Pacific Northwest College of Art

PNCA is the only art and design college located in one of the most progressive cities in the United States. For all of its one hundred-plus years, PNCA has nurtured the talent in its students for radically reimagining everything, transforming the lives of our students and everyone they touch. Our studios and galleries continue to give rise to a vibrant community of innovators and culture-makers who shape the cultural landscape.

At the creative heart of Portland, PNCA is a center for communities of artists, designers, and scholars, presenting more free public programs and exhibitions in a given year than any other arts institution in the city.

Our mission is “We prepare students for a life of creative practice. “

The artists of the Museum Art School, later Pacific Northwest College of Art, have shaped the visual arts landscape of the region for more than one hundred years. They have become the teachers, professional artists, gallery owners, and art museum curators who have filled the galleries and molded young artists while making Portland the visual arts mecca that it is.

We empower students to reimagine what art and design can do in the world. As artists and designers, radically reimagining everything is at the heart of what we do every day in the studio when we are at our best. We challenge our students to think big and to extend their creative problem solving superpowers well beyond the traditional horizons of art and design.

Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) empowers artists and designers to reimagine what art and design can do in the world. This private fine arts and design college, founded in 1909 in Portland, Oregon, offers eleven Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) degrees, seven graduate degrees including Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) degrees, a Post-Baccalaureate, and a range of Community Education programs for adults and youth.

Diversity and inclusion at PNCA are crucial to our intellectual and aesthetic inquiry.We strive to create a safe and supportive environment that is enriched by variety in voices, work, and perspectives. We know that we are a better community of learners and educators when we have space for a multiplicity of worldviews and experiences.Thus diversity and inclusion at PNCA are crucial to our intellectual and aesthetic inquiry.

Guided by the principles of ethics and mutual respect, PNCA’s policies and procedures strive to ensure equity and social justice within our community of students, educators, and staff. Discrimination, harassment, and assault for any reason are unacceptable behavior in the PNCA community.

A platform for experimentation and expression in the arts, PNCA is also a laboratory for critical reflection and dialog that nurtures better, more informed, more critically engaged citizens while it educates emerging artists and designers. An important aspect of our curriculum is building an awareness of and critical culture around issues of power and privilege in order to decolonize our curriculum.PNCA’s Diversity Task Force is made up of students, faculty, staff, and board members. The work of the Task Force to further diversity and inclusion at PNCA is ongoing.

We play as hard as we work with beach field trips, all-school breakfasts and parties, spontaneous ping pong games, monthly First Thursday art receptions, and daily afternoon tea in the print studio. Students organize exhibitions, performances, and pop-up shops.

A student once said that what she loved about PNCA is that it is "dripping with art." Student art is installed in galleries, critique spaces, classrooms, offices, hallways, stairwells, and elevators. And our Center for Contemporary Art & Culture presents exhibitions by internationally-recognized contemporary artists including Cauleen Smith, Bruce Naumann, James Rosenquist, Wangechi Mutu, and many more. We host exhibitions and events as part of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival. And we host events for Design Week Portland and AIGA.

As a learning community, we value, respect, and appreciate difference—in gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, class, and age. We strive to create a safe and supportive environment that is enriched by variety in voices, work, and perspectives. We know that we are a better community of learners and educators when we have space for a multiplicity of worldviews and experience. Our Equity Council, open to all, meets regularly throughout the school year.

Student Life organizes events, field trips, and workshops. And students run a range of clubs from Electronic Music Club and Wildnerness Adventure to Blacksmithing Club. We host more than 700 free public events each year, bringing important lecturers, panels, projects, and exhibitions to campus. PNCA's Center for Contemporary Art & Culture presents exhibitions by internationally recognized artists on campus year-round.

Portland has long been a magnet for designers, musicians, artists, and writers. It’s a great place to live with stellar food, culture, urban parks, and both the Pacific Ocean and Mt. Hood within daytrip distance.PNCA is located downtown in a neighborhood that is home to most of the city’s art galleries and a concentration of design studios. PNCA’s Falcon Building houses additional studios and fabrication labs for ceramics, wood, and metal.