Brangien Davis Archives

Muse/News: SAM style leaders, virtual First Thursday, and llama heroes

Rachel Eggers on May 11 2020

SAM News

“The passion in David Rue’s voice is palpable.” Andrew Hoge of Seattle Magazine talks with SAM Public Engagement Associate David Rue for their May edition of Style Profile about his eclectic approach to personal style and arts programming.

This week, Stay Home with SAM gets you ready for SAM Book Club’s exploration of Octavia Butler, flips through a powerful youth zine responding to the pandemic, and ducks for cloud cover with Teresita Fernández.

The Seattle Times collects “5 fun ways to stretch your kid’s brain” with “Weekly Wonder” recommendations by Kris Gilroy Higginson, including SAM’s “tree-mendously cool” Middle Fork-inspired art project.

Vox Magazine’s Hannah McFadden of Vox Magazine, Columbia Missourian’s award-winning student magazine, has a very enthusiastic recommendation of SAM Blog in her round-up on online arts experiences.

“This blog is colorful and incredibly detailed in the descriptions of its exhibits and related art history. Plus, the blog’s tags make it easy to navigate.”

Local News

Did you virtually art walk with everyone this First Thursday? You can still watch all the virtual tours and talks presented by Lauren Gallow and Gabriel Stromberg with By The Hour, including talks from Pam McClusky and Foong Ping.

Unstreamable is back! In this recurring column, Chase Burns and Jasmyne Keimig watch and review films that are unavailable to stream; they’ve got helpful information on how to sign up for Scarecrow’s safe rental-by-mail program.

Brangien Davis of Crosscut with her essential weekly “editor’s notebook”; she talks about the effect of the shutdown extension on the arts in Seattle, highlighting creative efforts thriving in spite of the hardships.

“There’s a lesson in here somewhere, for these COVID days, about learning to trust in a new way of thinking, about seeing things differently when the world is turned upside down.”

Inter/National News

Nominated three previous times, Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, one of very few visual arts critics to win the prize.

“A small show that’s built around a sensational painting, and that has an unreadable relationship at its heart.” The New York Times’ Holland Cotter recommends a virtual visit to Boston’s Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

“A Wedding Photographer Took an Online Archaeology Class During Lockdown—and May Have Discovered a Lost Stonehenge-Like Structure.” Artnet’s Sarah Cascone with an incredible story of novice archaeology.

As he scanned along the River Trent, near the village of Swarkestone, he noticed something strange. “I thought, ‘what’s that? It looks a bit odd, and a bit round,’” Sedden told the Guardian.

And Finally

Not all heroes wear capes. Some are llamas with “envy-inducing eyelashes.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of John Akomfrah: Future History at Seattle Art Museum, 2020, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Sculptures in fall, erasure poems, and the wonderful Kerry James Marshall

Rachel Eggers on Oct 8 2018

SAM News

Curbed Seattle highlights the Olympic Sculpture Park as one of “26 best places to visit in Seattle this fall,” calling a visit to the sculpture park “the easiest way to feel artsy in Seattle without needing to spend half a day inside a museum.”

Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India is featured in the Stranger’s “Complete Guide to October 2018 Events in Seattle.” Diwali Ball, SAM’s annual fundraiser, and Night Heat, the 41st edition of our film noir series, also get mentions.

Did you know that SAM’s design team makes awesome videos? Don’t miss this fantastic My Favorite Things video featuring sailor Marc Onetto talking about the accuracy of Louis-Philippe Crépin’s Shipwreck off the Coast of Alaska, now on view at SAM.

Local News

Mayumi Tsutakawa for the Seattle Globalist on a documentary film about two women who—75 years apart—chronicled the cultures of Melanesia; one of the two held an exhibition on her work at SAM in 1935.

Here’s Emily Pothast for The Stranger on 10 not-to-be-missed gallery shows in Pioneer Square on view in October.

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis has a lovely review of Ballast, the Frye Art Museum’s new exhibition; Quenton Baker’s erasure and invented form poems were inspired by a massive historical research project into a little-known successful 1841 slave revolt.

“On the museum walls, their voices emerge like ghosts from the inky morass: ‘I am a crisis arrived.’ ‘A cargo of alarm.’ ‘Answer me.’”

Inter/National News

Way to go, genius: Three artists, including painter—and SAM Knight Lawrence Prize winner!—Titus Kaphar, were named “genius” grant winners from the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Think pink! Hyperallergic’s Dany Chan reviews a new exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology exploring the many meanings—from pretty to punk—of the color pink.

I get Google alerts for Kerry James Marshall, and here’s why: this week Hyperallergic shared a wonderful essay he wrote about Bill Traylor, and ARTNews reported his wonderful reaction to Chicago’s sale of one of his murals.

“Considering that only last year Mayor [Rahm] Emanuel and Commissioner [of the Department of Cultural Affairs Mark] Kelly dedicated another mural I designed downtown for which I was asked to accept one dollar, you could say the City of Big Shoulders has wrung every bit of value they could from the fruits of my labor.”

And Finally

Say goodbye to the last good thing on Twitter?

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Olympic Sculpture Park, 2015, photo: Nina Dubinsky.

Muse/News: Love at the museum, Afrofuturistic visions, and painting the blues

Rachel Eggers on Jul 23 2018

SAM News

Travel + Leisure was among those sharing the results of OkCupid’s 2018 Dater’s Choice Awards; in Seattle, SAM was singled out as the “Spot That Sparks Conversation.” Come fall in love at the museum!

Wall Street Journal subscribers: Don’t miss this review by photographer William Meyers of New Topographics, an installation now on view on the museum’s third floor.

Jeffrey Gibson: Like A Hammer is now on view at the Denver Art Museum and heads to SAM early 2019; Kealey Boyd of Hyperallergic dives into questions found in the exhibition.

“Does it make sense to distinguish Native American art today from other contemporary art? Does the category perpetuate generalizations and patterns of thinking? By blurring Native and non-Native elements, Gibson keeps these questions alive and insures that the art remains central to our answers.”

Local News

If you miss Mickalene Thomas like we do at SAM, go see the new show at the Henry Art Gallery. Margo Vansynghel of City Arts interviewed the artist about her intimate show that features photography, video, and one of the artist’s signature “living room” installations.

Brangien Davis of Crosscut on Coming Soon, an installation appearing across several Central District parks of construction notice-like signs that appear like “Afrofuturistic visions of a dream deferred.”

Emily Pothast has a fantastic story on Hyperallergic about AFTER LIFE (what remains) at Alice Gallery, a recent group show featuring Indigenous and Asian Pacific American artists.

“What does it mean to own the land? In a nation founded on violence against indigenous peoples, the question invites us to examine our own complicity in perpetuating that violence. Ownership is a powerful designation, and yet it is ultimately fleeting when we consider the possibility of mass extinction. Perhaps the only way to truly inhabit a place forever is to haunt it.”

Inter/National News

The New York Times continues its important Overlooked obituary series, revisiting the fascinating and tragic life of Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), who they call a “pioneer of modern Indian art.”

“That was Sacha Baron Cohen? What a nutcase. God bless him.” I gotta give this round to Christy Cones. Artnet’s Naomi Rea on how the Laguna Beach art consultant fared on the comedian’s new show, “Who Is America?”

Antwaun Sargent for Artsy interviews Henry Taylor, the 60-year-old Los Angeles-based artist whose first major monograph about his work (once called “the visual equivalent of the blues”) is due out this fall.

“Throughout his career, Taylor has remained committed to uncovering stories—about his family, about black people, about power and despair. ‘My painting is about…trying to be about some love shit, you know what I mean?’ the artist said.”

And Finally

Barbara Kruger for New York Magazine.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Robert Wade

Muse/News: Contradictions in Art, Humanity in Landscapes, and Cake goes to Court

Rachel Eggers on Jun 11 2018

SAM News

The Seattle Times’ Brendan Kiley previewed Double Exposure for the Sunday edition.

The museum knew it couldn’t present a simple hagiography of Curtis’ work without acknowledging its contradictions. “Double Exposure,” [Barbara Brotherton] said, “isn’t so much about Curtis and Native artists responding to his work as it is about putting them on equal footing.”

Molly Vaughan’s Project 42 was featured in this story and video by Crosscut’s Brangien Davis and Aileen Imperial. Look for the video as an interstitial on KCTS, too!

“Labor in my work is very important,” she says. “The labor that is put into the works is part of the memorialization. It’s the time that I spend thinking about that person and their story, and about how I’m hosting their spirit while I’m making their garment.”

Here’s the Stranger’s inimitable Charles Mudede on Basquiat’s “gorgeously brutal” Untitled, capitalist values, and giraffe necks.

Local News

Artist Trust recently announced Marita Dingus as the winner of the 2018 Irving and Yvonne Twining Humber Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement; see Marita’s work at SAM Gallery beginning this Thursday.

Rosin Saez of Seattle Met counts the “thoughtful, if curmudgeonly, ways” of Anthony Bourdain, tracing the moments the food & culture connector visited Seattle.

Don’t miss Rebecca Brown’s feature in the Stranger’s summer A&P, “What Looking at Landscapes Can Do to You,” a review of the current exhibition on view at the Frye Art Museum.

“This art is about looking and being aware that we live on a planet that’s bigger than us that we shouldn’t take for granted. Most of the landscapes don’t have people in them at all—and when they do, they’re small. We need to remember this.”

Inter/National News

Following last week’s significant ruling by the Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, both Artnet and Hyperallergic reflect on what it means for the art world.

The Art Newspaper previews the Charles White retrospective now on view at the Art Institute of Chicago and later traveling to MoMA and LACMA. A key figure of the Chicago Black Renaissance, White was a mentor to SAM favorite Kerry James Marshall.

For Freedoms, an organization founded by artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman, has launched an epic 52-state initiative to encourage political engagement by artists and art institutions this fall.

“We believe art is a necessity, especially in civic discourse,” she continues. “At its simplest level, we’re hoping to see more art exist in the world.”

And Finally

Good news: Art auction stock photos are about to get way less weird.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Images: Left: Sunset on Puget Sound, 1912, Edward S. Curtis, American, 1868-1952, photogravure on vellum (paper), 11 3/4 x 15 1/2 in., Seattle Art Museum, Gift of John H. Hauberg, 86.173. Right: Ch’aak’ S’aagí (Eagle Bone), 2018, Tracy Rector, Seminole/Choctaw, b. 1972., video, Seattle Art Museum, 2018 Commission, Courtesy of the artist.