Seattle Reboots Its Future

After just three months, Fuse has already raised $130,000 (Steffen's goal is $500,000). The first group of 10 grant recipients will soon be named, and Steffen says that he hopes to give out 15 grants in 2002. "We're looking for cultural innovators, artists who are likely to succeed, whose success will be important," he says. "And we want to provide not just money but also a program that leaves them in a different position at the end of the year than they were in at the beginning. We want to teach them how to see themselves as businesses."

Fuse fellows attend weekly workshops that let them follow one another's progress and teach them about managing financial planning, working with galleries and representatives, and writing grant proposals. Guest speakers address legal issues, marketing, and tax planning. "Artists are really small businesses, but most just don't have that mind-set," says Steffen, who adds that the Fuse fellows will spend the bulk of their year creating, not listening to lectures by accountants.

Steffen has established himself, and Fuse, as a link between the older, more established institutions in the city, and the bubbling and burgeoning underground art scene. "We've got really wonderful arts institutions here," he says, "and great emerging artists. Fuse is the missing piece. It's taking individual creative innovators and moving their careers forward to the point where their work will belong in the city's best galleries and museums."

A Museum on the "Bleeding Edge"

Brian Wallace is surveying the still-unfinished loading dock of the Bellevue Art Museum (BAM) and thinking like a teenager. The museum's 40-year-old curator is wearing a shiny knee-length olive-colored raincoat that sets off his spiky squash-colored hair. It's two months before the museum opens to the public (it opened in January), and Wallace can barely contain his excitement about all of his plans.

"Loading dock, to me, is just another name for stage," he says. "We're gonna have all-ages concerts here, in the loading dock. That should be a no-fucking-brainer. It's perfect: It's secure, you can close the doors, you can smoke butts outside." Inside, the walls, floor, and ceiling are all concrete. Rock concerts in the loading dock will be excruciatingly loud -- exactly the right volume for Bellevue's teenagers, who don't really have a weekend hangout.

If most established art museums revolve around the geriatric types who can serve on the ladies' auxiliary and attend mid-morning gallery talks, Wallace wants BAM to be the complete opposite: a museum that revolves around young parents, young artists, and teenagers. He and Diane Douglas, BAM's director, have nothing against blue hair, but they deeply believe that BAM needs to cultivate young members and supporters -- even if their only visit to the museum is for Saturday-night rock shows.

"There's only one funeral parlor in Bellevue," Wallace says. "There aren't a lot of old people. So we have to figure out how to connect with young people. We've got to engage the people who are moving to this region." Situated across Lake Washington from downtown Seattle, Bellevue is a ritzy suburb right next door to Redmond. The area is home to Microsoft's main campus and dozens of startups that have spun off from the giant software company. Before BAM raised $23 million for its new building -- the biggest fundraising campaign on the East Side, as this area to the east of Seattle proper is called -- the upscale Bellevue Square Mall was the social center of town.

Wallace wants to steal that mantle from the mall. Wearing a white hard hat decorated with an assortment of stickers -- sparkly pink lips, a Hello Kitty icon, the words "Panic Now" -- Wallace teams up with Barbara Jirsa, the museum's public- and community-relations officer, to lead a tour of the new building, directly across Bellevue Way from the mall. It's three stories tall and contains 36,000 square feet of interior space. The exterior is a dramatic fusion of glass, hand-sanded aluminum, and pomegranate-colored textured concrete.

"The idea is to make this a very nimble, very community-based institution," Wallace explains, standing just outside the main entrance to the new building. Artwork will be projected onto the overhang above, onto the large front window facing Bellevue Way and a two-story section of wall that faces south. Wallace wants the museum to extend into the public realm, to be seen from the street -- not sealed inside a sterile box. BAM will radiate art.

The building itself -- as well as the museum's programs -- is designed to forge strong ties to the community. There is an atrium, dubbed the Forum by architect Steven Holl, that can be rented out for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and Rotary Club meetings. An artists-in-residence studio on the second floor will offer a chance for patrons to see -- and perhaps participate in -- the creative process.