Bars & Restaurants

More and more we look towards other venues, social spaces and non-traditional art galleries to bring visual art, music and performance into the public domain. Such a small percentage of a city participates in gallery culture that we believed that bars and restaurants are often the ideal environment to reach the maximum number of people. We opened The Hideout in 2005, stacked the walls tall with over 90 regional artists and programmed the space as if it were a culture center. It publishes a patron-driven magazine bi-annually, hosts a robotic art dispenser, engages in discrete theater and harbors conversations about art, and life, 7 days a week. Vito's was a Seattle institution opened in 1953, but fell on hard times in the twenty first century. We restored it, returned the grand piano to the lounge and run one of the best cocktail programs in the city. 

In an economy where dedicated gallery space is often too difficult to pencil out in our rising economy, we look for hybrid ways to bring art to the people in creative, sustainable ways.

The Hideout - Seattle

Opened in 2005, Greg Lundgren and Jeff Scott wanted to create a social space that merged art and performance with craft cocktails. This dark and cozy downtown bar features over 90 paintings on the walls by regional contemporary artists, publishes The Vital 5 Review - a magazine created onsite by their drinking patrons, hosts Discrete Theater and has a robotic art dispenser named EARL 3.0. Hidden behind black velvet drapes on historic First Hill, it is an artist enclave where the cocktails contain as much care as the diverse collection of art on the walls.

Vito's - SEATTLE

Opened in 1953 by Vito and Jimmy Santora, Vito's is one of Seattle's oldest and most infamous cocktail clubs. Over the last seven decades Vito's has provided refuge to politicians, crooks, celebrities, priests and the regions Italian community. Lundgren and Scott purchased the derelict club in 2005, restored it to its original glamor, brought in a new grand piano and program live music five nights a week.  Its rich history in cocktail culture, politics, organized crime and east coast, family style Italian food define it as an iconic mid-century treasure.