Jeff Jahn Artist
Jeff Jahn (born 1970) is a curator, art critic, artist, historian, blogger and composer based in Portland, Oregon, United States. He coined the phrase declaring Portland, "the capital of conscience for the United States," in a Portland Tribune op-ed piece, which was then reiterated in The Wall Street Journal.Jahn's cultural activities in Portland frequently receive attention outside the region from media outlets such as CNN, Art in America, The Art Newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, and ARTnews. Described in the press as "outspoken and provocative", and curatorially as, "a clarion call for Portland's new guard of serious artists—the ones creating a dialog that exceeds the bounds of so-called regional art." He originally took up art criticism when then-Modern Painters editor Karen Wright asked him to contribute to the then-London based magazine in the late 1990s. In 2005, he co-founded PORT, a noted visual art blog. Also, he lectures on art history or critiques at Portland Art Museum, University of Oregon, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland State University, Oregon College of Art and Craft and Lewis & Clark College. In 2010 he was a juror for the Andy Warhol Art Writing Grants. From 2002-2008 Jahn served as a board member of the Portland Art Museum's Contemporary Art Council and was elected to the vice president's post for a three-year term from 2005 to 2008. In 2006, he launched the visual arts non-profit Organism, which has hosted the work of artists Jarrett Mitchell Pipilotti Rist, Yoram Wolberger, Weppler & Mahovsky and Hank Willis Thomas. In 2008, he shut down Organism as the scope of his projects fell increasingly outside of its more narrow mission of living artists. One of Jahn's more recent curatorial project was a scholarly conference and exhibition dedicated to the work of Donald Judd with Robert Storr as keynote speaker at the University of Oregon's Portland campus.