Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Hayashi Wilder, Emily Small, Jade Ichimura, and Renée Reizman pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Memories & Inspirations: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art
Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR
September 27–December 20, 2025
In The Souls of Black Folk, published in the wake of the end of chattel slavery in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” This line, a metaphor of racial segregation and violence, became Du Bois’s investigation of the psychic wound of double consciousness. To be African American meant to have two identities—an American identity and a Black identity—in continuous conflict. This internal struggle of self-discovery echoes throughout Memories & Inspirations: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art.
Kerry and C. Betty Davis are art collectors from Atlanta, Georgia, who began their collection in the 1980s. I am always drawn to artworks that make visible the internal topography of the Black experience. Some of our most celebrated Black artists—Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, Samella Lewis, and my favorite, Elizabeth Catlett—collectively present a spectrum of experiences and philosophies spanning generations and geographies of the African diaspora. When experiencing the works, I am struck by their vulnerable and urgent insight into the workings of the Black psyche, not as a mirror but an ancestral affirmation.
Two convictions arose from this exhibition: first, Black people need to own our shit, metaphorically and literally, and second, a desire to critically reflect on the beauty and burden of Du Bois’s color line, not in the twentieth century, but today, right now.
Reflection: When do you feel most whole?
A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin
Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR
October 31–February 8, 2026
I’ll admit, I didn’t know much about Ursula K. Le Guin until I moved to Portland a few years ago. Though I’ve been an avid reader for most of my adult life, in the past, science fiction hasn’t been a genre I felt drawn to. It wasn’t until after finishing my undergraduate degree that I finally picked up my first Octavia Butler novel and fell deeper into the genre. No shade to Le Guin, but Black women were the ones who led me in, so I started with them. Still, Portland didn’t let my ignorance of Le Guin last long.
Curated by her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin honors the life and work of the late Oregon writer and artist. The show is a constellation of media that unfolds like chapters in a novel—murals, installation, ephemera, video, and robust programming coming together to articulate the contemplative and complex nature of the artist’s legacy. Le Guin’s personal life is braided into a cultural and historical narrative that challenges us to believe in other worlds.
Reflection: What stories have changed the way you engage with possibility?