PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - The Oregon Contemporary Arts Center is facing thousands of dollars in lost funding at the city and national levels, and programming is already suffering.
Executive and Artistic Director Blake Shell said they have canceled their summer exhibition, which would have focused on bringing back Indigenous language in the modern age.
In the fall, the Northeast Portland Arts Center in the Kenton neighborhood learned that, due to the restructuring of arts funding distribution, it would receive $14,000 less in annual funds from the City of Portland.
They also learned that due to recent federal budget cuts, they will no longer receive a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that they were expecting for next year.
Shell said that they started the year excited to celebrate their 25th anniversary.
"Going into 2025, we were really celebrating that and excited for having gotten here," she said. "It's hard for a small nonprofit to make it that long, and so we've been taking our victory lap this year, celebrating and thinking about staying around for the next 25 years. In that time frame, the next few months, the climate has shifted pretty radically...a lot of arts organizations are worried and struggling."
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Their space mainly hosts art exhibitions and rents out discount spaces for smaller arts organizations.
She said the city of Portland funds around 80 arts organizations, many of which also lost out on funding in the fall, while larger organizations received the bulk of the funds.
Shell said that if they can't make up the yearly funds they were counting on by Oct., they will have to start looking at some drastic changes.
"It starts to add up, and it's a scary time for everybody," she said. "Are we ticketing moving forward instead of being free to the community?"
They may also have to cut members of their already small staff.
She said that at the federal level, she doesn't believe arts and culture are a priority, but there is still hope for the City.
"I do think that Portland cares about arts and culture and really cares about all of these issues, so if we don't get it for this year, we're not giving up, we're going to keep fighting with the other groups," Shell said.