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What’s in here
The dignity of the common people.
We pulled this room together. Paintings, photographs, mechanical marvels, and the everyday objects people lived with, worked with, and loved, roughly 1850 to 1950, gathered in and around Seattle. Some pieces are local, some are not. Across from them, new work by the Seattle Art Prize Fellows. A hundred years of everyday Seattle, hanging next to the work being made right now.
Why these objects
What’s here is what moved us. An honest mix, gathered fast, not museum-curated. The patina on a time clock punched by thousands of working hands. A photograph that survived because someone kept it in a drawer. A painted scene of a city still figuring itself out. Not relics. A hundred years of everyday beauty.
Beauty is something that shows wear, shows where it came from, shows the people who used it.
Four layers
First, the physical objects: paintings, photographs, mechanical marvels, tools, the everyday gear of the period.
Second, real archival photographs of Seattle from the time, many of them black-and-white originals brought back to color so the city in them reads as a place where people actually lived.
Third, AI-generated views of daily life from those decades, made now to give a feel for rooms, streets, and moments that no longer exist. They sit next to the archival photographs on purpose, clearly generated, not pretending to be period prints.
Fourth, short narrated videos. Eight-second pieces paired with the archival photographs, written and voiced like a curator would: a single moment from the frame, told out loud. Open one on your phone, watch, then look back at the photograph on the wall. More clips come online each week through the summer.
An honest note
We pay quiet homage to the people of early Seattle, the ones who built the streets, kept the doors, swept the floors, raised the children, and made the city we inherited. Early Seattle, 1850 to 1950, doesn’t fully represent every community in today’s Seattle tapestry, and we are honest about that.
The Conru Art Foundation’s values are Beauty, Truth, and Love. Where we can, we surface stories from the African-American and Chinese-American experience of the period. For the fuller picture we humbly recommend the Wing Luke Museum and the Seattle Asian Art Museum.
What you’ll see
Paintings
Portraits and scenes of a city being born.
Photographs
Snapshots, studio prints, family records.
Mechanical marvels
Music machines, time clocks, the gear of daily work.
Everyday objects
The things Seattleites put on the mantel.
Colorized archive
Black-and-white Seattle, gently brought back to color.
Short narrated videos
Eight-second pieces, paired with the photographs, growing weekly.
Prize Fellows
New paintings by the current cohort, across the room.
Tours
A 30-minute walk through both halves with a curator.
Visit
311½ Occidental Ave S · Pioneer Square, Seattle
2nd Floor · Free Admission · Open during gallery hours
June 1 to August 15, 2026. Tours every 30 minutes, 12 PM to 4:30 PM. Closed Mondays. Eight people per tour.
Walk slowly. Let the objects speak.
Presented by the Conru Art Foundation.