Hide/Seek is a gay-centric group show organized by the Smithsonian, now on its West Coast tour. The rainbow roster includes heavyweight names like Eakins, O’Keeffe, Rauschenberg, Mapplethorpe, and Warhol. Mostly men, with few up-and-comers here, the exhibit is like a pantheon of Dead... More >>

It starts, like all good things in life, in Kent. There, few Seattle artgoers know, are some large, significant installations you can tour today during the Earthworks Tour Inaugural Bike Ride. Three loops range from a mostly flat 12-miler suitable for families to a hillier 23-mile circuit that... More >>

Returning home from several years Boston, UW-trained photographer Eirik Johnson soon set out for the woods of Oregon. And for the north shore of Alaska. His intent for the images in Camps & Cabins was to document what he calls “cultural and environmental modes of improvisation.” Or,... More >>

Whatever happened to Earth Day? (It's Sunday, April 22—remember?) Established in 1970, in large part owing to Seattle's Denis Hayes, the eco-awareness festival has somewhat faded in public awareness—along with roadside litter and leaded gas. Today, recycling is routine, and the... More >>

James Turrell's Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry's erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure's frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the... More >>

Some downtown office workers may feel deterred from merely browsing at SAM because of, well, the ticket price. If there's not some big marquee show to see, wandering at random through the galleries doesn't seem a good value. But for the cost of absolutely nothing, if you have 45 minutes to... More >>

Wind Cradle looks like six giant blades of grass, or the magnified cartoon facial hairs of a razor commercial. The thrill of the piece is seeing something so small and delicate rendered as a monument in stainless steel. But indestructible as it looks, fashion has conspired against Wind Cradle.... More >>

Installed in 1993, The Wall of Death may occupy, after the Fremont Troll, the worst site for public art in Seattle. It’s only visible to those on the Burke-Gilman Trail and UW students and staffers traversing down to the Portage Bay side of campus. It gets almost no sun, and even less... More >>

You have to kick aside the fallen leaves to find a small marker identifying the Department of Forensic Morphology Annex, a four-year-old installation just south of the UW Law School. Students scurry by to their classes, seemingly oblivious (or accustomed) to the stainless-steel blob, which... More >>

When the little park designed by Murase Associates opened at the corner of Queen Anne and Roy, I was not impressed. The unloved, gravel-covered site had previously been scraped of its gas station (with pollution still beneath) and sat on a highly trafficked and confusing intersection (yes,... More >>

Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist... More >>

The city isn't opening many new parks during these budget-crunched times. A noteworthy exception, however, is the freshly renovated and renamed Thomas C. Wales Park, though it isn't a cheerful place for kids to frolic on swings or splash in the wading pool. Instead, it's a memorial to the... More >>

As the most touched, caressed, and fondled piece of public art in Seattle, I would nominate Black Sun, installed at the old SAM (now SAAM) on Capitol Hill back in 1969. Hard to remember now, but American-born sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was once considered a rather daring modernist,... More >>

Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four... More >>

Seattle Center is in upheaval. The Sonics have gone to Oklahoma, KeyArena is struggling to find new events to fill the revenue gap, Memorial Stadium is crumbling, the Fun Forest will soon close, and the ongoing Century 21 makeover plan is gonna take a whole lot of money to implement. But in... More >>

The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal... More >>

Sure, SAM had its big show “S’abadeb—The Gifts,” but some of that same Salish iconography shows up elsewhere in town, and for free. It took me a while to recall where, during a past West Seattle bike ride, I’d seen some of the same faces, birds, and fish, but eventually... More >>

As you climb to the second floor of Kane Hall, Jeffrey Simmons' Echo, a circular painting 11 feet in diameter, rises like a moon over the stairway railing and dramatically takes command of the hallway by the Walker Ames Room. A common (and reasonable) complaint about abstract painting is... More >>

With coal cars and commuter trains rumbling beneath, the Weller Street Overpass connecting the ID to King Street Station isn’t a place where pedestrians tend to linger. Racing across Fourth Avenue South from offices at Amazon.com to catch the last Sound Transit train home, their haste is... More >>

Henry Moore (1898-1986) is not someone whose name you often hear these days. Once a progressive, modernist force, not a conceptualist or particularly clever, his legacy seems tied to the avant-garde innovations of the ’20s and ’30s, pre-WWII, pre-irony, pre-Pop, pre-Andy Warhol and... More >>

Since 1982, one of the enduring small pleasures to opening The Seattle Times on Sunday has been Paul Dorpat's before-and-after photo feature, which supplies most of the 200-plus images in Now & Then, MOHAI's final show before moving to SLU next year. In one poignant image, we see Paul Thiry's... More >>

There is art to be found in Kent. And if you don’t believe me, you can Google map it. Installed in an old gravel pit in 1979, Untitled (Johnson Pit #30) is a fine example of bulldozer art (also called “earth art” during that decade). Robert Morris graded a series of concentric... More >>

The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or... More >>

Cut through a berm at a King County sewer pumping station, stainless-steel plates flank Laura Haddad's 2003 Undercurrents, an etched-metal sluiceway aimed into Elliott Bay, ringed by a pleasant circular plaza. Added in '09 to help disguise a mechanical vault for the giant $140 million project... More >>

Since opening, the Olympic Sculpture Park has somehow eclipsed and subsumed the identity of Myrtle Edwards Park, which was established (with a different name) back in 1964, when SAM was still a small institution confined to Capitol Hill. The narrow old shoreline park was renamed in 1976 for the... More >>