The Bellevue Arts & Culture 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.

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