ArtSEA: Paul Allen Foundation awards $9M to downtown arts orgs

Since the effort is focused Downtown, it’s perhaps no surprise that the lucky recipients include Seattle Art Museum ($500,000), Seattle Symphony ($700,000) and Friends of Waterfront Park ($5,000,000) (!).

All of the orgs are planning to use the funding to increase access to programming — such as Seattle Art Museum’s immediate plan to expand its beloved Free First Thursdays program from 10 a.m. -  5 p.m. to 10 a.m. - 8 p.m., with special programming from 5 - 8 p.m. These longer hours begin Thursday, October 3.

ArtSEA: Notes on Northwest Culture is a weekly arts newsletter from Cascade PBS.

The grant money is also going to several smaller and/or emerging organizations, including: Base Camp Studios ($200,000), which operates two galleries (one Downtown, in the old Bergman Luggage building, where it is creating a hub of affordable artist studios); Common Area Maintenance ($200,000), a Belltown gallery/woodshop/community space with artist studios; and Theater Off Jackson ($350,000), occupying a historic building in the Chinatown-International District.

The overall goal of the funding is to enliven the neighborhood not just for tourists but as a “vibrant hub for those who live and work in the area.”

Also in art money news this week: Mayor Harrell released his 2025-2026 proposed budget for the Office of Arts and Culture, with $23.5 million allocated for 2025 and $21.5 million for 2026. No huge changes here; the 2024 adopted budget was $22.9 million. But the proposed cut to The Seattle Channel — which would axe Nancy Guppy’s longrunning show Art Zone — would be terrible news for local arts coverage.

Included in the Mayor’s budget is a one-time $2.5 million grant to support Downtown activation, with an eye toward the FIFA World Cup in 2026, via festivals, visual arts installations and alleyway activations. Additionally, $2 million in financial support is slated for organizations “still struggling with post-pandemic recovery.”

Public hearings on the budget will happen Oct. 16 and Nov. 12, with final adoption expected Nov. 21.

Have you recently been awakened in the wee hours by a low-level grinding noise? That’s the sound of millions of teeth gnashing during this stressful Presidential election season.

While not entirely avoidable, you may find some relief in the comedies currently playing on Seattle stages. Local theaters are leaning into laughs this season — a strategy for getting audience butts back in seats that doubles as a (temporary) escape from real-world worries. 

I spent an enjoyable evening last week surrounded by an uproarious crowd at ACT Theatre for POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive (through Sept. 29).

This high-energy, very sweary (think Veep) 2022 comedy by Selina Fillinger showcases the sharp timing and slapstick skills of seven Seattle actors. Anne Allgood and Annette Toutonghi are especially fun to watch playing opposites (stoic chief of staff vs. trembling secretary) in this Tony-nominated political farce.

From seven women scrambling behind the scenes we move to one who dreams of taking center stage: Funny Girl at The Paramount Theatre (through Sept. 29). The now-iconic musical first landed on Broadway in 1964, where Barbra Streisand soon made the role of comedian Fanny Brice her own. After a rocky start, the 2022 Broadway revival earned raves with Glee star Lea Michele in the lead; the touring version stars Hannah Shankman.

Seattle Rep is mining the classics as well, presenting Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tragicomedy The Skin of Our Teeth (Sept. 26 - Oct. 20).

Written in 1942, the absurdist play delights in compressing timelines — a 5,000-year-old New Jersey couple is threatened by the Ice Age and takes in refugees including Moses and Homer, for example. Whether faced with a Great Flood or Great War, humanity’s remarkable resilience is the throughline. 

If swinging from classic comedy to classic comedy becomes your election-season survival guide, consider a couple more rungs on the monkey bars: 

• a (compacted) adaptation of Lerner and Loewe’s Arthurian-themed musical Camelot at Village Theater (in Issaquah through Oct. 13; in Everett Oct. 19 - Nov. 10);

• a new “backstage comedy” by local playwright Katie Forgette, who riffs on Death of A Salesman with Mrs. Loman Is Leaving (ACT Theatre, Oct. 12 - 27); 

• and, coming up at the Center Theatre at Seattle Center, Seattle Shakespeare presents one of the Bard’s bawdy romps, Love’s Labor’s Lost (Oct. 30 - Nov. 17).

Fall is for festival-going, and here are a few excellent reasons to get out there.

It’s time for Wa Na Wari’s annual Walk the Block fest (Sept. 28; register online for a map of events), which this year celebrates the organization’s five years as a Black arts hub, as well as ownership of the craftsman home the nonprofit has converted into a cultural center. This popular outdoor amble features art — from 2D to dance — at venues across the Central District.

Featured Wa Na Wari artists include Xenobia Bailey, C. Davida Ingram, Marita Dingus, Nia-Amina Minor, Elisheba Johnson, Inye Wokoma and Tariqa Waters, the last of whom has announced she’ll be making the rounds in a new pink spacecraft of her own devising.

As noted last week, the Local Sightings film festival continues its run of regional gems at Northwest Film Forum through Sept. 29. And hot on its heels is the fourth annual SIFF Doc Fest at SIFF Cinema Uptown (Oct. 3 - 10), showcasing true and intriguing stories from North America and Europe.

Among the diverse slate of doc topics this year: female long-haul truck drivers, Black farmers, Brian Eno, the 1980s Vietnamese New Wave scene, France’s repatriation of royal treasures from Benin, and Devo.

The 12th biennial Skagit River Poetry Festival (at venues across La Conner, Oct. 3 - 5) is about to kick off up north, with 33 poets raring to read. Among the mix are beloved local writers including Elizabeth Austen, Paul Hlava Ceballos, Claudia Castro Luna, Bill Carty, Susan Rich and Derek Sheffield. 

And at the Georgetown Steam Plant, the SPAM New Media Festival (Sept. 27 - 29) is presenting 30+ installations featuring experimental video art, brainwave-powered VR, ghost sensors, electronic music performances, wearable tech and of course: robots.

This issue of ArtSEA is made possible in part thanks to support from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.