Oregon Arts Watch

1 week ago | orartswatch.org | Amy Leona Havin

David Hume Kennerly and Charles Jennings met 40 years ago and the close friends have been creating work together ever since. Both nearly 80 years old, Kennerly, prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and photojournalist, and Jennings, best-selling writer and journalist, have no intention of taking it slow. Their newest book, a captivating collection of photographs and poetry, will be featured this weekend during a special event called Nostalgia Is So Yesterday.

1 week ago | orartswatch.org | Jim Flint

From enchanted forests and 9/11 airport runways to Pittsburgh backyards and Shakespearean battlegrounds, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s newly announced 2026 season delivers 10 powerful productions that span centuries and genres — each exploring what it means to rise, connect, and move forward in uncertain times.

1 week ago | orartswatch.org | Amy Leona Havin

On the first full day of summer the sun is upthe sky as far as it will get and now it willhead south to warm the Antipodes, where todayit rains and gales blow up from the Antarctic. Here it is summer already, the lawn mowed, gardenweeded and nostalgia for summers past makes herway into this place.

1 week ago | orartswatch.org | Linda Ferguson

If productions of plays were people, then John Patrick’s The Curious Savage at North Portland’s Twilight Theater Company is an utterly charming friend who is the perfect blend of snappy wit and soft heart … a welcome addition to a society that the columnist and author David Brooks says has become increasingly sad, isolated, and mean. Perhaps Brooks, sociologists or historians could explain why the show was a flop when it opened on Broadway in 1950 with Lillian Gish as its star.

1 week ago | orartswatch.org | James Bash

It’s hard to believe that Classical Up Close has just finished its twelfth season, but it’s true. What began as a response to the cancellation of the Oregon Symphony’s return to Carnegie Hall in 2013 has blossomed into an annual event of free chamber music that puts the artists up close and personal with listeners.