Muse/News: Art Doctor, Fall Reading, and Dürer’s Spite

SAM News

“Behind the scenes at SAM’s new Asian art conservation studio”: For the Seattle Times’ Pacific Northwest Magazine, Brendan Kiley takes you into SAM’s Atsuhiko and Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Conservation Center and introduces to you to Tanya Uyeda, the center’s new conservator of East Asian paintings.

“Now that SAM has its own studio and conservator—with plans to hire others, likely with Chinese or Korean expertise—it hopes to treat works not only from its own collection, but collections around the country. From here on out, Uyeda expects to be doing a lot of surgery.”

Here’s a Seattle Times reader “rave” for the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s 2020 remodel. Good news: You’ve now got one more day a week to visit our Art Deco gem; it’s now open Thursdays as well as Friday–Sunday. 

Among The Seattle Times’ Margo Vansynghel’s “Must-see Seattle-area exhibits in October” is a free book launch event. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore debuts Touching the Art at SAM on Sunday, October 15. Andrew Engelson also recommended the book in “New Local Releases to Read This Fall” in The Stranger’s fall Art and Performance Quarterly.

“No, I’m not recommending an art show where you’re allowed to touch the art. But I promise that you’ll feel like you’re up close with the paintings local writer Mattilda B. Sycamore describes in her new—and yes, touching—memoir.”

Local News

Get your fall reading list together with this Seattle Met list of Washington State Book Awards winners and finalists.

Whether you made it or missed it, relive the joy of Walk the Block at Wa Na Wari

Vansynghel also reported on the departure of E. Michael Whittington as the executive director of the Bellevue Arts Museum. Kate Casprowiak Scher has been named interim executive director.

“Scher—who’d already been volunteering with the museum—has already jumped into the fray, connecting with staff and assuming Whittington’s responsibilities to make the transition as smooth as possible.”

Inter/National News

Farah Nayeri for the New York Times Magazine on Louvre director Laurence des Cars’s “big plans for the world’s most visited museum.”

CBS Sunday Morning shared highlights “from hip hop to Picasso” in the upcoming arts season. There’s even a mention of Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec, on view through December 3 at the Seattle Asian Art Museum!

A spicy headline, via Adam Schrader for Artnet: “Albrecht Dürer Painted Himself Into a 16th-Century Altarpiece to Spite a Patron Who Paid Him Poorly, New Research Suggests.”

“It’s essentially him saying, ‘this is not actually about you as a patron, Mr. Heller. This is art and this will endure and will be looked at in 500 years’ time.’”

And Finally

“The great Seattle sitcom.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.