Muse/News: Physicality at SAM, labs at the new Burke, and the wonder of Beverly Pepper

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Sep 23 2019

Muse/News: Physicality at SAM, labs at the new Burke, and the wonder of Beverly Pepper

SAM News

Fall arts previews continue hitting newsstands! The New York Times and The Seattle Times both recommend our major fall exhibition, Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum.

“. . . physicality will be on full, glorious display at the Seattle Art Museum.”

Artnet and In Other Words released their findings and features on the representation of women in the art world. SAM was one of 26 prominent American museums to share data about their acquisitions and exhibitions. The takeaway? While all museums claim greater attention to women artists, “just 11 percent of all acquisitions and 14 percent of exhibitions over the past decade were of work by female artists.”

Local News

Don’t miss the Seattle Times’ full fall arts coverage—which recommends getting out of the house to experience art, with recommendations for music, theater, books, and more.

Crosscut’s Samantha Allen asks what’s lost when a city defined by its beloved neon signs makes the shift to LED.

Press got to visit the new Burke Museum recently. Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne wasn’t overly impressed with the mastodon and T-rex skulls, but loved the labs.

“All over the museum—sometimes behind glass, but also out in the open—you see people doing the actual work of keeping natural history and science alive.”

Inter/National News

Artsy is out with its “Vanguard” list for 2019, with their picks for artists who are “emerging,” “newly established,” and “getting their due”—including SAM favorites Jeffrey Gibson, Ebony G. Patterson, and Jacolby Satterwhite.

Here’s Artnet on a weathered oil painting depicting Saint Jerome that turned out to be by Anthony van Dyck. Art collector Albert B. Roberts picked it up at an auction for $600; it’s now on view at the Albany Institute of History & Art.

Megan O’Grady for the New York Times Style Magazine on Beverly Pepper, the sculptor whose Persephone Unbound and Perre’s Ventaglio III grace the Olympic Sculpture Park.

“Public art can sometimes feel ponderously corporate or impersonal, but the unroofed splendor of Pepper’s site-specific works can prompt unexpectedly potent encounters . . . They are framing devices for wonderment.”

And Finally

A Friday for the future.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Danae, 1544–45, Titian, Italian, 1488/90–1576, oil on canvas, 34 15/16 x 44 3/4 in., Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.

Muse/News: Hot arts fall, recycled art, and the long climb of Betye

Rachel Eggers on Sep 9 2019

Muse/News: Hot arts fall, recycled art, and the long climb of Betye

SAM News

Every week, Jasmyne Keimig of the Stranger looks closely at one artwork that’s “Currently Hanging.” Last week, she focused on Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) by Lucian Freud, now on view at SAM as part of an iterative single-painting show honoring Paul Allen, A Cultural Legacy.

“There’s a stiltedness to the scene, a sense of uneasiness between the figures, that betrays a certain uncomfortable and strange family dynamic.” 

Out goes hot girl summer, in comes hot arts fall. Seattle Magazine’s fall arts preview recommends Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum, the “throbbingly dramatic” major exhibition opening October 17.

Local News

Gallery watch! Jasmyne Keimig shares the good news on Slog: the J. Rinehart Gallery officially has “a physical space, baby.”

Real Change’s Lisa Edge talks with Osa Elaiho, whose work is included in a group show at Columbia City Gallery. Music and family are what inspire the artist’s mixed-media paintings.

What a dump: Crosscut’s Brangien Davis visits the Recology CleanScapes recycling facility and meets its two current artists-in-residence.

“Just as WALL-E surfs the garbage heaps for treasures to take home — a bobblehead dog toy, a golden trophy, a hinged ring box — artists in residence roam the space with an eye out for intriguing items — a toy gun, a set of new knives, the detritus from an entire bachelorette party.”

Inter/National News

Artnet’s Taylor Defoe profiles Ivory Coast-based artist Laetitia Ky, who “makes unbelievably inventive sculptures with her hair.”

Following the devastation of Hurricane Dorian on the Bahamas, the Pérez Art Museum Miami and partners are collecting urgently needed supplies.

The New York Times’ Holland Cotter on the long, viable career—and sudden spotlight, with two major museum solo shows this fall—of Betye Saar.

“Because it’s about time!” she says. “I’ve had to wait till I’m practically 100.”

And Finally

Here’s a way to donate to those affected by Hurricane Dorian.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau), 1981–1983, Lucian Freud, British, 1922–2011, oil on canvas, 73 x 78 in., Paul G. Allen Family Collection, © The Lucian Freud Archive/Bridgeman Images.

SAM Gallery Artist Kellie Talbot Travels for Art

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Sep 4 2019

SAM Gallery Artist Kellie Talbot Travels for Art

SAM Gallery artist Kellie Talbot travels across the country with her husband, cat, and duck, in a truck pulling her mobile studio, an Airstream trailer they named Mr. Salsa. Kellie Talbot’s America on view at SAM Gallery September 4–29, showcases some of her newest works. Talbot has established a national reputation for her oil paintings of the neon signs scattered across America. In the last two years, her family has driven 36,000 miles, through 29 states, in pursuit of source material for her paintings. She plans her route, knowing where certain signs are located, but is always open to possibilities and unexpected opportunities. Some of her favorite signs and memories come from happening upon them. One unexpected ice storm led them to Vaughn, NM (population 446), where Talbot found one neon sign after another.  She was out in the snow, climbing on her Airstream trailer to get photographs for future paintings. When she’s traveling the country, Talbot says “I photograph almost every sign I come across because when I am in collecting mode I don’t want to pass up any potential. Sometimes it’s more obvious. Some of those obvious ones have an iconic shape or beautiful neon that just demands to be painted.”

Once Talbot returns to her studio in Seattle or New Orleans, she relies on reference photos from her trip, to paint photorealist paintings of the signs that represent the landscape of American artifacts, craftsmanship, and history. Talbot describes how “once I am in my studio I spend a lot of time with my reference material planning out a body of work. I like to have a balance of close-ups mixed with landscapes. I like there to be a push and pull of sorts. Some signs are small but I paint them big while others I can enlarge just portions. Almost every sign has the potential to be painted. I just have to find the aspect of that sign I want to paint.”  Talbot is often drawn to a particular letter or shadows from a sign. Focusing on a smaller portion of the sign allows the viewer to enjoy the shapes, shadows, and colors in a new way. Talbot intentionally includes the rust and decay in the neon signs she paints. These details aren’t negatives to the artist, they are signs of time and experience, both an elegy and a hope.

Meet the artist at the opening reception on Thursday, September 5, 6–7:30 pm at SAM Gallery.

– Pamela Jaynes, SAM Gallery Coordinator

Image: Courtesy of the artist.

Muse/News: SAM award news, the Space Needle is a she, and Dr. Seuss at the museum

Nina Dubinsky on Sep 3 2019

Muse/News: SAM award news, the Space Needle is a she, and Dr. Seuss at the museum

SAM News

Last week, SAM announced the finalists for this year’s Betty Bowen Award: Andrea Joyce Heimer, Anthony Hudson, Adair Rutledge, Lynne Siefert, and Anthony White.

The solo exhibition of the 2018 winner, Natalie Ball, was reviewed in Art & Object.

“Subverting tropes about Native American identity and art by repurposing familiar materials, Ball points out the absurdity of our assumptions.”

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is on regal display on the cover of this week’s Real Change; inside, don’t miss Lisa Edge’s review of the installation.

“Let’s have positive images of ourselves that are done with love,” said Muholi. “Let us consume this self-love because our forefathers, our foremothers that came before us never had the opportunity to speak for themselves.”

Local News

“The Space Needle is a she.” Crosscut’s Brangien Davis on a documentary exploring the hidden history of Seattle’s iconic landmark: its shape may have been inspired by a Black dancer named Syvilla Fort.

The City’s Art Beat Blog has a recap of the recent Creative Advantage Arts Partner Summer Institute, held at SAM; this year’s theme was “exploring the local.”

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig goes home to Wa Na Wari, reviewing the center’s newest show featuring work by several artists, including Nastassja Swift’s video of masked dancers.

“Swift’s video, no more than 10 minutes long, grapples with the concept of home, being home, having a home, feeling at home in one’s body and community. In that way, it fits well at Wa Na Wari. Where do we belong?”

Inter/National News

Artforum reports that Werner Kramarsky passed away this week at the age of 93; a formidable collector, he donated 25 drawings to SAM over the years.

Artnet’s Ben Davis takes a look at Dia:Beacon’s new permanent gallery dedicated to Sam Gilliam and his signature “drape” paintings.

The New York Times’ Guy Trebay attends the 16th annual edition of the influential and popular International Folk Art Market, which explodes the art-world schism between fine art and craft.

“It comes out of nowhere, out of nothing,” he added. “There’s not a tradition for it. It’s just some guy saying, ‘I want to make this thing.”

And Finally

Double Dr. Seuss news: Oh, the museums you’ll go!

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Snake” at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Layerless freedom, #JayDoodles, and Art Boys

Nina Dubinsky on Aug 26 2019

Muse/News: Layerless freedom, #JayDoodles, and Art Boys

SAM News

In honor of Pacific Northwest Black Pride, Crystal Paul, Erika Schultz, and Corinne Chin of The Seattle Times presents a multimedia story exploring identity and freedom with 10 Black, queer Seattleites.

In a related story, they recreated an intimate conversation that Black, queer artists recently had with Zanele Muholi, talking through their reactions to the SAM show, Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness.

Here’s Gregory Scruggs for the Stranger, interviewing Brazilian artist Regina Silveira about her Olympic Sculpture Park site-specific installation Octopus Wrap, the goal of art, and the relative concrete jungles of Seattle and São Paulo.

Seattle Met’s September issue has hit newsstands. Their fall arts preview leads with a story on the new directors at SAM, the Symphony, and the Opera—and their visions for the future. SAM’s new director Amada Cruz starts in mid-September!

“The tradition of art museums is that they’re closed off repositories of precious works of art,” [Cruz] says. “How do we open ourselves up so that museums can become part of everybody’s daily life?”

Local News

The Seattle Times’ Alan Berner captured some terrific shots (as usual) of an installation happening at the Burke Museum: a huge mural by artist RYAN! Feddersen.

Watch this Crosscut video featuring cool footage of the viaduct “unmaking” and a conversation with architect David Miller about the future of the waterfront.

#JayDoodles: It’s a thing. SAM’s own Chiyo Ishikawa is among the art-world heavies offering their takes on Governor Jay Inslee’s lighthearted artistic practice in this Seattle Times story.

“The figure in the boat could represent his campaign: Rowing against the stream!”

Inter/National News

The MCA Denver has named Nora Burnett Abrams its new director, reports the New York Times. She’s been a curator at the museum for the last 10 years.

Alex Needham, an arts editor at the Guardian, tweeted this week that curators shouldn’t be named in show reviews. Artnet’s Naomi Rea reports on the ensuing Twitter storm.

Artnet’s Caroline Goldstein reports on the ABC casting notice that may bring so-called Art Boys to network television.

“The dashing Art Boy, on the other hand, is more of a rosé and tapas type. Who doesn’t want to watch a show about him?”

And Finally

Happy birthday, Dorothy Parker.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Installation view “Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness,” Seattle Art Museum, 2019.



Radical Responses with Allison Kudla

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 21 2019

Radical Responses with Allison Kudla

Beckoning visitors at the end of a long hallway inside Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement is an interactive art activity inviting visitors to experiment with ideas connected to the exhibition. Created by artist Allison Kudla, visitors build designs using small pieces of discarded plastic pulled from ocean beaches through community clean up events, organized by the non-profit group Ocean Blue Project. As you build your design a camera captures the work, and the image, translated through a computer program, is projected into a kaleidoscopic pattern on the wall, mimicking the William Morris wallpaper surrounding it. You have until September 8 to see the exhibition, featuring a range of works by Morris and his peers, and to interact with Kudla’s art activity in the galleries.

Awarded a PhD in 2011 from the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), Kudla originally titled the work Radical Anthropocene, to focus on human activity as the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Prior to her PhD work, Kudla earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2002, with an emphasis on art and technology studies. We sat down with the artist to discuss this engaging art interactive, hear from her below!

SAM: Tell us about your process creating this project.

Allison Kudla: The Radical Anthropocene project was based on a prior work I created for Summer at SAM in 2015. That work, titled Digital Kaleidoscopes of Nature, was an interactive workshop wherein people visiting the Olympic Sculpture Park could select from plant cuttings from the park to create digital kaleidoscopes. SAM approached me to adapt the project to become a wallpaper, rather than a circular kaleidoscope, that would be placed in response to William Morris’ wallpaper.

When considering the material or objects to be used to create the wallpaper, I thought about Morris, his ethics, values, and poetry. I knew I didn’t want to buy mass-produced items, but I did want to talk about industry and where we have come since Morris’ era. His care for our relationship to nature and warning of the future that might occur due to industrialization, were the cohering agents when I determined what the objects to use in creating the digital wallpaper. We are in the middle of a waste crisis on multiple levels. Perhaps the Naturalists of the Anthropocene are those that are working to clean up, invent sustainable materials, and regenerate human culture on the planet.

The Ocean Blue Project, based in Oregon, regularly organizes community beach cleanups to extract the detritus of industrialization from the ocean. The oft-called “marine debris” that was sent to me for selection and placement included plastic forms, shapes, textures and colors—some recognizable objects, others only fragments, and all created through a process of industrialization.

I teamed up with my colleague, Dr. David Gibbs, a senior research scientist at ISB, who created the project’s code in Python. We worked collaboratively through GitHub with SAM’s Cooper Whitlow to complete the project

Do you collaborate with people in other disciplines on a regular basis?

Yes, absolutely. I think working with people in other disciplines is mutually beneficial. Cross- or interdisciplinary pursuits tend to push us out of our comfort zone. If I can work as a colleague with a scientist, and a scientist can work as a colleague with an artist, we are both getting an opportunity to be in the imposter zone. Though this word, imposter, may have negative connotations, the truth is that when we feel this way we are often learning new things, growing, beginning to think from a different perspective, and potentially forming new views of our work. This is inherently positive. Also, it is fun to work with other people, so there are social aspects to that as well.

What brought you to pursue a PhD in the intersection of Art and Science?

I studied fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This trailblazing school didn’t require their students to pick one discipline, but rather let the course catalog be exactly that; a catalog. Each semester I would pick my classes thinking about what I was genuinely interested in learning. I didn’t know what kind of artist I wanted to be when I started there, but by the end, after moving through painting and fiber arts into video and finally art and technology, I realized that it was the creation of new art forms and new knowledge where I found the most satisfaction. When I joined the PhD program at UW, DXARTS (Digital Arts and Experimental Media), it was in its first year. Not only was it a pioneering new program, it was founded on exploring cutting-edge, research-based art. I decided to take the X in DXARTS and run with it. Through that, I established a practice intersecting experimental biology, specifically plant biology, with computer-aided design and fabrication processes.

Where else can we see your work?

Due to the living nature of many of my works, they often are only presented when specific facilities and resources are secured, and typically solely for the purpose of creating a cultural experience for an audience. In short, my work, because it is living, is very hard to collect and often tricky or expensive to produce. When it is produced, it has a finite duration and potentially unknown outcomes, thus making it a “risky” choice for many typical arts establishments. Despite those challenges, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France recently acquired one of my most complex works, “The Capacity for (Urban Eden, Human Error).” It was an amazing experience to transfer the knowledge of the piece to the museum and have valuable conversations with the technology team and the collections managers about not only the maintenance of the living work during the two-month lifespan of when it is on display, but also on the conservation of the whole system for decades to come.

What do you plan to do with the images created from the in-gallery experience at SAM?

It is another research project for me! I am fascinated by what people choose to “save” or determine as beautiful in the context of the activity. I am also fascinated by patterns and am interested in creating interactive projects where the audience is engaged in creating the work and feeding back into the system itself. In the future, I hope to use the images as a negative control for a classification system I plan to develop around the history of pattern-making using data science and libraries of ornamental patterns. I have been attempting to garner resources to move this project forward, but as you can imagine, longer-term funding in fringe areas like this can be hard to find.

For now, I created this compilation of several of the hundreds of patterns that were saved.

Images: Courtesy of Allison Kudla

Muse/News: A radical age, imagined futures, and refugee stories

Rachel Eggers on Aug 19 2019

Muse/News: A radical age, imagined futures, and refugee stories

SAM News

The Stranger’s Philosopher-In-Residence Charles Mudede reviews Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement, describing the historical context for what makes it radical.

“The humans of our times are so used to kitsch. But for the Victorians, it was completely new. It was radical. This is the mind-set the exhibit wants us to enter: one that had no past, only the future. The Victorian age is the cradle of our post-post-postmodern times.”

“Why see one sculpture when you can see nine acres of them?” Business Insider on popular US tourist traps and where to go instead—like SAM’s Olympic Sculpture Park.

Local News

Crosscut’s Misha Berson on “The Bar Plays,” two plays set in bars presented in a real-life “venerable gathering place,” Washington Hall.

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig visits Juventino Aranda’s show at Greg Kucera, In Dreams I Once Believed There Was a Future, which features enlarged and edited pages from Little Golden Books.

Real Change’s Lisa Edge on the “Black celestial sovereignty” in the work of Robert Pruitt; his solo show is now on view at Koplin Del Rio gallery.

“The thing that we’re living under doesn’t seem to be working for us, so maybe we need to imagine a new thing,” said Pruitt. “Myth, science fiction, all of that is a way to kind of for me to think about another kind of way of living.”

Inter/National News

Just asking: should we maybe have left these where they were? Artnet reports on the “array of amulets, gems, and lucky charms” found at Pompeii that researchers believe belonged to a female sorcerer.

Now on view at DC’s National Gallery of Art: The Life of Animals in Japanese Art, featuring “300 works drawn from 66 Japanese institutions and 30 American collections” that are all about animals (!).

“Poignant, solemn and utterly shaming”: The New York Times’ Jason Farago reviews The Warmth of Other Suns, a thematic exhibition on the global refugee crisis at the Philips Collection.

“Together they outline a more fraught view of the art of the last century, in which the refugee is not an outsider looking in, but a central actor in the writing of a global culture. ‘Refugees,’ Arendt wrote in 1943, ‘represent the vanguard of their peoples — if they keep their identity.’”

And Finally

One solution for the sad lunch break.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement, Seattle Art Museum, 2019.

SAM Gallery Artist Creates a Healing Environment

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 14 2019

SAM Gallery Artist Creates a Healing Environment

For her recent commission for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA), SAM Gallery artist Niki Keenan created 11 paintings focused on healing environments. SCCA brings together the leading research teams and cancer specialists of Fred Hutch, Seattle Children’s, and UW Medicine. The treatment rooms in their newly expanded SCCA outpatient clinic in South Lake Union feature Keenan’s work.

Niki Keenan’s paintings are inspired by the natural world, specifically sunrises and sunsets in Seattle. She uses dynamic, bold colors to paint water scenes with bridges and reflections from the vantage point of a boat. Keenan writes, “Each of the paintings in this series depicts a Pacific Northwest bridge, most of them are in Washington State, one is in British Columbia, Canada. I use these bridges as a way to frame the sky, as a way to show off the sun’s rays dancing around the architecture and as an anchor to a specific place. These brilliant sunsets and sunrises are happening all around us and by showing them happening in places we recognize, it makes the experience a shared one. Also, I believe bridges are symbolic of journeys in that they help us get where we want to go.”

In the new treatment rooms at SCCA, Keenan hopes her paintings will help transport viewers and give them something new to focus on, during their treatments. She believes “being transported during times of stress and uncertainty, is such a gift and so vital for healing. Paintings can literally turn a regular wall into a portal and the place you get to go in my paintings is full of hope, happiness, light.”

Keenan began showing her work at the SAM Gallery in 2018 and was quickly discovered by local collectors. SAM Gallery supports local artists and their careers by increasing their exposure and finding audiences for their work. 

– Pamela Jaynes, SAM Gallery Coordinator

Photo: Dave Keenan. Images: Niki Keenan.

Muse/News: Supporting change, learning a city by foot, and farewells to Toni Morrison

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Aug 12 2019

Muse/News: Supporting change, learning a city by foot, and farewells to Toni Morrison

SAM News

SAM director and CEO Kimerly Rorschach shared the museum’s position on proposed changes to Washington State’s overtime rules. These changes are long overdue, and SAM has been a leader in implementing adjustments. However, a slower ramp-up would be more sustainable for non-profits.

Local News

Marcus Harrison Green of the Seattle Times on Blood Lines, Time Lines, Red Lines, the Warren Pope solo show now on view at NAAM that explores the city’s history of racist housing policies.

“Pulling a reverse Henry David Thoreau”: Crosscut’s Brangien Davis on Seattle Walk Report, the comic that explores the magic of the city by foot. Its anonymous creator will name herself soon!

With “Currently Hanging,” The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig gets close to an artwork. Here, she visits a figurative gold sculpture by Casey Curran that echoes previous works by Anthony White and Tessa Hulls.

“The sculpture reminds me of The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa-meets-the-alien-from-Annihilation-meets-Rodin’s-Thinker. All things I love.”

Inter/National News

“The first Abstract Expressionist”: Who would you name? The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has a new exhibition that may answer that question.

DCist on the Phillips Collection’s new exhibition of 100 works by 75 artists on global displacement; director Klaus Ottmann calls it “the most ambitious exhibition the museum has ever undertaken.”

Author Toni Morrison died this week at the age of 88. This New York Times obituary celebrates her “luminous, incantatory prose resembling that of no other writer in English.”

“Ms. Morrison animated that reality in prose that rings with the cadences of black oral tradition. Her plots are dreamlike and nonlinear, spooling backward and forward in time as though characters bring the entire weight of history to bear on their every act.”

And Finally

Quiet As It’s Kept.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

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

Muse/News: Muholi recommended, radical love, and a new look at Basquiat

Rachel Eggers on Aug 5 2019

Muse/News: Muholi recommended, radical love, and a new look at Basquiat

SAM News

Aesthetica makes five recommendations from around the world to see, including Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness at SAM.

Seattle Magazine is out with their list of the “21 Best Things To Do in Seattle in August 2019.” Remix at the Olympic Sculpture Park makes the cut.

Local News

The Seattle jazz scene has two sad losses to report: the closure of legendary club Tula’s at the end of September, and the retirement of Clarence Acox, Garfield High School’s jazz band director.

In addition to their booth-to-booth coverage of this past weekend’s Seattle Art Fair, Crosscut has pieces by Emily Pothast and Margo Vansynghel examining the various outcomes of the Fair on the local art scene.

The Big Art Weekend wouldn’t be complete without the incredible satellite events; here’s Gayle Clemans for the Seattle Times on the free festival:festival, which also took place over the weekend (SAM’s David Rue is one of the curators!).

“The festival will highlight ‘artist-driven portraits of identity,’ which will take many forms including visual art and performance, according to co-curator and dance artist David Rue. ‘We’re using this approach so that artists can provide a counterpoint to the dominant narrative told about people that look like them while celebrating the power of culturally responsive rigor.’”

Inter/National News

Baltimore is great city full of great people. And now this! Artnet reports that the Baltimore Museum of Art will dedicate “a year’s worth of exhibitions dedicated to female-identifying artists throughout 2020.”

“What Does Radical Love Look Like?” Hyperallergic’s Seph Rodney explores that question at the Ford Foundation Gallery’s latest show, featuring work by Athi-Patra Ruga, Lina Puerta, and Ebony G. Patterson.

The New York Times has a fascinating look Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story at the Guggenheim; curated by Chaédria LaBouvier, the show centers on a painting that depicts the tragic death of a young Black artist.

‘”This is someone becoming — finding themselves, finding their voice, finding their practice,’ Ms. LaBouvier said. ‘I didn’t want to make him into a myth, or make him into a sort of trauma-porn story either. And I thought the best way to do that was to take a step back and let him speak for himself.’”

And Finally

Evergreen story.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: A legacy on view, Springfield in Tacoma, and blind spots

Rachel Eggers on Jul 29 2019

Muse/News: A legacy on view, Springfield in Tacoma, and blind spots

SAM News

 A Cultural Legacy: A Series of Paintings from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection is now on view at SAM. This iterative single-painting exhibition celebrates the legacy of Paul Allen. Artdaily, Artnet, Geekwire and Patch all shared the news.

The Seattle Times includes SAM show Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness on their “Look Ahead” list of recommendations for the month of August, calling their portraits “a soul-shaking experience.”

And Seattle Met recommends Remix, our “bona fide fete,” on their list of “13 Seattle Events to Catch This August.” Get your tickets now for another radical edition of our art-filled, body-moving, late-night out.

Local News

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig devotes the recent “Currently Hanging” post to Birmingham by Toyin Ojih Odutola, now on view at the Frye Art Museum.

The most recent edition of Crosscut’s arts newsletter by Brangien Davis includes a shout-out to the Seattle Arts Voter Guide, created by Seattle University students in a Public Policy and the Arts class.

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores on the Tacoma Art Museum’s new exhibition, Bart at TAM, featuring over 150 cels of hand-drawn art from The Simpsons.

“The cels in the exhibit come from Heeter’s personal collection of more than 900 Simpsons animations, which he started collecting in the early ’90s. ‘I had a full head of hair when I started collecting and now it’s all gone,’ he says.”

Inter/National News

Read about 2017 Knight Lawrence Prize-winner Sondra Perry’s new show A Terrible Thing, “an institutional critique of MoCA Cleveland.”

Great news reported by Artnet’s Sarah Cascone: “A consortium of foundations … has bought the historic archives of Johnson Publishing, the Chicago-based company behind Ebony and Jet magazines.”

Don’t miss this conversation-starting New York Times piece by Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang that calls for more critics of color.

“…the spaces in media where national mythologies are articulated, debated and affirmed are still largely segregated. The conversation about our collective imagination has the same blind spots as our political discourse.”

And Finally

Keep an eye out for an 8-foot-tall yellow bird.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Muse/News: Muholi’s gaze, disco photographs, and Space Age fashion

Rachel Eggers on Jul 22 2019

Muse/News: Muholi’s gaze, disco photographs, and Space Age fashion

SAM News

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis reviews Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, saying the self-portraits “stare right back at you—and, unlike you, they don’t blink.”

“Throughout it all Muholi looks straight at us with those unflinching, wide-open eyes. ‘Yes?’ they seem to say. And also: ‘I see what you see when you see me.’”

Rainy Julys mean MOVIES. Have you been to our new film series, Comedy Gold from the American Cinema? Check out films every Thursday night recommended by Seattle Magazine and The Stranger, now through August 15.

Local News

The Stranger’s Dave Segal on the Nordic Museum’s exhibition of photography by Hasse Persson, who captured some of the most important political and cultural moments in America from 1968-1980—including shenanigans at Studio 54.

The Seattle Times’ Moira Macdonald goes to camp, checking out the Met’s latest fashion exhibition—and finding some resonances in MOHAI’s current show of Northwest style.

Farewell to Marvin Oliver, artist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington, who died this week at the age of 73.

“’We have lost an amazing mentor and elder in our community and his legacy will live on,’ Olsen said. ‘And those of us who understand his vision and mission to support the Native students and enhance the visibility of Native art and culture will make him and keep him proud and forge on with his legacy.’”

Inter/National News

Pictures worth a thousand (and more) frames: here’s Artsy on six films inspired by famous photographs.

Farewell to Philip G. Freelon, who was “arguably the most significant African-American architect in recent history.” He died recently at the age of 66.

Space seems to be on everyone’s mind. Enter the Brooklyn Museum, with their new retrospective Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion, full of his “youth-fueled modernism” aesthetic.

“They were garments that projected utility but were irresistibly sleek and sexily alienish; clinically pristine, yet sinuous—all the appeal of an Eero Saarinen Tulip chair, but made for the body.”

And Finally

So the trailer for CATS happened. The Internet had some feelings.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Authentic relationships, living museums, and oysters: SAM goes to New Orleans

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jul 17 2019

Authentic relationships, living museums, and oysters: SAM goes to New Orleans

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) brings together museums across the country—representing more than 35,000 individual museum professionals and volunteers, institutions, and corporate partners—to share knowledge, best practices, and standards of excellence. Every year, AAM hosts an Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo, featuring interactive sessions covering all aspects of the museum field, keynote talks, book readings, vendor presentations, and parties. Held in a different city every year, the host city often guides the content and experience of the attendees, especially when it comes to doing what museum professionals love to do: visit museums. Well, and eat.

This year’s annual meeting was held May 19–22 in New Orleans. Here are three reflections from SAM staff on what they learned, experienced, and ate in NOLA.

David Rue, Public Engagement Associate

Ongoing (and authentic) relationship building is the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the 2019 AAM annual meeting. After connecting with Lauren Zelaya, Brooklyn Museum’s Assistant Curator of Public Programs and Nico Wheadon, Studio Museum Harlem’s former Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement in 2017, we felt a mutual desire to continue a professional relationship of idea-sharing and thought that AAM would be a great opportunity to continue the conversation. In our session, we provided three different institutional perspectives on how to use public and educational programs to implement racial equity work both internally and externally. Getting to know and learn from my co-presenters undoubtedly help me grow as an arts professional. It’s a prime example of how important it is to reach out to those that are doing work that is similar to your own.   

Apart from a fun and exciting panel discussion, it was also my first time visiting New Orleans and it’s safe to say I fell in love. The city, the people, the art, and THE FOOD! It felt great representing SAM at such a large conference and in such a beautiful part of the world.

Philip Nadasdy, Associate Director of Public Engagement

Beyond full days of sessions, keynotes, and meetups, one of the distinct benefits of any AAM annual meeting is the opportunity to visit cultural organizations that help comprise the host city’s identity—and there is no city like New Orleans. A more recent addition to the city is the Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum which opened in 2013 with a mission “to promote community empowerment through remembering the past, sharing stories of the present, and planning for the future.”

The museum resides on the corner of a residential street in a six-room house converted into gallery and programming spaces. The Lower Ninth Ward is perhaps most commonly known as the neighborhood hit hardest by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but the Living Museum tells a more comprehensive history of the neighborhood’s geography, people, and culture—while amplifying the ongoing and future community-based efforts to strengthen the lives of people living in the Lower Ninth.

While the museum’s footprint is small, the experience is complex in approach, rigorous in interpretation, and deeply effective. The museum takes the long view of the neighborhood’s history: the geologic and natural ecosystem before land development and industry; Indigenous cultures of the region; colonial beginnings as sugar plantation land; the subsequent growth as a predominantly Black and working-class neighborhood, rich in culture and with an inclination towards resiliency and a do-it-ourselves activism, amidst historically racist and neglectful policymaking and lack of infrastructure investment.

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath are given rightful attention, providing deeper insight into the stories of the residents through oral histories, photographs, art installations, and video that underline the devastation not only of the storm and floods, but of the ongoing systemic forms of oppression and racism that members of the community faced (and continue to confront) as their homes and livelihoods were destroyed.

As in its name, this is a living museum, and while the Lower Ninth’s history is on full display, so too are the ongoing efforts to rebuild and strengthen the community, in which the museum plays an important role through wellness, arts, afterschool programming for youth, and hosting community wealth building opportunities, professional training, and education programming for adults.

In 2012, the city began limiting voyeuristic Hurricane Katrina bus tours of the Lower Ninth, but similar versions continue to operate today. The Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum stands as an antidote to that exploitative version of learning about a place and people—a museum built by and for the community that tells their own stories.

Rachel Eggers, Manager of Public Relations

I arrived in New Orleans the day before sessions began, just as night began to fall. I walked the streets of the French Quarter and posted up at a red-lit oyster bar to experience Gulf oysters; in Seattle it’s all brine and mignonette, there it’s horseradish, hot sauce, and conversation. I was in love with the city already.

Over the next two days, I attended sessions on public policy, crisis communications, and participatory exhibitions. A standout was the conversation-starting keynote by art curator and writer Kimberly Drew. My favorite session was TrendsWatch, the annual forecasting report led by Elizabeth Merritt, Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums. In her work, she identifies what the field needs to be planning for. She identified five trends: truth & trust, blockchain technology, decolonization efforts, homelessness & housing insecurity, and self-care. Phrases that I heard throughout the conference resonated with me and how I approach my work and the work we’re trying to do at SAM: bearing witness, democratic meaning-making, and mission-led social justice stances. 

The annual meeting is more than, well, meetings. I also caught a performance by Big Queen Cherice Harrison-Nelson of the Guardians of the Flame and a reading by legendary culinary historian Jessica B. Harris. At the amazing closing night party, I walked through the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, which simply astounded me. On view was Vernacular Voices, featuring work by Self-Taught, Outsider and Visionary artists; the paintings of Clementine Hunter were a revelation.

On my final morning, I took a streetcar (no, it wasn’t called Desire) to the New Orleans Museum of Art, where I saw photographs from Rich Frishman’s Ghosts of Segregation series; Will Ryman’s massive gold-painted log cabin America, chronicling the violence of capitalism; and yes, a monumental mural painting by Clementine Hunter.

I fell in love with New Orleans; from the cats in the streets and the live jazz and Sazeracs at Snug Harbor, to the gigantic Gulf oysters and the stunning art and people, it’s a place with a gift for life. I left inspired about the possibilities for cities and for cultural institutions to better people’s lives. 

– Rachel Eggers, Manager of Public Relations

Images: David Rue with co-presenters Chayanne Marcano (Studio Museum of Harlem) and Lauren Zelaya (Brooklyn Museum). Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum, photos: Philip Nadasdy. Oyster-getting and gabbing with famed shucker “Stormin” Norman Conerly at Acme Oyster House. Harvesting Gourds near the African House and Wash Day Near Ghana House, Melrose Plantation (1959) by Clementine Hunter at the New Orleans Museum of Art, photos: Rachel Eggers.

Muse/News: Muholi arrives, an unlovable tree, and monuments to rad Women

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jul 15 2019

Muse/News: Muholi arrives, an unlovable tree, and monuments to rad Women

SAM News

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is now on view at SAM, and it’s not to be missed. Here’s Elena Martinique for Widewalls and Victoria Valentine of Culture Type on the South African visual activist’s work.

Jasmyne Keimig of the Stranger offered this sneak peek; keep an eye out for her feature story on the show.

Outside suggests “11 Alternatives to Crowded Outdoor Instagram Spots,” with the sculpture park handily beating the gum wall.

Give a read to Casey Arguelles Gregory of The Eye’s post about what we do with problematic art; Claire Partington: Taking Tea at SAM is given as an example of how to respond.

“[The installation] creates a stunning dialogue between the historical ‘porcelain room’ and our modern attempt to reckon with the colonialism and institutional racism that necessitated the creation of these beautiful objects.”

Local News

The Stranger doesn’t like our city flag. They’re throwing a design contest for a new one (non-binding). (SAM tickets are among the prizes!)

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis on Beili Liu’s new show at MadArt, which addresses the global refugee crisis with clothing frozen in place by cement.

The Denny Substation has a sculpture called Transforest—apparently the tallest public art in the City—that the Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig calls “unlovable.”

“Obviously, Transforest can’t capture certain things about trees—their smell, the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, their sense of knowing. But as I stood underneath it, sweating under all that sun, trying to figure out this sculpture, I realized I was missing something simple, easily capture-able about trees—their shade.”

Inter/National News

Artforum reports on the ongoing controversy involving the proposed destruction of a mural at San Francisco’s George Washington High School; now 400 academics, writers, and artists have written an open letter opposing the plan.

Elsewhere in school murals: Dr. Maya Angelou is celebrated in over two dozen eye-catching murals throughout the campus of the Dr. Maya Angelou Community High School.

And elsewhere in rad women monuments: Zachary Small of Hyperallergic reports on the proposed monument on Roosevelt Island to the groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly.

“Almost 132 years later, the intrepid reporter will return to the scene of the story that made her a hailed heroine of journalism as a permanent monument.”

And Finally

If you are not always eager to learn more about Bob Ross, then I just don’t know what to tell you.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Installation view Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Victorian extra-ness, tree art, and what happens when artists curate

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jul 8 2019

Muse/News: Victorian extra-ness, tree art, and what happens when artists curate

SAM News

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis recommends that you “judge for yourself … and consider just what makes art radical” in her write-up of Victorian Radicals.

And GRAY Magazine’s Rachel Gallaher chats with curator Chiyo Ishikawa about the exhibition on “what’s so radical” about it.

“Rich in saturated color and minute detail, the works sit in bold contrast to the zeitgeisty minimalism and pastel palettes of the past few years. It’s a rather refreshing aesthetic twist, and a veritable feast for the eyes.”

Watch Evening Magazine’s thoughtful story on Hear & Now, featuring interviews with artist Trimpin, poet Pam Winter, and Path with Art director Holly Jacobson.

Comedy Gold from the American Cinema kicks off this week; with classics like The Thin Man and The Awful Truth it’s no wonder the series is included on Seattle Magazine’s list of “21 Best Things to Do in Seattle in July 2019” and is one of the Seattle Times’ “hottest Seattle events for July 2019.”

Congrats! SAM trustee Charles Wright has been named Middle Market Family Business Executive of the Year by the Puget Sound Business Journal. 

Local News

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores (just named New Journalist of the Year by the Society of Professional Journalists [Western Washington]!) visits The Beacon, Columbia City’s new single-screen cinema.

The Stranger’s Rich Smith wrote about Seattle’s newest “pretty dreamy” dance company, Seattle Dance Collective; their first show, Program One, premieres at Vashon Center for the Arts this weekend.

An SOS, a lofty reminder, a memento mori: Crosscut’s Brangien Davis visits Ted Youngs’ new Smoke Season installation and looks at some other trees in art, including John Grade’s Middle Fork at SAM and the Neukom Vivarium at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

“They peer up at the tree, which stands parallel to the Space Needle — one conceived as a beacon of humanity’s bright future, the other an urgent message from the here and now.”

Inter/National News

You love to see it: As part of NPR Music’s exploration of the Seattle music scene, they look at “11 Visual Artists Creating The Look Of Seattle Music.” 

Who knew this was such a rich genre? Artnet’s Caroline Goldstein brings you the “Finest Artistic Depictions of Totally Wasted People Ever.”

The New York Times’ Roberta Smith on Artistic License at the Guggenheim, a show curated by six artists—one for each of the ramps of the museum’s rotunda.  

“Artists look at a collection more freely and greedily than most of us, from odd angles. They often ferret out neglected or eccentric treasures, highlighting what museums have but aren’t using; they can also reveal a collection’s weaknesses, its biases and blind spots.”

And Finally

A world of cages.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view “Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement” at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Beauty at SAM, Juneteenth lessons, and a huge statue from Kehinde Wiley

Rachel Eggers on Jun 24 2019

Muse/News: Beauty at SAM, Juneteenth lessons, and a huge statue from Kehinde Wiley

SAM News

The Victorians Radicals are here! Here are reviews from Gary Faigin for the Seattle Times and Stefan Milne of Seattle Met on the exhibition’s beautiful objects and historical richness.

Fayemi Shakur profiles Zanele Muholi and their work photographing Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex South Africans. Muholi’s stunning self-portraits arrive at SAM on July 10.  

“I want the next generation of young queers and non-queers to know that we are here, that we were here. We owe it to ourselves to make sense of our lives and living.”

Local News

“Almost free is unfree”: LaNesha DeBardelaben, Executive Director of the Northwest African American Museum, shares the story—and lessons—of Juneteenth. (And Real Change’s Lisa Edge wrote up their current exhibition!)

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig on the “disco balls, closed-circuit cameras, and colored lighting” in Give It or Leave It, Cauleen Smith’s solo show at the Frye Art Museum.

The Seattle Times’ Brendan Kiley talks with Greg Lundgren about empty spaces, collective billionaires, and the forthcoming Museum of Museums (MoM).

“I’ll keep saying the same thing I’ve said for years: Any time you have a concentration of talent, wealth, innovation and quality of life, you’ve got all the ingredients for a renaissance, of a revolution, of a movement. But somehow, we just haven’t been mixing them right.”

Inter/National News

NPR reports that poet, writer, and musician Joy Harjo will be the next poet laureate of the United States. Learn more about her with this great conversation from BOMB Magazine between Harjo and fellow poet Sherwin Bitsui.

Artforum reports: “The Association of Art Museum Directors’ board of trustees has passed a resolution that calls on the more than two hundred museums it represents to end unpaid internship programs.”

A new republic, set in stone: The Virginia Museum of Arts announced the acquisition of Kehinde Wiley’s largest sculpture to date, a 30-foot-tall bronze of a Black man on a horse, modeled after Richmond’s Confederate statues.

“Art and violence have for an eternity held a strong narrative grip with each other … To have the Rumors of War sculpture presented in such a context lays bare the scope and scale of the project in its conceit to expose the beautiful and terrible potentiality of art to sculpt the language of domination.”

And Finally

A dilemma of inheritance, a question of citizenship.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Beata Beatrix, begun 1877 (left unfinished in 1882 and completed by Ford Madox Brown), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, British, 1828–1882, oil on canvas, 34 1/8 × 26 7/8 in., Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council, Purchased, 1891P25, © Birmingham Museums Trust, Courtesy American Federation of Arts

A Grand Return: Preparing to Reopen the Seattle Asian Art Museum

Seattle Art Museum on Jun 19 2019

A Grand Return: Preparing to Reopen the Seattle Asian Art Museum

With construction nearing completion at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, SAM staff has started preparations for the months-long move back into the historic building. As most people who have changed residences know, moving back in can often be as challenging as moving out. That experience will be amplified on a massive scale as the staff begins the gargantuan task of readying the renovated museum for art and visitors.

The 10,000 collection objects that were carefully packed, tracked, and removed from the Asian Art Museum now need to return to the building—a process expected to require a full year, although the museum will reopen before that process is complete. Lauren Mellon, Director of Museum Services and Chief Registrar, explains “Moving back in will be more complicated because we’re building the storage spaces as the art returns.” However, the collection will be returning to many important improvements. Mellon continues, “We will now have full climate control, and the storage facilities will be vastly upgraded. Overall, the objects will be much happier in their new home.”

Before works of art and museum staff can enter the renovated building, a number of systems across the facility will need to be tested to ensure they are operating correctly, including those pertaining to security, mechanics, air quality, and climate control. “We must maintain what we call a ‘critical environment’ to support the art, as well as provide a safe and healthy environment for employees and museum visitors,” explains Lee Richardson, Director of Facilities.

Once testing is complete, the first works of art that will be brought inside are those to be presented in the museum’s galleries. The preparation crew will begin working gallery by gallery, building platforms, preparing the cases for object displays, and eventually mounting the works of art. One of the most exciting outcomes of this work is visitors will have the chance to experience more of the museum’s collection. “We will no longer have to de-install the permanent collection as the special exhibitions change. All thirteen of the museum’s original galleries will now be dedicated to showing the collection,” says Nathan Peek, Director of Design and Installation. 

The building’s many improvements are inspiring the work of museum staff across departments. As Richardson says, “While the renovation process was important to addressing safety issues, we also now have a better palette to work with for exhibiting art and engaging the public.”

– Erin Langner, freelance writer

Photo: Natali Wiseman

Muse/News: A new leader for SAM, Lorna’s dark paintings, and Frida’s voice

Rachel Eggers on Jun 17 2019

Muse/News: A new leader for SAM, Lorna’s dark paintings, and Frida’s voice

SAM News

Last week, SAM announced that Amada Cruz has been chosen as the museum’s new Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, succeeding Kimerly Rorschach who is retiring in September. Brendan Kiley of the Seattle Times had the exclusive. Brangien Davis of Crosscut and Jasmyne Keimig of the Stranger also both interviewed Amada.

And everyone else shared the news, including ARTNews, Artforum, Artnet, and Seattle Met. Even Representative Pramila Jayapal was eager to welcome Amada to Seattle!

Oh yeah: We also opened our major summer exhibition last week! Seattle Times photojournalist Alan Berner was there with a sneak peek of the beauty that is Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement.

And Seattle Magazine’s June issue features a round-up of “must-see” area museums—including, of course, SAM.

Local News

The future site of Capitol Hill’s AIDS Memorial Pathway will be activated this summer and beyond with temporary artworks and performances—including a series of dance performances curated by SAM’s Public Engagement Associate, David Rue!

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis on Discover + Disrupt at the Center for Architecture and Design; the show features work by art collective Electric Coffin that imagines “a more artful public cityscape.”

The Seattle Times’ Moira Macdonald on the controversy surrounding Penguin’s new edition of John Okada’s novel “No-No Boy.” UW professor Shawn Wong originally fought to have the book published and disputes the new edition.

“The publishing history of ‘No-No Boy’ is as important as the book itself,” he said, remembering how he would sell copies of the original CARP edition out of the trunk of his old Mustang in the 1970s. “To publish the book without acknowledging that publishing history is publishing a very incomplete story.”

Inter/National News

“Dark times, to me, mean dark paintings”: The New York Times’ Siddhartha Mitter speaks with Lorna Simpson about her new show, which sees the artist continuing to work in ever-new mediums, including painting.

Artnet’s Sarah Cascone on the Delaware Art Museum’s plans for a reinstallation of much of its permanent collection and how they’re engaging the community in their prototyping process—including Post-Its!

The Guardian’s Nadja Sayej on a “groundbreaking” exhibition of work by Native women at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The show features a loan from SAM’s collection: Marie Watt’s Blanket Stories.

“90% of Native art is made by women. Native artists know this. It’s just non-Native people who haven’t recognized that.”

And Finally

Is this Frida Kahlo’s voice?

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Natali Wiseman

Meet SAM’s New Director, Amada Cruz

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jun 13 2019

Meet SAM’s New Director, Amada Cruz

“I’m looking forward to continuing SAM’s commitment to welcoming everyone.”

– Amada Cruz

We are pleased to welcome Amada Cruz to the SAM family this September as the Museum’s next llsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, succeeding Kimerly Rorschach who will be retiring this fall. Amada joins us from the Phoenix Art Museum where she has served as its Sybil Harrington Director and CEO for the past four years. Amada brings with her more than 30 years of professional experience in the arts. In 2015, W Magazine named her one of the 11 most powerful female museum directors in America. She starts at SAM in September 2019 and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. Get to know SAM’s new director in this short interview with Amada and check out our press release for more on this exciting announcement.

SAM: Why were you interested in coming to Seattle and working at the Seattle Art Museum? 
Amada Cruz: So many reasons! The incredible collection, the generosity of its donors, and Kim’s legacy of excellence. Also, everyone loves Seattle. A great museum with a community of support in a great city. What’s not to love?

What excites you most about SAM’s permanent collection?
I know the contemporary art collection the best because it’s my field, but I love “general” museums because they offer entry points for everyone. I grew up going to the Art Institute in Chicago and The Met in NY, and I like getting lost in big museums, making discoveries. But, the most immediate thrill will be the newly reopening Seattle Asian Art Museum, which will be such a pleasure for me to discover and share with our audiences.

At the Phoenix Art Museum, you took many steps to make the museum more accessible and inclusive. Tell us about this work!
Phoenix is 40% Latinx, so we focused on welcoming that audience in a sustained way. My first interview was in Spanish for the local Spanish-language newspaper and the Univision station. That was important. I also diversified the staff to the point that 3 out of 5 of the senior staff are Latinx. That change affected everything, including programming decisions (more exhibitions by artists of color) and communications (welcoming of all). We initiated a bilingual program with a big banner over the front desk that reads, “Welcome. Bienvenidos.” It seemed like a small gesture, but the response was huge and (mostly) positive. But we also reached out to other groups, including our local Sikh community and now have a Sikh art gallery. I want everyone to feel like the museum belongs to them.

What do you think the biggest challenge is for museums today?  Remaining relevant when people are engaging with culture in so many different ways and with so much competition for attention. We live in a distracting world, so how do we get people to slow down enough to engage with art? It helps to have three distinct sites like SAM, each one offering a particular experience—the urban downtown space, a grand building in a public park, and a spectacular sculpture park by the water.

Which restaurant will you eat at first when you get to Seattle? 
Please send me recommendations! I’ll eat almost anything (once) but really love seafood . . . and wine.

Photo: Natali Wiseman

SAM Connects Free Days to Victorian Radicals

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jun 11 2019

SAM Connects Free Days to Victorian Radicals

The search for beauty in our modern age will lead you to the free Community Opening Celebration for Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement on June 13. From 5–9 pm see the exhibition for free, take part in art-making activities, and catch performances throughout the museum. Can’t make it to the opening? We have many other ways for you to visit SAM for free or at a discount during Victorian Radicals!

  • Free community passes may be available for community organizations or colleges and universities.
  • Many of our programs include free admission to our special exhibitions on the day of the event. Keep an eye on exhibition-related events.
  • First Thursdays
    Adult: $9.99
    Seniors 65+, Military (w/ID): $7.99
    Students (w/ID): $4.99
    Ages 19 & younger: Free
  • First Friday: Admission to the special exhibition is $7.99 for anyone 65 years and older.
  • As a part of Museums for All, SAM offers free admission to low-income families and individuals receiving SNAP benefits when you show your EBT card.
  • King County and Seattle Public Libraries offer free passes to special exhibitions.
  • City of Seattle’s Gold and FLASH card program. If you have a Gold or FLASH card, your caretaker gets free admission.
  • Teen Tix
  • Bank of America’s Museums on Us: On the first full weekend of every month, Bank of America cardholders receive free admission at SAM.
  • Blue Star Museums: free admission to military personnel and their families. Just show your military ID. The military ID holder plus up to five immediate family members (spouse or child of ID holder) are allowed in for free per visit (special exhibition surcharge may apply).
  • UW Art Students get free admission with sticker on their student ID

Basically, you have no reason not to visit! And remember, entry to SAM’s permanent collections is always suggested admission! You can come experience our global collection year-round and pay what you want.

Images: Sir Walter Scott’s Monument Clock, ca. 1850, William Frederick Evans, British, active 1830–75, gilded and silvered brass, blued steel, enamel, and marble, 24 5/8 × 16 3/8 × 12 5/8 in., Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council, Presented by Miss P. Evans, 1959S1057.1, © Birmingham Museums Trust, Courtesy American Federation of Arts. Day dress, ca. 1865, British, green and black striped silk with black ribbon, braid and cord trim (machine- and hand-stitched), 52 3/8 × 68 7/8 in., Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council, Presented by Mrs. Bridget Doreen Bruce, 1963M32, © Birmingham Museums Trust, Courtesy American Federation of Arts

Muse/News: Radical times, art world internships, and online wives

Rachel Eggers on Jun 10 2019

Muse/News: Radical times, art world internships, and online wives

SAM News

The summer edition of the Stranger’s Art & Performance Quarterly is out! Recommended SAM shows in the visual arts listings include Hear & Now, 2018 Betty Bowen Award Winner: Natalie Ball, Victorian Radicals, Zanele Muholi, Material Differences: German Perspectives, You Are on Indigenous Land: Places/Displaces, and Claire Partington: Taking Tea. They also recommend upcoming events Summer at SAM and Remix.

Fine Art Connoisseur, 425 Magazine, and Seattle Gay Scene are also among those who look forward to getting radical with the Victorians when our major exhibition opens this Thursday night.  

Local News

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig looks—and looks again—at Cecilia Vicuña’s first major US solo exhibition, now on view at the Henry Art Gallery.

The Seattle Times’ Brendan Kiley reports on the formal launch of the Art Workers Union (AWU), formed by and for security guards at the Frye Art Museum.

Margo Vansynghel for Crosscut on the future home of an incredible archive of Black Panther newspapers; a satellite of Estelita’s Library, it will be the first “tiny cultural space” from the Office of Arts & Culture.

The newspaper collection, says Dixon, preserves “an important, critical part of American history. To see that [this] time existed and that it’s captured in the pages of these newspapers so that people can actually see and read what we said—not what someone else is interpreting from afar—but what we said, how we articulated revolution in this country, that’s the importance of them.”

Inter/National News

From the Los Angeles Times: The Natural History Museum of LA County announced a major rethink of the La Brea Tar Pits site; the Olympic Sculpture Park’s designer Weiss/Manfredi is one of three firms making proposals for the project.

Hyperallergic’s Kealey Boyd on Margaret Kilgallen’s first posthumous museum exhibition—now on view at the Aspen Art Museum—and the artist’s “unique mix of folk, feminism, and street art.”

Artsy’s Benjamin Sutton examines “how internships are changing the art world,” detailing various initiatives at the Getty Foundation, Souls Grown Deep, and Artpace.

“Museums desperately need talent in all sorts of positions—curators represent a fraction of the staff of museums,” Anderson said. “We’d be thrilled if an accountant emerges from [the Souls Grown Deep initiative] and finds their way into the museum profession, but they’re an accountant who has knowledge and experience in a particular cultural remit that otherwise they may not have.”

And Finally

Please, My Wife, She’s Very Online.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: The Long Engagement, ca. 1854–59, Arthur Hughes, British, 1832–1915, oil on canvas, 42 1/8 × 21 in., Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council, Presented by the executors of the late Dr. Edwin T. Griffiths, 1902P13, © Birmingham Museums Trust, Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Conservation Stories: The Lamentation over the Dead Christ

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jun 6 2019

Conservation Stories: The Lamentation over the Dead Christ

SAM’s intricate and stunning sculpture of The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Massimiliano Soldani Benzi is currently on view in Body Language, but wouldn’t be if it weren’t for a years-long project that restored the piece to its former sheen. To make this possible, our conservators worked with a team at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, the original home of the sculpture. See images from the process and find out more about the conservation process from our conservators before you see this sculpture in person.

Lamentation over the Dead Christ before conservation.

Massimiliano Soldani Benzi’s bronze sculpture The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (SAM 61.178) was cast in 1714 and acquired by SAM in 1961 as part of the Samuel Kress Collection. SAM’s Head of Conservation, Nicholas Dorman, led a multi-year fundraising campaign to study and treat the sculpture. Completed in December 2018, the project encompassed three broad goals: analysis of the surface and cleaning, replacing the lost crown, and constructing a new period-appropriate base.

The sculpture was loaned to the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence in 2017, where it was featured in Making Beauty: The Ginori Porcelain Manufactory and Its Progeny of Statues. The exhibition discussed the relationship between Soldani and the Ginori Porcelain studio: after his death, Soldani’s heirs sold some of his wax models and molds to Mr. Carlo Ginori, who reproduced them in porcelain at his Florentine workshop. The bronze Lamentation over the Dead Christ was displayed next to its porcelain cousin for the first time, both having been cast from the same approximately 56 molds.

Lamentation over the Dead Christ during conservation

The Bargello exhibition was an opportunity to study and document the various layers of degraded, non-original surface coatings—a mixture of black-brown pigmented wax and oils—with Florentine conservator and metals specialist, Ludovica Nicolai. Nicolai has worked on a great number of Soldani’s works in the Bargello collection. In collaboration with Nicolai and SAM’s conservation department, scientific analysis of the coatings was executed by a team of scientists from Adarte, Pisa University and Florence University, in order to inform the cleaning approach. Over four months, solvent gels were used to soften the hardened coatings, followed by cleaning with dental tools and the flexible tips of porcupine quills to gently remove the non-original layers from the surface. 

Meanwhile, the missing crown of thorns was re-cast by the Florentine foundry Ciglia e Carrai. Two sources informed the crown’s recreation: a 1970–1990s image of the sculpture located in the Fondazione Zeri archives (housed in Bologna), and the original wax model of the sculpture located in the Palazzo Pitti collection.  

Lamentation over the Dead Christ after conservation

At the conclusion of the treatment, a stylistically appropriate wooden base was constructed—whose form echoes the porcelain version in the Bargello exhibition. This replaces the modern stone mount on which it has been previously displayed.

Lamentation over the Dead Christ conserved on pedestal

This project was a truly international collaboration. As well as the experts mentioned above, we are particularly grateful to Dr. Paola D’Agostino and Dr. Dimitrios Zikos and their colleagues at the Bargello for their abiding support and for being so generous with their knowledge. To conserve a sculpture like this in its original place of creation is a significant funding challenge, and we wish to thank the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, The Museo Nazionale del Bargello, SAM’s Plestcheeff Fund for Decorative Arts, an anonymous foundation and an anonymous individual donor. Thanks to their support, we can present and share the story of this magnificent Florentine baroque sculpture.

– Geneva Griswold, SAM Associate Conservator & Nicholas Dorman, Chief Conservator

Images: Installation view Body Language, Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman. Before conservation photo: Ludovica Nicolai. Installation view Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 2017, photo: Arrigo Coppitz. During installation and details photo: Ludovica Nicolai. Fondazione Federico Zeri Archive  | no. 149804Silver gelatin print, ca. 1970–1989 During treatment in the Bargello Museum galleries, photo: Geneva Griswold. After conservation photo: Ludovica Nicolai. Installed on pedestal photo: Arrigo Coppitz. The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, ca. 1714, Massimiliano Soldani, Bronze, 34 x 32 3/4 x 22 1/2 in. Samuel H. Kress Collection, 61.178.

SAM Connects to the Hear & Now

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jun 4 2019

SAM Connects to the Hear & Now

We believe art is for everyone and right now everyone can experience a new kinetic sound sculpture installed at SAM’s 1st and Union entrance. Playing music, projecting poetry, and covered in the text, drawings, and collage by artists with lived experiences of homeless, Hear & Now is a collaboration between internationally celebrated artist, composer, and musician Trimpin and Path with Art students presented for you to view for free!

Built from an antique hand-pulled wagon originally built by Trimpin’s father in Germany, the work is activated by pressing the play button situated next to the object. Each tap triggers a different musical composition or poem created in collaboration with teaching artists. Hear & Now is free and accessible to all and will be on view through July 15. Visit the entire museum for free on Thursday, June 6, and catch the Hear & Now Performances and Artist Talkback taking place 6–8:30 pm featuring pop-up performances by the student artists, a movement piece directed by Rachel Brumer and Monique Holt accompanied by the musical compositions played by the sculpture, and a chance to hear from Trimpin.

Get primed for Thursday evening with this interview with Trimpin and a Path with Art student artist.

SAM: How did you start working with Path with Art?

Trimpin: Five years ago, I was Composer in Residence with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The last year of the three-year residency involves a public-outreach workshop. I decided to work with a group of Path with Art student artists. I was first introduced to Path with Art at a performance at the Hugo House; I was impressed with the artistic caliber of all the performing artists.

Tyler Marcil: Jennifer Lobsenz, the Program Director at the time, asked me to participate in this project in the summer of 2017. We worked with Christina Orbe for six weeks and Yonnas Getahun for two weeks over the course of eight workshops at Trimpin’s studio.

During these workshops, we created found poetry – I had never done anything quite like that before. I took a story that I had already written called, “The Woman on the Sidewalk,” and pulled words from that story to create new poems for the sculpture. A year later, I was invited to record work for Path with Art at Jack Straw Cultural Center.

What is the significance of the wagon wheel as a foundation for the sculpture? How does it relate to experiences of homelessness?

Trimpin: When I was beginning to conceptualize the interdisciplinary workshop, mobility and transition was a major consideration. Aware that most homeless people are in continual transition, the wagon-wheel was a starting platform to build up the story, not just metaphorically, but literally as a sound object which is mobile. It is similar to the way the wagon was used in my family to haul a variety of items around, and I still remember watching my father when he was building the wagon from scratch.

How did the artists collaborate on the creation of the final sculpture?

Tyler: The first group to meet was our group—the poets. The visual artists then took the found poems we created, turning these magnificent words into different pieces of art. Then the musicians came and made compositions inspired by the language and the artwork.

Hear & Now allowed many people to contribute their skills to this larger project. The people who were involved all have different ways of expressing themselves. Through this project, their voices are heard, and they are able to speak from their soul through their medium. Without this opportunity, they might feel silenced—without a voice, or without their voices being heard.   

Can you share a moment of discovery or breakthrough in the process that left an impression on you? Why did that moment stand out to you?

Trimpin: Artists in general are not collaborating with other artists very often. A part of the workshop was to teach each student that we don’t have to compete with each other; and we actually can work together and contribute each individual’s expertise to make the project successful. This process was very important to me and the project would not exist without the great commitment and interaction of each individual student.

Tyler: I don’t like hearing my own voice. When we were recording our stories at Jack Straw I could feel my heart racing because it’s a voice that my mother created by teaching us to speak a certain way. I could hear the –eds and the –ings. Those were important in my household growing up.

When I was forced that day to listen to my voice I cried inside because I realized—my voice is beautiful. And had I known that it was beautiful, I would have listened all along. And now when I ask people, what is it about my stories or poetry that you like? They tell me, it’s your voice.

What do you hope the sculpture can inspire in a viewer?

Trimpin: My hope is that the viewer can hear and see that a group of Path with Art student artists—adults—who have lived the experience of homelessness, addiction or other trauma, have earned the ability, knowledge, and imagination to collaborate, design, write, and compose and to achieve a project at this high artistic level.

Tyler: I hope that Hear & Now will bring awareness of people who have lived experience of homelessness. That the person living that experience could be you. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be prejudiced, or disown others as though they don’t exist.

And I think by having a sculpture that shares these wonderful voices, not only are you hearing their voices, but your hearing that they’re a person. The voice you hear is coming from them, from their humanity.

How does the upcoming performance connect to the sculpture?

Trimpin: For the upcoming performance, the students are performing live, interacting with the instrumentation of the wagon with their own voice or instrument.

Tyler: It ties together these themes of voicelessness and visibility for those experiencing homelessness. It connects to the sculpture because it’s using American Sign Language to present stories for those who cannot hear or speak, and ties in this concept communicating in different ways—with our voices, but also with our hands. This whole project is about lifting up those who have so often been silenced, and widening our circles of empathy and understanding, and the performance brings together both people with lived experience, and those without while exploring these themes.

– Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, SAM Content Strategist & Social Media Manager

Images: Installation view Hear & Now at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photos: Natali Wiseman.
Path with Art would like to extend a special thank you to Seattle Department of Neighborhoods for making this project possible.

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

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jun 3 2019

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

Site-Specific Art at the Park: Regina Silveira’s “Octopus Wrap”

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on May 29 2019

If you’ve strolled through the Olympic Sculpture Park since May you’re probably wondering about the tire tracks covering the PACCAR Pavilion. As if monster trucks went rogue or a motorcycle gang veered off Western Avenue to burn some surreal rubber, the building is wrapped in a pattern of skid marks. Look closely and you’ll spot five toy motorcycles on the interior mural wall, the origin of this mind-bending temporary intervention—by one of Latin America’s most influential contemporary artists—that alters our perceptions of our physical environment. 

Commissioned by SAM, Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap is the latest architectural installation the artist has realized around the world. Hailing from Brazil and examining the ways superimposed images change the meaning of an existing space, Silveira took inspiration from the Olympic Sculpture Park’s location at the intersection of several busy thoroughfares. Next time you visit the park, tune in to the sounds of traffic, trains under the greenway, and the churning sea, as you take in Octopus Wrap, on view through March 8, 2020

Silveira’s interventions on the exteriors and interiors of buildings, on city streets and in public parks, have included dense clusters of footprints, swarms of insects, nocturnal light projections of animal tracks that wander across building façades, and exaggerated shadows. Some of her installations have the appearance of occupations, infestations, or supernatural visitations; others seem to be fantastical apparitions that suspend the laws of nature and perception.

For Regina Silveira, a political element of these ruptures resides in their assault on our perception or, in her words, “in the level of transformation that can be brought about by grafting something into a given space in a way that magically changes its relationship to the real.” Her aim is estrangement from the familiar, and her preferred tactic is surprise. Beyond a heightened sensory experience within a newly defined space, Silveira’s mode of intervention can also be understood in social and political terms.

With Octopus Wrap, the pavilion’s calm, white walls are noisily invaded by five motorcyclists who use the windows, walls, and floor as their racetrack. When seen from a distance, the undulating tracks create another, larger image, one that ensnares the architecture as if within the arms of an octopus. The installation will be temporary, but the new images and sensations it creates will enter our memory and form a lasting imprint of a different kind.

We extend a special thank you to our generous SAM Fund donors who helped make this installation possible.

Muse/News: A sound wagon, a light tunnel, and a change

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on May 28 2019

Muse/News: A sound wagon, a light tunnel, and a change

SAM News

Seattle PI’s Zosha Millman interviews Path with Art executive director Holly Jacobson and a student artist about Hear & Now, the kinetic sound sculpture now on view at SAM that was created by Trimpin and Path with Art student artists who have lived experience of homelessness. Don’t miss June’s First Thursday performance and talkback about the work.

“It is going to require human centered solutions that will require putting the person that is having that experience at the center of the solution . . . And art is just a tremendous vehicle for that.”

Following her preview of Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap, Crosscut’s Brangien Davis features the installation in her weekly newsletter, including quotes from her interview with the artist.

SAM’s upcoming major exhibition, Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement, is included in the Seattle Times’ annual guide to all the happenings around town this summer.

Local News

“Gore-tex meets Gucci”: Crosscut’s Brangien Davis re-examines at the oft-mocked Seattle style through two fashion exhibitions, now on view at MOHAI and MoPOP.

Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne explores the future of music festivals in the region, now that Sasquatch and Upstream are done.

It’s been a minute since Charles Mudede brought his inimitable voice to the visual arts; here he is with an appreciation of James Turrell’s Light Reign at the Henry Art Gallery.

“But there is nothing supernatural or sacred here. We have the deepest feelings for light because it powers the processes that result in the wine we drink, the books we read, the park-bench kisses we enjoy all through the summer.”

Inter/National News

Jori Finkel of the New York Times reports that the Museum of Contemporary Art will soon offer free general admission; the change is made possible by a $10 million donation by the board president, Carolyn Clark Powers.

ARTnews’ Claire Selvin shares the news that the PBS NewsHour will expand its broadcast and digital arts reporting initiative, Canvas, thanks to a gift from the Knight Foundation (Arts publicists around the country react).

Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s first African American woman, and first openly LGBTQ mayor got an artwork for her office just in time for her swearing-in; Amanda Williams’s Cadastral Shaking (Chicago v1) is about the legacies of redlining.

“Chicago is a city full of hope about shifting histories and moving toward equity, and the fact that the new mayor wanted a work of art about that says a lot,” Gass added. “We believe in the power of art to help shift perspectives, and hopefully the map in the office will help do that.”

And Finally

Get stuck on the Unicorn Tapestries.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of Hear & Now, Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Welcome Home, Ancestral Modern!

Pam McClusky on May 22 2019

Welcome Home, Ancestral Modern!

Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan-Levi Collection recently concluded a tour to four museums where it opened thousands of eyes to the visionary innovations of a new chapter of art history. When this exhibition first opened in 2012 in Seattle, one critic described it as:

National and international visitors came to Seattle and paid attention to this gathering of art which led to a connection with the American Federation for the Arts through their board member, Kimerley Rorchach. The AFA took on the responsibility for finding other museums and organizing the logistics for traveling the exhibition. During three years, it was seen at the Frist Center for the Arts in Nashville, the Chazen Art Museum in Madison, the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, and the Audain Museum in Whistler. 

Amazingly enough, the entrance to the exhibition often focused on a painting that has the startling quality of a stop sign, by painter Ngilpirr Spider Snell, who is warning you not to get too close to a sacred body of water that is being guarded by a snake. 

That warning leads into looking at dots, mazes and linear patterns that may not always be what they seem. In Australian Aboriginal art, dots can trace the journey of a creative ancestor.

Or dots can punish a boy who has stolen an emu’s heart by turning him into a colorful whirlwind

A maze can be a map of an artist’s homeland filled with sandhills.

And linear dashes of paint may conjure up leaves full of medicinal strength blown across a windswept desert. 

This art constantly offers many new visual experiences—peering underground to see yams grow; trekking over vast salt lakes; following the trail of a blue-tongued lizard or encountering a lightning-spitting serpent in swirling water. It is endowed with the vision of the world’s oldest living cultures whose artists have ushered in an indigenous renaissance since the 1970s. They focus our attention on the remarkable continent these communities have managed for centuries.    

At each venue, the exhibition was accompanied by texts written by SAM, and designers put the art in interpretive themes also established by SAM.  Throughout the tour, the couple whose collection was being featured made their way to the openings to speak with the press, educators, staffs, and members of each museum. Thanks to Robert Kaplan and Margaret Levi for making this extraordinary tour possible, and to all the artists whose creativity continues to challenge our eyes to adjust to what they consider significant. 

– Pam McClusky, Curator of African and Oceanic Art

Images: Installation view of Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan-Levi Collection, Seattle Art Museum, 2012, photo: Nathaniel Wilson. Kurtal, 2005, Ngilperr Ngalyaku Spider Snell, © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VISCOPY, Australia. Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming (detail), 1996, Kathleen Petyarre, © Kathleen Petyarre. Walu (detail), 2008, Tommy Mitchell, © Tommy Mitchell. Yunarla (detail), 2010, Yukultji Napangati, © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VISCOPY, Australia. Leaves (detail), 2002, Gloria Tamerr Petyarre, © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VISCOPY, Australia, photo: Paul Macapia. Audain Art Museum, Whistler, BC, Canada, photo: Pamela McClusky. Audain Art Museum opening with Bob Kaplan and Margaret Levi, and Director, Curtis Collins.

Muse/News: Summer fun, earthy art, and a wish

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on May 20 2019

Muse/News: Summer fun, earthy art, and a wish

SAM News

Heads-up, parents and caregivers: summer in Seattle is upon us! Here’s Elisa Murray for the Seattle Times with great ideas to keep the learning going and keep the fun going while school’s out. She includes Summer at SAM, our annual series of free programming at the Olympic Sculpture Park, held this year July 11 through August 22.

And Artdaily and Patch.com both shared the news about Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap, the mind-bendingly cool site-specific installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park’s PACCAR Pavilion.

Local News

At this week’s event featuring Tayari Jones (she was AMAZING), Seattle Arts and Lectures announced their exciting 2019-20 lineup, including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Min Jin Lee, and Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey.

Musical hooks and a “subtle new take on its sexual politics”: Seattle Magazine’s Gavin Borchert on “Why You Need to See Seattle Opera’s Carmen.”

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis examines the dire news about climate change and looks at how art could be a vital way to confront the challenges ahead.

“It might seem too-little-too-late to argue for sublime beauty in the face of urgent statistics about habitat loss, mass extinctions, droughts, wildfires and coastal erosion. But the introspective state that art is so adept at conjuring might be the only angle from which our modern brains can process and address the monumental facts.”

Inter/National News

Farewell to I.M. Pei, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect who passed away at the age of 102. He designed the glass pyramid entrance of the Louvre in Paris and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

The team at Artnet has a gondola-full of reads on the Venice Biennale, including the recent news that Lithuania’s beach-opera installation and Arthur Jafa’s film “The White Album” took the event’s top prizes.

Renée Reizman for Hyperallergic on Dandelions, an installation by the anonymous Los Angeles art collective Art Department that turned a decommissioned substation into “a secret wish-processing facility.”

“The bureaucrat asked more general questions. Could the wish be categorized as altruistic or selfish? Did it pertain to romance or your career?”

And Finally

“We sat them up on chairs, they were smiling for the camera. It was the greatest day of my life.“

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Muse/News: Wrapping up, bobbling macarons, and going to camp

Nina Dubinsky on May 13 2019

Muse/News: Wrapping up, bobbling macarons, and going to camp

SAM News

That’s a wrap on Jeffrey: Gibson: Like a Hammer. As a farewell, here’s Emily Zimmerman interviewing the artist for BOMB Magazine.

“I needed to let go of whether I was an artist or not, and I needed to pursue the things that I want to see existing in the world that don’t exist. What are the things that would leverage this world that didn’t meet my expectations?”

Celebrated Brazilian artist Regina Silveira has debuted a new site-specific installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park’s PACCAR Pavilion called Octopus Wrap. A glimpse of the installation process was captured by the Seattle Times’ Alan Berner. Seattle Met and Crosscut also previewed the installation, which features a series of tire tracks wrapping around the walls, windows, and floor of the building, looking like the arms of an octopus.

“The startling change to the familiar park building embodies elements of play, but also reminds us of the luxury of presuming our surroundings will always stay the same.”

And Smithsonian Magazine featured the sculpture park on their round-up of the “world’s most spectacular sculpture parks.”

Local News

Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture announced that Christopher Paul Jordan has been selected to create the centerpiece artwork for the planned AIDS Memorial Pathway project on Capitol Hill.

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores and South Seattle Emerald’s Jessie McKenna both wrote up Alexis Taylor’s Black Among Other Things, an installation at AURA in the Central District about her experiences as a Black woman.

The art of food: Chef Brady Williams won Best Chef in the Northwest at James Beard Awards; the Seattle Times’ Bethany Jean Clement recently picked up a shift at Canlis to learn about their legendary service.

“By the top of the stairs, the macaron begins to bobble; on the penultimate step, it leaps to its death, in its final act somehow managing to shatter on the soft carpeting. A man seated at one of Canlis’ well-spaced, snowy-white-linened tables regards me with a mixture of pity and horror.”

Inter/National News

But is it CAMP? The Met’s latest exhibition—and attendant over-the-top Gala—has everyone reaching for their undergrad copy of Sontag. Here are some thoughts.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) announced this week that Mia Locks will be their new senior curator and head of initiatives; interestingly, they don’t have plans to hire a chief curator to replace Helen Molesworth.

Nadja Sayej for the Guardian on Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman, now on view in New York, which traces her work as a “trailblazer of African American arts.”

“She said her legacy is in the work of her students,” notes Ikemoto. “Even when they didn’t have money to buy their own art supplies, she let them use hers. She often said, ‘I know much I was put down and denied, so if I can teach these kids anything, I’m going to teach it to them.’”

And Finally

Can we please do something now?

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of “Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap”, 2019, Seattle Art Museum site-specific installation, photo: Mark Woods.



Muse/News: Pie art, Seattle style, and obvious plants

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on May 6 2019

Muse/News: Pie art, Seattle style, and obvious plants

SAM News

Lauren Ko creates stunning pie art on her @lokokitchen Instagram—check out the pie she made inspired by SAM’s show! There’s more details here. Get yourself to SAM: Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer closes this Sunday, May 12!

Ring in wedding season—you know you love it!—with this Seattle Bride look at a beautiful wedding at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Aww.

Local News

The Seattle Times’ Moira Macdonald takes a look at the new fashion exhibit at MOHAI on—yes, really—Seattle style.

Watch the Seattle Channel’s CityStream story about the forthcoming return of the historic Louisa Hotel, including the fate of their rediscovered Prohibition-era murals.

Seattle Magazine’s Gavin Borchert and Gwendolyn Elliott on Amazon’s internal creative program, Expressions, which gives employees opportunities to get creative.

“Reverberating beyond the badge-required halls of Amazonia is a bigger conversation about the company’s contributions—or lack thereof—to Seattle’s creative community as a whole, considering how much it’s altered the city’s physical and cultural footprint.”

Inter/National News

John Grade does it again: Check out this stunning installation by the artist set in a clearing of an Italian forest, which turns rainwater into the droplets of a natural chandelier.

An appreciation for the “guardian of Black cinema” by the New Yorker’s Doreen St. Felix of the director John Singleton, who passed away this week at the age of 51.

Artnet’s Melissa Smith talks with Black artists about the paradigm shift of increased interest in their work—and the attendant pressures, including stress, burnout, and exploitation.

“Navigating the limited existing roles for [black artists] is exhausting, and never-ending,” Jemison says. “And black artists are very aware that being selected is super arbitrary and predicated on partial understanding of the work.”

And Finally

All Alone Bert. Pre-Cracked Egg. Funeral Kazoo. They’re all an Obvious Plant.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

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