2023 was a year of big swings. Taylor Swift came, saw and conquered — and caused a 2.3-magnitude seismic Swift, um, shift. Meanwhile, the arts sector felt the aftershocks of the pandemic, with unprecedented turnover among arts leaders and, Swifties notwithstanding, lagging audience numbers. But there were reasons to celebrate: Bumbershoot rose like a phoenix from the ashes. Cinerama made its long-hoped-for comeback. Here’s what happened this year, what it means and how it may impact what’s next for local arts.
Bumbershoot’s revival
Following a three-year hiatus and a changing of the guard, Seattle’s signature music — and arts! — festival made its triumphantly quirky return to Seattle Center, giving 20,000 attendees per day, organizers say, a reason to stay in town Labor Day weekend. The new leaders, anchored by a trio of local music and arts vets, made good on their promise to lower ticket prices and elevate the arts of all stripes, taking a wide-lens view of what and who make up the Northwest’s cultural fabric. For the first time in a long time, Bumbershoot felt like an expression of the Pacific Northwest instead of a reflection of popular culture, thanks in part to a lineup less reliant upon contemporary big names and the big-money ticket prices they command. Yes, even your friendly neighborhood punk has a reason to return to Bumbershoot again.
— Michael Rietmulder, music writer
Summer of Taylor and big pop shows
2023 was Taylor Swift’s year and we were all just breathlessly along for the ride. For one fateful July weekend, Seattle got its turn to be the center of the Swiftieverse when Taylor took over Lumen Field with her impossibly hyped — and as good as advertised — Eras Tour. The superstar’s record-setting pop tour of the century (briefly) set a Lumen Field attendance record and the 72,000 friendship-braceleted fans who sang along each night caused literal seismic activity that topped Marshawn Lynch’s fabled “Beast Quake” rumble of 2011 (take that, 12s). The 2.3-magnitude buzz around town was even bigger than when the MLB All-Star Game brought baseball’s biggest stars (Shohei who?) to SoDo just two weeks before Swift’s arrival. But even beyond Swift’s Seattle weekend, 2023 brought a summer of big-tent pop shows with Swift’s buddy Ed Sheeran (who quickly topped Swift’s Lumen Field attendance record), Drake and Beyoncé all taking the city by storm.
— M.R.
Joni-palooza takes the Gorge
One perk of living in a place that has produced a bunch of famous, well-connected musicians is their capacity for doing cool things in our backyard. Case in point: Brandi Carlile invited a bunch of pals to accompany her in June to play a few shows at the little ol’ amphitheater down the highway, aka the majestic Gorge Amphitheatre. Of course, one of those pals happened to be legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who gave her first proper headlining concert in roughly 20 years and her first full set since a surprise comeback performance at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival. With Carlile at her side, a comfortable and confident Mitchell regaled the awe-struck crowd with stories and songs during a familial two-hour and 40-minute set mimicking the friends’ all-star living room jam sessions that helped Mitchell recover from a 2015 brain aneurysm. Once the tissues were put away after Friday night’s Joni Jam, Carlile and crew continued the biggest iteration of her annual Echoes Through the Canyon concert yet, stretched out to an unforgettable three-nighter capped by a rare Highwomen performance. It was the most monumental home state concert event since Pearl Jam’s 2018 Home Shows, one that will live forever in PNW concert lore.
— M.R.
The return of Don’t Call It Cinerama
When Seattle’s most beloved movie theater closed its doors abruptly in early 2020, just ahead of the pandemic darkness, many feared it would never reopen. But sometimes, you get a Hollywood ending. SIFF announced, at opening night of its annual festival this May, that it had acquired Cinerama from the estate of owner Paul Allen. With the help of numerous donations and public money from the Seattle City Council and Metropolitan King County Council, the historical theater — renamed SIFF Cinema Downtown, due to licensing issues with the original name — reopened in December with the family film “Wonka” showing on its massive screen. SIFF artistic director Beth Barrett said that programming would be quite similar to what the theater has offered in the past: first-run studio films, festivals (including the popular 70mm film series), and “special events focusing on filmmakers.”
— Moira Macdonald, arts critic
“The Boys in the Boat” comes to the big screen
Local author Daniel James Brown’s nonfiction book “The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics” came out in 2013 and quickly became a beloved bestseller, with readers wondering why this very cinematic story of triumph over adversity wasn’t immediately being made into a movie. But even though the movie rights were sold before the book’s publication, it was a long road to the screen. Several different producers and directors came and went before “The Boys in the Boat” landed in the hands of George Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov. Filmed in England last year, with Clooney directing a mostly little-known cast, the film finally made its local premiere in early December — with Clooney, Brown and family members of the gold-winning Olympic team in attendance — and opened widely Dec. 24.
— M.M.
$200 million art donation for SAM
You’ve likely seen “The Eagle,” a 38-foot lipstick-red steel sculpture by American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976) at Olympic Sculpture Park. But did you know the soaring sculpture was a gift to the Seattle Art Museum by local art collectors Jon and Mary Shirley? This spring, Shirley, a former Microsoft president, and his second wife, Kim Richter Shirley, announced they’re donating their collection of Calder artworks, estimated to be worth $200 million, to the museum. The gift is a bequest, which means that the artworks will be officially transferred to SAM upon Jon Shirley’s death. The public can already catch an incredible glimpse of these works, many of which have not been shown together in years, in the exhibit “Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection” (through Aug. 4, 2024). The exhibit puts SAM in the national spotlight and could help attract more visitors — and even future art donors.
— Margo Vansynghel, arts economy reporter
New Seattle arts office leader
It’s been a rocky few years for Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture: Internal turmoil simmered behind the scenes even as the office sent grants to a sector embattled by the pandemic. To many, the June appointment of Gülgün Kayim, a soft-spoken policy whiz from Minneapolis, as the office’s new director signified a potential breath of fresh air. Since her July arrival from Minneapolis’ Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy, Kayim — a theater artist and experienced arts administrator long focused on economic sustainability for creative workers — has already successfully jumped into the not-very-splashy but vital behind-the-scenes work of advocating for more funding. What’s next for her: devising a strategic plan that lays out how to rebuild and reinvigorate the local creative economy and make it more equitable. As Kayim said, “We’re in a moment of inflection.”
— M.V.
Gage is moving to Amazonia
Gage Academy of Art surprised many when the longtime nonprofit Seattle art school announced in November that the school would be leaving its Capitol Hill home after two decades and moving to South Lake Union. It would be moving to a ground-level retail space owned by Amazon, in the building that also houses offices for the company’s cloud computing service, AWS. The move is somewhat unusual, as smaller art schools traditionally have taken over old schools or industrial spaces rather than shiny corporate facilities. And while Gage — which is nonaccredited and doesn’t offer degrees — has provided art classes to Amazon employees since 2019, getting close with a tech giant represents a notable shift for a school steeped in tradition and classical techniques. The hope is that the new location is more modern, more accessible and can help attract a younger and more diverse student body.
— M.V.
More money for art
The arts scene is still feeling the pandemic’s “long tail.” The margins, if any, are thin. But at the end of the year, some good news is trickling in for the sector: The 2024 budget for the Office of Arts & Culture is growing to $23 million, up from the foreseen $17.4 million, in part for additional grants and downtown activations. And $10 million in funding — courtesy of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation — is coming to Washington’s creative nonprofits next year in the form of up to $25,000 in grants for arts and culture organizations. Last but not least: News of the most significant boost to the sector, at least in King County, dropped this month: The Metropolitan King County Council approved the creation of a new cultural access program. Funded by a sales tax increase of 0.1%, the program will send more than $100 million to local arts nonprofits yearly, which will be transformative for the creative economy.
— M.V.
Changes in arts leadership
Keeping tabs on this year’s comings and goings among arts leadership felt like a full-time job all its own. As of September, cultural support and grantmaking organization ArtsFund had informally tracked, over the course of two years, at least 47 new hires or open positions at the senior leadership level among its network of 131 arts and culture organizations across the central Puget Sound region — a number ArtsFund president and CEO Michael Greer called a “once-in-a-generation transition of leaders.” On the one hand, this turnover makes some sense: some arts leaders burned out, or delayed planned exits, to help navigate their organizations through COVID. But with that exodus comes an exciting influx of new personalities and new energy to our institutions, including two in particular who will undoubtedly help set the tone for future theater in Seattle: Katie Maltais, the new managing director of the 5th Avenue Theatre; and Dámaso Rodríguez, who was named artistic director of Seattle Rep in July.
— Gemma Wilson, arts and culture writer
Theaters adjusting to the times
After the digital theater of 2020 and the masked theater of 2021 and the tentative theater of 2022, 2023 has been about theater figuring out how to make things work in our new reality of uncertain ticket sales. Audiences haven’t returned in pre-COVID numbers, some administrators fear the death of the subscription model is nigh, and sharing resources is one name of the game. When Book-It Repertory Theatre closed after 33 years, Seattle Shakespeare Company took over its scene shop, both for its own use and to keep the shop available to the theater community. Intiman Theatre continues to experiment with short show runs and financial models, and the first two shows in Seattle Rep’s season — the cirque show “Passengers,” and the two-person, zero-instrumentalist musical “Islander” — were created elsewhere, as was ACT Theatre and 5th Avenue Theatre’s season-opening coproduction, “Cambodian Rock Band.” Coproductions are nothing new but they seem to be everywhere these days, and it will be interesting to see if and how those collaborative shows change the flavor of each component theater.
— G.W.