Portland Arts Watch is an independent Portland, Oregon-based journalism website that looks at the arts, design and culture in the Northwest. Its impulses are historical and observational. It seeks to build open-ended descriptions and open-minded arguments and believes that both are improved by the responses of its community. It respects creative activity and civil discussion wherever it finds them. Portland Arts Watch accepts queries, stories, criticism and essays in text, video and audio media.

The editor of Portland Arts Watch is Barry Johnson, a freelance writer and editor. My professional history includes stints as arts editor, arts columnist, visual arts critic and theater critic at The Oregonian during the past 26 years. Before that I was the arts editor and a columnist at Willamette Week in Portland, and my journalism career began at the now-defunct Seattle Sun, where my various jobs included classified ad manager, dance critic and publisher. I also worked as a freelance sports stringer for the wire service UPI in Seattle. I have written catalog essays for art exhibitions of work by Portland artists Carl Morris, George Johanson and William Givler.

This blog continues work I started during my final year at The Oregonian. My themes then were 1) the special nature of this time for the arts in Portland; 2) the fragility of our arts organizations and the creativity needed to sustain them; 3) the crucial role that the arts and design can play in developing a culture that is creative and democratic. Although Portland Arts Watch is Northwest-based, it looks for national and international connections to the culture here and is especially keen on projections of our specific culture here into the "outside world."