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3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202-8199

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Alison Saar is a Los Angeles-based artist whose sculpture, prints, and installations mine themes of the African Diaspora. Drawing from folklore, literature, and music, Saar’s powerful imagery manifests in many mediums, including her iconic Harriet Tubman memorial in Harlem. Saar received a BA from Scripps College in 1978 and an MFA from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1981. She has shown internationally, including LA Louver Gallery, The Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the Phyllis Kind Gallery in New York City, Hoffman Gallery at Lewis and Clark College, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. She is a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, winner of the Joan Mitchell Award, and an NEA Fellow. Her work is represented in many collections, including The Whitney Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institute, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

From Art in America (2012) by Leah Ollman: “Her figures are strong and self-possessed, sturdy descendants of African deities and the wood carvings of Expressionists like Hermann Scherer and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. She pits the formidable physical dignity of her sculptures, their internally anchored identity, against objects and details that threaten a diminishment of the figures' status.”

Sponsored by the art department. Free and open to the public.

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  • Connor Seymour

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