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The halls of any high school would suggest art and sports are not the most natural pair. The two groups tend to eye each other suspiciously and largely keep to themselves. But that’s the exact combo organizers chose to kick off the first-ever Portland Arts Week, which starts July 9.
“It’s been a little quiet in the Pearl and downtown,” says gallery owner and event organizer Elizabeth Leach. “What does Portland have to celebrate? The Fire! So, let’s do a theme with all these galleries and nonprofits of art and sports.”
Portland Arts Week will actually be four days, July 9–12. It’s going to look like 16 Portland galleries hanging sports-themed shows (most of which stay up for about a month), a two-day symposium, performances, movie screenings, and tons of free sporting events in the downtown Park Blocks. And summer 2026 is a great time for it: Not only does the city have a new professional basketball team in the mix with the Portland Fire, the World Cup is hitting a fever pitch.
The goal of Portland Arts Week is to bring the arts audience to sports and the sports audience to arts. Almost all of the events are free, though some require reserving a spot online in advance.
Art world insiders will not be surprised to learn that Portland Arts Week is the brainchild of Leach, a tireless visual art-scene cheerleader. Leach established her eponymous Pearl District gallery in 1981, founded Portland arts nonprofit Converge 45 in 2016, and has been hyping the idea of a Portland Cultural Corridor since about 2022. Portland Arts Week is an effort to activate that corridor, which runs along the Park Blocks from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in the Pearl to the Portland Art Museum and Portland State University downtown.
Other than the extensive woman power necessary to conceptualize, organize and execute the inaugural Portland Arts Week, Leach’s artistic contribution to the event is a group show called Let’s Play. The show features pieces by art world heavy hitters such as John Baldessari (a 2017 screenprint of a glove catching a baseball) and Claes Oldenburg (1991’s Sneaker Lace in Landscape), an outstanding 2022 Hank Willis Thomas mixed-media work made of NBA jerseys, and much more.
Leach intends Portland Arts Week to be an annual summer event and has even brainstormed the 2027 theme: art and food.
Like this year’s theme, Leach says, “people can take it and do what they want.”
Here are five events at the inaugural Portland Arts Week that caught our eye:
1. Symposium on Art, Sports, Culture and Business. This two-day symposium is the most in-depth and highbrow offering of Portland Arts Week. Day one will be held at the Portland Art Museum and feature two panel discussions: one on the cultural and economic impact of art and sports (with panelist Lisa Bhathal Merage of RAJ Sports, the investment firm behind the Thorns and the Fire) and one on art collecting. Day two will cross the river to the Tomorrow Theater for panel discussions on media and one on the behind-the-scenes stories of art and sports in Portland. Tomorrow Theater will cap it off with a live taping of the New York–based basketball podcast Cookies Hoops, hosted by Ben Detrick and Andrew Kuo.
Why it stands out: The famously private owner of the Portland Fire and the Thorns speaks!
Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 Park Ave. 10 am–2:30 pm Thursday, July 9. Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division St. 1:30–5 pm Friday, July 10.
2. Running Lessons: Drawings from Strava at Froelick Gallery
A certain type of runner or maybe most runners at this point are a little too into the fitness app Strava, which tracks all manner of endurance sports and performance metrics. Artist V. Maldonado created a whole series of mixed-media works and paintings based on their Strava runs. The paintings up at Froelick now through July 18 prominently feature what you might call “Strava orange” and many, many laps around the track at Duniway Park, among other Portland locations. “My dad ran from the migra and my mom ran from the patriarchy! I come from lifelong runners,” writes Maldonado in their artist statement. “Running is how I draw myself.”
Why it stands out: Geek out on running stats, but make it high art.
Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis St., froelickgallery.com. 11 am–5:30 pm Tuesday–Saturday, through July 18.
3. Park Blocks Art and Sports Activation
Saturday is an all-day sporting festival in both the North and South Park Blocks that Leach anticipates will be “phenomenal.” There will be 10 offerings of activities, all free: pickleball, bocce, basketball clinics for kids, bachata and salsa dancing, and an all-day street soccer tournament. On the art side, the Portland Art Museum will host a family-friendly painting party to complete Yinka Ilori’s street mural Mountains Full of Blessings.
Why it stands out: Enjoy what is essentially a free one-day gym membership, or earn bragging rights that you technically collaborated with world-renowned British Nigerian artist Ilori.
North and South Park Blocks in downtown Portland and Portland Art Museum, 1219 Park Ave., portlandartsweek.com. 8 am–5 pm Friday, July 10. See the website for a schedule of events
4. Good Game at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
This is probably the most faithful interpretation of a combined “art and sports” event of the week. For one night only, PICA rebrands itself as the Portland Institute for Contemporary Athletics to host this slightly unhinged evening of “competitive art.” PICA has an impressive slate of 10 participants, a mix of artists and athletes from a variety of sports, such as basketball, dance, and track and field. They will be teamed in pairs to “prepare a performance highlighting the skills, techniques and style of their respective practices,” according to PICA.
Why it stands out: “It will be sweaty, it’ll be fun, and there may even be a mascot,” PICA says.
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 15 NE Hancock St., pica.org/events/good-game. 8 pm Friday, July 10. $20–$50.
5. Scrimmage at Stelo
Sport courts are a major theme in New York artist Ronny Quevedo’s visual vocabulary, making him a natural fit for the event. The son of a professional soccer player in Ecuador, Quevedo has transformed the floor of Stelo into a distorted, wild version of basketball court markings, with vibrant vinyl primary colors. Visitors are then invited to use removable stickers to mark up the windows of the gallery—all X’s and O’s and arrows, like a coach’s playbook. “Match rules” are posted in the entrance. “This is an exploration in drawing, movement and sport…. You can respond to what came before but not remove it,” Quevedo writes. Stelo should be good and marked up by the end of this show’s run.
Why it stands out: Mucking up the walls of an art gallery without getting in trouble? Yes, please.
Stelo, 412 NW 8th Ave., steloarts.org. Noon–5 pm Wednesday–Saturday, through Aug. 8. Artist’s talk 1 pm Saturday, July 11.
