Seattle art fight: Who owns First Thursday? Pioneer Square's monthly art walk now has some stiff competition

First Thursday in Pioneer Square (photo by Jen Kelly - The New Pioneer Square) First Thursday in Pioneer Square (photo by Jen Kelly - The New Pioneer Square) Photo: / Photo: / Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Seattle art fight: Who owns First Thursday? 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A few months ago, when Becky Blanchard was opening a new show in her Pioneer Square art gallery, she noticed a crowd outside. It was First Thursday, and crowds were usually a good thing for the monthly art walk.

But this crowd was watching a mini-performance by Teatro ZinZanni in Occidental Park.

"It was a great celebration," said Blanchard, co-director of the Stonington Gallery. "But they had this huge crowd, and the galleries were empty."

For nearly 30 years, First Thursday has been a Pioneer Square fixture and one of Seattle's best-known, art-scene hangouts, in which galleries stay open late one night a month, and people come check out new exhibits and stroll the cobblestones.

But the concept, billed as the country's first art walk, has become so successful that it has spawned a host of imitators and followers. The Seattle Art Museum and Henry Art Gallery also now do a First Thursday, in which they stay open late and offer free admission.

There's also a popular arts-and-crafts market with free music in Occidental Park on the first Thursday of the month. And Seattle and other city boosters - obsessed with attracting happy, social people to downtown parks - have begun scheduling lots of free events, dance lessons and concerts, many of which happen to fall on the same day.

The competition for calendar space, coupled with economic hard times, has begun to annoy some Pioneer Square gallery owners, who have long felt a sense of ownership over First Thursday.

"We have tried to suggest to people to give us credit for having created First Thursday, and don't heap all this other stuff on it," said Greg Kucera whose namesake gallery has been in the neighborhood for decades.

Kucera has been so worried about the co-opting of First Thursday that when organizers of a potential Chihuly exhibit at the Seattle Center merely floated the idea of participating in the art walk, Kucera politely slapped it down.

"While it may seen intuitive that having all kinds of free things to do on First Thursdays is a good thing, in point of fact, all of those 'free things' simply compete with one another to make it impossible for any one to do all of them well…" he wrote Chihuly's people in a letter.

"The museums have latched on to it now, and other businesses as well, and in my opinion, it is nearly reaching a point of over stimulation."

On top of other Thursday art events, Pioneer Square's art-walk crowd has also changed. In the past, First Thursday used to bring out serious art buyers, along with tentative couples on a first date and 20-somethings looking for some cheap fun.

These days, with Occidental Park hosting a lively arts-and-crafts market on the same day, the crowds now seem to include more people interested in buying jewelry and soap than in collecting in fine art.

"(Our patrons) say, 'First Thursday is such a circus now, we're not coming down,'" Kucera said, who has begun opening shows on less crowded days to accommodate them.

"What we've lost is a certain level of collector base that really used to partake in First Thursday."

The market is organized by The Alliance for Pioneer Square, where program director Lisa Dixon said First Thursday - now dubbed by marketing experts as "1T" - has a dual purpose.

Dixon said the art walk attracts collectors, which is good for the galleries, and that both the walk and market bring people to the neighborhood, which is good for Pioneer Square.

"And younger people may not be art buyers right now," she said. But they may become collectors later, especially after visiting galleries in the relaxed setting of an art walk, she said.

"I think a lot of that is education."

Blanchard said both the market and art walk have equal merit, but wondered if they could be helping each other more. She said a big factor for galleries and artists is the months of work it takes to prepare a show's opening, which are often scheduled for a First Thursday.

"There's a lot of riding on that evening on that month," she said. "So you can understand that there is some inherent conflict of interest."