A fellowship of the Conru Art Foundation
Make the work
that endures.
The Seattle Prize backs a small number of invited artists to strengthen their practice among serious peers: a private studio, sustained time, critique, and an ambitious community.
Alongside the fellowship, the Foundation commissions and acquires work for a public collection. We specifically look for work that resonates with Rehumanism.
- By invitation
- A short list of artists, chosen for the work they are already reaching toward.
- Pioneer Square
- Studios above the galleries of the Occidental Fine Arts Center, in the oldest part of Seattle.
- Exhibited downstairs
- Completed Signature Works are shown in the first-floor gallery at Occidental Fine Arts, in rooms the city walks through.
Why we do this
Rehumanism.
Made to be seen.
There is a kind of painting that needs a patron. It is made for the public, not for one person’s living room, and almost nobody buys it for their home. The Seattle Prize is an experiment in modern patronage: we commission that work and hang it downstairs where the city can stand in front of it.
We call the reason Rehumanism: serious human subjects, painted with enough skill and care that they resonate deeply with the viewer. Not a genre, not a test of belief. The bar the work has to rise to.
Why artists say yes
Four things ambition
cannot do without.
Ask the fellows and the ideas were never the problem. Time, money, a serious room to work in, and people worth showing it to were. The fellowship supplies those four.
I
A room of your own
A private studio at the Occidental Fine Arts Center, in a building full of artists holding themselves to the same standard.
II
Off the treadmill
Months of uninterrupted work, without the commission-to-pay-the-bills cycle deciding what gets painted. Long enough to attempt the picture you keep postponing.
III
Peers who speak the language
A cohort of serious painters across the hall whose eye you trust, who will tell you the truth about the work and push you past what you would settle for alone.
IV
One painting built to outlast you
Not a body of small pieces. A single ambitious Signature Work that leaves the studio, goes on the gallery wall downstairs, and meets the public for years.
The film · 17 minutes
Artists in their own words.
The inaugural fellows talk about the training, the doubt, and the stubbornness behind the work, and what a year of real studio time made possible. A documentary by Kelly Guenther.
The inaugural cohort
The company
you would keep.
The inaugural fellows set the studio culture at Occidental in the program's first year. Later fellows are named when the invitation is ready for the public.
Inaugural fellows
Emma GarayDiego GlazerNicholas EiseleJackson WredeDaniel Zalla
The Signature Work
Not more work.
The work.
A fellow may propose a Signature Work: an ambitious project they would attempt if time and doubt were not in the way.
The artist begins with a subject they believe in. Before a commission proceeds, the artist and the Foundation agree on its public purpose, scale, finish, and path to exhibition. Fellowship participation alone does not make every studio work a Foundation project.
Beyond the fellowship
The Signature Work joins
a public collection.
The Prize is one program inside the Occidental Fine Arts Center, a restored 1890s building in Pioneer Square with working studios upstairs and galleries, museum rooms, and public exhibitions downstairs.
A walk through the building with Andrew Conru, founder of the Conru Art Foundation
The Foundation acquires the commissioned Signature Work and shows it in those public rooms, alongside exhibitions, workshops, and First Thursday crowds.
The artist's personal and out-of-scope work remains their own to keep, show, or sell. The public commission is the part of the practice we agree to build together.
Studios, galleries, and museum rooms in a restored 1890s building on Occidental Square.
Exhibitions, workshops, artist talks, and First Thursday openings, season by season.
Where commissioned Signature Works join the Foundation's permanent collection and stay on view for the public.
The foundation behind the building, the collection, and the programs that surround the Prize.
Two shapes of fellowship
The right amount of time for the work.
The fellowship is shaped around the project, not the calendar. Some work wants one concentrated push; some needs a year to find its footing.
Four months
One focused term for an invited artist to strengthen their practice among peers and, where separately agreed, develop a Signature Work for public presentation.
Full year
Three connected terms for Senior Fellows whose project and practice call for a longer arc of research, making, and exhibition.
Details are settled privately with each invited artist.
For prospective fellows