World Forestry Center Presents New Exhibition: Forest Hope Through Innovation
Portland, OR – World Forestry Center’s Discovery Museum announces a new featured exhibition, Forest Hope Through Innovation, an interdisciplinary art-forest-science experience exploring how creativity, research, and community action can shape a sustainable future for the forests we rely on. The exhibition runs March 1 – August 2, 2026, and is included with museum admission.
Forest Hope Through Innovation brings together the work of more than twelve innovators from universities, research labs, and artistic collaborations. Through emerging technology, experimental forest management, and art-science partnerships, the exhibition highlights the aesthetics of forest-based research and the many ways people are responding to climate change with imagination and care.
Each contributor approaches forest health in unexpected and thought-provoking ways. Works include visual arts, scientific research, new technologies, and community science projects.
“This exhibition shows that innovation doesn’t only live in laboratories or academic journals, it lives in creative partnerships, artistic interpretation, community action, and bold ideas for caring for forests in a changing climate,” said Stephanie Stewart Bailey, Curator of Art and Experiences at World Forestry Center. “We hope visitors leave feeling curious and empowered to deepen their relationship to our forests.”
By displaying research typically happening behind the scenes in labs and incubator-like spaces, Forest Hope Through Innovation becomes both a gallery and a public-facing living laboratory. Visitors are encouraged to engage actively with the work, ask questions, and consider their own role in shaping forest-climate solutions.
Innovative projects featured in the exhibition reveal new tools and research methods helping scientists understand and protect forest ecosystems. Highlights include biodegradable seed carriers inspired by plant biology, tree ring research that uncovers centuries of climate and fire history, non-invasive wildlife monitoring using airborne DNA, and electronic sensors that track real-time changes in tree growth under climate stress.
Landscape design and planning projects explore how forests and communities can adapt to wildfire and extreme environmental change. Documentary films and speculative design works examine assisted migration of trees and reframe wildfire as both a threat and a dynamic ecological force.
Transdisciplinary art projects bridge forest science, culture, and long-term care. These works include photographic documentation of forest decomposition over decades, art practices rooted in ritual and repair, historical landscape painting analysis used as ecological data, and ceramic seed pods designed to regenerate forests after fire while honoring Indigenous fire stewardship traditions.
“Spending time with these works transforms how we see forest research and the people behind it,” said Stewart Bailey. “Each project invites us to think differently about forests, not only as ecosystems, but as a shared responsibility.”
World Forestry Center seeks to amplify voices that deepen our understanding of the interrelationship between forests and society. Forest Hope Through Innovation reinforces the belief that anyone can contribute to the long-term health of forests through curiosity, problem-solving, and collective action.
On view on the second floor of World Forestry Center’s Discovery Museum in Portland’s Washington Park, the exhibition is included with museum attendance.
EXHIBITION DETAILS
Title: Forest Hope Through Innovation
Duration: March 1 – August 2, 2026
Days: Tuesday through Sunday
Time: 10 am – 4 pm
Venue: World Forestry Center, Discovery Museum
Address: 4033 SW Canyon Road, Portland, OR 97221
Admission: Included with Museum Admission
For more information, please visit https://worldforestry.org/hopethroughinnovation/