Oregon Humanities

The act of gathering together to worship is nothing new. Sometimes that worship takes the form of praising a higher power. Sometimes it takes the form of humans role-playing the lives of other humans. Portland Playhouse in northeast Portland is melding the ideas of worship, community, and shared humanity into an energizing and intimate experience.

Housed in a former church, the Portland Playhouse just wrapped up a forty-show run of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black... More

03 June 2011 | Posted in Community Grants | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)

Paulann Petersen, Oregon’s poet laureate, has been on the road for nearly two weeks, traversing the state in an effort to visit as many communities during her tenure as possible.

Petersen was appointed to a two-year term by Governor Kulongoski in April 2010. Oregon Humanities coordinates this program as part of a unique collaboration with the Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Heritage Commission, Oregon Historical Society, and the State Historic Preservation Office, with... More

19 May 2011 | Posted in Community | Permalink | Comments? (1 so far)

About twenty-five people gathered in the lobby of the Gerding Theater at the Armory in Portland during the lunch hour on Friday for the fourth and last Shop Talk, a special program sponsored by Oregon Humanities and Portland Center Stage. Bust playwright and actress Lauren Weedman and Back Fence PDX coproducer B. Frayn Masters talked about memoir, truth, and fame. Emcee Kelsey Tyler, PCS education and community programs director, asked questions that elicited laughter and... More

09 May 2011 | Posted in Community New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)

TEDxPortland—an independent spin-off of big TED, “Ideas Worth Spreading” TED—happened on one of the first dry, sunny days of spring, so it would have been natural to see more than a few empty seats in the Gerding Theater at the Armory, especially as the day went on. That’s not what happened. Sure, there were a few more seats in the theater by day’s end, but only a few.

What was the pull to stay in a dark theater on a clear day listening to thirteen speakers talk... More

03 May 2011 | Posted in Events Community New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)

The pairing of women and war brings so many other words, other ideas, to my mind. Like most who share my age, class, and nationality, my knowledge of war comes mainly through language. Newspaper or magazine articles, novels, history books, lectures. It just is not a duo I have seen in real life, but it captures my attention nonetheless. I feel a responsibility to at least bear some brief witness to world’s more brutal realities. Shortly after it was published in 2008, I... More

23 November 2009 | Posted in Events Community New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (1 so far)

In late summer of 1979 Dale Eldred created a series of interconnected sculptures of refractive light panels sited at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, across expansive lawns and along the median of Volker Boulevard. The refractive tape created prisms that changed with every movement of the viewer, the sun, the moon, and the earth’s rotation. I was a new freshman at the Kansas City Art Institute, and the playfulness and gentle thoughtfulness of the sculpture quickened my... More

02 November 2009 | Posted in Community Inside O. Hm. New Ideas | Permalink | Comments? (2 so far)