Seattle’s 10 Best Contemporary Art Galleries

Nestled within the University of Washington and founded in 1927, the Henry, which is actually a non-profit museum, is an established and highly acclaimed presence on Seattle’s art scene. Currently home to a vast collection of over 25,000 objects, the gallery brings together an array of interactive installations and exhibitions, including works by Bruce Nauman, Sean Scully and Louise Bourgeois. Although much of the permanent collection has been digitized and can be accessed via the Internet, nothing can replace walking into Light Rein, James Turrell’s Skyspace project, a profoundly spiritual site-specific installation that allows visitors to focus their attention on a single slice of the sky. At the heart of the Henry’s mission is the dynamic, open-ended (and open-minded) discourse on art – and indeed, this makes it Seattle’s foremost art destination.

SOIL’s origins can be traced back to 1995, when a group of ambitious local artists began their search for a space to exhibit their work. The gallery’s cooperative spirit is still very much palpable. Run by artists and for artists, SOIL organizes open-application curated shows on a biannual basis, giving emerging artists the chance to showcase their work. Be it a live reading from the artist’s seventh grade diary (Christopher Buening, 2014) or an aluminium sculpture embodying the frailty of memory (London Tsai, 2014), SOIL prides itself on its dedication to art, whatever its medium or subject matter. Legend has it that they even once exhibited ‘gerbil art’.

Prole Drift founders Dirk Park and Jaq Chartier are both locally renowned artists and the engineers behind Aqua Art Miami, an art fair hosted at Art Basel Miami every year. Their Seattle-based gallery was established the autumn of 2011, making it a new, creative and dynamic addition to the local art scene. Dirk describes Prole Drift as a ‘non-representational gallery’ and finds great joy in his freedom to pick out artists to represent. And indeed, his exhibitions appear at once whimsical and enchanting, bringing color, energy and vibrancy to paper, a medium preferred by Prole Drift’s owners. The gallery’s frequent collaborations with organizations such as Seattle-based SEASON make it an incredibly sociable space to mingle with the local art world.