Critical Conversations

The Ford Family Foundation’s Visual Arts Program honors the Foundation’s late co-founder Hallie Ford and her lifelong interest in the arts by helping Oregon’s most promising established visual artists actively pursue their work. One element of the program is Critical Conversations, a platform for dialogue and inquiry that supports Oregon artists and writers. This initiative collaborates with rotating arts organizations across the state to bring prominent visiting curators and arts writers for studio visits, public lectures and other forms of engagement with our creative communities. Recognizing the vital relationship between artists and those who analyze, historicize, and present art, Critical Conversations also sponsors convenings and commissioned writing that engage Oregon’s curators and arts writers in dialogue around contemporary issues in both the art world and society at large.