Seeing Visual Artists: A Portland Pandemic Report by Bean Gilsdorf

Portland, Oregon, is known as a city for people who love art and culture. But what about the artists who reside there, is it a supportive place for them to live and work? Seeing Visual Artists: A Portland Pandemic Report is a quantitative and qualitative research project that examines the conditions of artists’ lives in the first year of the pandemic. Based on a survey of visual artists in the metro area, and synthesized with research relating to art, culture, and economics, the report explores the complex interactions within Portland’s art ecosystem, and connects the data from the survey to concurrent issues beyond the parameters of the city.

The survey concerns only visual artists, but much of the data presented here could hold true for dancers, performance and sound artists, writers, musicians, and other creative workers. If Portland has built its reputation on the labor of the artists who live there, how can it support those people now? 

The author is grateful to the Andy Warhol Foundation for an Arts Writers Grant that supported this project, and is honored by the artists who participated in the survey and revealed sensitive information for this report. 

This document is the first in a series of pieces hosted by CFAR that examine notions of ACCESS across time and varied perspectives. 

Bean Gilsdorf is an artist and writer. Her artworks have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and the American Textile History Museum, as well as exhibition spaces in Poland, England, Italy, China, and South Africa. In her writing, Gilsdorf frequently addresses issues connected to appropriation art, feminism, and the effects of socioeconomic conditions on artistic practices. Her reviews and essays have been included in publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Frieze, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Momus. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2020), two Fulbright Fellowships to Poland (2015–2016 and 2016–2017), a Graduate Fellowship at Headlands Center for the Arts (2011–2012), and a Graduate Full Merit Scholarship at California College of the Arts (2009). 

Check out the write-up of Seeing Visual Artists: A Portland Pandemic Report on Hyperallergic.