Curtis R. Barnes tries to make nice, peaceful, nonpolitical art, but something always happens to make it intense, tough, turbulent. Barnes has been making art in Seattle since he was 3 years old, and he’s about to be 71. It’s fitting that the Frye, where he took art classes as a child, has organized his first museum show, featuring paintings, drawings, sculptures, and a room devoted to the Omowale mural that energized the African American part of this city—and then was shamefully destroyed. Barnes’s art is like that Frye-owned painting he saw way back, of the horses fleeing the stable on fire: Real life feels at stake in it. (Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, fryemuseum.org, 11 am–5 pm, free, through Sept 21)

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...