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For the second year in a row, Bloomberg Philanthropies, billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropic organization, has awarded a $100,000 Asphalt Art Initiative grant to a project in Portland. The award will fund the design and creation of a new pedestrian plaza in front of Portland Art Museum, a joint project proposed by the Portland Bureau of Transportation, PAM and the nonprofit City Repair.
The Asphalt Art Initiative grant winners were announced on June 16. Portland was one of 10 recipients from a pool of more than 200 applicants.
Yinka Ilori, a British Nigerian multidisciplinary artist based in London, will design the new plaza. Ilori will gather community input on an original art piece for the plaza. His designs will incorporate his signature use of bright colors to reanimate otherwise dull concrete urban spaces.
The 2025 award is both the artist’s and city’s second wins. Ilori previously reactivated 11 crosswalks on London’s Tottenham Court Road in 2021.
“This is a way community members can participate in shaping their streetscapes and take some ownership,” David Andersson, an Asphalt Art Initiative associate program officer, tells WW.
The Asphalt Art Initiative has funded more than 100 projects in Europe and North America since its 2020 launch. In 2024 it funded a joint proposal from PBOT, City Repair and The Pathfinder Network, a nonprofit supporting families with incarcerated members, for a Parkrose High School class project. Students and volunteers created a traffic-calming street painting project on Northeast 131st Place between Northeast Shaver Street and Prescott Drive.
Similar projects, according to a Bloomberg-funded study, have seen a 50% decrease in vehicle-pedestrian collisions as well as a 27% increase in frequency of drivers yielding to pedestrians, according to a 2022 study done by Sam Schwartz for Bloomberg Philanthropy.
About the PAM plaza project, Andersson says, “It will hopefully be a very inspiring and welcoming space for residents, for visitors, for people who are longtime users of the museum to people who have never stepped foot in the doors.”