Art college gets a $15 million gift
Hallie E. Ford's gift to the Pacific Northwest College of Art will bring world-class artists to Portland for residencies
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
D.K. ROW
The Oregonian
Hallie E. Ford, a 102-year-old philanthropist, is giving the Pacific Northwest College of Art $15 million, the largest single donation to an Oregon cultural group.
The gift signals an important turnaround at the once-struggling art school and marks its growing role as a hub for the city's creative economy.
The college will use most of the money to create an ambitious program that will bring world-class artists, performers and designers to live and teach in Portland. Under the program, the college's 3,000 full-time and continuing education art students will be able to study painting, design, computer graphics and the like, with the artists.
"To endow a program that brings important artists to this community will change everything," says architect Brad Cloepfil, an internationally known Portland architect and one of a small group of creative executives who have been advising PNCA on its future. "It changes not only the school but this city."
The gift reflects Ford's desire "to see a globally recognized center for visual art and design education located in Oregon," she said in a written statement.
The gift dwarfs PNCA's largest previous gift, $530,000, from late artist and PNCA faculty member Gordon Gilkey. The college's budget this year is $7.5 million.
A winning proposal
For PNCA, the $15 million gift was almost a missed opportunity.
Two years ago at an informal gathering of philanthropists, patron Jordan Schnitzer made an ambitious proposal: to merge PNCA with Portland State University in order to create a single, high-powered art department.
The merger would have given PNCA some security -- it rents its Pearl District facilities and has struggled financially since establishing itself as an independent institution in 1994 after its 85-year affiliation with the Portland Art Museum. And the move might have boosted PSU's underfunded but talented art department.
PNCA President Tom Manley says the several million dollars needed to fund the merger would have been donated by Ford, whose late husband, Kenneth W. Ford, founded Roseburg Forest Products Co. She was seeking an opportunity to make a major contribution to arts education in Portland.
The Ford Family Foundation, which Ford and her husband founded in 1957, confines its gifts primarily to rural and southern Oregon communities, though Ford herself has been the major benefactor of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, among other cultural institutions.
Manley says discussions between the art college and PSU president Daniel Bernstine were congenial. But both presidents ultimately agreed that a merger would be too complicated and not fully beneficial for either institution.
"Why lose our identity to gain security?" Manley says.
But PNCA did not want to lose the momentum created by Schnitzer's proposal. The college re-approached Ford with its own idea, one largely conceived by Manley and inspired by a college master plan created by Cloepfil and his company a few years ago.
In February, the college and Allyn Ford, CEO of Roseburg Forest Products and son of Hallie and Kenneth Ford, began direct conversations that culminated in the $15 million gift. Christine D'Arcy of the Oregon Arts Commission confirms is the largest such donation made in Oregon. Recent momentum
For PNCA, the gift punctuates an extraordinary administrative turnaround. Four years ago, the college was struggling with issues regarding its financial health, faculty and staff morale. The future of its Pearl District campus, owned by the family of the late Edith Goodman, was uncertain.
But since taking over in 2003, Manley, who came to Portland after a stint as a fundraiser at the Claremont Colleges in California, has helped stabilize the college. It's now debt-free. Staff morale has turned sharply positive, and the college has just begun its first master of fine arts program.
Above all, Manley aggressively pushed the college to pursue relationships with several of Portland's world-class creative figures and companies, such as Cloepfil of Allied Works; Sohrab Vossoughi, founder of the design firm Ziba Design; and John Jay, a partner in the ad agency Wieden+Kennedy.
Those networking principles were the foundation of the new institute, which will be called the Ford Institute for Visual Education, and the ambitious artist-in-residence program. The college hasn't developed a short list of prospective visiting artists or even a launch date for the program. But it envisions bringing five to seven world-class artists, designers and performers to live and teach students in Portland for residencies lasting from six months to three years. Ford's gift, $10 million of which is designated for the institute, would pay for the artists' extended housing as well as a generous living stipend.
The influence and presence of these artists would not be restricted to the PNCA campus, according to Manley and Cloepfil. Those visiting teachers, in turn, likely would collaborate with Oregon artists, arts institutions and businesses, creating a wave of activity in Portland, PNCA officials say. The artists-in-residence would also bring their own network of contacts to visit and interact with Portlanders.
"We are creating social and creative capital," says Manley. "Every time we pick one of these artists, five or six more will (unofficially) be part of the program. If you pick five, you are actually talking about 25."
"There is no six degrees of separation anymore," says Wieden's John Jay, who, like Cloepfil, has been advising PNCA. "I believe it's two." At home in the Pearl
Aside from creating a historic new institute and residency program, Ford's gift allows the college to move forward with other initiatives with the remaining $5 million.
PNCA officials say they are outlining a plan to launch a major capital campaign in 2009, its centennial year. Funds from that campaign likely will help resolve the college's control over its leased space.
After contemplating the possibility of moving to another part of the city, possibly Old Town, the college now wants to stay in its Pearl District site, where it would continue to be just blocks from Ziba, Wieden+Kennedy and other creative companies.
"We don't want to be isolated or feel we are on an island," says Manley. "We want to be integrated in the River District."
PNCA officials would not comment specifically about negotiations with the Goodman family to buy the buildings the college leases. But Manley says the outlook is positive.
Those involved in the conversation "are great people," he says. "They care about the city, and they care about the school."
D.K. Row: 503-294-7654 or
dkrow@news.oregonian.com. Also:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/visualarts
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/orego...290.xml&coll=7
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