A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin isn’t a typical exhibition. Ursula Kroeber Le Guin wasn’t a typical artist.

Curated by her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, the new show installed at Oregon Contemporary is, by his definition, “nonobjective”—a sprawling love note unembarrassed by its devotion. Braiding her personal and creative worlds, the exhibition pulls together interactive installations, a working typewriter, and hand-drawn maps of Earthsea. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Born in Berkeley in 1929 to two anthropologists, Le Guin began her career publishing under an androgynous pseudonym in Playboy and ended it as one of American literature’s most far-out visionaries. She resisted oft-assigned labels—genius, anarchist, even sci-fi writer—believing she hadn’t earned the first two an

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