Our Next Art Capital: Portland?
Submitted by Steve on May 7, 2012
From Peter Plagens at The Wall Street Journal:
To be blunt, Portland's art scene has a lot of no-no on its lips but yes-yes in its eyes.
Storm Tharp, one of Portland's bigger stars who sports that regional artist's badge of honor, inclusion in a Whitney Biennial, has said, “If it becomes an art capital, I might have to move back to the Snake River.” He'll probably have to call for the moving van sooner than expected. Portland might be, as Mr. Jahn puts it, “a lot of soggy people drinking a lot of coffee,” but you can feel it in the drizzly air: It's livable, lefty and crammed with those unpolished launching pads known as alternative spaces. For the foreseeable future, anyway, artists will keep heading to Portland.