Pride Month: The Fleet’s In and Queer Art at SAM

This July marks my one-year anniversary at SAM and June was my first Pride in Seattle. I even had the honor of walking the parade with the city’s Consulate of Mexico. As a gay professional of Mexican descent, this is all a big deal for me!

In my role as the museum’s deputy director for art, I work among so much art, and every day I’m actively discovering captivating items within the SAM collection. Thinking about LGBTQ+ artists, I was surprised to learn that the collection has a print of The Fleet’s In (1934) by gay artist Paul Cadmus. He created this work on paper in response to the censorship of his painting of the same subject. In it, a raucous group of sailors enjoy shore leave while in Manhattan. The original painting, commissioned through the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) during the Great Depression, caused quite a stir in its day. So much so that it was removed from view for what Naval officers and critics considered “outrageous” for the behavior depicted in the work: the figures, many from the LGBTQ+ community, merrymaking with the featured service men. A queer celebration appropriate for Pride Month! The original painting is part of the Met’s collection, and you can learn more about it here.

To this day, the painting has had limited exposure but it is well known within queer art history. The print version, like the one in SAM’s collection, is important because it was intentionally created by Cadmus in an act of rebellion to disseminate the image and prevent its censorship. He would even credit the uproar with making his work more well known during his life. The work may have garnered a negative response, but the image itself carries gay culture, much of it coded and strategically placed by Cadmus, during a period when homosexuality was illegal. The print at SAM is interesting because it was gifted to the collection in 1944 by the founder of our museum, Dr. Richard Fuller. Could he have known about its notoriety and importance before gifting it to the museum? To more surprise, we also have a 1937 photographed portrait of Cadmus by Carl Van Vechten in the museum collection.

Reflecting on the collection during Pride Month, I sought other queerness currently on view in SAM’s galleries and by gay artists. Pop artist Andy Warhol has a strong presence in the museum; he even came to the museum for a solo exhibition in 1976. His large painting of the musician Elvis Presley as a young gunslinger heartthrob immortalized in silver is not only a reference to the future but to the reflective aesthetic of his famed studio the Silver Factory. It was an inclusive space for its day and a beacon for anyone who felt different, including members of the LGBTQ+ community. Some individuals who stood out even took on a role as  “Superstar” of the Factory for their beauty, personality, or talent. While Warhol’s universe tended to focus around himself, his impact on popular culture included making queerness more visual, and many artists today follow in his footsteps.  

Everywhere you turn, the museum also has a younger generation of queer artists on view: Mickalene Thomas’s large bedazzled painting, Chicano artist Laura Aguilar’s evocative and haunting black-and-white photography, Native American multidisciplinary artist Jeffrey Gibson’s beaded punching bag with the phrase “If I Ruled the World” in colorful plastic beadwork, Jacolby Satterwhite’s projected video work about his mother and Ballroom culture, Kehinde Wiley’s portrait featuring a Black subject in a classical style and Nick Cave’s maximalist soundsuit. There’s a recent acquisition by Naama Tsabar, an Israeli artist (and friend) whose practice includes intimacy and contact through the tactile materials that she uses, sculptures she builds, and evocative sonic performances. In my previous role at The Andy Warhol Museum, I hosted a performance of hers in conjunction with the exhibition Fantasy America. Titled Stranger, it comprised a double-sided guitar and two nearly physically identical women (the artist and Kristin Mueller) struggling through a non-verbal but acoustic conversation. Many of these artists I have followed for years and have even met. Having them in the collection is so inspiring and special for Seattle.    

Although marginalized peoples enjoy this honorary month of acknowledgement, the support in this city is ongoing and Pride Month felt the most festive during a time of nationwide hate and oppression against LGBTQ+ people. In addition, I’ve met so many people, including colleagues at SAM, who are also part of the community or dedicated allies. We work across many departments in the museum and it’s clear we really care about the community in Seattle. Pride Month has passed, but the visibility and support of LGBTQ+ artists has and will continue at SAM.

– José Carlos-Diaz, SAM Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art

Photos: The Fleet’s In, 1934, Paul Cadmus, American, 1904-1999, print, Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 44.229. © Estate of Paul Cadmus. Paul Cadmus, 1937, gelatin silver print, 10 x 7 5/8 in. (25.4 x 19.4 cm), Mary Arrington Small Estate Acquisition Fund and Photography Purchase Fund in honor of Cheryl Ann Christie, 98.87. © Estate of Paul Cadmus.

 

Muse/News: Rising Star, New Leader, and a Wave of Influence

SAM News

Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks opens Thursday, July 13 at the Seattle Art Museum. The Seattle Times’ Margo Vansynghel includes the exhibition—the artist’s first in Seattle—on her list of recommendations for July.

“The star of Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo has risen almost too fast to behold—like the speed of light.”

“Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Free in New York thanks to the Seattle Art Museum.” Terumi Pong of An Emerald City Life and her family make excellent use of a patron-level SAM membership.

Via Denise Sakaki for 425 Magazine: “The Market Fishmonger & Eatery is a Summertime Catch.” We couldn’t agree more, and we recommend you check out our restaurant partner’s eateries at the Seattle Art Museum and for the summer, the Olympic Sculpture Park.

In other Olympic Sculpture Park news, it’s been named one of the ten best sculpture parks by the readers of USA Today. Thank you!

Local News

In her latest ArtSEA post, Crosscut’s Brangien Davis shares a behind-the-scenes of the final preparations for XO23, the forthcoming art space in the old Coliseum Building opening July 13 (hmm, could make a night of it with the Boafo opening…). 

Check out The Stranger’s comprehensive Pride month coverage, with event recommendations, engaging profiles, and reported features. 

The Seattle Times’ Margo Vansynghel also reported the recent news that Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture has named Minneapolis arts administrator Gülgün Kayim its new director.

“Seattle is a city that is known for its world-class artists, creative entrepreneurs, and arts scene,” Kayim continued, “and I look forward to working with them to make the arts more equitable and accessible to all.”

Inter/National News

Howard Halle for ARTnews on “12 LGBTQ+ Artists Having Institutional Shows This Pride Month,” including Jacolby Satterwhite, Keith Haring, and Lauren Halsey.

Via Artnet: There’s a new episode of the acclaimed series Art in the Twenty-First Century to check out on PBS. It features contemporary artists including Anicka Yi, Tauba Auerbach, the Guerrilla Girls, and Hank Willis Thomas.

“How Hokusai’s Art Crashed Over the Modern World”: Jason Farago of the New York Times reviews Hokusai: Inspiration And Influence, from The Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Now on view in Boston, it heads to SAM this October!

“[…] one of the greatest of all printmakers appears at the nucleus of a worldwide cultural transformation, in which art became more urbane and more fleeting, and the observed world got flattened out into signs and symbols.”

And Finally

The Seattle Times revisits Sleepless in Seattle locations (and seeks justice for Walter!).

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Pride Month: Rosemarie Trockel’s Bibliothek Babylon

In honor of Pride Month, SAM Blog features reflections by SAM voices on artworks from the collection that explore LGBTQIA+ art and artists. Queer lives matter every day of the year, but this month is a particular opportunity to celebrate histories of joy, advocacy, and resistance.

In Det lika olika/The Same Different, a 2018–2019 solo exhibition at Sweden’s Moderna Museet Malmö, contemporary German artist Rosemarie Trockel interrogated viewers with a single question written on a small piece of paper: What is it like to be what you are not?

SAM’s collection features Trockel’s Bibliothek Babylon (1997), a photographic screenprint on transparent red Mylar. In it, the subject sits at a library table surrounded by books, wearing only cords of rope that outline where clothing seams would fall on the body. The title, in Trockel-fashion, asks to be picked apart: “Babylon” the Greek, Latinized form for “city of Babel.” In Abrahamic tradition, the Tower of Babel is a bastion for humanity and explanation for the world’s languages. One would have to guess that Trockel means to contrast this with the biblical Babylon (a woman atop a seven-headed beast, meant to personify promiscuity).

“[Trockel] started in Germany in the 80’s. It was a male-dominated art world she lived in and tried to make herself visible, which was not that easy. So she infiltrated the art world with materials that perhaps did not belong to that male art world. Such as wire, wool and knitting instead of painting… Many have said or read her art as feminist. And I think, yes there’s a truth in this, but there is so much more.”

– Iris Müller-Westernmann, Curator, Det lika olika/The Same Different.

The purpose of the title is to conjure religious and historical fears regarding femme people’s pursuit of knowledge and bodily autonomy. The use of rope—a fiber—invites us to consider whether the subject is liberated or restrained in their nakedness. For this image, the total edition consists of 60 screenprints: 25 on red, 20 on yellow, 15 on clear, as well as 25 artist proofs. The tone of each varies in how the subject and the books’ covers are accentuated and made readable.

In other works, Trockel deftly uses medium to talk about women as creators of art subjugated to the realm of the underappreciated “craft” and the household. “Woman,” also, as a narrowly defined and restrictive category. Much of Trockel’s body of work incorporates clothing and textile that’s often unisex in appeal until stretched, conformed, and gendered by the wearer. Reflecting on reunification years, Trockel’s series of masks, Balaclava, are a commentary on gender roles, women’s muteness, and the necessity for radical action. Trockel herself has at times rejected the title of “artist” or referring to her work as “art.”

“In Trockel’s art, the mixing of the idealized feminine with the mundane is a potent means of raising consciousness about the ways women have come to be classified and evaluated…

…Without question, the body and what has been designated as ‘woman’s work’ are powerful signifiers… to blur the division between genders and to suggest the foundering of the traditional ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ connotations associated with dress.”

– Sidra Stich, Art Historian

Another who took inspiration in literary metaphor is Argentine thinker and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). In his 1941 short story The Library of Babel, Borges imagines a theoretical library containing all knowledge. The dimensions of such a place are impossible, but its books would contain letters and punctuation in every possible combination. Meaning, if searched for long enough, you could find a copy of this blog post, a transcript of any conversation, and even the details of your own death.

In 2015, writer and coder Jonathan Basile tried exploring the implications of this by describing the library through algorithm. On his website, enter any text you like: a favorite memory, a bold lie, a list of groceries. You’ll then be pointed to the room and book where, in an ontological sense, it’s already written. Not all things in the library are true and few pages are legible. But is it not helpful (and terrifying) to know your thoughts have already taken form? What, read back, would feel the most validating? What might Trockel, wishing to be “free of the binary system,” write? It’s already there to be found, of course.

Here’s one final resonance: The 2017 German television series Babylon Berlin invokes “Babel” to depict the last days of the Weimar Republic as a time of extravagance, danger, unrepressed art, and sexuality. These are the oft-forgotten “golden twenties” preceding totalitarian rule and the burning of books and libraries. Of things lost: the significant shift away from traditional roles  for the Neue Frau (“new woman”), as well as a wealth of research on identity and gender-affirming care.

Celebrate Pride Month in Seattle with these suggested events:

Fri Jun 23
Trans Pride Seattle
Produced by Gender Justice League, this event in Volunteer Park will feature music, performances, food trucks, and educators.

Sun Jun 25
Seattle Pride Parade
The official 49th annual Pride Parade! Join in the fun or grab a spot in the grandstand. Say hi to SAM’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group who will be marching together. 

Aug 17–20
Pacific Northwest Black Pride 2023 in Columbia City
Celebrate the 6th year celebrating the Black LGBTQIA+ community with workshops, a health festival, music performances, parties, and more.

– Travis L., SAM Event Security Officer

Travis (they/them) is a mixed-media artist working in the realms of history and romanticism. They were recently featured in The Process Project and currently have work on view in the group exhibition Freedom at Gallery B612 through July 21.

References: Rana, Matthew. “What Is It like to Be What You Are Not? Rosemarie Trockel’s Diverse Practice.” Frieze, 31 Oct. 2018. Issue 200. Drier, Deborah. “Spiderwoman: Rosemarie Trockel.” Artforum, Sept. 1991. Vol. 30, No. 1. Stich, Sidra. The Affirmation of Difference in the Art of Rosemarie Trockel. 1991. Phillips. “Bibliothek Babylon (Trockel).” Artsy, June 2019. Auctions. Edition Schellmann—Fifty Are Better Than One.

Images: Bibliothek Babylon (Library Babylon), 1997, Rosemarie Trockel, German, b. 1952, screenprint on transparent red Mylar, 47 x 35 1/2 in. (119.38 x 90.17 cm), Print Acquisition Fund, 97.57 ©️ Rosemarie Trockel, photo: Mark Woods. The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563; in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Celebrate Pride with a Mickalene Thomas-Inspired Art Activity

On Saturday, June 3, SAM staff will participate in Seattle Pride in the Park to celebrate the city’s LGBTQIA+ community. This all-ages, family-friendly event features Drag Queen Storytime, youth spaces, lively performances, food trucks, nonprofit booths, queer vendors, and more. We’ll be at Volunteer Park from 12–7 pm to facilitate an art activity and spread the word about our upcoming programs and exhibitions.

As I brainstormed ideas for a fun, engaging, and educational art activity for Pride, one of my personal favorite artists, Mickalene Thomas, came to mind. Thomas’s work embodies the spirit of inclusivity, and her use of bold colors challenge traditional notions of beauty, gender, race, and identity. She is a Black queer contemporary artist that creates colorful and lustrous paintings, collages, photography, videos, and installations and uses materials like paint, pictures, colorful patterns, and rhinestones in her large-scale paintings. In 2018, SAM mounted Figuring History, an exhibition of her work alongside fellow artists Robert Colescott and Kerry James Marshall. Here’s a Seattle Times video interview about the show.

Inspired by Mickalene Thomas’s style, SAM Education staff has crafted Sparkling Icons, an art activity for participants of all ages. Using images of noteworthy LGBTQIA+ artists and activists, visitors will create collages with patterned papers and rhinestones that venerate the beauty and individuality of some of our most beloved legends. We wanted to highlight individuals that have paved the way for social justice and equality and have helped build a supportive community for future generations. 

Art museums, as cultural institutions, have the responsibility to promote inclusivity and highlight the work of artists in a way that provides art historical context but also shares the truth about their lived experiences. By participating in Pride Month, we want to demonstrate that SAM’s museum spaces are ones that are welcoming to queer self-expression and points of view (and not just during June!). Plus, who doesn’t want to come and play with glitter and rhinestones?! Hope to see you up at Volunteer Park on June 3, looking sparkly and iconic! 

Can’t make it to Pride in the Park? Check out the Sparkling Icons art activity and try it on your own time.

– Nicole Henao, SAM Manager of Youth and Family Programs

Photos: Chloe Collyer & Nicole Henao.

Object of the Week: Country Ball 1989–2012

Summer 2020 is here. The list of what hasn’t, can’t, or won’t, happen is long. No solstice gatherings, no gay pride parades, no powwows, or large family reunions. Instead, we are a stay-at-home culture with hypochondriac tendencies, trying to make it through a pandemic that demands change and suffering, and thrives on confusion. We watch the world largely through our screens, shaking our heads at the horrifying news of an escalating death count due to the virus and to brutality. We fill up on visions of those who are losing loved ones, or Zoom together to process the despair of losing our own. In the face of such turmoil, what art makes sense? I’d like to offer my vote for an artist who offers constant revelations.

Jacolby Satterwhite was introduced to me by Erika Dalya Massaquoi when we teamed up in a search for artists to feature in an exhibition called Disguise: Masks and Global African Art. I was hooked the instant I saw his video work, which relies on an aesthetic of immersion in a multimedia cavalcade of images that take hold of your imagination in a very different way than a canvas on the wall or a sculpture on a pedestal. His screens swallow you up and turn you upside down in a chaos of people dancing and transforming while strange structures jiggle and shapeshift. This was an immediate trigger, reminding me of being in the middle of a masquerade or a carnival procession, where all your navigational skills are put to the test and you get to share moments of complete disorientation with others. I’ve always been convinced that such art is woefully underrepresented in museums, as paintings and sculptures prevail. Mr. Satterwhite is a champion of screens that challenge your mind to suspend belief in what is real, and encourage you to reconsider what about life is important to understand.

So an expedition to get to know what he is doing began. You can do it too. Thankfully, I’m not alone in my fascination with his talent and intellect. He’s got more online interviews than many artists several times his age. Partly, this is because there isn’t a dull minute when he’s on camera. A list of a few interviews to watch follows, and if you want to start with art first, there’s Country Ball––a 12 minute tour of a family gathering in North Carolina that becomes completely reinvented for reasons that the artist can best explain. In this summer of 2020, when we’re recalibrating what matters, Jacolby Satterwhite is a visionary for our time.    

ART21 Videos

March 16, 2012, Jacolby Satterwhite interviewed by Charlie Rose, 4:33.

November 7, 2017, Jacolby Satterwhite excerpt reel, 19:55.

November 6, 2019, Visions of Utopia: Performance in Progress 2017, 6:22.

And most recently:

Pam McClusky, Curator of African and Oceanic Art

Image: Country Ball 1989–2012, 2012, Jacolby Satterwhite, HD digital video with color 3D animation, sound, 12 min., 39 sec., Modern Art Acquisition Fund, 2013.2

Muse/News: Unplugged Studios, a home for Black art, and Subway Dogs

SAM News

SAM’s upcoming major exhibition, Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement, makes Seattle Met’s list of “10 Seattle Events to Catch This June.”

Colossal features the human + animals ceramic vessels of Claire Partington, whose work also has set up shop in SAM’s beloved Porcelain Room.

Watch this Art21 short video featuring Zanele Muholi and their “unplugged” studio practice of self-portraits and portraiture; Muholi’s work comes to SAM on July 10.

Local News

Stefan Milne of Seattle Met on poet Jane Wong, whose James W. Ray Distinguished Artist-exhibition at the Frye—exploring food, silence, and ghosts–opens tomorrow.

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig goes up, up, up, to the 73rd floor of the Columbia Center to see The Factory’s latest show, work by 17 queer artists including Anthony White, Clyde Petersen, Markel Uriu, and more.

Lisa Edge of Real Change visits the Central District’s new Black arts space, Wa Na Wari, created by Jill Freidberg, Elisheba Johnson, Rachel Kessler, and Inye Wokoma. Also: the collective is curating the Summer at SAM kickoff.

“They always say ‘this is so great’ or ‘this is so wonderful,’” Johnson shared. “The first couple times it happened I said ‘you haven’t seen anything yet.’ They say ‘no, this is here.’ It’s just something about being able to walk into a space and know that it’s a cultural center for Black people that feels embodied as soon as you go through the entryway.”

Inter/National News

A Seattle man examined photographs he’d purchased 50 years ago at a Philadelphia secondhand store—only to discover they were by Weegee, the legendary crime photographer. Here’s other weird places art has been found.

Artnet’s Taylor Defoe continues to follow up on the recent incident at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in which a group of students of color were harassed by staff and other visitors.

The New York Times’ Holland Cotter looks at several shows in the city held this Pride Month in honor of the half-century Stonewall anniversary.

“For many reasons, protest is a logical direction for art right now. There is still no federal law prohibiting discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q.+ people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity (although some states and cities have enacted laws prohibiting it). Trans women continue to be victims of violence. The rate of new H.I.V./AIDS transmission among gay black men remains high. And the impulse within the gay mainstream to accommodate and assimilate is by now deeply ingrained. The time has come to hear Sylvia Rivera calling us out again.”

And Finally

As a person who has taken IKEA desks and Christmas trees on Seattle buses, I am here for this.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Saint George Slaying the Dragon, 1872; designed ca. 1862, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, British, 1828–1882, stained, painted, and leaded glass, 37 3/8 × 28 7/8 in., Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council, Purchased, 1972M79, © Birmingham Museums Trust, Courtesy American Federation of Arts
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