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Conru Art Foundation Presents
Live performance on Pioneer Square. A dozen evenings of chamber music, ballet, contemporary dance, jazz, and spoken word inside 6,000 square feet of restored gallery space.
Beauty. Truth. Love.
Dates
Summer 2026
Location
Pioneer Square, Seattle
Programming
~12 performances
One Pioneer Square Block
Beauty. Truth. Love.
We have built our foundation on three principles. The Occidental Sessions bring them to a stage twelve times this summer, in the oldest part of the city.
The Space
The ground floor of the Occidental Fine Arts Center is a long, light-filled gallery on Pioneer Square. Brick walls. Tall windows. A wide-open floor that can hold an audience or a quartet on equal footing.
A balcony mezzanine looks down on the floor from above, doubling the room when we need it for chamber concerts and opening up sightlines for dance. Beautiful contemporary art lines the walls all summer. The performances slot into the gallery, not the other way around.
6,000 sq ft
Open floor plus mezzanine balcony.
Pioneer Square
Occidental Avenue, Seattle’s oldest neighborhood.
On the Walls
Two centuries of art hanging together for the first time. The performances slot into a working gallery, not a black box. Three things are up all summer.
Nineteenth Century
An assortment of beautiful nineteenth-century paintings from the CAF collection: portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and small-format work from European and American studios, 1850–1910. Hung in the round on the gallery walls.
Seattle Art Prize Winners
A dozen brand-new paintings by recent Seattle Art Prize winners, debuting their amazing humanistic work. The Prize asks Seattle’s contemporary painters to make the case for beauty, truth, and love. This is where you see the answer.
The AWWW WallCurators only
Nineteenth-century cats, dogs, parrots, and the children who loved them — all looking right at you from the same wall. Curated from CAF’s collection of Victorian-era pet paintings. This is the wall everyone will photograph.
Preview the catsThe Sessions
A summer’s worth of evenings, programmed for surprise. Each session lives inside the gallery walls.
Chamber Music
String quartets and small ensembles in the round.
Ballet
Contemporary and classical dance commissioned for the room.
Contemporary Dance
New work from Seattle and Pacific Northwest choreographers.
Jazz & Improv
Late-evening sets with a paid bar and café-style seating.
Spoken Word
Poetry, monologue, and reading nights with local writers.
Opera & Voice
Aria nights and song cycles, paired with the gallery walls.
And more. We are programming for surprise. The full list of artists and dates is announced first week of June.
On The Calendar
We are finalising dates with each visiting company. The full calendar with ticketed evenings and free open-house afternoons is announced first week of June.
Late June
Opening week
A weekend of live performance to mark the summer’s opening across all three buildings.
July
Mid-summer
Chamber music, ballet, jazz nights, and a spoken-word evening. Roughly one show a week.
August
Closing weekend
Final performances and a closing reception. The galleries come down the next morning.
The Summer of Awe
The Occidental Sessions are part of a larger Conru Art Foundation program for summer 2026. See the rest below, or the full umbrella here.
The Summer of Awe
Pike & 5th
A 30-foot LED wall, museum-grade gallery walls, and nightly happenings inside the historic 1916 Coliseum Theatre.
Open
Salon → Lusty Lady → Coliseum
Time travel through five of Seattle’s lost worlds. A private CAF walking loop: Art Love Salon, the 1893 Lusty Lady, the 1916 Coliseum, a climb to the hidden balcony, and the Coliseum of Art exhibition. Twelve people per tour, every 30 minutes. Hardhats on.
Open
Seattle, 1850–1950
A century of paintings, photographs, mechanical marvels, and the everyday objects Seattleites once put on the mantel.
OpenPress & Inquiries
Press week first week of June, ahead of the public opening. Press, programming, and partnership inquiries welcome.