The landscape painting by Lan Ying is kept in three Japanese boxes

More often than not, museum books and catalogs feature masterpieces—and only masterpieces. But what about the questionable pieces, forgeries, objects in unfortunate condition, or, to be frank, ones that puzzle even the most experienced experts? Aren’t issues like that just as interesting as those surrounding highly acclaimed artworks? Because of the economics of publishing, ‘coffee-table books’, as museum catalogues are sometimes known, miss out on long lists of fascinating ’second-tier’ objects and intriguing issues that consume much of a curator’s time.

SAM is about to change all that. We’re making our Chinese painting calligraphy and holdings more accessible to the public through a new online catalogue. Under the auspices of the Getty Foundation, we’re designing new ways of presenting information about this rich but little-known collection.  Just like in traditional catalogs, we’ll share relevant information about esteemed works of art. But this catalog will include much more. 

SAM is one of nine museums that received 2-year planning grants from the Getty Foundation to plan for an online scholarly catalogue, with the hope of creating a new model for online scholarship other museums can follow. Our new online catalog will be interactive. Our researchers and curators will continually update information as we discover it. We’ll share ideas, hypotheses, and arguments. We may stimulate further discussions. We may stir debates. 

The artist has yet to be identified

Our new online catalog will be open-ended. Because we’re not limited by a page count, we can include more comparative images which would be too costly to reproduce in a book. 

Our online catalogue will be accessible. We’ll let everyone learn about our masterpieces—as well as our problematic pieces, including those with authenticity issues. Once you hear the stories of these artworks, you’ll realize that maybe not all of them should be simply understood as fakes.  Authenticity is not a straightforward issue and with our online catalog, we’ll have a forum for discussing some truly fascinating histories. 

You can look forward to seeing works that have been assembled in parts, a genuine Ming painting that had later been inscribed with the name of a famous Yuan painter, and most happily for this curator, hidden treasures that have been overlooked before.  While the online catalogue may take two years to complete, the establishment of this SAM Blog will allow us to send out interesting tidbits on our progress.  Stay tuned.

Josh Yiu

While the public probably expects art museums to venerate famous creators from the historical past (Michelangelo and Alexander Calder jump to mind), few institutions are practically skilled at paying tribute to younger artists, and still more rare are those that are capable of committing the time necessary to really get to know creative men and women.  Outside of planning exhibitions and acquiring their works of art—professional practices typically reserved for artists who are substantially far along in their careers—how do museums show that they are engaged with artists at a deep, supportive level?  Limited time, limited resources, and basic risk aversion all weigh against engaging deeply with artists as a community.  I attended two events at the Seattle Art Museum recently which left me with a sense of pride about the ways in which this institution balances its responsibility to art history and to the local community by making long term investments in support of the creative life of artists.

The Betty Bowen award has been an important recognition given to an artist from the Pacific Northwest at the early stages of his/her career. Awarded for over thirty years now, it currently includes a significant cash prize, together with the opportunity to display a work (or two) in a prominently designated space at the entry of the downtown SAM facility. Last Friday night, Josh Faught accepted the 2009 Betty Bowen award for his innovative work, which slyly combines the values of homespun fiber arts with cool conceptualism. Josh spoke about his motivations for making work that owed equal parts to Magritte’s surrealism, Judd’s seriality, and the appeal of a hand-crocheted afghan thrown over the sofa. He did this to a nearly full auditorium. The Betty Bowen Award committee, led by Gary Glant, but comprised of artists, collectors and others committed to boosting Pacific Northwest culture worked closely with Michael Darling, SAM’s curator of modern and contemporary art to identify Josh from a field of 494 submissions. Jenny Heishman and Matthew Offenbacher also received prizes from the Betty Bowen Award Committee, and both spoke with sincerity and a sense of support for local artistic endeavors that impressed me, and I am guessing many others in the room. All of the artists were supported by friends, partners, parents who witnessed what are likely not the last public recognitions of their rising talents. SAM’s role in this was gratifying.

Bouldering, 2008, Jenny Heishman, ceramic penny-round tiles, mirror, inkjet print, wood, and wire, 48 x 72 x 36 inches

Awards for strong artists who are no longer in school, but who have not yet become household names, are doubtless too few. The Betty Bowen Committee does impressive work by creating the opportunity to showcase serious, relevant work in the region’s most visited art museum. Earlier this week, at the end of SAM’s October board meeting, my colleagues and I invited the Seattle-based artist Roy McMakin to speak informally with the trustees. Earlier in the month, Michael Darling had presented a large group of McMakin’s work to the Committee on Collections, and the Committee had voted to acquire the works for SAM’s collection. Although that particular acquisition was in process long before my arrival in Seattle, I count myself as an admirer of McMakin as an artist and a thinker. Listening to him speak about the thought processes that went into his work at the Olympic Sculpture Park, Love & Loss, I was still more convinced about his approach to making poignant, smart works of art. Even more, the dialogue between the artist and this committed group of civic leaders struck me as the best possible way to mark an end to my first month at SAM—thinking about the world with artists and remembering the power of representations to change the way we view our lives.

Untitled, 2009, Matthew Offenbacher, oil and acrylic on Stainguard cotton, 52 x 45 inches

When my colleagues and I launched this blog, I signed on to do this for a month. I am eager now to share the SOAP box at SAM with others. I hope to write another entry from time to time, so I am not done with this experiment. Hearing the voices of others in and around the institution will be of still greater interest, I hope.

Derrick R. Cartwright

Our new director Derrick Cartwright gives you an inside look into the Michelangelo Public and Private  and Alexander Calder exhibition galleries with curators Chiyo Ishikawa and Dr. Gary Radke.

All works of art by artist Alexander Calder in the video are  copyright © 2009 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

As part of a self-stated wish to broaden the dialogue within/about the Seattle Art Museum’s new blog experiment, ideally as quickly as possible, it is worthwhile to respond to some of the questions that have been posted so far about the initial name of this blog. Why SOAP? To help respond to this, I asked Matthew Renton, who leads SAM’s communication efforts, to share some background:

MR:

Creating the SAM blog has been a little like having a baby. Do we even like kids? Are we ready to have one? Can we support him properly? How do we protect him from the world out there? What if nobody likes him!?

After realizing that there is never a perfect time, we decided to take the plunge and we started making our baby. What made the timing all the more perfect, was the arrival of a wonderful midwife (I hope he doesn’t mind me calling him that) – Mr. Derrick Cartwright.

So, what to call our first-born? Plain old ‘SAM’s Blog’ felt like it was the ‘Bob’ of names (no disrespect to any Bobs out there). We wanted him to be distinctive ….different, dare I say it…ARTY! But we didn’t want him to be bullied in the playground (out went ‘Off the Pedestal’, ‘SAM-a-log’ and ‘Touchable’, which surely would have earned him a well deserved kicking). Then came the word play…‘SAMbigious’, ‘SAMbiguity’ – maybe too open to misinterpretation.

We started to think about symbols that people associate with SAM – eagles, camels, and hammering men. This led to ‘Red Eagle’,  ‘Camelback’ and ‘The Hammer’….but where’s the fun? It’s all about us, and doesn’t encourage the participation that we know will be essential to our blogs success.

Then one of the team threw ‘SOAP’ into the conversation. Nice word we all agreed…. kind of….clean. We then went into a roller-coaster discussion about the merits of the word. The bad stuff: ‘soap-box’ – sounds negative; ‘soap-opera’ – like a tedious drama; ‘soapy’ – lightweight and frothy….all valid contributions. Then we thought about the positive connections: ‘SAM comes clean, bursting the bubble, let it soak for a while….getting lathered up’. It felt like we might have a language for our blog that would be distinctive and engaging.

We then started thinking about acronyms ….S.O.A.P…..Sam Offers Alternative Perspectives,  Sam Off A Pedestal, Seattle’s Official Art Place, Seattle’s Outstanding Art Personalities !!! I hope you’ve realized by now that ‘SOAP’ doesn’t stand for anything in particular…well, anything serious anyway. We hope it will be open to interpretation and we welcome your suggestions (keep it clean please!).

Suddenly, we realized we were making too much of this. The blog is a fun, informative, revealing and powerful way to share with our audiences, and most importantly listen to what they have to say. It doesn’t matter what you call your blog, or your child for that matter. Once the name sticks, that’s it – they become that name in whatever shape or form their personality dictates. Unlike a child though, we can use ‘SOAP’ for now and if someone comes up with something better further down the path, then great!

Thanks for that, Matthew. I actually took time to check and there are a bunch of ‘Sam’s Blogs’ out there, which helped convince me that it wasn’t the ideal choice. Matthew has a quick British wit, captured neatly in his thoughts above. I had somewhat different responses to his, of course. I said already that I rather liked ‘SAMbiguous’, or ‘SAMmy’ (which might, I imagined, typographically morph into ‘my SAM’ and then back again on the screen). Ultimately, I fell upon my art historical preferences in giving a deciding vote to ‘SOAP, thinking that it had all of the aforementioned allusive strengths—soapbox, soap opera, popping idea bubbles, etc.—but with a subtler set of references to transparency, the ephemeral, and prismatic reflections on the visible world.   

UNTITLED I-V, 2004, Tara Donovan, Etchings 14 x 14 in, Image area: 12 x 12 inches, Ed/23, Greg Kucera Gallery

For these reasons, and others I am sure, artists have chosen the depiction of soap bubbles as a subject throughout history. A detail from such an image in SAM’s own permanent collection—a 17th century Flemish genre scene—appears at the top of this blog. The conjunction of soap and art conjures for me, first and foremost, Jean Siméon Chardin’s great images of bubble blowers and their youthful observers, begun in the 1730s. These were key representations in a chain of more or less phenomenological experiments by artists that are linked to enlightenment ideas. Or, it made me recall more contemporary works, like Tara Donovan’s brilliantly whimsical ‘bubble drawings.’ Ultimately, by putting ‘SOAP out there, both as a name and a communications device, my colleagues and I hoped it would inspire curiosity and, in the end, still bigger thoughts. We expected a few swipes, but what’s clearly better? SAMbitious?    

 Derrick Cartwright

Before I became a museum director, I was an art history professor, and made my living by communicating ideas—and then coaxing them back out of bright undergraduates. I was truly happy as an art historian but realize in retrospect that listening carefully wasn’t necessarily a rewarded virtue, and even less a guarantor of success in the classroom. Reading, thinking, and speaking passionately about art and its complex intersection with history was stimulating in itself, but ultimately it didn’t require reciprocation from my audiences, except for asking them to write exams, papers, and fill out teaching evaluations at the end of the term. Since I usually got very good feedback from my students, I confess I didn’t spend much time worrying about what my own active listening might mean to those constituents. I feel differently today.  

I am deep in listening mode as I complete my second week on the job at SAM.  

A museum leader is often called upon to “say a few words” in any number of contexts, and sometimes on a moment’s notice, which is a skill in its own right. However, listening closely is by far the most valuable skill that any recently arrived director can possess. Attending carefully to what is said in staff and board meetings, to say nothing of what is casually exchanged in hallways, at openings, and in spaces beyond the museum itself, is in many ways more important than anything I might find myself actually saying at these times. Without a willingness to hear what others think—about SAM, about Seattle, about expectations for our programs, and the role of museums in contemporary culture—it would be perilously easy to follow a path that leads nowhere, or satisfies no one . . . except, but only briefly perhaps, the director.

Listening to as many different voices as possible sounds easy, but actually isn’t. For one thing, it is hard to keep track of “who said what” and then to have the presence of mind to wonder “why is this considered important to be heard right now.” To avoid cacophony, I try to ask similar questions to as many different people as possible and then interpret the variety of responses I receive. For instance, I have been asking everyone who will meet with me: “What do I need to know about SAM in order to be successful?”And, internally, I am trying to track: “What is the significance of the emphasis, repetitions and variations in perspective?”; “How can this help me as I develop a plan for my first year at SAM?”; “Why is this issue so important to this individual, and why hasn’t it come up in other conversations?” Most importantly, I have been asking, “What haven’t I heard yet?” and “Who else should I speak with in my first months on the job?”

Maybe it is the fault of having parents who were both psychoanalysts, but listening thoughtfully has served me well as a strategy for the first months in my three previous directorial roles. Listening cannot be a meaningful substitute for making statements about my vision for the future of SAM, except on a short-term basis, but it will help ensure that when those statements come forward, they will have been shaped by voices and experiences beyond my own. I am all ears and would be eager to hear from you.  

Derrick Cartwright

Overflow, 1978, Andrew Wyeth, American, 1917 – 2009, watercolor (drybrush) on paper, 23 x 29 in. Private Collection

On Wednesday night at SAM, my colleague Patti Junker delivered a sensational lecture that she titled “Andrew Wyeth, Rebel.”  Few people think about one of the premier realists of the 20th century in terms of rebellion, but SAM’s curator of American art made the case that received wisdom has tended to gloss over the more challenging, less seamless narrative surrounding Wyeth’s long output. Indeed, Patti demonstrated how his complex relationship to art world controversies could not be collapsed simply into the narrow terms of his late life love affair with a Chadd’s Ford neighbor, Helga Testorf.  Her argument took an admirably broader view than that, and it never stooped to gossip. Wyeth’s complicity with the New York art world, which in many ways treated him as an outlier for the second half of the century, has been almost completely overlooked. Patti stopped short of suggesting Andrew Wyeth was a secret abstract expressionist; instead she likened him to someone to whom I don’t imagine he is often compared: Marcel Duchamp. After an hour of deliberate, well-documented discussion of Wyeth’s complicated involvements with the Museum of Modern Art, his own unique family legacy (his father, N.C. Wyeth, was one of the premier illustrators of the turn-of-the-century), and his rural neighbors in both Pennsylvania and Maine, Patti’s speculation that the Helga pictures have more than a casual association with Duchamp’s final, enigmatic work, Étant Donnés, settled on the audience like a tremendous revelation. She convincingly brought together what, to my knowledge anyway, no other scholar has observed. The arrival of Helga to Wyeth’s private world coincided neatly with the unveiling of Duchamp’s final work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.   

Was Wyeth aware of this and did it determine his own late investigations of the American nude? Duchamp is infamously known as a cultural “bad boy”; Wyeth never pretended to seek that distinction, although the Helga pictures brought him some short-lived notoriety. Patti made a case for a strange and unforeseen commonality between two so-different artists. You could not dismiss the feeling that she was on to something important about the aesthetic challenges of late 20th century American art. It was a thrilling moment and I felt proud to be in an institution that shares this kind of new knowledge. 

I want SAM to pursue curatorial innovation and taking chances. Audiences in Seattle ought to have access to the best works of art and feel what it means to subject them to the best minds’ efforts, minds unafraid to challenge received wisdom and provoke new thinking about culture. We need to continue to build on the reputation of Seattle as a center for ambitious projects and ideas of consequence that stretch across all fields. With colleagues like Patti, and a worthy, inquisitive community, this seems both doable and worthwhile.      

Derrick Cartwright