Funded Programs

The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation offers a full spectrum of programs and outreach initiatives that promote lifelong learning and build connections to our local community.

Through programs, partnerships, and community advisory processes, the Foundation strives to be more than just a collection of objects and artwork, but also to be a place where conversations about the world around us take place.

Director Park Live Paint OffConverge 45Forever De YoungBlack Lives MatterJewish Book AwardsJordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at Sitka Center for Art and EcologyIFPDA Artist Lecture SeriesIFPDA Jordan Schnitzer Award for Excellence in PrintmakingIPCNY Annual Spring BenefitDieu Donné Annual BenefitPNCA Jordan D. Schnitzer Exhibition and Visiting Artist Series

2023

Director Park Live Paint Off

Presented by Jordan Director Schnitzer and The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation
Co-Sponsored by Clean and Safe, Converge 45 Biennial, Revitalize Portland Coalition, Portland Art Museum, Willamette Week and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU

Join us August 24th through 26th for this first annual competitive, live painting event at Director Park to celebrate art, culture, and community engagement! The Director Park Live Paint Off will showcase the incredible talent of Portland’s artist community while providing economic opportunities and advancement for the artists. This community activation at the newly rededicated Director Park invites downtown workers, residents, and visitors alike to watch 30 of the city’s most talented artists create artworks in real time! A panel of local art world leaders will present over $16,000 in cash prizes including a people’s choice award decided by a public vote.

Event Schedule

  • Thursday, August 24th 11:00am – 7:00pm
    Live Painting at Director Park
  • Friday, August 25th 11:00am – 7:00pm
    Live Painting at Director Park
  • Saturday, August 26th 11:30am
    Awards Ceremony

Since 2016

Converge 45

Converge 45 is a biennial multi-day event that showcases international, national, and regional contemporary art. Situated in and around Portland, Oregon, a dynamic and expanding center for art, design, and culture, Converge 45 is an opportunity for artists, collectors, curators, scholars, and the public to take part in the unprecedented collaboration of Portland’s leading arts institutions, galleries, and artist-run spaces.

Image of Converge 45 event taking place in a ballroom from 2016

Converge 45 at PNCA in Portland, Oregon, 2016.

Photo credit: Mario Gallucci

Blue and teal smoke envelop and rise above a metal pyramid structure outside the de Young museum in San Francisco, California for Judy Chicago's atmospheric smoke performance, Forever de Young

2021

Judy Chicago’s Forever de Young

This free, open-air, pyrotechnic performance was sponsored in celebration of the artist’s exhibition Judy Chicago: A Retrospective, on view at the de Young museum from August 28, 2021 – January 9, 2022. The performance took place in front of the de Young museum in San Francisco, CA on October 16, 2021.

Forever de Young harked back to the artist’s innovative Atmospheres, a series of performances staged in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Distinguished by their controlled choreography and distinct reformulation of land art, these live sculptures nonetheless escaped the annals of art history for decades.

In the early 2000s, a new generation of scholars surfaced and celebrated these works as feminist responses to the Light and Space movement. These unobtrusive and ephemeral environments—which opposed the permanent interventions into and transformation of landscape by her male peers—were finally understood as a form of sustainable earth art that freed color from the rigid structures of painting and sculpture and allowed it to gush into the air as clouds of pigment.

Forever de Young was made possible by by the generous support of Jordan D. Schnitzer in memory of his late mother, Arlene Schnitzer (1929-2020), who served on the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Board of Trustees and Acquisitions Committee from 2006-2015.

2020

Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Program

Jordan Schnitzer, in a partnership with the Jordan Schnitzer Museums of Art at the University of OregonWashington State University, and Portland State University, is establishing an $150,000 Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Program. Each Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art will award $2,500 grants to 20 artists who use their voices, experiences, and artistic expression to reflect on social justice efforts in response to systemic racism.

Black Lives Matter Artist Grant header image

Since 2008

Jordan Schnitzer Jewish Book Awards

The Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards are the first annual book award program to be offered by the Association for Jewish Studies, made possible by funding from the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation of Portland, Oregon. These awards recognize and promote outstanding scholarship in the field of Jewish Studies and honor scholars whose work embodies the best in the field: rigorous research, theoretical sophistication, innovative methodology, and excellent writing. The awards are structured to recognize all areas of Jewish Studies research, paying tribute to both the breadth and depth of AJS members’ scholarship.

Since 2012

Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology

The Sitka Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency was established in 2002 to provide artists with little or no printmaking experience the opportunity to explore a new creative medium with guidance, instruction and technical assistance from a professional etching printer.

Printer, Julia D’Amario worked at Pace Editions in New York City for seventeen years, before moving to rural California in 2006. Julia first came to the Sitka Center as a resident artist in 1997. She developed a deep connection to Sitka and the Oregon coast and enthusiastically agreed to become involved in developing the print program.

Three artists are invited to the Sitka Center each October and January for an intensive two week long residency, during which they work on copper plates, using a wide variety of etching techniques. At the end of each residency Julia prints the finished plates in editions of ten to be divided equally between the artist and Sitka. The Gordon Gilkey Print Center at the Portland Art Museum and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation Collection also receive prints from each collaboration.

Sitka Center for Art & Ecology

Otis, OR

Jordan D. Schnitzer with Christiane Baumgartner and Jennifer Farrell post lecture. Image Credit: © Kristina Nazarevskaia

Jordan D. Schnitzer with Christiane Baumgartner and Jennifer Farrell post lecture.
Image Credit: © Kristina Nazarevskaia

Since 2014

IFPDA Artist Lecture Series

The IFPDA is a nonprofit organization of expert art dealers who foster a greater appreciation of fine prints thought exhibitions, programs, print fairs, and the IFPDA Book Award.  The International Art Fair for Prints & Editions offers visitors an unrivaled opportunity to view and acquire outstanding works across the diverse range of periods and specialties represented by the IFPDA’s exhibiting members.

Established with the generous support of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, the annual artist lecture aims to honor and raise public consciousness about the unique ways in which contemporary artists use printmaking in their artistic practice. Sparked by a keen interest in the inventiveness of printmaking and carrying on a family legacy of collecting art, Jordan Schnitzer began collecting prints in 1988. Today, his collection exceeds 20,000 works and his Family Foundation manages an active lending program aimed at making fine art easily available to qualified institutions, especially those in less-served communities.

Since 2018

IFPDA Jordan Schnitzer Award for Excellence in Printmaking

The Jordan Schnitzer Award for Excellence in Printmaking supports emerging or under-recognized contemporary artists whose practice highlights printmaking. Established with the generous support of Jordan Schnitzer, this annual prize awards an artist with a $25,000 grant each to support new work and experimentation in print. The award both encourages the artist’s focus in printmaking while raising public consciousness about the unique ways in which artists engage printmaking in their artistic practice.

Anne Coffin, IPCNY Founding Director, stands at the podium at the 2014 IPCNY Spring Benefit

Anne Coffin, IPCNY Founding Director, at the IPCNY Spring Benefit, 2014

2016 – 2018

IPCNY Annual Spring Benefit

Conceived to be the first and only non-profit exhibition space, resource and learning center devoted solely to artists’ prints, International Print Center New York (IPCNY) serves the needs of artists, printmakers, educators, publishers, students, collectors and general viewing public. It offers exhibition opportunities for contemporary artists through its New Prints Program which inaugurated the comprehensive program of exhibitions embracing all time periods and cultures, launched in 2000 with Hard Pressed at AXA Gallery and continuing today through our international and thematic exhibitions series.

Scholarly publications and education programs complement these exhibitions. Information services both in the gallery and on line, events for members and the public, and a website document and supplement our exhibitions; visits to local printmaking workshops, art fairs and galleries are arranged for our members. Entrance to the gallery is free, and IPCNY welcomes regular visits from many local universities during the academic year. IPCNY has been described by a New York City artist as the “epicenter of the print world.”

Since 2016

Dieu Donné Annual Benefit

Dieu Donné is a leading non-profit cultural institution dedicated to serving established and emerging artists through the collaborative creation of contemporary art using the process of hand papermaking.

Dieu Donné was founded in 1976 by Susan Gosin and Bruce Wineberg to explore the untapped potential of hand papermaking as an art medium. They introduce artists from a wide variety of practices to the creative possibilities in hand papermaking, fostering experimentation and creating innovative works of art. Their work is realized through extensive collaborations with artists. They strive to teach a new visual language, providing a transformative experience that often leads to artistic breakthroughs. They share this work with the community through our gallery, public and educational programs.

Wangechi Mutu speaking at a podium with microphone in front of a projected image

Jordan D. Schnitzer Exhibition and Visiting Artist Series: Wangechi Mutu, 2016

Photo Credit: Mario Gallucci

Since 2016

PNCA Jordan D. Schnitzer Exhibition and Visiting Artist Series

The Jordan D. Schnitzer Exhibition and Visiting Artist Series presents an annual curated exhibition from the dynamic and expansive collection of over 12,000 contemporary prints from the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation to the 511 Gallery at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. The series brings an invited artist in connection to the exhibition to engage with PNCA students, faculty, and the public through lectures, studio visits, and collaborations with the Print Media department. In addition to the Exhibition and Visiting Artist Series, selections from the Collection are lent to the PNCA Object Library to be studied by students and faculty on a regular rotating basis.