Design Week Portland
This exciting citywide event series dives into design across all disciplines.
As an annual event celebrating the many layers of design in the city, Design Week Portland brings together makers, designers and a community of creative individuals to start conversations, increase awareness, and serve as a catalyst for new ideas. Spread throughout the course of a week, this wide-ranging conference includes lectures, dance parties, workshops, tours, and open houses at some of the leading design firms in Portland.
Not strictly limited to one mode, Design Week Portland has events in disciplines including graphic design, illustration, fashion, cooking, arthictecture, fashion and more. The festival returns every April with dozens of events spread over the course of the week.
A Look Back at Design Week Portland 2019
In 2019, Design Week Portland scheduled nearly 200 different speakers, workshops, screenings, exhibits, parties, panels, auctions, happenings and shows throughout the city over the course of a week. These events are the heart and soul of DWP, showcasing the diverse voices that help shape Portland’s creative community.
More than 100 different studios, retail spaces and agencies took part in Design Week Portland by hosting open house events during the run of the festival. DWP also created itineraries for two of the festival’s most popular topics: architecture and digital design.
- Architecture: The architecture itinerary included a selection of events related to the Portland’s eclectic urban design and architecture. The program explored Portland’s past, present and future built environment, along with discussions about how heritage, sustainability and technology inform the city’s architectural landscape.
- Digital Design: The digital design itinerary focused on digital and interactive design and user experiences. Experts engaged on topics and technologies like virtual and artificial reality, animation, machine learning, placemaking, ethics and accessibility.
Upcoming Dates & Times
- Apr. 18
- Apr. 19
- Apr. 20
- Apr. 21
- Apr. 22
- Apr. 23
- Apr. 24
Different by Design
There's something unique about Portland artists & makers
Upcoming Art & Design Events
Handmade NW
Get a head-start on holiday shopping at Handmade NW. Now in its twelfth year, this three-day event rotates artisans from each day, offering shoppers unique items throughout. This year’s market takes place to OHSU’s Center for Developmental Health. The center is committed to finding the root causes of chronic disease and to developing new methods…
Mumvember
During the month of November, Lan Su Chinese Garden will be packed with more than 750 potted chrysanthemums artistically displayed throughout the garden. More than 75 different chrysanthemum varieties will unfurl in all colors, shapes and sizes including: spiders, quills, spoons, regular incurves, irregular incurves, reflexes, semi-doubles, anemones, brush, thistle, exotics and more. Take in…
Noritaka Tatehana: Refashioning Beauty
Portland Japanese Garden presents the art of Noritaka Tatehana in his first-ever North American solo exhibition. Installed in the Pavilion and Tanabe Galleries located within the manicured grounds of the renowned Gardens, Tatehana enchants through his use of traditional symbols of sophistication and beauty with the inclusion of new, never-before-seen artworks created especially for this…
Wild Arts Festival
The Wild Arts Festival is Pacific Northwest’s premier art show and book fair celebrating the natural world. Held each November by the Portland Audubon, the festival attracts nearly 5,000 visitors each year. New for 2019, the popular festival has moved to Pure Space in Portland’s vibrant Pearl District as the festival celebrates its 39th year….
Portland Winter Light Festival
Brighten your February with glowing sculptures and thousands of twinkling lights at the annual Winter Lights Festival.
Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art
Marking the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, this exhibition explores the overwhelming power of nature and the epic cycles of volcanic destruction and regeneration with stunning photographs, paintings and drawings of the mountain from 1845 to the present day. Curated by Dawson Carr, Ph.D., The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of…
Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott
The first comprehensive retrospective of one of America’s most compelling and controversial artists, Art and Race Matters traces the work of Robert Colescott (1925-2009), who established his career in Portland with the support of gallery owner and philanthropist Arlene Schnitzer, then made his mark in the 1970s with a series of deconstructed art-historical masterpieces that…
Design Week Portland
This annual springtime festival showcases Portland’s creative community, with a week full of lectures, design events and open houses.
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism
Internationally beloved artists Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) and Diego Rivera (1886–1957) played a crucial role in defining and establishing the Avant-Garde cultural movement in Mexico in the early 20th century. Their famously stormy marriage reflected their diverging artistic styles: While Rivera’s art projected itself outward, often in vast murals and concerned itself with the construction of…
To Bear Witness – Extraordinary Lives
To Bear Witness – Extraordinary Lives will capture, share and preserve the stories of 10 to 12 people from varied backgrounds who left their homelands for safe haven in the United States. Although these refugees had survival on their minds when they first arrived, they jump-started their lives with remarkable determination, finding their way in…
Ansel Adams in Our Time
Oct 17, 2020 – Jan 24, 2021 Ansel Adams in Our Time celebrates the visual legacy of the acclaimed American photographer and includes some of his most iconic images, from a symphonic view of snow-dusted peaks in The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (1942) to the sublime Moon and Half Dome,…