Richard M. Campbell papers, 1970-2017

Richard Montgomery Campbell was a prominent visual art and theater critic in Seattle, Washington.

Campbell was born on November 3, 1942 in Puyallup, Washington. His grandfather was an assistant to Governor Isaac Stevens and his father was an attorney and a member of the first Puyallup Fair Board (now Washington State Fair) beginning in 1938. He graduated from Puyallup High School in 1960 and attended Whitman College and then the University of Washington. He first worked for the Bremerton Sun and then, in 1974, began working at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) where he continued to work for 35 years as an art critic covering visual art and theater. He covered classical music, ballet, modern dance, and opera, as well as news about strikes, internal conflicts, and the construction of Benaroya Hall and the conversion of the old Opera House into McCaw Hall. While at the P-I, he also wrote on the side for a small arts newsletter edited by Maxine Cushing Gray.

After the P-I closed down in 2009, Campbell began working on a history of Allied Arts which were a group of activists who pushed to develop the arts, preserve historic buildings, and improve the appearance of Seattle from the 1960s to the 1980s. In 2014, he authored the book "Stirring Up Seattle: Allied Arts in the Civic Landscape." He died on February 11, 2017.

Sources: The Seattle Times, February 26, 2017, obituary for Richard Montgomery Campbell.