Artists need support for their work. Period.

Last Friday, like many arts organizations around the country, PICA received notice that our $30,000 grant from the NEA to support the Time-Based Art Festival (TBA) was being withdrawn. 

While PICA* certainly needs money to sustain itself as an organization, those funds weren’t for PICA as such. Those funds were for artists. Our NEA grant was for project funding, which means the money would go directly to artists making work—specifically for TBA:25. 

This is a call to help raise our promised—then retracted—$30,000. This is about honoring our commitments to artists, their practices, and our community. 

The only way we can move forward is together, and we need you to donate now.

To be clear, we aren’t alone in our need. Several of our colleagues at the NEA are taking “deferred resignation” from their jobs and we have heard that many peer organizations are also facing major funding losses. We will ALWAYS stand with artists, arts organizations, arts workers, and audiences.

If you, like many of us, feel helpless, take action: Donate to PICA now.

Don’t wait, respond.

*PICA is a handful of contracted, part-time, and full-time arts workers. PICA is 30 years of presenting fearless, experimental, uncensored works of art. PICA is tens of thousands of people showing up as audiences and as a community. PICA is our fellow Portlanders and our Board of Directors. PICA is a safe place for those who live and work in the margins.