Artist Nicholas Galanin Invites You
“I’ve composed a new American national anthem: take a knee and scream until you can’t breathe.” – Nicholas Galanin
An invitation, a provocation, a plea: The startling neon artwork on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry is all of these things. Commissioned by SAM to create a new work for its reimagined American art galleries, Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangaẋ) responded with the scorching Neon American Anthem (2023), a “participatory performance” installation comprised of text in custom neon and welcome mats that offers visitors a place to engage their voice, body, and mind in a cathartic experience.
The project to dramatically transform the museum’s American art galleries first opened in October 2022. It came together in an inclusive-planning model as part of SAM’s commitment to centering equity at the museum. The effort was led by Theresa Papanikolas, Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art, in collaboration with Curator of Native American Art Barbara Brotherton, who retired at the end of 2022, along with other SAM staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community.
Galanin is one of the three contemporary artists who worked with SAM, and his work debuted in April 2023. Wendy Red Star’s (Apsáalooke,) lightbox installation, Áakiiwilaxpaake (People of the Earth) (2022) and Inye Wokoma’s curated gallery, Reimagining Regionalism, both went on view with the exhibition’s opening. Red Star’s work is now part of SAM’s permanent collection.
Neon American Anthem fills the gallery with white light from a custom neon installation that offers a proclamation and an invitation in all-caps text: “I’ve composed a new American national anthem: take a knee and scream until you can’t breathe.” On the floor lies a grid of “Daisy Doormats,” the iconic AstroTurf welcome mats with plastic daisies in the corners; this symbol of Americana becomes both unsettling and humorously ironic in this setting. Visitors ring out with sounds of protest, mourning, or celebration, their sounds filling the museum’s spaces.
In an artist’s statement, Galanin says, “The neon sign embodies capitalism, its text a pointed reference to the murders of Eric Garner, George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, and all people of color who have been murdered at the hands of police and agents of the American state. Asking participants to take a knee is a position of deference and worship turned refusal. Asking them to scream until they can’t breathe encompasses protest and prayer aimed at tearing down the systems built to enforce Whiteness, White privilege, heteropatriarchy, and capitalist control.”
SAM is proud to have hosted this powerful artwork that takes on American history and seeks to inspire a new future. May the sounds—and ideas—it has inspired echo for years to come.
– Rachel Eggers, Associate Director of Public Relations
Photo: Nicholas Galanin by Alborz Kamalizad.