell-Smith created the work in 2017 while in residence at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, where she found a large collection of banners for student exhibitions dating as far back as the 1970s.
Encountering the banners, she “felt steeped in the legacy and the diversity of Indigenous artists” who had built and shaped the institute. She began painting on top of four of the banners, adding her own marks while letting the images of the artists and their work show through. She writes, “This painting reflects the connection and inspiration artists give to one another, specifically how important it is to share marks, imagery, and memory of the artists who came before us.” The piece highlights, in her words, “the fluidity Native artists bring between tradition and contemporary cultures.”
Ka’ila Farrell-Smith is a contemporary Klamath Modoc artist, writer, and activist based in Modoc Point, Oregon. She received a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art and an MFA from Portland State University. She is represented by Russo Lee Gallery in Portland.
 This fall, the City of Portland will reinstall the Abraham Lincoln monument in the South Park Blocks as part of the Portland Monuments Project. Conserved and restored by leading specialists, the historic bronze will return on a seismically upgraded base that brings Lincoln closer to the public, with new interpretive panels, historical narrative text, site markers, and QR codes.
Shaped by years of community input, the installation is designed to create a more accessible, interactive experience while adding context that recognizes the full and complex legacy of the figures represented in Portland’s public spaces.
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Add it to your calendar 🗓️
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July 4
Oregon Contemporary hosts an afternoon of readings, community reflections, performance, and local bites to celebrate the closing of The Price of the Ticket, the 2026 Artists’ Biennial curated by TK Smith. Events run from 2 to 8pm.
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July 9–12
Portland Arts Week brings exhibitions, talks, and public events to the city’s Cultural Corridor, exploring the intersection of art and sports. The inaugural gathering includes programming at arts institutions, galleries, and cultural spaces across Portland.
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July 11
Join the Portland Art Museum, Office of Arts & Culture, PBOT, and City Repair to help transform Southwest Madison Street into the new Cultural District pedestrian plaza featuring Mountains Full of Blessings, a monumental asphalt artwork by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Ilori. No painting experience required. Location: Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave.
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July 11–12
Enjoy two evenings of free live music at Ventura Park. Saturday, features LaRhonda Steele and Conjunto Alegre for an evening of Latin and soul; Sunday brings the Portland Cello Project’s tribute to Stevie Wonder. Location: Ventura Park, 460 SE 113th Ave.
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July 18–19
Celebrate Portland’s LGBTQIA+ community with a weekend of live music, food, vendors, community organizations, and the annual Pride Parade downtown. Location: Tom McCall Waterfront Park and downtown Portland.
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July 18 - Mar 7, 2027
The Portland Art Museum opens a new exhibition drawn from its permanent collection, exploring the many forms of work that shape daily life, including manual labor, care work, and artistic practice.
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Grant opportunities and open calls 📣
- Safe Blocks Eliot Neighborhood Placemaking Project | City of Portland Office of Violence Prevention | One contract of up to $50,000 for a muralist or organization to lead community visioning, design, and street-painting projects near Dawson Park in the Eliot neighborhood | Applications due June 29, 2026, at 4 p.m.
- Multnomah Arts Center Annual Call for Art: Front & Center Galleries | Visual artists living in, or whose Tribal lands are in, Oregon and Southwest Washington | Exhibitions scheduled February 2027 through early 2028 | Applications accepted through July 15, 2026
- Portland Panorama Film Festival 2027 - Call for Film Submissions | Feature films, shorts, documentaries, animation, experimental work, Oregon Shorts, Pacific Northwest music videos, and NW Series | Early Bird Deadline: August 1, 2026
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Arts Build Communities Grants | Oregon Arts Commission / Business Oregon | Matching support for arts-based community projects | Application deadline: 5 p.m. on Wednesday, August 12, 2026
- Portland Winter Light Festival 2027 - Call for Art | Artists, performers, designers, architects, and community groups | Applications accepted on a rolling basis through August 28, 2026
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Affordable Commercial Tenanting Grant | Prosper Portland | Up to $300,000 | Application deadline: Ongoing
What we're reading 📰
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Traducción e Interpretación | Biên Dịch và Thông Dịch | अनुवादन तथा व्याख्या
口笔译服务 | Устный и письменный перевод | Turjumaad iyo Fasiraad
Письмовий і усний переклад | Traducere și interpretariat | Chiaku me
Awewen Kapas
Translation and Interpretation: 311
The City of Portland ensures meaningful access and reasonably provides: translation, interpretation, modifications, accommodations, alternative formats, auxiliary aids and services. To request these services, call 311 for Relay Service or TTY: 711.
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