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Those traversing the halls of the Portland Art Museum this summer will notice one exhibit that demonstrates extraordinary versatility, featuring everything from a T-shirt with screen-printed Martians to a series of “super awesome zines” titled Details the Duck.
The more than 100 pieces in the museum’s HeART of Portland Visual Art Exhibition were created by very local artists: Portland Public Schools students. The museum is home to at least one art piece from each of PPS’s 81 schools through September, in every medium imaginable. (Think ceramics, collages, and rug tufting, just to name a few.)
The display is just one part of HeART of Portland, an annual event highlighting PPS students’ varied talents across artistic disciplines. This year’s exhibition kicked off on April 15.
Does that date feel familiar? HeART of Portland was first produced in 2015 as a way to show the public where money from the Portland Arts Tax was being put to use. That this year’s show opened on Tax Day is just “a coincidence,” says Kristen Brayson, PPS’s director of visual and performing arts. But it’s meant to land around the season to show taxpayers that arts education and access are happening in Portland schools.
“Our hope is that, over time, people can really see that this is not just something happening abstractly in a classroom somewhere,” she says. “Students are learning coursework…and you can see that manifested in the performances and the exhibition work that comes out of it.”
Opening night included a performing arts showcase, featuring the theme “Windows of Our Future.”
One example of how that theme was applied: Kenzo, a junior at Grant High School who is part of its student dance program, says the largely student-led program centered choreography around seeing into dancers’ futures. “A lot of us are going to college and doing dance in college,” he says. “A lot of us are looking through the window as a sign of what’s to come next.”
The 2026 performance celebrated a notable milestone: students who were kindergartners when Arts Tax collections started are now seniors in high school, making the class of 2026 the first with continuous access to an arts education at PPS.
Since 2013, all Portlanders have been asked to pay $35 each year to fund arts education and arts organizations. The tax has raised about $146 million over more than a decade. Arts Tax dollars fund one arts educator in each K-5 school, and PPS maintains pathways through students’ middle and high school careers.
This year is also the first time PPS student artwork will be on display at the art museum for months, thanks to additional space from a recent expansion.
In years past, Brayson says, student work was displayed for about two weeks, and not in the main Portland Art Museum building due to space constraints. But this year, Hana Layson, PAM’s head of youth and educator programs, says student art got to have the same treatment as every other artist featured in the museum. (Students could also write labels to accompany their works.)
“We didn’t have space right for student artwork in the museum proper, so we would use an event space in the Mark Building. The teachers would always do a great job [displaying student art], they would hang the artwork on grids that PPS provided,” Layson says.
She adds: “But this year, it’s in a proper gallery. The Portland Art Museum collections team that installs all of the artwork was able to install this. So it received the same love and care that every exhibition in the museum receives.”
Brayson says the district also works to instill interschool collaboration on a number of performances in HeART of Portland. A large glass panel in the museum’s gallery features a colorful collage of works from across the district’s classrooms, Layson says.
On the performance side, collaboration comes in the form of an elementary school honor choir and K-12 honor dance collective, bringing talented students across the district together to learn from each other and build special performances.
Winnie, a senior at Grant who is also part of the dance program, was selected as a member of the honors dance collective.
“Here with the honors dance collective, it feels like it’s all about community and connection,” she says. “There are a lot of moments where we got to work with other students to make choreography which is really special.”
