Libby Werbel

Libby Werbel is an artist and curator who was born and lives in Portland, Oregon. Her work as a curator includes underrepresented artists and audiences within institutions. Her series of exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum, “We. Construct. Marvels. Between. Monuments” was described as "an unparalleled one-year program aimed at questioning what kind of art ends up in museums."
Career
Werbel is the founder and director of an art gallery called the Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA). Werbel opened PMOMA in 2013 in the basement of Mississippi Records. At the time she called it "her fake museum." OPB noted that PMOMA is "a tiny space that wittily challenges ideas about the nature of museums and the art-watching experience." The project has received recognition in Artforum, among others, and has been supported by the Precipice Fund, The Calligram Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. PMOMA has received note for solo exhibitions by artists such as Chris Johansson, Johanna Jackson, Lonnie Holley, Howard Finster, and Sue Tompkins, and has had group shows including the work of artists such as Raul De Nieves, Ray Johnson, Bruce Conner, and Joe Brainard.
Werbel is also the visiting artistic director at the Portland Art Museum who curated the ambitious, year-long series of exhibitions We. Construct. Marvels. Between. Monuments. The exhibition series culminated with what the Willamette Week called "the largest Sun Ra Retrospective yet".
Werbel has curated exhibitions at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as an exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.

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