KSMoCA + Other Partnerships

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA)

Founded in 2014 by artists Harrell Fletcher and Lisa Jarrett, the King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA) is a contemporary art museum and ongoing social practice project embedded inside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School (PreK–5) in Northeast Portland. Through long-term relationships among artists, students, teachers, school community members, local community partners, undergraduates, and PSU graduate students, KSMoCA creates opportunities for cross-age collaboration, creative inquiry, and reciprocal learning.

For graduate students in the MFA program, KSMoCA functions both as a learning environment and as a site for hands-on social practice. Students have multiple opportunities to participate in and shape the museum’s programming: working closely with the three artists-in-residence invited each year, helping plan and facilitate workshops and collaborative projects, and connecting with elementary students through the mentorship program. They may also contribute to exhibitions that emerge from collaborations between visiting artists and children—either directly, or indirectly by supporting undergraduate classes that take place at the school.

KSMoCA offers a wide range of entry points for students to learn, experiment, and build long-term, community-centered practices within a living museum context.

Center for Positive Aging

The partnership with the Center for Positive Aging (formerly Hollywood Senior Center) is a long-standing collaboration within the MFA program. Initiated by faculty member and program alumna Emily Fitzgerald, the partnership supports intergenerational projects that bring together graduate students and older adults through storytelling, photography, workshops, co-created exhibitions, and community-based research.

Projects often emerge from conversations and shared experiences and emphasize care, dignity, curiosity, and mutual learning across generations.

Example student projects include:

  • intergenerational photo and writing exchanges

  • co-created exhibitions

  • participatory storytelling workshops

  • ongoing relationship-based fieldwork

Manfred Parreles in conversation with participants at the Center for Positive Aging.

Additional Community Partnerships

In addition to KSMoCA and the Center for Positive Aging, the MFA program regularly collaborates with schools, nonprofits, civic organizations, and cultural institutions across Portland and beyond.

Past and recurring partners include:

  • Columbia River Creative Initiatives (CRCI) – Social practice inside and outside incarceration settings

  • City of Portland – Civic collaborations and public art/social research initiatives

  • Portland Art Museum – Youth engagement, curatorial projects, and research

  • British Council Artist Exchange – International exchange with artists and educators

  • Local schools, community groups, libraries, senior centers, and cultural organizations

Partnerships evolve as students initiate new collaborations during their time in the program, sometimes continuing long after graduation.

Simeen Anjum, Permission to Leave, Assembly 2025
Created in partnership with the City of Portland Office of Arts & Culture and presented at the Portland Building.

Gwendolyn Hoeffgen and Domenic Toliver, Community Art Exhibition Opening, 2025
Featuring artworks created by residents of the Watershed senior housing community, presented in the Community Event Space at Watershed at Hillside.