Portland Monument Project Symposium

October 11-12, 2024

The Portland Monuments Symposium was presented by Converge 45 and Portland Community College, the first of a series of public events supported by the City of Portland. This event built upon Converge 45’s Portland Monuments & Memorials Project, which launched in 2021 during social justice protests and scrutiny of Portland’s public monuments following the murder of George Floyd. The original project comprised a series of online presentations, outdoor experiences, and the creation of temporary art installations on vacant pedestals following the removal of five monuments throughout the city.

The symposium’s programming was informed by the 2023 report from Portland’s Monument Engagement Process Committee. As Portland grapples with how to address these now-empty pedestals, the symposium will bring together local voices, regional public art administrators, and national experts to discuss what monuments should represent in the future. The event will feature panel discussions that explore what communities value and memorialize, envision the design of future monuments, and examine the reasons behind these decisions.

In Breakout Sessions, community feedback will be collected by notetakers from PMP research partner the Regional Research Institute of Social Work at Portland State University. The details of the processes and anonymity of the research will be further discussed during the welcoming remarks each day as well as at the beginning of each breakout session. The data collected throughout the project will be analyzed and compiled into a report, which will be submitted to the City of Portland for consideration.

Panel Discussions

Policy Making

This panel discussion aims to explore the complexities of how monuments reflect societal values and historical narratives, emphasizing the need for inclusive dialogues in the policy-making process. Experts from various fields, including history, sociology, art, social justice, communications and urban planning, will share insights on the responsibilities of policymakers in addressing the diverse perspectives of the communities that these monuments represent. The conversation will also highlight the importance of transparency, community engagement, access and accountability in crafting policies that govern the creation, alteration, or removal of public monuments. Can objects serve these communities in the future or are new models needed that embrace history and memory but also support the cultural work of future generations? Are there restorative possibilities in living monuments that provide access to underserved communities to not only look but create in their communities? Ultimately, the discussion seeks to inform ongoing efforts related to the reevaluation and creation of monuments that truly reflect the community's values and history and the policies that inform their existence.

Introduction: Derek Franklin (C45)

Moderator: Norah Crean

Panelists: John Washington, Amanda Rawson,

Teressa Raiford

Indigenous Perspectives

This panel discussion will delve into the complex relationship between public monuments and Indigenous peoples’ perspectives. This conversation aims to illuminate how monuments often reflect dominant narratives that can overlook or misrepresent Indigenous histories and contributions. Panelists will explore the significance of decolonizing public spaces and advocate for monuments that honor Indigenous heritage and sovereignty. Attendees will gain insight into the strategies for reimagining public monuments as sites of education, remembrance, and reconciliation, fostering a deeper understanding of the historical context surrounding these structures. This dialogue seeks not only to critique existing monuments but also to envision new forms of recognition that resonate with the values and experiences of Indigenous communities.

Moderator: Sandra Hale Schulman

Panelists: Gerald Clarke, Marie Watt

Artist Perspectives: Re-shaping / Re-evaluating / Re-framing

This session draws together Oregon artists in an action-packed whirlwind of ideas and proposals that reimagine, celebrate, agitate, and ask questions about what could come next for monuments in our state. Together we will reconsider what is currently in our public space, and explore how the existing works and beyond might become containers for the future. The session will be interactive, thoughtful, joyful and there will be awards.

Moderators: Mack McFarland & Jess Perlitz

Panelists: Ilish Bath, Tannaz Farsi, Chisao Hata, Kanani Miyamoto, Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr., Lynn Yarne

Keynote Lecture

Hamza Walker

Since 2017, Walker has been working on MONUMENTS, an exhibition that features roughly a dozen decommissioned monuments to be shown alongside works of contemporary art. Slated to open in the Fall of 2025, the exhibition is being co-organized with The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and is co-curated with artist Kara Walker and MOCA’s Senior Curator, Bennett Simpson. This talk will discuss the theoretical and historical framework underpinning MONUMENTS.

Break Out Sessions

Session A: The City of Portland has core values. These values are equity, anti-racism, collaboration (working together), communication, transparency (being open and honest), and fiscal responsibility (using money wisely). How can monuments support the City’s values?

Session B: What do Portlanders think about the City’s current monuments?

Session C: How can Portland adapt and be open to change with its use of public art to hold memory and history?

Session D: The City of Portland has decisions to make about monuments and public art. These decisions include how to think about our history and how to educate the public about our monuments. What principles and practices should guide these decisions?

Symposium Participant Biographies

Panel 1: Policy

Norah Crean

Norah was born and raised in Washington DC and has lived in Portland for the past 3 years. Her work as an arts professional has varied from roles in exhibition curation & design, founding and developing an artist residency program, and now as a Public Art & Collections Manager. She is currently exploring interests in preventive conservation within collections. She is an active member in creative communities of San Francisco and Portland, OR and serves on Respond to Racism’s Data Collection Committee. She is an advocate for the arts on local levels and promotes manual competency and critical thinking skills through accessible public art programming. She is currently learning how to weld and is studying Chemistry here at PCC as a pre-program Conservation student.

Teressa Raiford

Teressa Raiford is the founder and executive director of Don’t Shoot Portland, a nationally recognized art and education nonprofit in Portland, Oregon that promotes social change in the spaces of civil rights and racial justice. She is also director and curator of The Black Gallery in Portland’s’ Pearl District.

Amanda Rawson

Amanda Rawson has participated in the cultural art sector for over ten years. She joined Barbara Goldstein & Associates in 2019 and is now co-owner of the firm Art Builds Community (previously known as Barbara Goldstein & Associates). Previously, Amanda worked as the Major Gifts Officer for the San Jose Museum of Art and the Donor and External Relations Manager at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. She is a 2017 Fellow of the Emerging Arts Professionals Bay Area with a focus on the Creative City topic, and she is an alum of The Silicon Valley Organization’s Leadership San Jose. Her past board leadership includes the Board of Directors for Local Color in San Jose, the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, and was the 2020-2021 chair of genArts Silicon Valley, a program of Silicon Valley Creates that is dedicated to empowering creative individuals and emerging arts leaders through professional development, advocacy, and networking. Amanda currently serves with and is a founding member of the grassroots organization San Jose Arts Advocates. Amanda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of California Berkeley.

John Washington

Mr. John Washington has over 4 decades of experience as an entrepreneur, community advocate, cultural responsive consultant, urban developer and national multi-media producer. Born onto the mean streets of Patterson, New Jersey, he rose through the ashes and rubble of a violent and impoverished community that claimed many of his family, friends and neighbors, to become a powerhouse of inspiration and beacon of encouragement. He attended Rutgers University where he was an All-American football player, but after the death of his father through substance abuse related illness, Mr. Washington was led to pursue addiction studies at Washington State University, WA and Evergreen College, WA.

After graduation, he interned at the Olympic Center in Bellingham, WA., working with Native Americans through addiction counseling. This experience led him to Oregon where he operated as a consultant to several of the local tribes including the Grand Ronde, Siletz and Cow Creek. He also worked with Marion County, where he designed programming to serve and treat historically hard-to-reach ethnic youth and families in the areas of drug/alcohol and gang intervention. In the1990s, he founded Inside Out Care in Salem, Oregon, a successfully administered, treatment based program for this same population.

In the early 2000s, he established Flossin Media in the Heart of the Soul District in Portland,Oregon. As a multicultural media production and marketing agency, Flossin specializes in reaching Black and other communities of color through print, video and event production as wellas strategic communication, community engagement and public relations/social media management. As CEO of Flossin Media and Publisher/Editor in Chief of Flossin Magazine, he is also an active editorial advisor to outside authors, bringing a culturally responsive perspective to their work. Examples include, “What A City’s For: Remaking the Politics of Displacement” by Professor Matt Hern and the outreach strategy section of the “Pathway 1000 Implementation Plan”, a displacement mitigation strategy developed by Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives. He is the host of two podcast series, Black Beat and PDX Black Rose, where he highlights Black newsmakers from around the City and the Pacific Northwest.

He currently serves the N/NE Portland community by advocating for small businesses and youth entrepreneurs as the Executive Director and Chair of the Soul District Business Association(SDBA). In this role, he guides 350 active members towards resources for personal and professional training opportunities, funding sources and civic engagement positions. He also works with small business owners and youth entrepreneurs to help them navigate complex governance systems, connect to resources and build partnerships. As an Outreach Navigator on behalf of the N/NE Community Development Initiative committee, Mr. Washington connects Black and other business owners and residents of color to funding resources for property acquisition and improvement and oversees fiscal management of grant funds for the Williams and Russell Project working group. He also guides the SDBA’s “Green Lighting Black Lives Matter Youth Media Project”, a collective impact partnership and training program that engages young people ages 16-24 in the practical application of film and video while helping them develop authentic storytelling skills from the perspective of Black experience. The program includes a culturally responsive training component that seeks to instill his long taught philosophy of connecting people of color with their senses of capability, significance andinfluence in their lives and in the World. This program also folds in a Summer Works Internship program where these same young people, under John Washington’s leadership, produce the MLK Dream Run Weekend Celebration. This event serves to connect the business and residential communities of inner N/NE Portland, both historic communities of color and the emerging demographic, in healthy and economically prosperous manners. This program also serves to balance the digital divide by connecting historically marginalized communities to pathways and pipelines in the digital workforce industries. Mr. Washington has also been a driving force in guiding a number of public art projects in the Soul District. He chaired Prosper Portland’s Vanport 2 Development Design Committee and worked with leadership at the Regional Arts and Culture Council to provide a culturally responsive lens to community identity. He currently sits on the Historic Albina Advisory Board (HAAB) and the N/NE Oversight Committee . Past board affiliations include Governor Ted Kulongoski‘s Juvenile Justice Task Force committee, Salvation Army White Shield and Venture Portland. He is a proud member of the Most Honorable Prince Hall Masons, Coalition of Black Men and NAACP Portland Chapter.

Panel 2: Indigenous Perspectives

Sandra Hale Schulman

Sandra Hale Schulman, an arts writer, author, and filmmaker of Cherokee Nation descent, has been writing about Native issues since 1994 and is a regular contributor to Indian Country Today News. The recipient of a Woody Guthrie Fellowship, she is an author of four books, has contributed to shows at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, The Grammy Museum, The Museum of Modern Art NYC, and produced four films on Native musicians.

Gerald Clarke

Gerald Clarke (born February 24, 1967) in Hemet, California, is a sculptor, installation, and conceptual artist from the Cahuilla Band of Mission Indians. His work often reflects on and questions current issues in Native America and the United States, as well as his personal life. Clarke was accepted to University of Central Arkansas where in 1991 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in painting and sculpture. Clarke then went on to obtain his Master of Arts in 1992 from Stephen F. Austin State University. After graduation he became an adjunct professor of art at Lon Morris College all the while working on his Masters thesis. With his thesis, which looked at the use of traditional American Indian themes and images in contemporary art, accepted Clarke received his Masters of Fine Arts from Stephen F. Austin in 1994. Clarke headed the art department at Northeast Texas Community College in 1996, eventually moving on to East Central University to serve as assistant professor of art in 1998.

Clarke's artworks have been exhibited at the Oceanside Museum of Art, San Diego, CA; C.N. Gorman Museum, Davis, CA; University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Chickasha, OK; Holter Museum of Art, Helena, MT; Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, OK; Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; and Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, NM. And his work can be found in the permanent collections of the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, Riverside, CA; Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN; and the Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA. When not creating his own work or teaching art at Idyllwild Arts Academy, Clarke assists in running the Clarke family cattle ranch, and remains heavily involved in Cahuilla culture. He is also a frequent lecturer, speaking regionally about Native art, culture and issues. In 2008 he was elected to the Cahuilla tribal government, which he still serves on.

Marie Watt

Marie Watt is an American artist and citizen of the Seneca Nation with German-Scot

ancestry. Her interdisciplinary work draws from history, biography, Iroquois protofeminism,

and Indigenous teachings; in it, she explores the intersection of history, community, and storytelling. Through collaborative actions she instigates multigenerational and cross-

disciplinary conversations that might create a lens and conversation for understanding

connectedness to place, one another, and the universe. Watt holds an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University; she also has degrees from Willamette University and the Institute of American Indian Arts; and in 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Willamette University.

She has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the

Vermont Studio Center; and has received fellowships from Anonymous Was a Woman, the

Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Harpo Foundation and the Ford Family Foundation and the

Native Arts and Culture Foundation. Marie serves on the executive board for VoCA (Voices in Contemporary Art) and on the Native Advisory Committee at the Portland Art Museum and in 2020 became a member of the Board of Trustees at the Portland Art Museum.

Selected collections include the Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American

Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery, Crystal Bridges Museum, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the

American Indian and Renwick Gallery, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum,

and the Portland Art Museum.

She is represented by PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon, Catharine Clark Gallery

in San Francisco, California, and Marc Straus Gallery in New York City, New York.

Panel 3: Artist Perspectives

Mack McFarland

Mack McFarland is a cultural producer, educator, and Arts Administrator for the Cultural Resources Department at The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde . In May 2020 he co-founded Congress Yard Projects, an outdoor exhibition space begun in the time of physical distancing. For 14 years, McFarland served as curator for Pacific Northwest College of Art where his exhibitions included commissioned projects of new works from tactical media practitioners Critical Art Ensemble, Eva and Franco Mattes, and Disorientalism; as well as solo exhibitions from Joe Feddersen, Cauleen Smith, David Horvitz, and Joe Sacco. Since 2017 his focus has been on art and culture in our public spaces. In 2018, McFarland has partnered with Portland artist Sara Siestreem (Hanis-Coos) to contend with the racist legacies found in the art school's architectural details; commissioning eight Indigenous artists to create installations of physical and psychic markers for the region's Indigenous presence and the many peoples that lived on the land before the process of settler colonialism.

Jess Perlitz

(b. Toronto, ON) is an artist whose work is informed by our formations of landscape and the body’s place within it, finding points of desire, incongruity, and disruption. She is a graduate of Bard College, received an MFA from Tyler School of Art, and clown training from the Manitoulin Center for Creation and Performance. Perlitz is currently an Associate Professor and Head of Sculpture at Lewis & Clark College, and most recently, the co-leader of Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project. Perlitz is a 2019 Hallie Ford Fellow, a Joan Shipley awardee, and an award recipient from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared in playgrounds, fields, galleries, and museums, including the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens; Cambridge Art Galleries, ON; De Fabriek, NL; and aboard the Arctic Circle Residency. Her project Chorus is installed at Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia.

Ilish Bath

Ilish Bath’s first commissioned illustration was her elementary school’s yearly Christmas card. Since then her commissions range from album covers, to city bus wraps that honor Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander cultures and diasporas. Research drives both her commissioned and personal work. Her multimedia installation, everywhen, combines ink drawings, digitized hi8 tapes, risograph animation, and projection mapping, to explore circular time, dreams, familial memory and bond. Everywhen earned both the Thesis Show and Writing awards at Pacific Northwest College of Art, and a RACC Project Grant right after graduation (2023). Bath is based in Portland, Oregon, printing and teaching at the collectively operated BIPOC risograph press nun studios, illustrating, and assisting in a wide range of art, production, exhibition, and mural services—applying a lifelong drawing practice and persistent desire to learn within community contexts.

Kanani Miyamoto

Originally from Honolulu, Hawai`i, Kanani Miyamoto is currently living in Portland, Oregon where she practices art, teaches, and curates. She is an individual of mixed heritage and identifies most with her Hawaiian and Japanese roots, which is celebrated in her artwork. Miyamoto holds a Master of Fine Arts in Print Media from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and a Bachelor of Arts in Art Practices from Portland State University. Kanani is now the Arts Coordinator at p:ear.

Important to Miyamoto’s work as an artist is sharing and honoring her mixed cultural background to represent her community and the beauty of intersectional identities. She also explores topics such as institutional critique and hopes to create critical conversations around cultural authenticity in the arts. Miyamoto is a printmaker and uses traditional printmaking techniques to create large scale print installations and murals. In addition to being a practicing artist, she is an advocate for art education and a passionate community worker.

Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr.

Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is Black, Italian, Queer, Non-Binary, Neurodyvergent, and practices primarily in america. Their collaborative approach results in artwork by and for the people. Stevenson’s practice has been dedicated to supporting young people ages 4 to 18 in developing the necessary skills to encourage advanced imaginative thinking and self-confident expression. In 2019 they developed the Afro Contemporary Art Class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School which has had many forms since, including Afro Futurist February, and three years of Fred Hampton Summer Camp. Supporting community efforts as well, taking the shape of support for the effort to Save Dr. Martin Luther King School from being displaced by the expansion of Interstate 5 which has triggered the need to move Harriet Tubman Middle School. These and other contexts show up in their recent work Mapping the Pipeline shown at the Portland Institute for Contemporary art as part of the Policing Justice exhibition. Stevenson is currently working in the Albina community to develop a Living Archive at Jefferson High School with students, community, and the architectural design team. Stevenson also has a robust portfolio of artist projects centering food and gathering around it, projects involving sculpture, drawing, and photography, and work in collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated folks. These include Tin Can Phone, a podcast all about life in and outside of prison, and Gallery Blue, a curation and exhibition project both of which are owned and operated by formerly incarcerated individuals. Stevenson pursues these professional and creative goals passionately because they believe that empowered and open-minded young people and communities are the best and most direct way toward ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.

Tannaz Farsi

Tannaz Farsi’s art spans sculpture, installation and image making allowing her to work within a serial structure to create interdependencies in meaning. She uses organic materials such as flowers and plants, creates spatial compositions from light, air, words and continually engages with the history and specificity of objects to critically address broader socio-political systems through both an analytical and poetic framework. Farsi’s research draws from historic cultural objects, feminist histories, and theories of displacement evidenced by long standing colonialist and authoritarian interventions into daily life to complicate the network of relations around conceptions of memory, history, identity and geography.

Farsi’s work has been exhibited at venues including SFAC Galleries, San Francisco; Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland; JSMA, Portland; Linfield Gallery McMinnville; Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma; the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington; and The Sculpture Center, Cleveland. She has been granted residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Ucross Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Studios at Mass MOCA, Santa Fe Art Institute and the Rauschenberg Foundation. Her work has been supported through grants and awards from the Oregon Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, University of Oregon and the Ford Family Foundation. She received a Hallie Ford Fellowship in 2014 and was named the twenty-eighth Bonnie Bronson Fellow in 2019.

Lynn Yarne

Lynn Yarne is a 4th and 5th generation Chinese and Japanese American from Portland, OR. She is interested in visual remixing as a process of meaning making, pulling from mixed metaphor and iconography, stories your auntie’s friend told you, traditions you don’t know where they came from, making it up as you go along and doing with what you have. Though much of her work has stemmed from a family connection to Portland’s Old Town, her curiosity around community, space and story extend and expand as they encounter the experiences of other communities and individuals.

Yarne works as a teacher in a public school facilitating a screen printing program. She works with over 200 students a year in concepts around self expression and critical visual communication. As a teacher and artist that often works with people, she approaches the study of engagement with curiosity, worry and intention

Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen

Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen are two people who work together as one artistic entity. They tend towards project-based work, using art as an extended form of study and a testing ground for ideas about language, politics and social life. Their projects are often grounded in translating between text and image and expanding the individual act of reading into visual, collective form.

Their work has appeared in many public places as well as at institutions such as The Renaissance Society (Chicago, IL); The San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego, CA); SPACES (Cleveland, OH); Locust Projects (Miami, FL); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR); and on the pages of NOON Literary Annual. In addition to teaching, they enjoy working on the land where they live and spending time with their children.

Chisao Hata

Chisao Hata is a performing artist, community organizer, and global citizen artist. Her work shares the Japanese-American story to communities from Hiroshima, Japan to Cuba, and New Mexico to Ontario, Oregon. As an arts educator, her perspectives are shared as an Oregon Humanities Conversation Leader and Vanport Mosaic Festival Stories in Movement artist. She originated Gambatte Be Strong, stories of Japanese-American displacement and resilience in Portland and is a partnering artist at the Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Keynote Speaker

Hamza Walker

Hamza Walker has been the director of The Bric (Formerly LAXART) since 2016, after 22 years as curator and director of education at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. Under Walker’s leadership, The Bric has deepened its mission and exhibition program to include thematic group exhibitions, new work with historical figures, and institutional-scale projects with emerging and established artists.