A few weeks back, Disjecta announced its lineup of curators for the 2013/2014 season— Curator-in-Residence Summer Guthery and Portland2014 Biennial Curator Amanda Hunt— and tonight you'll have a chance to meet the ladies themselves and learn more about their Portland plans (6 pm, 929 NW Flanders, right by PDX Contemporary).

While this evening's event will feature a presentation and Q&A from the new-to-town curators, here are some quick highlights to get the introduction rolling: Both Guthery and Hunt have ties to Los Angeles' LAXART, an independent nonprofit art space where Hunt acts as curator and Guthery organizes one-off events. When I think of Hunt, I think of shows like Meg Cranston's Emerald City, a recent exhibition at LAXART that explored the construction of trends by examining Pantone's color of 2013, emerald green. Guthery has made splashes with The Canal Series (and its precursor, The Chrysler Series), a monthly series of "single evening readings, screenings, and performances," and she was recently announced as a contributing curator to this November's performance art biennial, Performa, in New York.

Though the above introduction doesn't do justice to the careers of these very busy curators (I've included bios from the official PR after the jump so you can check out their credentials), it does set me up to say one thing: Disjecta appears to be solidifying a focus shift with the announcement of this recent crop of curators. In the Cris Moss-curated Portland2010 and the Prudence Roberts-curated Portland2012, we saw Disjecta looking within city limits for a curatorial angle, bringing on the aforementioned local educator/curators to make the big calls. But when Disjecta imported Oakland's Josephine Zarkovich as curator-in-residence of the current 2012/2013 season, they set the tone for what now seems like an investment in outsider perspectives. It's probably a good move: Portland's stock of curators can feel insulated at times— a lot of the same people focusing on, if not the same artists, the same types of art— and I'm excited to see what folks outside this city are wowed by, and what they'll decide to include in Disjecta's future programming.

Anyway, more details on tonight's event can be found right here.

Aaaaand, some big-kid words about Hunt and Guthery:

Amanda Hunt is a graduate of the Curatorial Practice Program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has worked at galleries and institutions including Whitechapel Gallery, London; Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York; the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2012, Hunt worked on two major arts initiatives in Los Angeles: Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival, co-produced by LAXART and the Getty Research Institute, and Made in L.A. 2012, the first Los Angeles biennial organized by the Hammer Museum in collaboration with LAXART. Hunt also served as Curatorial Assistant at the Los Angeles City Pavilion produced by Walead Beshty as part of the 9th Shanghai Biennale, and most recently curated Steffani Jemison’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

Summer Guthery is an independent curator and writer based in New York City. She has been in Los Angeles since February to program a series of events at LAXART and attend the Mountain School of Arts. Guthery will serve as a curator with Performa, the performance art biennial in New York, this November. Other recent projects include The Chrysler Series and The Canal Series, both formulated as single evening readings, screenings and performances, from 2010-2013. Prior to accepting the Curator-in-Residence role at Disjecta, Guthery curated at Artists Space, School of Visual Art, NY and the Hessel Museum among others. Her writing has been included in ArtForum, Frieze, Performa Magazine, Pastelegram and Art In General Production Notes. In 2009 she was the Curatorial Fellow with Performa. She has been a visiting critic and lecturer at Columbia University, New York University, The Living Art Museum (Reykjavik), U-Turn Quadrennial (Copenhagen) and Parsons School of Design. Guthery holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.