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Bad news for all-ages music fans: the Velvet Elvis Arts Lounge announced last week that the non-profit arts space will close at the end of June, due to volunteer burnout and a pessimistic assessment of the future for an alternative arts space in the high-rent, sports- and beer-oriented Pioneer Square. The theatrical side of the Velvet Elvis had stagnated in recent years, with a near-permanent, just-ended run of Vince Balestri's one-man show, Kerouac. But its all-ages concert programming was second to none, bringing in most of the Northwest's best bands along with many touring groups who wanted to play all-ages shows in town. With the impending demolition of RKCNDY, this brings the number of all-ages live-music clubs in Seattle to a dangerously low number. Anyone want to start a new all-ages venue in Seattle's current restrictive legal climate? Anyone?
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Having been unceremoniously dropped from the schedule at Seattle Art Museum, Mike Kelley's installation Pay for Your Pleasure may get a second shot at a Seattle showing. De Kwok and Kim Collmer, who are curating a millennial show for the Center on Contemporary Art, are considering Kelley's installation for inclusion. Given SAM's disheartening lack of backbone when faced with negative media attention over the artist's requirement that the museum purchase and present an artwork from a serial killer, I'd love for a more courageous institution to step in and give the work the public presentation it deserves.
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Consolidated Works found a temporary home last week, thanks to Paul Allen. The new contemporary arts center, which intends to present theater, art, and film in one building, received the go-ahead to present its fall show, Artificial Life, in a former auto-glass warehouse in South Lake Union. Allen purchased the building along with many others in the area in the heady Seattle Commons days, when the whole neighborhood was going to be rebuilt around a huge park. Now Allen's people intend to redevelop the neighborhood as a mixed residential and commercial district with cultural institutions. The nominal-rent offer for the warehouse, which will be demolished in 2000, could lead to Consolidated finding a permanent home in the neighborhood. Consolidated Works' fall show, opening around September 1, will include a new work by the brilliant local theater collective the Compound, an installation by Sandy Skoglund, buglike robots made of scavenged parts by Los Alamos, New Mexico scientist Mark Tilden, pieces by local artists Shawn Wolfe, Jim Rittimann, and Lauren Grossman, and a film program curated by WigglyWorld's Debbie Girdwood.