arts-culture
The Bellevue Arts & Culture Guide
BAM is just the start. A working guide to the museums, galleries, theaters, and public art that make Bellevue more than a shopping town.
In this guide
Bellevue's arts scene is small, serious, and weirdly under-celebrated. Here's the working map.
Bellevue Arts Museum (BAM)
The anchor. Three floors, contemporary craft and design focus, and reliably good rotating shows. Free admission first Friday of every month.
Foster/White Gallery
Serious Pacific Northwest art — sculpture, glass, painting — in a downtown space that's easy to miss but worth the stop.
Aronica Fine Arts Gallery
Smaller, friendlier, more accessible. A good first gallery stop if you're new to local art.
Gunnar Nordstrom Gallery
Photography and prints. The owner will talk to you for an hour if you let him.
Theatre at Meydenbauer
Touring shows, opera, dance. The acoustics are good and the seats are big.
Bellevue Civic Theatre
Community theater that punches above its weight. Annual Shakespeare in the Park run is the locals' summer ritual.
Bellevue Youth Theatre
Worth seeing even without a kid in the cast. The set design is consistently inventive.
Crossroads Bellevue Stage
Free live music six nights a week at the mall. It's better than it sounds.
Public art worth a walk
- Bellwether sculpture trail (downtown, summer)
- Downtown Park public art (rotating)
- Eastside Heritage Center for local history
- Winters House — Bellevue's only National Register historic home
The annual list
- Bellevue Arts Fair — last weekend of July, three days, 300 artists.
- Garden d'Lights at the Botanical Garden — Nov–Jan.
- Bellevue Jazz & Blues Festival — early summer.
Browse arts & culture listings.
Featured in this guide
Places to know
Pacific Northwest Ballet at PACE
4.6Touring performances at the Performing Arts Center Eastside.
Downtown
Bellevue Arts Museum
4.4Bellevue's cultural centerpiece — a non-collecting museum of Art, Craft, and Design in a Steven Holl–designed building across from Bellevue Square, with rotating exhibitions, family programs, and one of the strongest pieces of contemporary architecture in Downtown Bellevue.
Downtown
Meydenbauer Center
4.4Bellevue's premier convention, conference, and performing arts venue — 36,000 square feet of column-free ballroom, a 410-seat theatre, and a full block of meeting space steps from light rail.
Downtown
Bellevue Civic Theatre
Community theater producing classic and contemporary plays.
Downtown
Editor's collections
Continue with a curated collection
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