Disjecta just announced the curator for the Portland2014 Biennial: Amanda Hunt. She hails from Los Angeles, where she is a curator at the contemporary space LAXART, but she has experience across the U.S. (and the Atlantic), having worked at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York; the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as having played a role in Los Angeles: Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival, co-produced by LAXART and the Getty Research Institute, and Made in L.A. 2012, the first Los Angeles biennial organized by the Hammer Museum in collaboration with LAXART.

Perhaps the most notable (and exciting) factor for the Portland Biennial, though, is that she’s the first set of eyes from outside the region to oversee the exhibition, hopefully bringing a national and even international context to bear on the Portland landscape and further pushing us into, at least, the West Coast conversation.

“I intend to use the biennial to make art in Oregon more visible and accessible across the US,” says Hunt.  “And I am grateful for the opportunity to work with Disjecta on a large-scale, yet local and flexible biennial.  As a Los Angeles-based curator, I look forward to engaging the creative ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest—and to developing lasting relationships within the Portland community. I hope to activate sites familiar and unknown and generate excitement by offering my perspective to this important exhibition.”   

Meet the Curators: Amanda Hunt and Summer Guthery 
923 NW Flanders (next to PDX Contemporary Art)
 May 18 at 6:30

Hunt will join the new curator-in-residence, Summer Guthery, for a presentation and Q&A on Saturday, May 18. Guthery is also currently programming at LAXART (although she lives in New York), which means it's gonna be a whole lot of sunshine in NoPo. Read our introductory interview with Guthery.