Muse/News: The body in art, Seahawks posters, and your right to vote

SAM News

Have you seen Flesh and Blood: Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum? Here’s art historian and critic Gayle Clemans for the Seattle Times, tracing the exhibition’s exploration of the human body as an artistic vessel.

“Throughout the exhibition, we are reminded of how art — much like a pitcher of wine or a human body within the paintings — is a vessel for meaning and message. Gender, race, class, age, ability and size play roles in communicating these meanings, in ways that feel historically remote, intimately resonant or disappointingly familiar.”

Seattle Magazine’s Gavin Borchert writes up an exciting new SAM commission; Carpe Fin, a “Haida manga” mural by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, is now on view downtown.

“The mural conveys a vitally timely moral—a warning about the dangers of human disconnection from the natural world.”

Casey Arguelles Gregory of The Eye offers this peek inside SAM’s conservation lab and the work of Nicholas Dorman and Geneva Griswold.

“Conservators approach art from a unique vantage point, intimately located between science, art, and museum politics. ‘We’re kind of in an ivory tower, but we’re looking at the front line.’ Nicholas Dorman explains.”

Local News

Lisa Edge of Real Change reviews Iconic Black Women: Ain’t I a Woman, now on view at the Northwest African American Museum.

Brangien Davis of Crosscut on the new series of Seahawks game-day posters designed by local artists—the proceeds fund art education in Seattle schools.

And Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores visits the Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture, which is now open.

“The new museum draws attention to an often overlooked slice of Washington state history, which includes major Mexican American contributions to agriculture, railroad transportation and civil rights. It also breaks ground as the first museum in the Pacific Northwest to highlight the Mexican American experience in this region.”

Inter/National News

The Los Angeles Times shares the news that Sandra Jackson-Dumont of the Met—and formerly of SAM!—heads to LA as the new director and CEO of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

Also in California: Fires. Artnet traces the threats to the Getty Museum and Charles M. Schulz Museum.

The New York Times’ Robin Pogrebin on a new Bill Traylor show at David Zwirner, with proceeds mostly going toward the Harlem Children’s Zone.

“’There is something terribly natural, terribly right, about having the Bill Traylor collection turn into money for his progeny,’ he added, referring to the Zone’s students. ‘I think he would have been — or he is — delighted about that. And I am, too.’”

And Finally

Don’t forget to vote!

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman