PICA was founded in 1995 by Kristy Edmunds, at the time the Director of the
Portland Art Museum's "Art on the Edge" program. The organization's exhibition and performance program was built largely around an itinerant model, utilizing vacant space or rented venues throughout the city of Portland rather than programming a single gallery or theatre year-round. The majority of PICA's performance programming was grouped into its annual performance seasons, which it produced for seven years before the organization began presenting the Time-Based Art Festival in 2003. The organization's signature event during this time was an annual
costume party fundraiser known as the Dada Ball, which it held from 1996 until 2001 in a variety of vacant spaces throughout the city. PICA's offices were housed at
Boora Architects from its founding until about 2001, and then moved to the headquarters of
Wieden+Kennedy in Northwest Portland. PICA housed its offices within those of Wieden & Kennedy until 2012, and operated an additional exhibition space in the building until 2004. In September 2003, PICA began presenting its annual
Time-Based Art Festival, a ten-day international festival of
contemporary performance and
visual art modeled after those in
Edinburgh and
Adelaide (
Fringe or
main Festival?). The TBA Festival built upon PICA's itinerant model of utilizing multiple venues around the city, including sites such as the former
Washington High School building in Southeast Portland, which would later become
Revolution Hall. In 2012, PICA moved to a leased third floor space on Southwest 10th Avenue, allowing the organization's offices and resource library to also be used a gallery and performance space when programs required it. On April 19, 2016, PICA announced that the organization was gifted a 20-year no-rent lease on a building along the
North Williams Avenue corridor by donor Allie Furlotti and the Calligram Foundation. In September 2016, PICA began utilizing this space as a box office, performance venue, and gallery for their 2016 TBA Festival while maintaining offices in downtown Portland. In November 2017, PICA's offices were relocated to the renovated Northeast Portland space.
Leadership Founder Kristy Edmunds left PICA in 2005 to become artistic director for the
Melbourne International Arts Festival. She is now Director at
MASS MoCA in western Massachusetts. Mark Russell (producer of
The Public Theater's
Under the Radar Festival and former director of
P.S.122) and Cathy Edwards (former director of programming for the
International Festival of Arts and Ideas) Mattox left PICA in 2017 following the end of that year's Time-Based Art Festival, her sixth as artistic director. PICA announced on November 28, 2017, that long-time programming staff members Roya Amirsoleymani (previously Director of Community Engagement), Erin Boberg Doughton (previously Performing Arts Program Director), and Kristan Kennedy (previously Visual Art Curator) had been selected as the organization's Artistic Directors. In 2023, Reuben Roqueñi was appointed Executive Director after serving nearly 20 years in arts philanthropy. He was formerly Director of Transformative Change Programs at the
Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF), a national organization headquartered in Portland, Oregon. ==Programming==