Cultural District

Overview Portland Art Museum invites the community to join a Free First Thursday event, offering free admission to the museum for all, plus a Live Wire event as part of the Literary Arts Portland Book Festival. Visitors can take in the afternoon gallery pop-ups, the evening show, or both! Free First Thursday + Museum pop-ups 4:30 – 6 p.m. — 4:30-6:00pm — Free, pre-show, pop-up performances will take place throughout the Museum’s galleries. Performers are poet and rapper Dessa, bestselling...

Music is more than just an aural language – it is a multitude of communication modes and literacies. Sight Reading features world-renowned songwriters translating between dialects in real time: the written language of music (usually expressed on...

Lisa Hanawalt reads from her new memoir at Portland Art Museum in the Prints & Drawings gallery.

Singer, rapper, and author Dessa joins the Oregon Symphony for an evening of soaring song ballads, writerly pop songs, and rap anthems. Don’t miss this landmark performance, presented in collaboration with Literary Arts as an extension of the...

Join Dr. Mas Subramanian, the inventor of YInMn Blue—the first new blue pigment discovered in more than 200 years—for a fascinating lecture on the science, history, and future of color. Dr. Subramanian will share the story behind this accidental...

Andrew Sean Greer showcases his wit, sophistication, and deep knowledge of focaccia in this tale of a young man who takes an unspecified job with a charismatic elderly Baronessa at her crumbling villa in the Tuscan hills. Interviewed by Lucy...

The first book in the best-selling fantasy series full of magic, wonder, and danger from Colin Meloy, lead singer of the highly celebrated band the Decemberists, and Carson Ellis, the award-winning illustrator. Soon to be a major motion picture...

Grammy® Nominated producer and Billboard #1 recording artist Aaron Nigel Smith is a transformative force in music, education, and humanitarian work.

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World (2026) Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer. 1hr 31min. Not Rated. If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it. Best-selling poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, queer and out but intensely private—Oliver’s poems inspire liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers, naturalists and urbanites. She was America’s unlikely, contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly fifty...

Have you ever seen a group of acclaimed illustrators face off to showcase their art? Now is your chance! Join Steph Littlebird, Scott Campbell, Vashti Harrison, Julia Kuo, Pedro Martín, Huda Fahmy, moderated by Breena Bard, Jonathan Hill for an...