Zoe Dusanne opens Seattle's first professional modern-art gallery on November 12, 1950.

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On November 12, 1950, Zoe Dusanne (1884-1972) opens Seattle's first professional modern-art gallery. The gallery is located in Dusanne's specially designed home at 1303 Lakeview Place (overlooking Lake Union above the City Light gas plant on Eastlake) and is known as the Zoë Dusanne Gallery. The first exhibition features works by Guy Anderson, Virginia Banks, Kenneth Callahan, Edwin Danielson, Walter Isaacs, Patricia K. Nicholson, Ambrose Patterson, Viola Patterson, and Mark Tobey.

Zoë Dusanne will become a major influence in introducing modern art to people of the Pacific Northwest. She was the first Seattle dealer to combine professional high standards and nurturance and promotion of Northwest artists with a broad-based desire to educate the local public about modern art, and to educate the world at large about Seattle painters. In this, the Gallery was unique.

In 1958, the house and gallery were demolished to make way for the Seattle Freeway (Interstate-5). On October 4, 1959, Dusanne reopened her gallery at 532 Broadway N, but the new gallery was never able to recoup the losses of the forced move. Dusanne closed the Zoë Dusanne Gallery in 1964.

Sources:
HistoryLink.org Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, "Dusanne, Zoë (1884-1972)" (by Paula Becker), http://www.historylink.org/ (accessed June 30, 2002).
Note: This file was corrected on March 19, 2005.

By Paula Becker, June 30, 2002

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Zoë Dusanne (center) in her gallery with (left to right) Paul Horiuchi, George Tsutakawa, John Matsudaira, and Kenjuro Nomura, 1950s
Photo by Elmer Ogawa, Courtesy UW Special Collections (MSSUA No. 553)