UPDATE: WWire has learned the last PAC board member, Victor Maldonado, resigned at 1:52 pm today. According to fellow former board member Katherine Ace, “[PAC] director Gavin Shettler has real problems communicating, especially with his board.” She goes on to clarify, “there were a couple of instances where we asked for information, like financials, and we simply wouldn’t get it. It was a HUGE amount of work but it was not going anywhere.”
ORIGINAL POST: WWire has learned that almost the entire Portland Art Center board has resigned, leaving one board member behind to pick up the pieces for a struggling, rapidly changing Portland arts organization that only last month was facing potential eviction by its landlord.
In a move that the center’s Executive Director Gavin Shettler called “disappointing,” PAC board members Katherine Ace, Karen Esler and Laura Ross-Paul all submitted their letters of resignation to Shettler on Sunday, Jan. 6. Those resignations by the trio of A-list artists comes on top of the fall 2007 resignations of board members Jeff Houghtaling and Meredyth Jensen. The end result: only artist Victor Maldonado remains on the board.
Shettler says “These three board members in particular didn’t have the time or energy to put toward the organization.”
Ace, Ross-Paul and Esler did return calls placed to their respective galleries for comment; their responses – and those of other arts community leaders, including gallery owner Mark Woolley – will be included in a January 16 WW article on the PAC.
“We were anticipating there would be a major change and we were planning for lots of restructuring,” Shettler told WWire this afternoon.
And Shettler points to recent fund-raising success as a sign the organization may be turning around and staying in its current location: the PAC raked in more than $60,000 in sales during its “PDX Panels” show in February – $40,000 plus in actual panel sales, buoyed by a matching grant of $20,000 from the Henry Hillman Family Foundation.
“While it’s difficult to make it through these transitions,” Shettler said, “I’m optimistic.” PAC’s February shows, including new works from Augustana Woodgate, Ben Hirschkoff, Alan Bailey, Jason Frank and Andy Brown, opens Thursday, Feb. 7.
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Dear Portland Art Community,
This morning I awoke to news that all members of the Portland Art Center board resigned.
Contrary to the online article, I promptly returned Stephen Marc Beaudoin’s call and talked with him twice personally. I am a longtime friend of many of the principle players in this story and with 5 years in nonprofits prior to opening my gallery, I’m sensitive to the nuances of staff/board/director issues, subissues and personalities. It’s sad and hard,but there’s probably 10 subthemes to this story. I’m not into taking sides, just into supporting more interesting arts programming in general in this town and thankful I don’t live in Des Moines, though it’s probably beautiful there.
PAC is one of the most exciting spaces I’ve been in in recent years. There is something to be said for artistic quality first; quantity (of sustainable funding) next. May Gavin and Kelly put together a dream team for their new board!
Thanks, Mark – as I mentioned to you in our phone chat yesterday, I had published this before you and I spoke on the phone, and was travelling today and unable to update the post. I have just updated it now to reflect our conversation. Please continue to check in with us on this story, especially in next week’s print issue.
As a volunteer of the Portland Art Center I would like to add a little insight to this article.
First of all I think that Laura Ross-Paul will be dearly missed as a board member at the Art Center. I understand that it is in her best interests to move forward right now and focus on her highly demanding personal life. I’m sure that Gavin will continue a positive and professional relationship with her in the future.
Portland has struggled and hoped for so long to have something like the Portland Art Center. I think it’s up to those of us who really care about art to recognize the massive effort it takes to create and maintain an organization like this. Gavin and Kelly may not have all of the credentials we would like to see in people running a gallery of this magnitude, but they are the only people I would trust to do it. I don’t think that replacing Gavin with someone with deeper pockets is going to create anything better for the rest of us.
If I were to offer criticism it would be that PAC has yet to find the right board and to fund more staff. That’s a tall order in Portland, Oregon and I wouldn’t expect it to be easy for anybody. There are a lot of people here who are really in it for themselves, but very few who are working for the greater good. I believe that behind the struggle that Gavin faces everyday he is working to make something bigger than himself or his own ego. Though the may have to contend with financial pitfalls and constant criticism we all owe them debt of gratitude and support.
Now that the Portland Art Center has had a very successful fund raising event, and has cleansed the cobwebs out of the boardroom I expect to see great things in the coming year. We need this gallery, and we need people like Gavin Shettler and Kelly Rauer to be the people behind it.
-Adam Bailey
Portland Art Center Volunteer