Muse/News: Jeffrey Gibson’s iconic forms, Tschabalala Self’s avatars, and a maybe-Caravaggio

SAM News

Reviews for Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer continue to hit! The Seattle Times, GRAY Magazine, KEXP’s Sound and Vision, UW Daily, The Spectator, and family blog An Emerald City Life all wrote up the exhibition. What they’re saying:

“Rather than offering an evolutionary tour of style, the exhibition exudes a feeling: a bold, fluid simultaneity, grounded in striking pattern, color and craftsmanship and provocative references to music, personal stories and indigenous practices.” – Gayle Clemans

“Personal, brilliantly hybridized, and seriously eye-catching.” – Blake Peterson

“It’s the type of honest, colorful, modern and inclusive art that speaks to your heart and I really want my kids to see it.” – Terumi Pong

In honor of his 50th anniversary at SAM, UW grad and SAM Films curator Greg Olson is the cover story of the alumni magazine Columns, with a profile by Sheila Farr and a photospread worthy of the big screen.

Artist Jacolby Satterwhite created an animation sequence for Solange’s film that accompanies her new album; Complex speaks with the artist, whose Country Ball 1989-2012 is now on view at SAM.

Local News

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores spoke with students who learned yesterday that their school, The Art Institute of Seattle, would be permanently shut down—today.

The Stranger has a round-up of 15 Pioneer Square gallery shows to see this month, including Mary Coss at METHOD and Ryna Frankel at 4Culture.

Hyperallergic’s Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud spoke with artist Tschabalala Self about her Frye Art Museum show and her avatars of Black womanhood.

“You can choose your identity through an avatar. This freedom is power. This freedom subverts subjectivity and allows an individual to escape the cultural attitudes they are subject to.”

Inter/National News

Artsy shares the news that the arts and cultural sector contributed over $763.6 billion to the American economy in 2015, making the case for the economic impact of the arts.

Hyperallergic shares the 43 extraordinary nominees for the 2019 World Press Photo Contest, including Finbarr O’Reilly’s “Dakar Fashion” and John Moore’s “Crying Girl on the Border.”

Unveiled in London this week: a 17th-century canvas of Judith and Holofernes that may be a Caravaggio—but there is no consensus among experts. The New York Times’ Scott Reyburn zooms in on the details.

“It’s perhaps not what an auctioneer—or a billionaire collector—wants to hear about a painting valued at more than 100 million. The market demands that geniuses like Caravaggio work alone.”

And Finally

Nothing made me happier last week than Alston’s singing mice.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Arts News from SAM, Seattle, and Beyond

SAM News

The solo exhibition of Molly Vaughan, winner of the 2017 Betty Bowen Award, is now on view. Project 42 raises awareness of a persistent pattern of extreme violence against transgender people by commemorating 42 murdered individuals. The show was recently highlighted by both City Arts and Seattle Weekly.

“When Molly Vaughan accepted the Betty Bowen Award at the Seattle Art Museum, she opted not to speak about her own work, as is custom. Instead, she invited three local artists with Native heritage to memorialize Fred Martinez, Jr., a trans-identified Navajo teen who was murdered in Cortez, Colo., in 2001.”

The Evergrey features artist April Soetarman’s Museum of Almost Realities, about objects “from the life you might have had.” The project popped up at March’s edition of Remix.

Local News

For the Seattle Times (and all the nerds), writer Paul Constant and novelist G. Willow Wilson preview MoPOP’s MARVEL: Universe of Super Heroes, which opened last Saturday.

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis interviews Pacific Northwest Ballet artistic director Peter Boal about a controversial work that premiered in their recent program.

Margo Vansynghel of City Arts reviews the Tacoma Art Museum’s retrospective of Seattle photographer Ella McBride (1862-1965).

“If the flower in the vase of the 1925 black-and-white gelatin silver print ‘A Shirley Poppy’ could speak, it might say, My heart is wide open. I’ve unfurled my petals so you can see it all. Tracing the valleys of light within the crepe-like petals, one imagines photographer Ella McBride responding from behind her single-lens reflex camera, I notice you.”

Inter/National News

Last week, TIME magazine published its list of the year’s 100 most influential people; Kehinde Wiley, Judy Chicago, and JR were three visual artists selected.

Beychella was certainly the event of the last couple of weeks (year? life?), but don’t miss Solange’s video and dance performance that recently took place at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice—“the first public museum and memorial to the victims of racial terror in the US”—will open next week in Alabama.

“There is still so much to be done in this country to recover from our history of racial inequality,” says Bryan Stevenson, the founding director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which spearheaded the project. “We can achieve more in America when we commit to truth-telling about our past.”

And Finally

He doesn’t do it for the gram—or the Pulitzer. But this was all of us when rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar won the prestigious award this week.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of Jono Vaughan: Project 42 at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Arts news from SAM, Seattle, and beyond – August 28

We love keeping an eye on contemporary artists once featured at SAM as they continue to make their mark. Also this week: dancing + statues + late Seattle summer.

SAM News

With the departure of Thomas Campbell at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and calls for the first woman director to be hired, Artnet names 11 woman art museum directors who could take on the job, including a familiar name.

Go expecting a bit of a squish—and have a wonderful Seattle summer evening,” says the Seattle Times’ Moira Macdonald about this Thursday’s Sculptured Dance event.

Artsy highlights eight artists who are revealing the radical possibilities in knitting and crocheting—including Haegue Yang from SAM’s 2015 exhibition, Paradox of Place: Contemporary Korean Art.

Here’s Hyperallergic on the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, the first US exhibition of abstract art created exclusively by women of color; SAM’s 2015 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize-winner Brenna Youngblood is included.

Local News

The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture announced last week that funding has been increased for its Cultural Facilities Fund, which supports capital projects for arts and cultural organizations (hurray!).

Inter/National News

Jets to Marfa! This October, Solange will perform in Marfa, Texas, in front of Donald Judd’s “15 Untitled Works in Concrete.”

Now streaming on Netflix: Kino Lorber’s collection “The Pioneers of African-American Cinema.” Learn more and watch a video about the restoration process.

Artnet collects the thoughts of 12 art historians and scholars on the debate over what to do with Confederate monuments.

And Finally

Put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it: A Portsmouth, Virginia resident has an idea for his town’s Confederate monument: replace it with one of Portsmouth native Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott.

– Rachel Eggers, Manager of Public Relations

Image: A visitor takes in Haegue Yang’s Female Natives series in Paradox of Place: Contemporary Korean Art, Photo: Mark Woods.
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