Our History

The Disjecta Studio honors the history of Oregon Contemporary, formerly known as Disjecta Contemporary Arts Center. This space provides a dedicated place for the kind of events that have remained at our core as we have grown from pop-up to roving non-profit to our current home here in this building: performance, art, and all kinds of events by the artists & communities of Portland that we continue to serve today.

Disjecta Contemporary Arts Center was founded in September 2000 by Bryan Suereth. Our first home was in a former Masonic temple on North Russell Street. That space was sold by its landlord in 2004, and Disjecta moved into the R.J. Templeton Building on East Burnside, establishing itself as a 501(c)(3) non-profit with Suereth serving as executive director. The first board of directors consisted of Jason Blackheart, Tim Duroche, Jo Ann Kemmis, Meagan Atiyeh, and Marshall Runkel.

Disjecta moved to its current home in 2007, where we established our core programming. We adopted the Portland Biennial when the Portland Art Museum, its host since 1949, decided to replace it with a regional format focused on a smaller group of artists. Portland2010, Disjecta’s first biennial, was curated by Cris Moss and held at the Kenton facility, as well as at other venues throughout the city. In 2016, the Biennial—curated that year by Michelle Grabner—expanded to include artists and sites statewide. 

Then, 2011 brought the first season of the Curator in Residence program, curated and produced by Jenene Nagy. Designed to showcase new curatorial voices, CiR was the first of its kind in the region, bringing challenging regional, national, and international work to Portland, and is still going strong today.

In 2017, our board hired curator Blake Shell as the second executive director in our history. Beginning that year, Shell certified Disjecta as a W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) organization—demonstrating a history of and commitment to voluntarily paying artist fees that meet payment standards. Noting the 2016 Biennial had expanded its scope to include the entire state, we saw an opportunity for Disjecta to similarly include points of view that have historically been underrepresented in the arts. We first shifted the 2019 Biennial—and subsequently all programming—to include a minimum 50% BIPOC representation, a mandate which we have maintained ever since. 

When the COVID pandemic prevented staging the 2021 Biennial, we launched Site, a series of large-scale installations featuring regional artists that could be installed individually and engage smaller, socially-distanced groups. The exhibitions proved so popular—and, given the number of local arts organizations shuttered in recent years, necessary in the region—that we added Site to our core programming.

In spring 2022, we emerged from the pandemic not only intact but thriving, and with a new name: Oregon Center for Contemporary Art—Oregon Contemporary, or Ox, for short. In 2024 we will complete our five-year plan focused on expanding programming and support for artists, increasing outreach to the community, and addressing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility throughout the organization. In 2025, we will celebrate our 25th anniversary as an arts institution in Portland, Oregon.