Libby Werbel is an artist, curator, and social organizer living and working in Portland, OR. In 2012, she founded the Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA) project to instigate discourse around what a community-built museum could be. With an emphasis on accessibility and engagement, Werbel continues to makes site-based works, partnering with artists and institutions, both formally and informally to make cross disciplinary art exhibitions. Her investigation in space-making has included alternative exhibitions models in Barcelona, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York City, Joshua Tree and Santa Fe. Werbel has received public and critical acclaim for her DIY organization methods and creative mobility within her institutional critique projects.
She was a recipient of the Precipice Grant in 2013 and 2015, a funding initiative of The Andy Warhol and Calligram Foundations distributed through Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, for projects being developed on the edge of new practice. In 2016 Werbel was featured as an artist in PICA’s Time Based Arts festival and was awarded a large capital fund through the Houseguest Residency to mount a free public “contemporary art museum” for 2 days in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square. Most recently Werbel fulfilled a two year position as Visiting Artistic Director at the Portland Art Museum, where she created five unique exhibitions encouraging audiences to think critically about how museums have traditionally granted access to art and knowledge, and what the future of the Institution could look like.
Professionally, Werbel is the Director of the lumber room, an exhibition space for the prestigious Miller Meigs Collection and teaches in the MFA studio art program at Portland State University. She has sat on various granting panels, selection juries and committees for the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation, PICA, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Disjecta, and National Visual Artist Network. She spends her time advocating for equity, restorative justice and cultural progress in the arts both locally and nationally. In 2019 she published a book about her experimental programming at Portland Art Museum, titled We.Construct.Marvels.Between.Monuments.
