Topic: Visual Arts
The School of Visual Concepts, originally called the New School of Visual Concepts, trained students and professionals in marketing, communications, and design skills. When founded in 1971 by husband-...
As a gallery owner, teacher, artist, and creative thinker, Don Scott was a catalyst in the Seattle arts scene from the 1960s until his premature death in 1985. While an undergraduate at the University...
Creating an art museum in Seattle began with a modest gathering of like-minded art and cultural enthusiasts in the early years of the twentieth century. Through two predecessor organizations and the p...
Until the early 1970s, the Seattle Art Museum had been firmly led by one man, Richard Fuller, but things were about to change. Many people would lead the museum as directors and board members over the...
Seattle is home to myriad art galleries and art museums, but it wasn't always so. In this original essay, historian Vicki Halper surveys the city's burgeoning art community in the years following the ...
The Seattle Arts Commission was formed in 1971. The commission evolved out of the Municipal Arts Commission, founded in 1955 with the aim of integrating artistic experiences into Seattleites' daily li...
The Seattle Camera Club, a group of photography enthusiasts, was formed in 1924 and disbanded in 1929. Composed mostly of Issei (first-generation Japanese immigrant) men, the club also welcomed men of...
Sculptor James W. Washington Jr. (1911-2000) migrated from Mississippi in 1944 to work as an electrician in the Bremerton Naval Shipyard. He was already a skilled painter and he shifted to sculpting a...
This is a snapshot history of the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture's leadership in providing quality arts education to students in Seattle public schools. The Office of Arts & Culture was established ...
In 1973, Seattle passed a 1 Percent for Art ordinance, which sets aside 1 percent of capital-improvement-project funds for the commission, purchase, and installation of artworks in a variety of settin...
Since she took over the Otto Seligman Gallery in 1966, Francine Seders has been a major player in the Northwest art scene, representing some of the region's premier artists, including internationally ...
The grandson of a slave from Jackson, Tennessee, artist Milton Simons grew up in Seattle, attended Garfield High School and served in the Army during World War II. Captivated by art, he enrolled in th...
Beginning in the early 1970s, when Buster Simpson camped out in buildings about to be demolished in downtown Seattle and made art out of the readily available materials in his rapidly changing ecologi...
David E. "Ned" Skinner, II and his wife Katherine (LaGasa) "Kayla" Skinner were individually prominent in Seattle's civic affairs beginning in the 1940s, contributing their income, their influence, an...
Albert "Al" Smith, Seattle's preeminent African American photographer, was the son of a West Indies immigrant couple who settled in the heart of Seattle's Central Area around 1914. He developed an ear...
Dubbed by one interviewer an "intellectual mischief-maker," artist Harry Smith was a man of varied interests who was alternately an anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, abstract painter, experimental fi...
Gustavus Sohon, a native of East Prussia, arrived on the Columbia River in 1852 as a private in the U.S. Army. During the following decade, he accompanied four historic expeditions across Eastern Wash...
Michael Spafford was a young art student at Pomona College in Claremont, California, in 1956 when a car accident put him out of commission for months. When he returned to school, he found another youn...
One of America's preeminent ceramists, Robert Sperry was a restless creative force who helped shape the University of Washington's ceramics program into one of the country's most influential. Hailed a...
Betty (Batchelor) Miles of Samish Island contributed this piece on Jack W. Stangle, who was a celebrated artist in Seattle from 1953 to his death in 1980. He was a member of the Northwest School and h...
Samuel N. Stroum was a self-made businessman and philanthropist whose far-reaching generosity of time and resources forever enriched Seattle's health, educational, and religious institutions, and espe...
The Tacoma Theatre, dubbed the "Finest Temple on the Coast" when it opened in 1890, was the vision of Tacoma boosters from as early as 1873, when Tacoma was selected as the western terminus of the Nor...
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government took unprecedented steps to support the visual arts, music, writing, and theater. Separate agencies dedicated to each were established ...
Alfred Schillestad, son of Seattle pioneer Ole Schillestad, left a unique visual record of early life along the shores of Salmon Bay in the sketchbooks he created as young man. Two of Alfred Schillest...