Tagged: arts & life

In her poem "What Stays Here," Colleen McElroy imagines life as a female soldier who must choose between loyalty to herself, and loyalty to a military code that says "keep quiet" and "get along." Like many of the poems in McElroy's ninth collection, "Here I Throw Down My Heart," (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) the poem awakens us to voices and stories we might otherwise never hear with such intimacy and power.

Seattle's music scene was booming in the mid-1990s. Four friends from different established bands decided to get together for a side project called Mad Season. Layne Staley sang in Alice in Chains, Mike McCready played guitar for Pearl Jam, Bassist John Baker Saunders toured with The Walkabouts and Barrett Martin was the drummer for Screaming Trees. 

When you take stock of Seattle’s cultural institutions, you’ll often see the name Bagley Wright attached. More than 50 years ago, Wright helped transform the Seattle Art Museum from a small, family-run operation into what it is today. One of his final gifts to the museum he loved is “Mirror,” a permanent installation on SAM’s northwest facade that both the museum and the artist hope will spur urban conversation in downtown Seattle. Marcie Sillman talks with Virginia Wright about her husband’s legacy at Seattle Art Museum and throughout the city.

When Seattle Art Museum opened its expanded downtown building in 2007, some people thought the main entrance on First Avenue was a little undistinguished.

One of those people was the late arts patron Bagley Wright. His wife, Virginia, says he thought the museum entrance needed to be marked in a dramatic way. "Because it looked like the entrance to an office building," she recalls.