Cascade hosts Portland Monuments Project Symposium
Photos and story by James Hill
Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus will host a multi-day symposium Friday, Oct. 11 and Saturday, Oct. 12, highlighting community voices and exploring the significance and future potentials of public spaces, art and monuments. This symposium will bring together regional public art administrators, and national leaders in public art and monument research in partnership with PCC’s Art Department.
Hamza Walker.
The Portland Monuments Symposium is the first of a series of public community activities supported by the City of Portland that builds from Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project, inaugurated in 2021 by Converge 45, which scrutinized the impact of public monuments in Portland. 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 of Portland.
The program will be centered around panel discussions and breakout sessions examining how communities decide what to commemorate in a monument; what future monuments can or should look like; and why they should look that way. The keynote speaker will be Hamza Walker, director of The Bric, a nonprofit art space in Los Angeles formerly known as LAXART.
For more information and registration go to www.converge45.org, or visit its Eventbrite page.
About James Hill
James G. Hill, an award-winning journalist and public relations writer, is the Director of Public Relations at Portland Community College. A graduate of Portland State University, James has worked as a section editor for the Newberg Graphic... more »