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Want more? Here’s everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, This & That.
Opens Oct 4
Rodney McMillan is a South Carolina–born, California-based artist who works across mediums to explore the social and political history of the United States. For this solo show, McMillian has taken inspiration from the lush nature surrounding the Henry to explore a landscape “overgrown with the lingering effects of physical, political, and social violence.” McMillian’s works range from abstract sculptures (made of thrifted cloth coated in house paint) to fantastical landscape paintings, as well as political video works informed by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements that remind us that the past will always linger. In his artist statement, McMillan writes that the past “is a fertilizer that feeds and cultivates the country we must tend to every day.” (Henry Art Gallery, free) AUDREY VANN
TELEPHONE
Oct 10–Dec 13
An exhibit that is an international game that starts with a single work of art that gets interpreted and translated hundreds of times, with more than 1,400 players and as many works of art? That’s TELEPHONE, an art experiment/exhibit in its third and largest iteration. Conceived by Seattle-based artist and software designer Nathan Langston, the premise is simple: Just like the children’s game, one work of art gets punted along (without context) to multiple recipients, who then interpret it as a new work of art, and so on until there’s a giant family tree of whispered artworks that have evolved in infinite ways. The results of the game will be revealed in a massive exhibit spanning two venues, with artworks ranging from musical compositions and poetry to painting, sculpture, and video. (Base Camp Studios 1 & 2) AMANDA MANITACH
Opens Oct 15
Combining landscape and portrait photography, Seattle-born Duwamish artist Camille Trautman asks, “How can I escape the screen and truly exist in this land?” I am a huge fan of the late-20th-century photographer Francesca Woodman, and Trautman’s photographs reimagine Woodman’s ghostly, grayscale approach and extended exposure technique, with the added insight of being a trans person in the digital era. While Woodman often obscured her body with mirrors, Trautman opts for LCDs (technology that uses liquid crystals to display images) to veil their body in natural settings. These works explore how landscape photography and digital media can shape or distort cultural identity by promoting or denying visibility. This October, Trautman is participating in the Frye’s Boren Banner Series, which asks regional artists to design a billboard-sized piece of art to be prominently displayed on Boren Avenue, along with a solo exhibition of related works. (Frye Art Museum, free) AUDREY VANN
Opens Oct 18
Priscilla Dobler Dzul’s museum debut in Seattle centers on stories of water “as portals of cosmic ancestral knowledge.” The artist, who divides her time between Tacoma and Yucatán, Mexico, pulls imagery and inspiration from both locales to weave works, including sculpture, textiles, and video, that unfold a story of environmental devastation entwined with cultural revitalization. In other words, the dark fairy tale of our current climate crisis, but with a possible happy ending: Dzul’s beckoning to reconnect to the universal sources of life and to “reimagine collective existence through the labor of craft.” Dzul’s own work is rooted in craft that draws from her Maya and multicultural heritage, but is infused with electric color and contemporary inflections—a cosmological melting pot of material and meaning that resonates with our times. (Frye Art Museum, free) AMANDA MANITACH
Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism
Opens Oct 23
The Seattle Art Museum’s new exhibit reflects on the Age of Impressionism through the lens of the French culinary tradition. With more than 50 works by household-name painters such as Gauguin, Monet, and Pissarro, the exhibit showcases the life cycle of food through the processes of cultivation, preparation, presentation, and consumption. These 100-year-old-plus oil paintings by old masters will transport you to the lush country gardens, bustling markets, and swanky restaurants of late 19th-and early 20th-century France. After viewing the exhibit, eat a generously buttered baguette and watch Babette’s Feast. You can thank me later. (Seattle Art Museum) AUDREY VANN
Through April 19, 2026
Stepping into Anila Quayyum Agha’s installations at the Seattle Asian Art Museum is a full-body immersion: intricate webs of shadow and light projected from a single source drench every surface in expanding, contracting geometries. The Pakistani American artist is known for her immersive environments, which take the masculine energy of monolithic steel forms (à la Richard Serra) and transform them with delicate patterns laser-carved into the surface. The light projected from inside these 350-pound floating steel frames in turn transforms everything it touches, including you, into something ethereal. While some of her motifs are inspired by Islamic designs, Agha herself is not religious, and the work is meant to evoke spiritual and emotional resonance that transcends culture. While there, stop by Ai Weiwei’s Water Lilies, a 50-foot-long pixelated interpretation of Monet’s painting rendered in 650,000 LEGO blocks—a work subversively sublime in its own right. (Seattle Asian Art Museum) AMANDA MANITACH
More
The True Butterfly Effect Through Oct 4, Slip Gallery, free
Safety/Luck Through Oct 10, Center on Contemporary Art, free
Mary Finlayson: Orange, Violet Through Oct 11, Winston Wächter Fine Art
Brad Winchester “RAVELING” Through Oct 18, James Harris Gallery, free
Stefan Gonzales, Dual Solo Exhibitions Through Oct 18, the Vestibule & Specialist, free
Outside: In Through Oct 25, Foster/White Gallery, free
Rachel Campbell: Oddly Familiar Through Oct 25, Spectrum Fine Art, free
Nina Katchadourian: Origin Stories Through Oct 26, National Nordic Museum
Pepper Pepper: Pink Moment Through Oct 30, M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery, free
Of The Land: Curated by Sobia Zaidi Through Nov 1, SOIL, free
Whiting Tennis Through Nov 1, Greg Kucera Gallery, free
Small Works Exhibition Through Nov 7, Gage Academy of Art, free
Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form Through Jan 4, 2026, MoPOP
Tariqa Waters: Venus Is Missing Through Jan 4, 2026, Seattle Art Museum
Ash-Glazed Ceramics from Korea and Japan Through July 12, 2027, Seattle Art Museum
Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (Bronze) Through Oct 2027, Olympic Sculpture Park, free
Ten Thousand Things Through Spring 2027, Wing Luke Museum
Gossip: Between Us Ongoing, Tacoma Art Museum
Cultured Commodities: Photographs from the Henry Collection Opens Oct 18, Henry Art Gallery, free
Fay Jones: New Paintings Opens Oct 18, Studio E Gallery, free
Kim Smith Claudel: End Cycle Opens Oct 25, The Vestibule, free
Beau Dick: Insatiable Beings Opens Oct 25, Frye Art Museum, free
Jonathan Lasker: Drawings and Studies Opens Oct 25, Frye Art Museum, free
Jen Ament: Head Trip Opens Oct 30, Spectrum Fine Art, free
CAM 10th Anniversary Party Oct 31, Common Area Maintenance, 7 pm, donations accepted
Early Warnings
New Nordic: Cuisine, Aesthetics, and Place Opens Nov 15, National Nordic Museum
