Marcie Sillman's culture picks: Looking back at the year and the decade in Seattle arts
This last year was one of transition for Seattle’s cultural community.
Leadership transitions
New leaders took over the artistic directorships of Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera. Guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard is the symphony's new music director, replacing fan favorite Ludovic Morlot.
Morlot is a hard act to follow; during his tenure, the symphony initiated partnerships with local pop musicians, less formal performances in the “Symphony Untuxed” series, and opened its tech-savvy education center, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.
As Seattle Opera’s new general director, Christina Scheppelmann becomes one of very few women to head a major American opera company. Scheppelmann leads the company in its first year at the brand-new Seattle Opera Center adjacent to Marion Oliver McCaw Hall.
At the Seattle Art Museum, new director Amada Cruz takes the reins from Kimerly Rorschach. Although SAM postponed the opening of the renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum, the Volunteer Park jewel box will open to the public in February 2020.
In early 2019, Book-it Repertory Theatre’s founding co-artistic directors Jane Jones and Myra Platt announced they’ll step down this coming summer, to be replaced in 2020 by Chicago-based Gus Menary.
City department changes
Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture has been in conversation with the city’s Economic Development Office.
New ED director Bobby Lee dreams of a city that prioritizes investment in the “creative economy,” which includes everything from software developers to hip hop musicians. Local film and music community advocates have balked at what they see as a transfer of resources from the existing Office of Film and Music, but Mayor Jenny Durkan has backed Lee’s proposals.
Grand opening
On other fronts, 2019 saw the grand re-opening of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
Not only is the new building bigger than its predecessor on the University of Washington campus; it’s also more transparent—literally. Visitors have the opportunity to watch scientists at work in labs that previously were sequestered behind the scenes.
Stunning works
Cultural organizations of all sizes have offered some amazing work this past year.
Preston Singletary’s mind-blowing “Raven and the Box of Daylight” continued at the Museum of Glass.
The Seattle Dance Collective, spearheaded by Pacific Northwest Ballet favorites Noelani Pantastico and James Yoichi Moore, debuted on Vashon Island.
The Frye Art Museum’s hosted a tribute to choreographer Donald Byrd called “The America that is to Be."
And Ahamefule Oluo’s “Susan” played at On the Boards.
The list goes on and on.
Fight for survival
Artists need to make art, but they, and the organizations that present them, spent the past decade fighting to survive in the aftermath of the 2008 economic collapse.
The demise of Washington Mutual was the most visible sign of financial problems at major businesses in the region.
While WaMu’s collapse had an immediate impact on its employees, it also hit the arts community. WaMu was a major cultural patron in the region, and many groups felt the loss of that largesse very keenly.
Many other businesses also cut back on their philanthropic activities; combined with increased online entertainment options leading to decreased audiences for live performance, arts organizations have been struggling to come up with new funding paradigms.
A place to call home
Meanwhile, artists and small arts organizations struggled to stay in Seattle as real estate prices soared in the wake of Amazon’s entrenchment in the city center.
Traditional artist enclaves like Capitol Hill and South Lake Union saw construction of new, expensive housing aimed at the tech sector. Many creatives were forced to look for cheaper digs outside the city limits.
Meanwhile, small arts organizations have struggled to maintain their homes in the midst of the redevelopment.
In 2014, the low-income housing organization Capitol Hill Housing, in partnership with arts groups and the city of Seattle, opened 12th Avenue Arts, a building that combines affordable apartments with two theaters, community spaces and underground parking for the Seattle Police Department precinct across the street.
The dream was to provide a model for similar partnerships that could keep artists and low-income workers in the city.
Moving to other neighborhoods
Unfortunately, Amazon’s continued growth and the influx of new residents has only amped up the pressure on nonprofits.
Velocity Contemporary Dance Center launched a campaign to raise an operating cushion to stay in its Capitol Hill home. Richard Hugo House, a literary center around the corner, sold its longtime home and took up residence on the ground floor of a new mixed use building.
While artists continue to fight to stay in city-owned buildings at Magnuson Park on Lake Washington, the Georgetown neighborhood next to Boeing Field has evolved into a refuge for many studio and performing artists.
At the enclave Equinox, former industrial buildings have been transformed into a creative center that includes two small theaters, one of which is home to the contemporary presenter Base.
Seattle officials are aware of the pressures. The City’s Office of Arts and Culture launched various efforts to catalog arts spaces and to designate neighborhoods as historic cultural districts. They’ve also been exploring different ways to give incentives to for-profit developers to retain or create housing and artist work space.
A new year, and a new decade, don’t erase the challenges. But they do offer a clean slate of sorts: the opportunity to reconsider the role the cultural community has played in shaping the city Seattle has become and to devise a multi-faceted plan to sustain the community moving forward.
