Top Seattle art exhibits to see in fall 2026

Corner stores, Indigenous futures, digital overload and circuses all serve as fodder for reimagination by art makers in the city. This fall presents Seattle art lovers with a bevy of opportunities to immerse themselves in the worlds created by talented artists. We’ve collected five can’t-miss shows to put on your calendar this season.

‘Inconvenience Store’

We live in a world of instant gratification — at the click of a button, you can get anything ordered directly to your front doorstep. But art, according to Seattle artists Mary Anne Carter and Lilia Deering, is the direct opposite of that: It’s messy, fickle, and, at its core, inconvenient. That’s the concept behind their latest project, “Inconvenience Store,” a pop-up art exhibition and immersive retail experience that takes the form of a corner store inside an old 7-Eleven on Third Avenue and Pine Street. Like STÖR, Carter and Deering’s 2024 exhibit and store spoofing IKEA, Inconvenience Store is also an actual store: There will be dozens of local and national artists — like Shiloh Davies, Emma Kates-Shaw and Clyde Petersen — who have handcrafted familiar convenience store items (at price points ranging from $1 to $10,000) in departments like Health & Beauty, Food & Pantry, and Pet Supplies. While these objects might not always be the most practical, they will always be unique.

Official opening is Sept. 19 with rotating exhibitions for the next six to 12 months; Parnassus Project, 1524 Third Ave., Seattle; free; @inconvenience_store_art

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‘Temporal: Stories of Indigenous Present, Re-imagining Indigenous Futures’

Take Interstate 5 down to Olympia, where the Coast Salish Museum of Fine Arts is bringing together work by several Indigenous artists to the walls of the Thurston County Museum of Fine Arts. Curated by Hopi artist Micaela Shafer, “Temporal” is a show pushing back against the idea that Indigenous peoples are relics of the past by exhibiting work where artists explore their identities on their own terms. “This exhibit encourages the artists to take up space and command the present and envision a future where our stories are told by us, not for us,” Schafer writes in the show’s press materials. “Temporal” will feature mythic, woodsy photographs from Daniel Smith’s (Swinomish) Nanoforest project, giant beaded sculptures by Tammie Dupuis (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation) and more artists from the Indigenous Creatives Collective. 

Oct. 2-Dec. 11, Thurston County Museum of Fine Arts, 120 Olympia Ave. N.E., Olympia; free; tcmofa.org. 

‘SENSORIUM’

What has our contemporary culture of digital saturation, endless scrolling and constant updates done to our nervous system? To the very fabric of our ties to one another? Choreographer Alana O’Farrell Rogers has teamed up with artists Esther Loopstra and Alaina Stocker to present a new interactive installation called “SENSORIUM” where a selection of thinkers will try to answer that very question. For the exhibition, organizers have invited seven Seattle artists with their distinct aesthetic sensibilities to decorate the walls of an “electric mansion” where various local drag and dance groups like CO- and TUSH will put on performances exploring the impact of AI, smartphones and tech on our day-to-day lives. 

Oct. 23-Dec. 13, Base Camp Studios 2, 1901 Third Ave., Seattle; tickets: $20-$55; alanaorogers.org

‘Not My Circus’

Los Angeles-based artist Karon Davis’ sculptural tableaus are the stuff of dreams. She uses white plaster casts of people — friends, family members, strangers, herself — to stage surreal investigations of race, history, dance and violence in the United States. At first glance, her sculptures almost seem alive thanks to the glass eyes she sticks in each piece, as if you’re catching each figure frozen mid-action. After snagging the Seattle Art Museum’s prestigious 2025 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize, her show “Not My Circus” shines a spotlight on the freaky netherworld of the circus and traverses its presentation of both pain and pleasure. Tragic clowns, fierce lions and a knife-thrower’s assistant all make up Davis’s plaster circus.

Nov. 5-Jul. 4; Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., Seattle; adults $29.99, seniors/military $24.99, students/teens $19.99, children 14 and under free; seattleartmuseum.org 

‘Ibidem’

In Latin, “ibidem” means “in the same place,” often used in bibliographies to connote a reference being found in the same source. In the context of víctor yáñez-lazcano’s upcoming show of the same name at The Vestibule in Ballard, the word takes on a more embodied meaning. Exploring the impact of white supremacy on romantic desire, yáñez-lazcano will spend Fridays and Saturdays during the exhibition’s run in the gallery standing and kissing one of two two-way mirrors which will sit on opposite sides of a black box structure inside Vestibule. Over the course of the show, yáñez-lazcano will invite other BIPOC performers to also hold a static position in front of the other mirror. 

“Ibidem” will also feature photo assemblages made by yáñez-lazcano from discarded images that have been cropped to leave only empty skies visible. As a whole, the exhibition grew from the artist’s “growing awareness of the direct impacts social conditioning had on his self-advocacy and his experiences with intimacy.”

Nov. 7-Dec. 12; The Vestibule, 5919 15th Ave. N.W., Seattle; free; thevestibule.org