The Seattle Prize Fellows
A dozen brand-new paintings by recent Seattle Art Prize Fellows, hanging upstairs at the Occidental Fine Arts Center alongside the historical Beautiful Things, 1850–1950 collection. A century apart, on the same wall.
The Seattle Art Prize is the foundation’s annual award for contemporary painters working in Seattle. Past Fellows have been selected by Olivia Park (lead curator) and a rotating jury. The Prize asks the same question every year: can you make a painting that argues for beauty, truth, and love?
For the summer 2026 hang, twelve recent Fellows are each showing one new painting made specifically for the exhibition. They’ll be in conversation with the nineteenth-century work across the room: same questions about people, place, and what is worth looking at, answered a hundred years apart.
Curated by
Lead Curator
Olivia Park
Aesthetic, talent, and the final hang.
Live tiles from seattleprize.org/projects. The final hang is confirmed with each Fellow and announced first week of June.
Inside the exhibition
A 30-minute curated tour through both halves of Beautiful Things, the historical and the new, on the 2nd floor of the Occidental Fine Arts Center.