Chesley Bonestells oil on illustration board painting, Separation of the third stage from the second stage of the reusable von Braun launch vehicle system, circa 1952, is one of several groovy-looking early space-age objects in the upcoming show at Pivot.
Chesley Bonestell's oil on illustration board painting, Separation of the third stage from the second stage of the reusable von Braun launch vehicle system, circa 1952, is one of several groovy-looking early space-age objects in the upcoming show at Pivot. Courtesy Bonestell LLC

Rich Smith here in the office wins the prize for today's best analogy: Paul Allen is the Bertha of the arts. Stops, starts, stops, starts. It's hard to keep up.

First things first: I finally got a response from a Vulcan spokesperson on the question I've been asking for months, which is, what's the future of Pivot Art + Culture, the onetime permanent gallery space that was going to host four exhibitions a year and had a full-time staff of three, at least two of whom have been let go?

"There may be subsequent exhibitions, or the space may be used for something else."

In other words, the future is unknown. I don't know whether to feel I am in a state of Buddhist presentness or bunking with Kafka on this story.

But for now, we do have a new bit of information: Pivot will host at least one more exhibition, this one titled Imagined Futures: Science Fiction, Art, and Artifacts from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection.

It runs April 7 through July 10, and it includes everything: '50s sci-fi illustrations of colliding asteroids and men in spacesuits and spaceships, some of which actually helped to inspire developments in space (rather than the other way around). Spacey/ish abstractish paintings from the '70s. An installation of colored LEDs that tracks the progress of Voyager One using custom software. Contemporary art photography of stars. A small painting by Magritte, and a larger Surrealist alien-landscape picture by Max Ernst.

There are also actual drawn and built plans and models by Wernher von Braun! And if you're a Battlestar Galactica fan, there's something there for you, too.

It sounds like more fun than the last exhibition, which I nevertheless completely recommend you go to see, The Figure in Process. You still have three days left.

Imagined Futures: Science Fiction, Art, and Artifacts from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection was curated by the man who was recruited from Minneapolis to run Pivot, Ben Heywood. I asked whether, like the other two full-timers, Heywood would not be remaining at Pivot in his original capacity. Is he on an as-needed basis or is he still full-time director of Pivot Art + Culture?

"As for the staff, Vulcan does not comment publicly on the status of its employees," the word came down from the Vulcan spokesperson.

For a non-obsequious take on the opening this month in D.C. of Paul Allen's landscape exhibition Seeing Nature, which comes to Seattle Art Museum at the end of its national tour, read Philip Kennicott's recent review.