1972

Festival ’72:

Official Poster Artwork by Claes Oldenburg

If Festival ’71 proved Seattle wanted a civic arts celebration, Festival ’72 proved it was here to stay.

Attendance grew significantly, by some estimates, an additional 50,000 people came to Seattle Center, and the scale, ambition, and theatricality of the event expanded.

Seattle historian Paul Dorpat notes that Festival ’72 introduced a striking new visual identity:

“The festival’s second symbol was Claes Oldenburg’s drawing of a colossal faucet flooding Lake Union.”
— Paul Dorpat, Bumbershoot’s Formative Years (1971–1979), HistoryLink.org

The image, surreal, playful, slightly absurd, perfectly matched the spirit of the festival. It signaled that this wasn’t just a municipal arts program. It was imaginative. It was experimental. It belonged to Seattle.

Programming deepened as well. The One Reel Vaudeville Show became a defining theatrical presence, helping cement the festival’s reputation for blending high art, street performance, music, and spectacle. Major cultural institutions began participating more formally, further anchoring the event within Seattle’s creative infrastructure.

Dorpat describes how the festival continued to evolve beyond its improvisational beginnings, expanding both its cultural partnerships and its audience. What began as a civic morale boost during the Boeing Depression was quickly becoming a signature annual gathering.

While it wasn’t officially called “Bumbershoot” yet, the festival's personality was sharpening: eclectic, theatrical, slightly offbeat, and proudly civic.

By the time the festival adopted the name Bumbershoot in 1973, the groundwork had already been laid, visually, culturally, and structurally, in these early years.

Source & Credit Portions of this history are quoted and adapted from: Paul Dorpat, “Bumbershoot’s Formative Years (1971–1979),” HistoryLink.org Essay 10027, posted September 1, 1999.
Available at: https://www.historylink.org/File/10027