Translating the Untranslatable: Emerging Arts Leader Amelia Ossorio Reflects

National Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated annually between September 15 and October 15 in recognition of the contributions and influence of Hispanic and Latine Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States. In recognition, we’re sharing this essay from a recent Emerging Arts Leader Intern. Learn more about SAM internships.

In memory of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, my UW Middle East Studies classmate who was killed by military on September 6, 2024, while volunteering in the West Bank. May we continue to be inspired by her memory to advocate for justice and a free and interconnected world.

Often, when I share that I am taking advanced Farsi classes or talk about my dedication to Persian-English poetry translation projects, I am met with confused stares. I’m a rising senior at the University of Washington majoring in Middle East Studies, with a concentration in Persian and minoring in Art History. With the mentorship of my professor, Dr. Aria Fani, I am inspired to disprove the myth of “untranslatability”: that art, languages, cultures, and people are irreconcilable and at odds with each other. This was a perspective I wanted to bring to my Emerging Arts Leader Internship in Public Relations and Outreach at the Seattle Art Museum this past spring and summer. Over the course of 20 weeks, I worked closely with Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations, on efforts to invite local Seattle communities into the museum for the summer exhibition, Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture.

During my time as an EAL intern, I focused on researching and executing an outreach plan with local contacts and partners, and I gathered insight into cultivating community partnerships between the museum and the public. Towards the end of my internship, my focus shifted to synthesizing my data into a report that can support the museum’s future outreach strategies. As a freelance artist with a following of nearly 60,000 on Instagram and more than 10 million views on my original comics, illustrations, and animations, I am keenly aware of the power of social media as a tool for connecting art with the public, and I wanted to bring this knowledge and creativity to support SAM’s outreach efforts.

Much of my internship inspired me to reflect on the intersections of the art museum as an institution and how it connects to our dynamic lives, passions, and experiences. In addition to my educational experiences, I volunteer with Peyvand Non-Profit Organization, which serves youth arts and cultural programming for Seattle’s Iranian and Afghan families. For the past two years, on behalf of Peyvand, I have designed educational posters about the Persian New Year to be displayed in several King County Library System locations. Peyvand director Shahrzad Shams has been a mentor to me as I develop as an artist and advocate, and my work with the organization has contributed to my understanding of partnership work.

SAM invites all EAL interns to create a gallery tour or presentation to share their contributions to the museum with the public. For my gallery tour, I drew inspiration from a personal connection to artwork on view in the museum. I highlighted two contemporary Mexican artists in SAM’s collection, Diego Rivera and Alfredo Arreguín, and presented a gallery tour on the public outreach plan I created inspired by the artists’ works. I was also inspired by my grandfather, Abel García Ossorio, who was the first Mexican American in the US to earn a PhD in clinical psychology after being rejected from colleges for being Hispanic. Using my time at the institution and access to its artworks by Rivera—two of which are on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry—encouraged me to learn more about the Mexican muralist movement and the hectic period following the Mexican Revolution, as I better my understanding of the history and political and social instability that led to members of my family immigrating to the US from northern Mexico in the 1920s. 

As an artist, I often prefer expressing myself and experiences visually through illustrations and comics. So to accompany my reflection, I also completed an illustration inspired by one of the works from my SAM gallery tour, Stalemate (1973) by Alfredo Arreguín (b. Michoacán, Mexico, 1935–2023), a Seattle-based artist who unfortunately passed away last year. The oil painting blends Pacific Northwest flora and fauna with other symbols and familiar images from Arreguín’s upbringing in Michoacán and Mexico City. A new work in SAM’s collection, the painting was on view in Poke in the Eye this summer.

I am drawn to the memory-like, stream-of-consciousness quality to the original painting, and I decided to create my own illustrated interpretation with symbols from my experiences and learnings at SAM this spring and summer. During my SAM internship, I visited Mexico City, which influenced my gallery tour. I represented this with a concha, an iconic Mexican sweet bread pastry; a cafecito; and a book on Frida Kahlo, who had also been a muse for Arreguín throughout his career. My Persian and Iranian studies at the University of Washington also guided me during my internship, and I illustrated a book that my language professor Dr. Fani had lent me for the quarter: Paintings and Designs of Sohrab Sepehri. I paid visual homage to the original painting by incorporating drawings of flowers, fruit, stars, and a mountain, but added my own flair: the flowers in my piece are nasturtiums, my mother’s favorites, and cherries represent the summer fruit of the orchard in my extended family. The mountain, originally a landmark of Mt. Rainier, painted by Arreguín, in my version became inspired by the illustration of a mountain on the cardboard box of Alvand on my tea shelf, named after a mountain range in western Iran, which is also a brand of sugar cubes to mix in hot chai and coffee called qand in Farsi. The cactus entering on the left represents both my heritage connection to Mexico and my online handle (@sensitive.cactus). Instead of flowing branches, I instead wrote in Persian calligraphy two words that are very meaningful to me and frequently appear in poetry: عشق “eshq” (love) and هیچ “heech” (nothing). While the original painting incorporates images of butterflies, which to me represent completion and fulfillment, I opted to draw a caterpillar, representing personal growth and embracing the in-between process.

I would like to thank my friends, family, and SAM staff for their support along the way, which was pivotal to my experience. I am appreciative of SAM staff who made me feel welcomed into the new environment and offered advice and understanding.

– Amelia Ossorio, Emerging Arts Leader Intern in Public Relations and Outreach

Photo: L.Fried. Illustation: Amelia Ossorio.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Susanna and the Elders

Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture is now on view at SAM! This homegrown exhibition features 87 ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and drawings from SAM’s collection—some of which are being shown for the first time. Throughout the run of the exhibition, we’ll be periodically sharing insight on a few of the eclectic artworks on view. 

Please note: The following article includes mentions of nudity, coercion, and sexual assault.

Like many works on view in Poke in the Eye at SAM, this painting’s vibrant colors and figurative style draws the viewer in, then flips expectations upside down. 

From a distance, Susanna and the Elders (Novelty Hotel) (1980) looks like a cartoon, but the artist, Robert Colsecott (1925–2009), often used this visually appealing strategy to hook viewers and make them confront the more serious issues of race and gender that are in his works.

This intriguing painting is titled after a story from the Bible that perhaps wouldn’t be so well known if not for the many Renaissance artists who painted it. Although Colescott didn’t cite one particular artwork as inspiration for his work, he was familiar with this subject from historical artists like Tintoretto, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and many others who depicted the story.

In this tale, found in the Book of Daniel, two men are spying upon Susanna bathing in the garden of her home. They catch each other peeping and unite to coerce Susanna into having sex with them. They threaten to blackmail her, but still she refuses. They have her arrested and publicly accuse her of adultery. These two respected men are judges and elders in their community and Susanna is sentenced to death on their word until the prophet Daniel appears and questions them. He finds major differences in their stories and declares Susanna innocent. 

Although a somewhat minor anecdote in the Bible, Susanna’s story became popular partly because it allowed artists to display their talent at depicting nude women. During the Renaissance, artists often portrayed Susanna lounging naked, sometimes unaware of the men watching, or other times, seeming to seduce them. Like the elders watching the oblivious Susanna, the patrons and viewers of these paintings also act as voyeurs of Susanna and lust after her with the excuse that the artwork depicts a biblical story. 

Robert Colecott interprets this tale in his own way: a naked blonde woman emerges from behind a shower curtain, much to the glee of three ogling men and one rubber ducky. At the Novelty Hotel (a real hotel that Colescott visited in Paris), a bald white man in a red robe, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a Black janitor holding a mop are directly next to this Susanna, physically leaning on one another as they witness this scene. Another Black man peers in through the open window, a self-portrait of Colescott himself with his signature glasses and facial hair. The rubber ducky also seems to be looking up at her eagerly from the tub. None of them are touching Susanna or harming her, but they are intruding on the privacy of her hotel room and her body. 

Much like the men in this scene, the viewer is also a voyeur complicit in this visual violation. With its bright colors and cartoonish style, paired with the towering seven-foot-tall canvas on which it sits, Colescott’s painting is unmissable. Visitors passing by can’t help but stop and stare at the intrusive tableau.

Susanna’s eyes appear closed as if she’s unaware of those watching her. Alternatively, Susanna’s facial expression could be interpreted as giving the voyeurs a flirtatious smile over her shoulder, as if performing for them. With all these eyes looking at her, it seems impossible that she wouldn’t notice these men around her, but is she to blame for their actions? By calling her Susanna in the title, she is aligned with the innocent and happens to be the unfortunate subject of this male attention.

Colescott grew up in Oakland, California and attended the University of California, Berkeley where he studied painting. He studied in Paris for a year, working with Fernand Leger. Colescott’s Night and Day, You Are the One (1969), also on display in Poke in the Eye, more closely resembles Leger’s Cubist-inspired, rhythmic style. Colescott visited and lived in Paris throughout his life, but returned to Berkeley for his master’s degree before becoming an art teacher in the Pacific Northwest, at a junior high school in Seattle and Portland State College. He later held other teaching positions in Cairo, Egypt, California, and Arizona.

From the mid-1970s on, Colescott was well-known for creating artworks that spoofed and remixed art history. He was a satirist, taking the serious subjects of the art world and translating them with critique, wit, and humor into offbeat commentaries.

Often, Colescott subverts artistic precedents by changing the racial makeup of the scene, substituting Black figures for the historically White main roles. Another work on display in the galleries of Poke in the Eye, Les Demoiselles d’Alabama: Vestidas (1985) plays on Pablo Picasso’s famous Cubist painting of sex workers, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Picasso’s original took direct influence from African masks, at the time regarded as “primitive” in the wake of ongoing colonization of that continent, but Colescott puts actual Black figures in this key moment in art history.

In Susanna and the Elders, the men overcome their racial differences to unite in their ogling of the modern Susanna. They are all complicit in this behavior and caught red-handed. However, Susanna seems to still have the upper hand—she stands tall, powerful, and unbothered.

By the 1980s, thanks to the previous decades’ feminist movement, American and European women received more recognition of their social and political rights and a degree of sexual liberation. Even with these men watching her in the hotel shower, she will not be accused of adultery and sentenced to death as the original Susanna was. These older men don’t pose a mortal threat to her in the same way that the biblical judges did. Colescott instead transforms the story into a comical episode that shifts the power in favor of the female lead.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Photos: Chloe Collyer. Susanna and the Elders (Novelty Hotel), 1980, Robert Colescott, American, 1925-2009, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 72 1/8 in. (213.4 x 183.2 cm), Mary Arrington Small Estate Acquisition Fund, 84.170 © Estate of Robert Colescott/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Curator Christian Larsen on Diego Cibelli’s Fiori dei miei Habiti

Fiori dei miei Habiti (La Montagne Enchantée) is a tour de force of porcelain artistry by Diego Cibelli, the Neapolitan contemporary master of this historically prized and notoriously delicate and technically difficult medium. Cibelli has achieved such extraordinary technical skill in part due to his close relationship with the legendary Royal Porcelain Manufactory at Capodimonte in Naples, Italy. His conceptual approach owes much to his training as both an artist and a designer at the Academy of Fine Arts and University Luigi Vanvitelli in Naples and the Weisensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin, Germany. Evolving from the tradition of 1960s and ’70s Italian radical designers—such as Archizoom, Superstudio, Andrea Branzi, and Ettore Sottsass—Cibelli’s work shares with these spiritual forefathers a belief in objects as powerful agents in our lived-in and natural environments. His training in design was not to gain “a practical functional method of doing,” as Cibelli puts it, but rather “it was a path I took only to be influenced by those thoughts where the object is considered as ‘a living being’ with its own history. This makes objects on a speculative level similar to human beings.”

Cibelli’s research-based approach leads to the production of singular collections, each exploring a specific theme—for example, the relationship between ceramics, ancient and medieval iconography, and early modern print culture. He has even created ceramic representations of the cash tips received in a single day by coffee baristas. The results are worthy of the most extraordinary cabinets of curiosities and Wunderkammer (wonder-room) collections.

The son of a fisherman, Cibelli grew up in the Naples working-class neighborhood of Scampia, a community of low-income housing that has been notoriously represented as the mafia-controlled center of drug dealing in the TV drama Gomorrah. Cibelli is the proud native son of his neighborhood, where his studio occupies the unused second floor of the local elementary school. In his workshop, he has overcome the challenges of his circumstances to grow a staff of assistants and a prolific practice that has made Cibelli a preeminent voice in contemporary porcelain.

Born into anything but royal conditions, Cibelli is the unlikely heir apparent to the long tradition of exquisitely detailed porcelain flowers that became the signature of the Royal Porcelain Manufactory at Capodimonte. Founded in 1743 by King Charles of Bourbon to rival the porcelain produced at Sèvres and Meissen for the French and German courts, respectively, Capodimonte porcelain became prized for its fine quality due to the suppleness of its paste.

The Seattle Art Museum commissioned Cibelli to create Fiori dei miei Habiti as a site-specific work that responds to the crown jewel of the museum’s European galleries: the Porcelain Room. Cibelli has expressed what an honor it is to have been invited to “dance together with so many porcelain masterworks gathered from across time and cultures in the museum’s extraordinary collection.” His work for SAM is a study in choreographies orchestrated between characters caught in complex compositions that create mininarratives and vignettes. This is not the first time Cibelli has engaged in such a dance. For The Art of Dancing Together, his 2021 solo exhibition at the Museum and Royal Wood of Capodimonte, the home of the Farnese Collection, Cibelli was invited to research and respond as a way of engaging in a contemporary dialogue with the museum’s historic masterworks.

Similarly to his work at Capodimonte, Cibelli responds to the context of SAM’s Porcelain Room, with its famed ceiling fresco by Venetian baroque rococo master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770). Rising upward in the center of the Porcelain Room directly underneath the Tiepolo ceiling, Cibelli’s porcelain mountain landscape provokes a conversation between the histories of sculpture and painting. His three-dimensional allegory responds directly to Tiepolo’s two-dimensional The Triumph of Valor over Time. While the vanity of eternal fame is the driving force behind Tiepolo’s work, Cibelli conveys the transcendence of eternal nature beyond humanity’s vanity. The pairing could not be more fitting. Tiepolo is known as a painter of light, whose ceiling frescoes in Venetian palazzi become illuminated and in turn diffuse light through the whole room by capturing the glimmer of sunlight reflected off the lagoon’s surface.In the purity of its bisque white body, Cibelli’s porcelain captures light into the vitreous translucency of its material, radiating an otherworldly, glowing aura. In terms of style, Cibelli’s baroque forms of abundance and technical virtuosity rival that of the great Italian baroque masters. His Neapolitan culture surely instilled in him the awe-inspiring drama of that city’s intense regional version of baroque. But his lightness of touch and preference for the whimsical arabesques of the floral and natural world place him within the language of rococo.

The work’s title takes on multiple meanings by substituting the word fiori (flowers) for fuori (out) in the expression fuori dei miei habiti, which means “out of my habitat [or habits],” implying a journey into the uncomfortable or unknown, an experience outside of one’s comfort zone. But the play on words could also be interpreted as “flowers of my dress,” drawing attention to the characters’ skin and garments of garlands, foliage, sticks, and flowers.

Cibelli takes his initial inspiration from Filippo Tagliolini’s La Caduta dei Giganti (1785–90), one of the greatest masterpieces of Capodimonte porcelain. In Tagliolini’s work, Zeus straddles the peak of Olympus hurling thunderbolts at the Giants, who are depicted as loin cloth–clad muscle men tumbling in various poses of defeat down the craggy slopes of the mountain. The Giants themselves were said to be hybrid beasts with dragon scales and shaggy hair, as tall as mountains and nearly invincible.

Cibelli reverses Tagliolini’s formula of traditional heroic masculinity in favor of a spectrum of diverse hybrid creatures, not a war of testosterone-fueled men but queer celebrants in states of transformation. Through the magic of metamorphosis, Cibelli conjures the act of becoming through the union of vegetal, human, and animal. His unique crossbreeds aspire toward a holistic and interconnected cosmology. Instead of defeated and falling down the mountain, his enchanted menagerie sets off on a journey full of twists, chains, tumbles, close calls, and glory as the beings spirally ascend the peak heavenward. Their path takes them through challenging encounters with animal-vegetal others as well as their own changes and transcendence.

Cibelli explains that it is in the process of his characters’ transformations that “they express beauty in their own terms.” Cibelli further explains that “beauty in my work comes from ‘the baggage of history.’ I consider time as a resource of ‘whispers’ that offer for each of my productions an overwhelming visual narration.”

To encounter Diego Cibelli is to discover a rare and unique, almost mythological, creature. He is the proverbial unicorn. His physical presence astonishes with his courageous and bold sartorial choices. His body has suffered through the challenges of an eating disorder, which in the food-dominated culture of Italy carries an especially intense resonance. His work is marked by a relationship to abundance and food, with one collection even titled Feed Me with Domestic Stuff. His star has risen and, along with it, he has triumphed over his own personal challenges. A light, joyful, and boundless compassion emanates from his soul. When with Cibelli, he transports us along with him into his fantastical world of imaginative and transcendent beauty.

– Christian Larsen, SAM Guest Curator and Cultural Historian

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Double Poke in the Eye II

Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture is now on view at SAM! This homegrown exhibition features 87 ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and drawings from SAM’s collection—some of which are being shown for the first time. Throughout the run of the exhibition, we’ll be periodically sharing insight on a few of the eclectic artworks on view. Stay tuned for more object spotlights to come.

Did you know that Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture derived its title from one of the artworks on view in the exhibition? It’s true! 

Created by artist Bruce Nauman in 1985, Double Poke in the Eye II features two faces made up of bright neon tubing. The figures look at one another while the hands in between them alternate lighting up. There is a slight delay between when the hands light up, but the two figures are always simultaneously poking each other in the eye, both at fault. Their pointed fingers just barely touch one another’s eyes and one face has its mouth open, seemingly arguing. 

Nauman began making works in neon in the 1960s, often using wordplay and both text and figurative imagery, to address “pain, life, death, love, hate, pleasure” to quote the title of another neon work by him that puts those words into a never-ending circle. Neon is typically used for commercial advertising, attracting the consumer’s eye to a storefront, but Nauman’s signs twist this commonly recognized aesthetic to question philosophical and artistic ideas.

Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana and attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison to study mathematics, physics, and art, then the University of California, Davis for his MFA. UC Davis was a hub for artists who rejected abstract and minimalist aesthetics and boundaries of low and high art. William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson were among those who taught Nauman at Davis and are also featured in Poke in the Eye

Nauman mainly studied sculpture, but after graduating, became known for his performances recorded in his studio space. Nauman captured himself doing repetitive tasks and exercises; for example, Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square, 1967–68, is ten minutes of Nauman doing just what the title describes. Watching these mundane actions captured on film draws attention to the topics of surveillance and privacy, as well as the human body’s physical limits and abilities, and what qualifies as art. To Nauman, anything an artist does in his studio is art and one of the most accessible materials an artist can use is his own body. 

Though Double Poke in the Eye II is not a performance piece, it echoes some of these themes. It mimics an endless, repetitive action as the figures go back and forth poking one another. Due to the way the lights click off and on and make the work change moment to moment, the viewer can get caught up watching this pattern repeat, trying to observe the whole sequence. In the way that viewers watch Nauman’s own body perform these repetitive actions, here we have people performing the same simple poke, again and again. Though the neon colors make this scene cartoonish, this piece illustrates a moment of pain and bodily harm that the viewer is forced to watch.

Yet, a “poke” has less serious connotations than a punch, a jab, or a stab to the eye. A poke is slightly silly. We “poke fun” at things to make light of them. The word choice for the title is significant because Nauman is also interested in the role of language in his art.

The gaps where language is imprecise are part of what Nauman wants to tease out. In 1989, Nauman said:

“When language begins to break down a little bit, it becomes exciting and communicates in nearly the simplest way that it can function: you are forced to be aware of the sounds and the poetic parts of words. If you deal only with what is known, you’ll have redundancy; on the other hand, if you deal only with the unknown, you cannot communicate at all. There is always some combination of the two, and it is how they touch each other that makes communication interesting.”1

The work isn’t just a poke in the eye but a “double poke” which is a not a common phrase: Is it a double poke because of the two figures poking one another? Or because there are two eyes as possible targets? Or could they be poking twice in a row?

Besides the verb of “poke”, the emphasis on the eye in this work is key—damaging someone’s vision impairs a major way of interacting with the world, limiting the way they can perceive others, art, and everything around them.

Double Poke in the Eye II is open to interpretation and double meanings. When asked about what the title of this particular work means on a SAM questionnaire, the artist simply replied “It is what it is.” 

For the exhibition though, this title represents the experimental modes that these artists used to depart from their contemporary artistic movements and seek something new. Many of these artists in Poke in the Eye depicted figures in their work (rather than abstraction); worked with neon, ceramics, and textiles (rather than paint and canvas); and were silly and self-effacing (rather than serious).

Artworks like these are a type of a poke in the eye—they stand out as offbeat and off-kilter from expectations of what art should be.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

1 John Yau, “Words and Things: The Prints of Bruce Nauman”, in Bruce Nauman Prints 1970-89, ed. Christopher Cordes (Castelli Graphics: New York, Lorence Monk Gallery: New York, Donald Young Gallery; Chicago, 1989), 10.

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Transforming My Artistic Practice: Emerging Arts Leader Andy DeLapp Reflects

My application to become a SAM Emerging Arts Leader was a shot in the dark. As an oil painter, object conservation seemed out of my realm. When I was finally offered this internship, however, I felt like I finally had a chance to explore a new aspect of the art world.

Unlike painting, the goal of art conservation is to not grab the attention of the viewer. I dove into projects with the hope that viewers would not see the countless hours I spent chipping away at flaking paint or the brush strokes in my wax applications. An art conservator is a kind of secret hero, working in stealth to make it seem as though all artworks on view have always been bright, shiny, and untouched by time. As a SAM intern, I grew familiar with employing vastly different treatments to an assortment of objects and sculptures.

While working alongside Liz Brown, SAM Senior Objects Conservator, I had the opportunity to help reassemble Me and Pops (2019) an artwork by American contemporary artist Aaron Fowler. It took precision and many hands to lift the plywood backing—when handling art in such an intimate way, I started to notice things that the average viewer might not. I needed to be aware of weak points, sharp edges, and even the fibers of the organic material. Many of those details revealed evidence of the artist’s hand. While thinking through these small details I felt like I was in a conversation with the artist, rather than simply handling an object.

Andy DeLapp and Liz Brown, SAM Senior Object Conservator, at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

I was also able to learn how to treat smaller objects in the museum’s conservation lab with Geneva Grisworld, SAM Associate Object Conservator. I gained insight into the research and documentation that conservators are required to complete before treating any object in the museum’s collection. Focusing on an 18th century French mustard cup, I took care in documenting every feature, scratch, and dent. I then made a mixture of calcium carbonate and ethanol to delicately remove the tarnish layer by layer. Slowly, and much to my satisfaction, the dull orange-tinted surface transformed into a dazzling silver. I made my own file on The Museum System (TMS) to document the cup’s condition, treatment, and analysis. I took a lot of joy in researching the history of mustard cups, especially discovering that this particular mustard cup was likely missing a spoon!

As an artist, I now think about how my own two-dimensional painting practice relates to object conservation. I think about my methods, the paints I use, and the craftsmanship of my hand-stretched canvas. I ask myself, “Will future conservators need to re-tension my canvas? What can I do to prevent paint lifting in the future? Should I note the pigments used in case the paint flakes?” The behind-the-scenes look at art conservation I received as a SAM Emerging Arts Leader has shattered the barrier that once sat between myself and the intimidating white museum walls.

I am extremely grateful for my experience as a SAM intern and am eternally grateful for the guidance offered by my supervisors on the conservation team. As my internship comes to an end, I will be pursuing jobs in art handling, and carrying my knowledge of conservation into my painting practice. I take pride in contributing to my community by caring for our beautiful art, and I sincerely hope my work at the Seattle Art Museum is unseen by the viewer.

– Andy DeLapp, Emerging Arts Leader Intern in Conservation

Photos: Chloe Collyer © 2024 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Red Hot Pot

Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture is now on view at SAM! This homegrown exhibition features 87 ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and drawings from SAM’s collection—some of which are being shown for the first time. Throughout the run of the exhibition, we’ll be periodically sharing insight on a few of the eclectic artworks on view. Stay tuned for more object spotlights to come.

Poke in the Eye is all about encounters with the odd and unusual as well as  challenging expectations of what you’ll find in a museum. Patti Warashina’s Red Hot Pot (1969) embodies this spirit with more than just tongue-in-cheek humor.

The shape of Red Hot Pot is not a standard form like the ceramic vessels that we use everyday. The large, curved rectangular white base with a black bottom edge resembles a toaster. But instead of toast emerging from this form, a bright pink tongue pops out from a pair of large red-orange lips and teeth. The shiny finish on the surface makes the lips look picture-perfect, glossy, and red hot, as the title says. 

Red Hot Pot is part of Warashina’s Basket and Loaf series where the forms (in this case a loaf) allude to themes of food and the kitchen, traditionally associated with women. Starting her career in the 1960s in a male-dominated art world and the rise of second wave feminism, Warashina often critiqued gender stereotypes and the sexualization of women’s bodies. Curvy vases have long been associated with women’s bodies and their reproductive capabilities, as vessels that can be filled. Warashina’s Faucet Pot (ca. 1966), also on view in Poke in the Eye, critiques this symbolism explicitly.

Likewise, the plump lips of Red Hot Pot mimic a seductively red mouth, but the tongue sticking out seems like an act of defiance. The lips aren’t blowing a kiss, but are drawn into a smile, poking fun at us for looking.

In isolating the lips and removing the rest of the face, Warashina draws attention to how sexualized a woman’s mouth can be, but also makes it more peculiar in this context. Warashina was inspired by Surrealist artists like Rene Magritte and Marcel Duchamp who are known for their strange, dreamlike scenarios that demand we inspect the mundane more closely.1 Red Hot Pot is definitely dreamlike, or maybe nightmare-ish, adding a mouth to this inanimate object. 

Talking about her work recently, Warshina said, “I like things that are not quite right, they’re kind of loony… The parts and pieces fit together and if they kind of go against each other that’s even better. You know, I don’t like things to be too logical. I like things that are kind of disturbed.”2

Warashina grew up in Spokane, Washington where her father, a Japanese immigrant, and her mother, a second-generation Japanese American, encouraged her education. However, they didn’t envision Warashina becoming an artist, and neither did she. Warahina attended the University of Washington intending to get a practical degree to work as a dental hygienist. When she took her first elective art classes, however, she fell in love with clay and experimenting with its techniques. Warashina returned to teach at the University of Washington from 1970 to 1995. In 2024,  she received the UW Alumni Association’s Golden Graduate Distinguished Alumnus Award.3

Throughout her career, Warashina was inspired by her fellow artists, especially those on the West Coast like Peter Voulkos, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, and Howard Kottler, who were exploring different ceramic techniques, modes of humor, and figurative forms. Abstract art had become a dominant force in the art world, especially on the East Coast, with Abstract Expressionism from artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and Minimalism from the likes of Donald Judd and Frank Stella. However, art departments at universities like the University of California, Davis, UC Berkeley, and the University of Washington became hubs for alternative approaches, rejecting abstraction, and typical materials like paint and canvas.

Art history in Europe and the US has tended to focus on paintings and sculpture (usually carving from marble or stone), Meanwhile, more everyday and functional materials like textiles and ceramics have been relegated to the category of “craft.” But many of the artists in Poke in the Eye like Patti Warashina pushed ceramics, and other materials like fiber and neon, to new possibilities and built the art world of today that recognizes extraordinary artists in any medium. 

When talking about the divide between what is art and what is not, Warashina defined it for herself: “When I come in and I see something that raises my blood pressure, then I know that there is something more than just a bowl or a sculpture or a painting. It makes me react to the painting chemically in my body. And that’s when I know—or music, you know. It makes my body react. And that is my way of judging whether, I guess, quote, whether it’s art or not… It alters your being.”4

Red Hot Pot, though it might cause confusion, discomfort, or even a laugh, provokes a reaction and that is what Warashina is looking for. To hear more from Patti Warashina herself, watch her recent SAM Talks conversation with Carrie Dedon, SAM Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

1 “UW ceramic arts program is in good hands with Patti Warashina,” UW Magazine, December 1, 2007, https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/the-wonder-of-patti-warashina/.

2 Airstream Turkey by Patti Wararshina, audio tour, Seattle Art Museum, 2024, https://www1.seattleartmuseum.org/tours/media/1544.

3 “Ceramic artist Patti Warashina Receives UW Alumni Association Golden Graduate Award.” UW Magazine, 2024, https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/ceramic-artist-patti-warashina-receives-uw-alumni-association-golden-graduate-award/.

4 Doug Jeck oral history interview with Patti Warashina, September 8, 2005, accessed September 13, 2017, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-patti-warashina-12864.

Images: Red Hot Pot, 1969, Patti Warashina, American, born 1940, ceramic with glaze, 11 x 19 1/4 x 19 in. (27.9 x 48.9 x 48.3 cm), Gift of Lucy and Herb Pruzan, 2023.23.3 © Patti Warashina, photo: Scott Leen. Photo: Chloe Collyer.

TAG Talks: The Power of Water, Color, and Teen Voices in American Art: The Stories We Carry

SAM’s Teen Arts Group (TAG) is an intensive internship program for high school-aged youth who are eager to learn about themselves and the world through art, and are excited to make SAM a fun and engaging space for teens. TAG members meet weekly from October to May to learn about the behind-the-scenes work of an art museum, lead engaging gallery tours, plan Teen Night Out, and so much more. TAG Talks is an ongoing SAM Blog series on SAM Blog that serves as a space for SAM’s teen leaders to express themselves and their love of art. Keep up with all TAG adventures by following @samteens on Instagram and stay tuned for more TAG Talks to come!

When it was announced that this year’s cohort of Teen Arts Group leaders would be making an audio guide for American Art: The Stories We Carry as our long-term project for the year, I was a bit nervous. I had never written a podcast or script before—and definitely not an audio guide. The idea of something I made being displayed for hundreds (maybe thousands!) of people to access was both intimidating and exciting! I was thrilled to try something new as well as test my creativity skills by developing something that guests at the museum could use to further enjoy the art. After finding out it would be something we work on in pairs, I felt more at ease as I usually work better and more efficiently in pairs than I do by myself.

I was lucky enough to be paired with Lila, another Teen Arts Group leader who had amazing ideas for the entirety of the project! She initiated the plan of having a conversation between us that consisted of analyzing the tones and impacts of the artworks we were assigned to discuss. She also proposed the idea of presenting the conversation as a podcast episode, which greatly contributed to the engaging and enjoyable demeanor of the final audio guide. Other folks that played instrumental roles on the audio guide as editors, recorders, and overall awesome people were Cristina Cano-Calhoun, SAM Museum Educator for Youth Programs, Ramzy, SAM Digital Interpretation Specialist, and Sasha Falsberg, SAM Audio Visual Technician! They greatly helped us make an audio guide that was polished, well-made, and fun to listen to. Each time new edits were made to our script, they always had the most helpful feedback and creative new ideas to add! 

One of the most memorable moments I had working on the audio guide was when it came time to record. This was the part that I was especially nervous about, as I was sure I wouldn’t be very good at recording something like this. Lila and I were guided to the recording area where Sasha greeted us and introduced us to some of the equipment we would be using. It was a calm and cozy environment in the recording room; the lights were dimmed and there were soft objects all around, which helped ease my nerves. We introduced ourselves and recited our pre-written statements made for the audio guide that would be played first when listeners first entered SAM’s American art galleries.

Then, we got to recording our own stop: an analysis of 4 different landscape paintings displayed together on a wall to the right of the galleries’ entrance. We discussed the colors and saturation of each work, and how this affected the gallery’s overall tone. We spoke of the paintings’ differing depictions of water, whether it be an ocean, lake, pond, or a fisherman’s hut. All of our pieces showed various relationships between humans and water. Because of this, we wrapped up our stop by asking: “What would these paintings look like if humans did not exist?”

Our hope was that listeners would walk away from our stop with a new perspective on how humans have impacted our planet’s water, how we use it, and how we need it. I hope that those who listened to our stop will now notice the smaller elements of the artworks that may otherwise go unnoticed, such as the relationships between colors and how they impact the feel of the painting. Overall, I hope that listeners enjoy our audio guide, and I highly recommend anyone with—or without—an interest in art to visit the American art galleries at SAM and listen to our TAG Audio Guide!

– Ella Clark (she/her), 16, First-Year Teen Arts Group Leader

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

In the Studio with SAM Gallery Artist Enid Smith Becker

In the Studio highlights the private workspaces of local artists represented by SAM Gallery. For more than fifty years, SAM Gallery has supported artists from across the Pacific Northwest and provided private and corporate clients with a wide range of services, from purchasing their first work of art to building extensive collections. To browse a featured artist’s entire catalogue of artwork available for rent or purchase, visit SAM Gallery on the lower level of the Seattle Art Museum.

Artist Enid Smith Becker creates semi-abstracted landscape paintings that capture a mood or an emotion. Her cozy, sun-filled studio sits in the middle of a forest on the outskirts of Seattle. When we visit, the unfinished artwork on her easel depicts a beach scene with blue skies. At the bottom, the ocean’s waves are layered atop the primary scene. For Becker, this painting evokes hope. Her works serve as a bridge between viewers and the natural world.

Becker begins each new artwork by searching through her source photographs, selecting a photo, and making a quick sketch. She paints the background landscape first and then incorporates panels or layers that overlap the landscape, offering multiple views of the same subject. Her painting process begins more loose and abstract, but becomes more intricate as details emerge. Some paintings begin with a certain location and change as she paints. For example, when she began a painting from a photograph of the Skykomish River Valley, she decided the mountains in the photograph were too angular, so she softened them. Becker wants the viewer’s eyes to continuously move and explore the space in her paintings. She works to capture the nuance of color as it is seen in the world, most recently blending five colors of green to accurately capture the color of some trees she was painting. As she paints, she steps back or rotates her paintings, to see the sense of movement and balance in the work.

Becker’s creations focus on nature and the environment. She believes that art can remind people of their connection to the natural world and encourage them to protect the beaches and forests they love. See new artworks by Enid Smith Becker online or by visiting Reveal at SAM Gallery through Sunday, August 4. Or, mix and mingle directly with the artist as we celebrate her artworks at the opening reception of Reveal on Saturday, July 13 at 2 pm.

Stay up-to-date on all that’s happening at SAM Gallery by following us on Instagram @atSAMGallery.

– Pamela Jaynes, SAM Gallery Specialist

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: American Gothicware

Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture is now on view at SAM! This homegrown exhibition features 87 ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and drawings from SAM’s collection—some of which are being shown for the first time. Throughout the run of the exhibition, we’ll be periodically sharing insight on a few of the eclectic artworks on view. Stay tuned for more object spotlights to come.

Howard Kottler’s American Gothicware from 1972 spoofs the well-known painting by Grant Wood, American Gothic, made in 1930. By placing a decal of the image on four plates and adding his own twist to each one, dinnerware becomes Gothicware à la Kottler!

During the start of the Great Depression (1929–1939), Grant Wood painted this now-iconic couple (the models were actually Wood’s dentist and sister) looking somber and proper in front of their farmhouse. Many viewers interpreted Wood’s painting as satire of older generations and outdated traditional values, while others saw it as a reflection of the resilience of farmers like these in the face of tough times. Since then, this painting has been parodied and reproduced in many forms, symbolic of one particular view of what it means to be an American.

Howard Kottler, working 40 years later, was a ceramicist in Seattle who taught at the University of Washington. Kottler was inspired by Pop Artists like Andy Warhol who experimented with reproducing famous images from pop culture and the art world. After World War II when the American economy was booming, artists were fascinated with the way that consumer goods and images could be mass-produced and identically replicated. Along with that, artists were also drawing from earlier movements like Dadaism and the idea of the readymade to challenge hierarchical definitions of art.

Kottler decided to use an everyday material that one could easily overlook, ceramic dishware, to bring politics to the table. American Gothicware conveys Kottler’s subversive attitude toward American life by altering Grant Wood’s painting across four plates: Look Alikes, Personal Possession, American Minstrels, and The Silent White Majority. Each plate offers a visual confrontation of the original painting by Wood and with it mainstream American values.

Look Alikes duplicates the man’s face and places it on the woman’s body, transforming them into a gay couple of sorts, or identical twins. In Grant’s painting, each character is strongly associated with their gender roles—the woman in her apron with houseplants on the porch behind her indicating her role as caretaker of the home, while the man is in overalls and a coat, holding a pitchfork and aligned with the red barn over his shoulder. While their stern expressions already made these two look alike, Kottler adds ambiguity about gender and the relationship between the characters. Kottler himself was a gay man and often included these questions and hidden meanings in his artworks.

In Personal Possession, a painted landscape seeps into the bodies and faces of the two characters, covering everything except their facial features and hair. Their skin is the color of the sky and their clothes have been replaced by a forest scene with some signs of human development: a bridge in the background and a tunnel to the right. The pioneer settlers who took the land as their own personal possession now wear the land as part of their clothes. It has become part of their identity as farmers who tend the land, but Kottler seems to ask if it was ever theirs to claim, critiquing the history of Manifest Destiny that is often taught in US history.

American Minstrels also delves into more unpleasant parts of American history. This image subtracts color from the skin of the two farmers to make them appear as white as the plate itself, making their whiteness literal. The title implies this could be seen as whiteface, an inverse of blackface minstrel shows wherein white performers would dress up as Black characters and parody their speech and behavior. Black performers would also participate in these minstrel performances, exaggerating their differences from white society. Minstrel shows were popular entertainment throughout the 1800s and perpetuated stereotypes that still linger today. Kottler’s reference to minstrels leaves the work open to more questions—what is being performed here and in the original American Gothic?

The Silent White Majority also critiques whiteness in America, co-opting a phrase that President Richard Nixon coined in 1969 for the American voters who did not vocally join in the counterculture and political discourses surrounding the Vietnam War. Here, the pair’s faces are mask-like with white covering the mouths but leaving their eyes and noses exposed. Their literal whiteness again calls attention to race, but even in their silence, they have power as a majority to influence politics in their favor, maintaining the status quo.

By modifying the recognizable symbol of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Kottler subverted and questioned prevailing ideas about American identity in terms of gender, sexuality, race, and national history. Alongside these political messages, American Gothicware challenges the medium of art too, transforming the humble ceramic plate into an artwork that offers a visual and conceptual feast

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

Playfully Irreverent, Intentionally Weird: An Inside Look at Poke in the Eye at SAM

This summer, dive into an oft-overlooked chapter in art history: the aesthetics that emerged on the West Coast in the 1960s and ’70s as a counter to the prevailing artistic practices of the time. Reacting against the sleekness, formality, and coldness of New York minimalism and other dominant modes of abstraction, many artists on the West Coast, particularly in Seattle and the Bay Area, began creating artwork that was intentionally more offbeat.

Instead of sleek, hard surfaces, artists opted to make work that was lumpy, tactile, and boldly colored. Instead of pure abstraction, they depicted human figures, animal caricatures, and fantastical narratives. Rejecting industrial materials, they embraced traditional craft techniques, especially ceramics, subverting divisions between “high” and “low” art. In many cases, these artists refused to take themselves or their work too seriously, by intentionally employing an irreverent sense of humor and wit.

Taken together, these strategies represented a tongue-in-cheek anti-establishment rebuttal to the dominant art market engine. Though this genre of work is often described as “Funk art,” after the seminal 1967 Funk exhibition at UC University Berkeley that brought several of these artists together for the first time, Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture takes a broader view. Here you’ll find that the aesthetic of this time and place was not a strictly delineated “movement,” but a moment: an organic and informal counterculture vision that continues to resonate today.

As one of the focal points of this West Coast aesthetic, Seattle is the ideal location to tell this story, and SAM has a particular strength in telling it—the depth and breadth of our permanent collection. Poke in the Eye is drawn primarily from SAM’s collection, mining works that visitors may have never seen before to uncover one of the legacies of our region. Experience collection favorites in a new light, discover new surprises for the first time, and learn a fresh version of art history in which SAM and Seattle play an integral role.

This article first appeared in the June through September 2024 edition of SAM Magazine and has been edited for our online readers. Become a SAM member today to receive our quarterly magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

SAM Announces Scott Stulen as New Director and CEO

We are thrilled to share the news, announced in The Seattle Times, that following an extensive international search, Scott Stulen has been chosen as the Seattle Art Museum’s new Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. Scott, an innovative leader renowned for his dynamic vision and commitment to community engagement, will officially begin his new role at SAM on August 26, 2024.

Scott joins SAM with a distinguished career in the arts, bringing a wealth of experience from his previous roles as President and CEO of the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and as the Director of mnartists.org, a critical arts writing platform of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“The SAM Board of Trustees search committee, in partnership with Russell Reynolds, searched extensively across the art museum field to find the best fit for our community. While gathering recommendations, Scott was mentioned by many others in the field, due to his reputation as an innovative arts leader, strong business acumen, and outstanding work in community engagement,” said Bert Valdman, SAM trustee and chair of the search committee.

During his tenure as leader of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Scott transformed the museum into a welcoming, inclusive, and family-friendly experience, resulting in exponential growth in both attendance and support. He secured a $10M gift in support of the museum campus’s first addition in over three decades, established a $16.5M contemporary art acquisition fund to diversify the collection, and overhauled the museum’s programming to center interactive, outdoor, and multi-generational fun and learning. In support of the broader community, Scott established a free membership program for all public-school teachers in Oklahoma and oversaw the planning of a 50,000 sq. ft. vegetable garden within the campus, providing over 1.5 tons of fresh produce each year to support communities of need.

Prior to joining the Philbrook, Scott was the inaugural Curator of Audience Experiences and Performance at the Indianapolis Museum of Art from 2014 to 2016, where he launched the ARTx program, commissioned new performances and site-specific installations, and launched new earned-income initiatives to welcome diverse audiences. From 2008 to 2014, he was Project Director of mnartists.org at the Walker Art Center, where he co-curated and developed the Open Field project, reframing the museum as a public park and platform for experimentation, including the first Internet Cat Video Festival.

Scott is also a practicing visual artist with an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Minnesota and a BFA in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He also DJs (spinning under the moniker MDL WST) and, along with wife Rachel, is raising two sons, Erlend (13) and Oliver (9).

“I am incredibly honored to be selected as the next CEO of the Seattle Art Museum. Seattle has always been a city I deeply admire, and the opportunity to lead such a renowned institution is beyond my wildest dreams. SAM’s three dynamic sites, talented and dedicated staff, and engaged board provide incredible opportunities to deepen our connections with the diverse communities we serve. As an artist, I approach things a bit differently, and I’m eager to bring this perspective to SAM along with my experience developing innovative and inclusive programs,” Scott shared. “I can’t wait to get started.”

Welcome to SAM and Seattle, Scott!

Photo credit: Bhadri Verduzco/Courtesy Philbrook Museum of Art

SAM Celebrates Pride: Between Rabbit and Fox

In honor of Pride Month, SAM Blog features reflections by SAM voices on collection artworks that explore LGBTQIA+ art and artists. Queer lives matter every day of the year, but this month is a particular opportunity to celebrate histories of joy, advocacy, and resistance. Check out more Pride-related content on SAM Blog, including another object spotlight and a list of queer film recommendations curated by SAM’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972) foregrounds his Indigenous, queer identity in his artwork, often with bold colors and materials that make his personal history and intentions undeniable. As Gibson has noted in many of his interviews, he celebrates a state of “in-between-ness”: between cultures, between aesthetics, and between normative gender expectations.1

Gibson is also in-between in a few places at SAM—Gibson’s 2017 work, Between Rabbit and Fox, is on view on the third floor, in the space between the modern and contemporary galleries and American Art: The Stories We Carry. 

This large abstract painting on canvas depicts a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors, refracted in a vibrant pattern. Although at first the painting seems like a smooth solid surface, its raised lines cut through different shapes and shimmery paints in the center to reveal the texture of the canvas. Looking closely, every diagonal is intentional, forming more and more triangles, and they create the effect of overlapping pieces and colors that change as they are layered.

As a painter, Gibson draws upon the major art historical movements of modernism and abstraction that explored minimalism and color theory, including the work of Josef Albers, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Al Held, and Barnett Newman, all of whose works are in SAM’s collection.

Yet abstraction has long been a part of Native American artistic traditions as well, adorning many types of functional and cultural objects, such as Navajo textiles and Osage ribbonwork.2 Between Rabbit and Fox also references Gibson’s own earlier abstract paintings on hide, where he directly connected abstraction to Indigenous history by painting upon this culturally significant material. In the same room as Between Rabbit and Fox, you can see contemporary Tlingit/Unangax artist Nicholas Galanin’s work on deer hide, Architecture of return, escape (The British Museum) (2022).

Gibson grew up in Germany and South Korea, among other places with his father’s military assignments, but came back to the US to attend the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, for his BFA, and then the Royal College of Art, London for his MA in painting. While growing up abroad, he felt he was treated as an “American,” but back at home in the US, he was seen only as Native American.3

Gibson is of Choctaw and Cherokee lineage, but didn’t grow up on a reservation. Many Americans he encountered had assumptions about a monolithic Native American culture and artistic aesthetic. Facing these reductive stereotypes, Gibson felt limited by this necessity to explain Native American art and concepts to an unaware audience, but also wanted to make work that reflected his identity. He found there was even less acceptance for a queer Indigenous man and artist.4

Instead of trying to avoid representing these identities in his art, Gibson came to a realization that he needed to incorporate them all and create a new path for himself in the art world. Around 2011, Gibson began reaching out to other Native American communities to learn about and collaborate on artworks that involved beadwork and drum making.5 He chose to use these techniques and make works on animal hide rather than on canvas, and he incorporated text and pop culture references to make his messages more visible.

Gibson’s work often addresses US history and the government’s failings toward Native Americans as well as queer communities. His other work in SAM’s collection, IF I RULED THE WORLD (2018), is a repurposed punching bag covered with beading, fringe, and metal jingles, and embedded with the title of a song by the rapper Nas. Here, Gibson also uses abstract geometric decoration with bands of primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) interrupted by black triangles.

The punching bag evokes physical action and even a sense of violent masculinity, which is immediately undercut by the delicate and detailed ornamentation that Gibson applies. He questions gender identity by using techniques like beading that are associated with women makers, as well as integrating quotes from queer club and music scenes and performing in gender-bending costumes he designs. Combining popular culture, canonical art influences, and Indigenous art forms and materials, Gibson has forged a new way forward that combines his identities with activism. The Seattle Art Museum exhibited a survey show of Gibson’s work in 2018, LIKE A HAMMER, and this year, Gibson was selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, one of the largest and oldest international art fairs. Gibson’s presentation, the space in which to place me, was the first solo show by a Native American artist at the prestigious event. With this platform, Gibson has brought his queer, Indigenous identity to the forefront, raising issues and history that his communities and all of us have to face in making a more just world.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

1  “Innovation and Tradition: Jeffrey Gibson Interviewed by Emily Zimmerman,” Bomb Magazine, May 6, 2019, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/innovation-and-tradition-jeffrey-gibson-interviewed.
2 John P. Lukavic, “What Should Have Been, What Is, and What Will Be,” Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. Munich, London, New York: Denver Art Museum, with DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2019; p. 29.
3 David Pagel, “Jeffrey Gibson: American. Native American. Gay. An artist’s life outside labels,” Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-jeffrey-gibson-20171007-htmlstory.html.
4 “Material & Identity Merge in Jeffrey Gibson’s ‘Like A Hammer’ at Seattle Art Museum.” YouTube January 31, 2019. https://youtu.be/-RrqDSZKtLQ?si=1NN66Iigx6HO0685.
5 Anne Ellegood. “Jeffrey Gibson: Critical Exuberance,” Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. Munich, London, New York: Denver Art Museum, with DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2019; pp. 83-84.


Celebrate Pride Month in Seattle with these suggested events:

Sat Jun 22
Youth Pride Disco
Break out your disco wear for this LGBTQIA+ Pride party, planned for and organized by LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 13 and 22! Join us for drag performances, great music, friend-making activities, food and soft drinks, a quiet room, and more.

Through Sun Jun 23
Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales: Together Again, Again!
Experience the comedy, music, and saucy stylings of two of the Pacific Northwest’s standout drag entertainers, in this wildly hilarious extravaganza set in an apocalyptic future. Check the event calendar for information about performances for teens, ASL interpretation, captions, and masking.

Fri Jun 28
Trans Pride Seattle 2024
Started in 2013, Trans Pride Seattle is an annual event organized by Gender Justice League. Visit the Volunteer Park Amphitheater from 5 to 10 pm for live music, community speakers, performances, and a resource fair all dedicated to increased visibility, connection, and love of the Seattle-area TwoSpirit, Trans, and Gender Diverse (2STGD) community.

Sat Jun 29
PrideFest Capitol Hill
Spanning six blocks of Broadway and Cal Anderson Park, this all-day market features queer local businesses, beer gardens, family and youth programming, and three stages with an unforgettable lineup of live performances.

Sun Jun 30
Seattle Pride Parade
Spend the final day of June by taking part in the 50th annual Pride Parade led by grand marshals Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. Then, head over to Seattle Center for the can’t-miss performances, hundreds of acts, beer gardens, food vendors, a new family area—and dancing in the iconic International Fountain.

Visit the official Seattle Pride website for even more suggested events.

Photos: Natali Wiseman.

SAM Celebrates Pride: The Talented Mr. Delafosse

In honor of Pride Month, SAM Blog features reflections by SAM voices on collection artworks that explore LGBTQIA+ art and artists. Queer lives matter every day of the year, but this month is a particular opportunity to celebrate histories of joy, advocacy, and resistance. Stay tuned for more Pride-related content on SAM Blog, including another object spotlight and a list of queer film recommendations curated by SAM’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group.

If you Google “Léon Delafosse,” you’ll get more information on John Singer Sargent’s portrait of the French composer and pianist—part of SAM’s collection since 2001—than on Delafosse’s life story: his early years of poverty, rise as a piano virtuoso and composer, and the eventual destruction of his promising career by powerful men.

Before the arrival of recordings, musicians who were not independently wealthy or well-connected needed patrons and made money by performing in the private salons of rich people. Delafosse made two famous gay friends who propelled his career in Paris: Count Robert de Montesquiou (a social snob and poet-poseur) and writer Marcel Proust. Each of these men acted as unofficial “agents” for Delafosse, promoting his talents to their powerful friends. It’s long been assumed Montesquiou, in addition to being Delafosse’s principal patron, was his lover, too, and that their fraught relationship is immortalized in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (with the bisexual violinist Charles Morel as Delafosse and the gay Baron de Charlus as Montesquiou).  

Gay sex was decriminalized in France in 1791, but men who loved other men emotionally and sexually remained (for the most part) quiet about their private lives. Men who were suspected to be homosexual, who had “feminine” voices or mannerisms, wore colorful and outlandish clothing,  engaged in non-traditional (unmanly) careers were described in code words such as “dandy,” “decadent,” “artistic” and “aesthete” (admittedly better than the alternatives of the time:“sodomite,” “invert,” and “pederast”!)

Montesquiou was easily bored and his temper was volcanic. When Delafosse made the inevitable mistake (unknown, but believed to be the fact he was more interested in music than in anything or anyone), their breakup was cataclysmic. Montesquiou and his accomplice, Proust, set out to destroy Delafosse’s reputation and have him barred from important musical salons all over Paris. They succeeded. Delafosse was devastated and hopeless as he became a laughingstock in the capital. 

Enter: John Singer Sargent.

Sargent (whose obsession with the male body is evident in his work) took a liking to the handsome Delafosse and in genuine friendship promoted his talents to influential Americans like arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner. Beginning in 1895, Sargent painted Delafosse (then in his early twenties) and gave him the portrait as a lavish gift. Delafosse kept the painting until the day he died.

Pride Month is a celebration of LGBTQ+ history and a time to ponder the world as it is. Community is fragile, and examining the story of Léon Delafosse presents a warning and a quandary. In Belle Époque France, anyone who did not fit easily into standard society, whose sexual identity or gender expression made them outsiders, had to examine and monitor their appearance, their every move, their every spoken or written word. Such nonstop, intense, and protective self-scrutiny must have been exhausting, infuriating. And seeing “yourself” in another man or woman who was like you must have been frightening and intimidating, and it often led to betrayals, based not just on what was held in common but what was different: money, class, looks, and the power that those things bestow.

When I examine Sargent’s image of Léon Delafosse with contemporary eyes and in the current worldwide political climate, I wonder: is Delafosse emerging from the darkness or receding into it? 

– Kevin Stant, SAM Docent

Kevin Stant has been a docent at SAM since 2002. Kevin’s next assignment will be at the Seattle Asian Art Museum; beginning August 31, he’ll give Saturday tours on the exhibition Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection.


Celebrate Pride Month in Seattle with these suggested events:

Sat Jun 22
Youth Pride Disco
Break out your disco wear for this LGBTQIA+ Pride party, planned for and organized by LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 13 and 22! Join us for drag performances, great music, friend-making activities, food and soft drinks, a quiet room, and more.

Through Sun Jun 23
Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales: Together Again, Again!
Experience the comedy, music, and saucy stylings of two of the Pacific Northwest’s standout drag entertainers, in this wildly hilarious extravaganza set in an apocalyptic future. Check the event calendar for information about performances for teens, ASL interpretation, captions, and masking.

Fri Jun 28
Trans Pride Seattle 2024
Started in 2013, Trans Pride Seattle is an annual event organized by Gender Justice League. Visit the Volunteer Park Amphitheater from 5 to 10 pm for live music, community speakers, performances, and a resource fair all dedicated to increased visibility, connection, and love of the Seattle-area TwoSpirit, Trans, and Gender Diverse (2STGD) community.

Sat Jun 29
PrideFest Capitol Hill
Spanning six blocks of Broadway and Cal Anderson Park, this all-day market features queer local businesses, beer gardens, family and youth programming, and three stages with an unforgettable lineup of live performances.

Sun Jun 30
Seattle Pride Parade
Spend the final day of June by taking part in the 50th annual Pride Parade led by grand marshals Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. Then, head over to Seattle Center for the can’t-miss performances, hundreds of acts, beer gardens, food vendors, a new family area—and dancing in the iconic International Fountain.

Visit the official Seattle Pride website for even more suggested events.

Image: Léon Delafosse, ca. 1895–98, John Singer Sargent, Born Florence, Italy, 1856; Died London, England, 1925, oil on canvas, 39 3/4 x 23 3/8 in. Given in honor of Trevor Fairbrother by Mr. and Mrs. Prentice Bloedel by exchange, and by Robert M. Arnold, Tom and Ann Barwick, Frank Bayley, Jeffrey and Susan Brotman, Contemporary Art Council, Council of American Art, Jane and David R. Davis, Decorative Arts and Paintings Council, Robert B. Dootson, Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth, P. Raaze Garrison, Lyn and Gerald Grinstein, Helen and Max Gurvich, Marshall Hatch, John and Ann Hauberg, Richard and Betty Hedreen, Mary Ann and Henry James, Mrs. Janet W. Ketcham, Allan and Mary Kollar, Greg Kucera and Larry Yocom, Rufus and Pat Lumry, Byron R. Meyer, Ruth J. Nutt, Scotty Ray, Gladys and Sam Rubinstein, Mr. and Mrs. Allen Vance Salsbury, Herman and Faye Sarkowsky, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Scheumann, Seattle Art Museum Supporters, Jon and Mary Shirley, Joan and Harry Stonecipher, Dean and Mary Thornton, William and Ruth True, Volunteers Association, Ms. Susan Winokur and Mr. Paul Leach, The Virginia Wright Fund, Charlie and Barbara Wright, Howard Wright and Kate Janeway, Merrill Wright, and Mrs. T. Evans Wyckoff, 2001.17. Photo: Elizabeth Mann.

Step Into the Whirlpool of Yirrkala at SAM

Is paradise lost? Or is there a place on Earth that has been able to avoid climate catastrophes, species loss, homelessness, and menial jobs, and that constantly involves everyone in making art and ceremony? There is. For visions of a culture that has cared for the environment and every living species in it for millennia, and now creates art which invites us to consider alternative ways of navigating life on this planet, let’s turn to Yirrkala.

Yirrkala is a small town on the northeast edge of Australia, which is a central hub for the people who call themselves Yolngu and live on territories from the waters off the Blue Mud Bay in Arnhem Land. Their art gives form to a database of relationships and laws that govern the way humans interact with one another and with natural phenomena. Their signature is seen in intricate designs that arrived with the great culture heroes whose bodies were marked by patterns of water, salt, and foam that dried on their skin. For centuries, Yolngu have painted clan designs on bodies for ceremonies and on sacred objects.

More recently, Yolngu artists have painted on bark, incised metal, and developed media to provide outsiders with hints of how they see their world. Thirty examples of art from Yirrkala were selected from the nearly 100 in the collection formulated during visits to the Top End by Bob Kaplan and Margaret Levi. A cultural keynote of Yolngu culture is the law of sharing and not excluding any people or anything from the group. Kinship extends to all living beings they come in contact with: from birds and insects to snakes and crocodiles. Then there are the ancestral beings who may make their presence known in sparkling water, blazing fire, or the angry eyes of a shark.

Will Stubbs, a Yirrkala resident, has described a difference in what Yolngu art reflects upon. As he has written, “If you think of a time before television, when entertainment was not beamed from remote sources, you would have been grateful for a fully functioning ecosystem… In a fully enriched ecosystem, you cannot separate yourself from the environment: fish will literally fly past your face, snakes slither into your house, and insects crawl into your bed.”1 A visit to this gallery will surround you with messages from Yolngu who offer a long, sustained look at their territory and want us to know how extraordinary it is.

Yirrkala: Art From Australia’s Top End is now on view in SAM’s third floor galleries.

– Pam McClusky, SAM Oliver E. and Pamela F. Cobb Curator of African and Oceanic Art

This article first appeared in the February through May 2024 edition of SAM Magazine and has been edited for our online readers. Become a SAM member today to receive our quarterly magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

1 Will Stubs, Larrakitj: Kerry Stokes Collection (Australia: Fremantle Press, 2011), 40.

TAG Talks: Disco, Dancing, and Bringing the Magic of Teen Night Out to Life

SAM’s Teen Arts Group (TAG) is an intensive internship program for high school-aged youth who are eager to learn about themselves and the world through art, and are excited to make SAM a fun and engaging space for teens. TAG members meet weekly from October to May to learn about the behind-the-scenes work of an art museum, lead engaging gallery tours, plan Teen Night Out, and so much more. TAG Talks is an ongoing SAM Blog series on SAM Blog that serves as a space for SAM’s teen leaders to express themselves and their love of art. Keep up with all TAG adventures by following @samteens on Instagram and stay tuned for more TAG Talks to come!

It’s a Friday night, and you’re bored out of your mind. The usual hangouts lack the frenzy, and your phone is out of new trends to show you. But wait! You suddenly remembered your friend telling you about the annual Teen Night Out at the Seattle Art Museum.

I joined SAM’s Teen Arts Group (TAG) in October 2023. Walking into my first meeting, it was already known that our adventures at SAM would culminate with Teen Night Out, just like every year. Seeing the excitement and anticipation that consumed last year’s attendees put pressure on us to plan and execute another engaging and fun event for Seattle’s teens. This being my first year in TAG, I wanted Teen Night Out 2024 to be memorable.

When it came to deciding the theme and decorations for the event, it was truly inspiring to hear the ideas of other TAG members. They demonstrated an immense passion for art, and shared their hopes for the museum. Theme ideas ranged from ballgowns, disco, glam rock, and nature. Until, finally, we hit Junkyard Disco. We all had ideas in mind that basically described vintage 70s fashion with a touch of sustainability. With a disco ball too, of course!

Leading up to the day of the event, TAG meetings covered creating decorations for the museum, whilst also leaving time for fun, practicing art with teaching artists. The decorations were my favorite part. Some of the decorations I made ranged from giant cardboard disco balls to a huge “SAM Records” music disk. Oh! And we can’t forget the giant van paper frame that was used as part of the event’s photobooth. During this time of cramming to finish creating decorations and planning, the best part of it all was bonding with other TAG members. Creating new decorations with the help of others while also complimenting and discussing posters made by others was truly the highlight of the process for me.

The minutes leading up to Teen Night Out were full of moving heavy packages of sparkling water and sneaking in some snacks along the way. Every TAG member had amazing, lavish disco outfits that truly matched the theme of the evening. What excited me most, however, was the sheer amount of disco balls, something I could’ve only dreamed of! Mere seconds before the doors opened, I created my own disco ball headband with the support of the tiny disco balls that filled countless buckets along the entrance of the museum. At exactly 7 pm, teens rushed in after the conclusion of the award ceremony of Seattle Public Schools’ Naramore Art Show on the museum’s lower level. I remember teens instantly running to the junkyard area we had in the front of the museum, taking all the tiny and large objects that soon transformed into original breathtaking creations.

Teen Night Out was a blur, but in the best way possible.

I remember creating many headbands and little gadgets that soon found a place on my bedroom bookshelf. In the middle of Teen Night Out, my friends and fellow TAG members Hamda and Samira alerted me to our new TAG audio guide, finally installed in American Art: The Stories We Carry. I remember jumping with joy after seeing our hard work in its full and final form for museum visitors to see and interact with for years to come.

To end off the night, students of the School of Acrobatics & New Circus Arts (SANCA) gave an amazing performance, entirely powered by youth! It was refreshing to see an organization that willingly grants youth the power to form their own decisions, something I admire about SAM as well.

Looking back, Teen Night Out felt like a huge hangout for teens with different backgrounds, but all united through art. Art possesses a healing power that has followed me throughout my life, and it’s truly rewarding to see other teens express themselves through various artistic means. To all teens, Teen Night Out is one night a year, but may very well be the best night of your entire year. You are guaranteed to make friends, have fun, make some great art, and find yourself along the way!

– Ivy Liu (she/her), 15, First-Year Teen Arts Group Leader

Photos: Chloe Collyer & Cristina Cano-Calhoun.

Professor Sonal Khullar on a New Approach to Imagining Geographical Borders in South Asian Art

SAM’s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas presents the 2023–24 season of the Saturday University Lecture Series, exploring various topics on Asian art and culture across time. On Saturday, June 8, Sonal Khullar, W. Norman Brown Associate Professor of South Asian Studies in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, will discuss the growing preoccupation with nations, borders, and partitions in contemporary art from South Asia since the 1990s. In advance of her talk, SAM spoke with Khullar about what visitors can expect to learn about in her upcoming talk, her travels to Lahore, Pakistan in 2018, and the role art has played and will continue to play in South Asian politics.


SAM: What can the public expect to learn about in your upcoming Saturday University lecture? What initially drew you to this topic?

Sonal Khullar: My lecture will highlight contemporary art from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka that takes up the problem of nations, borders, and partitions in South Asia. Since the late 1990s, artists have aimed to materialize a region distinct from the one conceived by nation-states and multinational corporations. They have done so through collaborations in the form of artworks, projects, exhibitions, and associations despite immense and growing conflicts within and between nation-states. Although globalization is generally imagined through networks and flows and discussed in terms of mobility and circulation, it can also be understood as their converse: obstacles to, or restrictions on, movement, evident in Pakistani artist Bani Abidi’s series of inkjet prints Security Barriers (2009–2019), the double-channel video installation The News (2001), and the film The Distance from Here (2010), which I will address in my lecture.

In researching my first book Worldly Affiliations (University of California Press, 2015) on modern art in India, I became aware of a contemporary art world that was different from what had come before in its formal and social commitments. Yet, legacies of modernism were everywhere in art institutions and imaginations, and highly significant for contemporary art. I wanted to explore that dynamic further. In the 21st century, artists from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka regularly show their work in India, where galleries, museums, dealers, and critics agglomerate, and large-scale, recurring international art exhibitions are hosted, both in the region and outside of it. These conditions for art have enabled cultural exchanges across borders and generated aesthetics and politics of what I call ‘everyday partitions.’ A sense of loss, edginess, and haunting, with the past looming over the present, is palpable in these works, as exemplified by Indian artist Shilpa Gupta’s work shown in the collateral exhibition My East is Your West at the Venice Biennale in 2015.

SAM: Academic research often involves travel. Is there a travel experience related to your lecture experience that you could share with us?

SK: My visit to Pakistan to speak in the Academic Forum of the inaugural Lahore Biennale in 2018 was unforgettable. It was my first time in Pakistan, though Lahore was familiar. It is the city in which my grandmother, Sudarshan Nayyar, spent her childhood and adolescence, living in 5 Scotch Corner off Mall Road, and attending Sacred Heart Convent School, where Belgian nuns valued discipline and enforced purdah (practices of gendered segregation). Her father, my great-grandfather, Sohan Lal Nayyar, a civil engineer with the Public Works Department, came from Qila Sobha Singh in Sialkot District, now Qila Ahmed Abad in Narowal District in Pakistan. I had long imagined Lahore with its tree-lined boulevards and Mughal monuments to be like Delhi, the city in which I grew up and which no longer exists, in part because the old Lahoris among whom I grew up are no more. I remembered their tehzeeb (manners) and zubaan (language) in encounters with artists and intellectuals in universities, museums, galleries, and art schools.

Lahore is also the city in which Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), an artist I have written about, lived, worked, and died. It was a thrill to trace her footsteps and that of critics such as Charles Fabri (1899–1968) and Mulk Raj Anand (1904–2004) and poets such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911–1984) and Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955), who made the city their home and built literary and artistic worlds in modern South Asia. Their work continues in the contemporary art I saw during the Lahore Biennale in Mughal buildings, colonial gardens, a modernist art center, the Lahore Museum, and an eighteenth-century haveli (mansion) in the old city that had been converted into an art school and Imambargah, a congregation hall for Shia Muslims, among other venues. This art presented a different vision of Pakistan than the one we most often see in the news where security, terrorism, religious nationalism, and gendered violence dominate headlines. I was interviewed twice about my research while in Lahore. You can access the published articles here and here.

SAM: The Seattle Art Museum is home to nearly 25,000 works of art. What’s one artwork from the museum’s collection that resonates with you? Why?

SK: Pushpamala N.’s Motherland-The Great Sacrifice, from the Mother India Project (2010; print date 2012) speaks to themes of my lecture: the critique of nationalism, political uses of the past, and the role of artists as citizens. Based on a popular image of the Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) sacrificing himself to India, personified as a mother goddess, this digital print refers to commercial images known as calendar art and to contemporary and historical practices of studio photography in South Asia with its use of backdrops and props, evident in the bright, flowery curtains that give this scene a theatrical quality. Assuming the role of Mother India, the artist performs for the camera and plays on normative notions of gender and sexuality. She invites us to consider how national myths of motherlands and sons of the soil suffuse everyday life. Mother India imagery is ubiquitous in offset printed calendar art displayed in offices, homes, and shops. In South Asia, politicians present themselves as mothers and fathers of a nation modeled on a family. 

In 2014, I taught a course at the University of Washington in conjunction with the exhibition City Dwellers: Contemporary Art from India, curated by Catharina Manchanda. We studied Pushpamala’s work as an example of contemporary artists’ engagement with photography and cinema cultures in India, a major theme of that exhibition, evident in works by Manjunath Kamath, Nandini Valli Muthiah, Dayanita Singh, and Vivek Vilasini. That exhibition featured Pushpamala’s Flirting (After 1990s Kannada Film Still) from the project Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs (2000–2004) in which the artist poses as a schoolgirl-like figure with a stainless-steel tiffin box or lunch carrier with a man who holds out a plastic rose. A bottle of beer and snacks for two in the background suggest that they are in a hotel room. In other words, the coy seduction playing out before our eyes may be more complicated than that. Pushpamala restages a film still from Sowbhagya Devathe [Gods of Good Fortune] (1995), directed by Om Saiprakash, to show how the workings of gender and sexuality in everyday life are inflected by popular culture

SAM: Is there anything we didn’t ask that you want to share with the public in advance of your lecture?

SK: Most of South Asia will be at the polls in 2024. National elections were held in Bangladesh and Pakistan in January and February, elections are underway in India and scheduled in Sri Lanka between September and October. Politics and politicians have been the focus of media attention. What do art and artists tell us about the region? How do they represent it differently from the state and civil society? Visual representation, cultural symbols, and history books matter, as these elections have reminded us. 

Discourses in the global north on the global south tend to emphasize death and disaster, floods and famine, war and genocide. While it is essential to address violence, such discourses tend to overlook forms of beauty and pleasure and acts of creativity and resilience. My scholarship considers those forms and acts as responses to border walls, security fences, road closures, barricades, and checkpoints in the global south and north. Art worlds in south and north are closely linked because of a history of empires, migrations, and diasporas, as I propose in an episode of the EMPIRE LINES podcast on Bani Abidi’s Memorial to Lost Words (2016) released on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the partition of British India in 2022.

SAM: What’s one book you’d recommend to those interested in learning more about your lecture topic?

SK: I can’t resist the opportunity to recommend my edited volume Old Stacks, New Leaves: The Arts of the Book in South Asia (University of Washington Press, 2023) with contributions by scholars and artists, including contemporary art projects and works of creative nonfiction. Tracing a history of illustrated books in South Asia since 1100 CE, this volume relates Indic and Islamic book cultures and manuscript and print forms, which are usually treated as discrete categories in scholarship. It discusses the role of institutions, including temples, warehouses, libraries, and museums, and highlights use, exchange, and the social lives of books. These topics seem newly important, indeed urgent, given attacks on authors, books, presses, archives globally. 

Contemporary artists across South Asia have turned to the book form to reflect on their societies and histories, and consider the impact of wars, empires, nations, and partitions. The cover image of Old Stacks, New Leaves is a detail from The Karkhana Project (2003), a set of twelve paintings produced collaboratively by six graduates of the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan: Aisha Khalid, Nusra Latif, Hasnat Mehmood, Imran Qureshi, Talha Rathore, and Saira Wasim. Citing Mughal manuscripts and artists’ books by Muhammad Abdur Rahman Chughtai (1894–1975) and Sadequain (1930–1987), The Karkhana Project addresses problems around art education and cultural expression in Pakistan. Old Stacks, New Leaves taking its cue from such artwork, and presents words and pictures that aim to “delight and instruct,” to quote Martin Amis quoting John Dryden.

– Simon Tran, SAM Manager of Public Engagement at the Seattle Asian Art Museum

Photo: Matt Leib.

Global Agitator: An Interview with Anida Yoeu Ali

Since the debut of Hybrid Skin, Mythical Presence in January, visitors to the Seattle Asian Art Museum have been enthralled by Anida Yoeu Ali’s dynamic performance-based artworks. Now, we speak with the Tacoma-based international artist with the activation of The Buddhist Bug behind her and the activation of The Red Chador taking place on Saturday, June 1.


SAM: Something that connects The Buddhist Bug and The Red Chador is their incredible visual impact that sparks immediate curiosity and delight: the humor and vivid color of the bug and the entrancing sequins of the chadors in all colors of the rainbow. Is this an artistic strategy?

ANIDA YOEU ALI: I know people in general don’t expect to see my specific Asiatic face, with its stoic countenance—which I have inherited from my mother and grandmother—as the visage of The Buddhist Bug or The Red Chador. I’m interested in hypervisibility and an acknowledgement of my presence. I tend to place my body in colors that evoke some kind of joy and pleasure or an infusion of “fabulousness.” For me, performance allows for a magic of reinventing the self and projecting a larger-than-life persona that isn’t imprisoned by oppressive representations. There’s an awareness of the spectacle and ultimately a power in reclaiming the gaze, which has trapped and dehumanized so many of us and our communities.

SAM: You’ve said that the sculptural garments are “artifacts” when not being performed. Tell us about the exhibition space experience you’ve hoped to create for visitors to the museum.

ALI: Many of my installations, whether wearable garments or otherwise, require activation in which the live body completes the artwork. My art form is performance-installation where meters and meters of textile act as skin, as a way for the surface of my body to extend into public spaces, and as a metaphoric device for stories to spread across an expanse. But those stories aren’t literal or spoken; they are experienced through performances and encounters. The audience will need to do the hard work of figuring out what all this might mean to them: personally, politically, and/or spiritually.

I want visitors to pay attention to the encounter they are having with the colors on the walls, the colors of the textile, the highlighted text quotations, the artifacts of performance through exhibited videos, photographs, and installations. In the end, visitors will feel something and they might even be provoked.

SAM: It turns out that The Buddhist Bug and The Red Chador have both been performed at least 16 times. What new discoveries have you made as you’ve enacted the works at different times and places around the world?

ALI: As a performance artist, I put my body into public spaces and take on people’s reactions and responses. If my work provokes, then that means people are not only thinking but they are feeling. I create out of feelings and I want others to feel as well. With every live performance, my body is so publicly accessible that I must engage in a lot of visualization and meditative activities in preparation for a worst-case-scenario situation. However, what grounds me is knowing that someone will be positively affected, whether it’s the ability to bring warmth and smiles to them for a brief moment or offering something unexpected that they will think about beyond the live moment. For me, in every location around the world children and youth have responded with the most joy, curiosity, and genuine wonder. Children have disarmed rare situations in which adult reactions have been alarming or hurtful.

SAM: And what are you excited about for the upcoming performance of The Red Chador on June 1?

ALI: Because my works are more known outside of the US context, I am excited to finally bring this epic performance to the Seattle area. There’s a freedom I feel with performing in public spaces and enacting fantastical/mythical heroines that’s extremely powerful and necessary. All I want to do is to be able to offer people inside and outside my communities an opportunity to witness, engage, and experience a glimpse of the world that I have worked so rigorously to hone.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

This article first appeared in the February through May 2024 edition of SAM Magazine and has been edited for our online readers. Become a SAM member today to receive our quarterly magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Photos: Chloe Collyer & Alborz Kamalizad.

Dr. Prita Meier on the Vibrant Arts of the Swahili Coast

SAM’s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas presents the 2023–24 season of the Saturday University Lecture Series, exploring various topics on Asian art and culture across time. On Saturday, May 11, Dr. Prita Meier, Associated Professor of Africanist Art History in the Department of Art History and Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, will discuss the vibrant contemporary art and architectural scenes of the Swahili Coast. In advance of her talk, SAM spoke with Meier about what visitors can expect to learn about in her upcoming talk, the boundaries of culture and geography, and her extended travels to Mombasa, Lamu, and Zanzibar.


SAM: What can the public expect to learn about in your upcoming Saturday University lecture? What initially drew you to this topic?

PRITA MEIER: I will introduce audiences to the vibrant arts and architectures of the Swahili Coast of present-day Kenya and Tanzania. This maritime region of eastern Africa is where Africa and the Indian Ocean intersect. This vibrant arena of convergence has been a center of globalism and intercultural negotiating for more than a millennium. The Swahili Coast has an especially long history or engagement and exchange with Asia. My lecture will focus on a range of artifacts, ornaments, architectural forms—and even photographs—from the early modern period to the present. I will invite audiences to rethink how they draw boundaries between cultures and geographies. Oceanic places like Swahili port cities are transcontinental and multicultural in ways that challenge our ways of seeing the world. The main question animating my lecture will be: Where does Africa end and Asia begin from the vantage point of archipelagos, islands, and itinerant objects moving across the sea?

SAM: Academic research often involves travel. Is there a travel experience related to your lecture experience that you could share with us?

PM: I am trained as an Africanist, which means my primary research method is fieldwork and ethnography. That is, I talk to people about their culture in order to learn from them. I have been traveling and working in the port cities of Mombasa, Lamu, and Zanzibar for over twenty years. I have become deeply connected to families in Old Town Mombasa, who have been nurturing me and sustaining me for a long time. While my research on the arts of the Swahili Coast is focused on object and material culture, I am first and foremost dedicated to centering the amazing Kenyan individuals who have mentored me and guided me over the years. In fact, I have just spent the month of April in Mombasa and Nairobi, working on a new research project with local collaborators.

SAM: The Seattle Art Museum is home to nearly 25,000 works of art. What’s one artwork from the museum’s collection that resonates with you? Why?

PM: I am fascinated this Pakistani Bodhisattva from the mid-2nd to 3rd century. I love artworks and cultural forms that challenge our ideas about where an object or style belongs. This is a sacred Buddhist manifestation, but its style and figuration is connected to the Hellenistic world. It belongs to two artistic traditions, but also exceeds those traditions. It is a fascinating artwork of the crossroads.

SAM: What’s one book you’d recommend to those interested in learning more about your lecture topic?

PM: Here are a few recommendations:

– Simon Tran, SAM Manager of Public Engagement at the Seattle Asian Art Museum

Photos: Headshot by Josh Kwassman. Hair Comb, about 1800, from Swahili coast of eastern Africa, courtesy of Minneapolis Museum of Art. Image of Bodhisattva by Paul Macapia.

Teens Look Forward: Emerging Arts Leader Karla Pastrana Reflects

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I have been asked this question since I was a child. Now, as a junior at the University of Washington Tacoma, that question has evolved:

“What do you want to do after college?”

No matter how it’s phrased, the question still sends a wave of nerves down my body. Growing up, there were high expectations for me to excel. As the only US citizen in my family, I wanted to show my parents that their sacrifices were worth something; as a student with a learning disability, I have struggled to catch up to my classmates; as an early-career professional, I constantly face uncertainty about what success looks like for me. Whenever I am asked who I want to be, I am reminded of my childhood fears—of the dark, the unknown, and what the future holds for all of us. 

I joined SAM’s Teen Arts Group (TAG) in 2020 as a senior in high school, and just recently wrapped up my second year as an intern helping to oversee the same program. As part of SAM’s education team, my goal was to provide youths with the same community experiences and leadership opportunities I received when I was a TAG member.   

I joined TAG at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, I was beyond scared about my future. I knew I wanted to go to college and get a degree in writing, but I was uncertain about where to take that experience afterward. While serving as a TAG leader, I learned that there were many opportunities out there which combined my passions for art, writing, and creating inclusive community programs.

After graduating high school, I decided I was interested in learning more about museum education. More specifically, I wanted to play an active role in creating artistic and educational opportunities for young students of color, populations who—like myself—have been historically excluded from art museums as a result of income inequality and systemic racism. Throughout 2020, TAG meetings were often spent discussing this issue because many of us had personally experienced exclusivity from art institutions. We made it our goal to prioritize inclusion across all our events, encouraging BIPOC teens from all social backgrounds to showcase their art and feel welcome at the museum. This led to On The Verge, a teens-only exhibition featuring artists whose perspectives and identities are shaped by race, gender, ethnicity, and social background. This exhibit was free, accessible, and open to the public—all of which helped artists, and my TAG colleagues, feel seen and valued at the museum.

As I have grown into my role as the Teen and Family Programs Intern, I have learned so much about how TAG is planned and executed behind the scenes. On the same day I am writing this reflection, I am also helping develop TAG’s yearly and weekly schedules, lead discussions and presentations with TAG participants, create content for @SAMTeens on Instagram, plan icebreakers and team-building activities, coordinate guest speakers, and provide mentorship opportunities for this year’s cohort of teens.

TAG is intended to help teens explore their passions and build leadership skills that will benefit them long after their time at SAM. I know how confusing and stressful it can be to navigate life after high school, and know how vital it is for teens to have a safe place to learn, ask questions, and make mistakes. As a TAG mentor, I’ve encouraged teens to anticipate problems, discuss questions, and think deeply about their short- and long-term goals—all of which are skills I have found helpful in my work as an Emerging Arts Leader.

My internship experience at SAM has expanded my view of what art and museums can be. By collaboratively planning projects and facilitating group discussions, I came to realize how great diversity leads to greater inclusion in museums. The teens I work with all come from different backgrounds, use different art mediums, and have different styles of leadership that shape their worldview.

I still have much to learn about running a community program like TAG, but my experience so far has shown me that I am on the right path in achieving my goals and overcoming my uncertainties about the future. Now when I get asked what I want to do when I grow up, I can confidently say: “I’d like to work for an amazing organization like SAM, making sure art is accessible and inclusive to all.”

– Karla Pastrana, SAM Emerging Arts Leader in Teen Programs

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

Professor Aurelia Campbell on the Rarity and Artistry of Chinese Buddhist Burial Shrouds

SAM’s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas presents the 2023–24 season of the Saturday University Lecture Series, exploring various topics on Asian art and culture across time. On Saturday, April 13, Aurelia Campbell, Associate Professor of Asian Art History at Boston College, will examine the artistry and significance of the elaborate Buddhist burial shrouds that were excavated from the graves of high-ranking men and women from China’s Ming and Qing dynasties. In advance of her talk, SAM spoke with Campbell about what visitors can expect to learn about in her upcoming talk, her first encounter with a burial shroud, and prevalent misconnections of Buddhism.


SAM: What can the public expect to learn about in your upcoming Saturday University lecture? What initially drew you to this topic?

AURELIA CAMPBELL: My talk will introduce Buddhist burial shrouds excavated from tombs dating between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties in China. The shrouds vary in form depending on the identity of the tomb occupant (for instance, those of lower-ranking individuals are printed on paper, while those of higher-ranking individuals are embroidered on silk). Some shrouds are executed in a Chinese style while others reflect a more Tibetan style, which was popular after the Mongols ruled China in the 13th and 14th centuries. Despite these differences, the shrouds all combine text and image to create a kind of power object that was thought to help bring about an auspicious rebirth. I was initially drawn to the topic of Buddhist burial shrouds after first encountering one in 2016. Since then, I have found out about several others while conducting research for my new book project on Ming dynasty burials. I now know of at least five burial shrouds, all of which are quite extraordinary, and I eventually plan to publish my research on them in a journal article.

SAM: Academic research often involves travel. Is there a travel experience related to your lecture experience that you could share with us?

AC: Given the fragile nature of these burial shrouds, they are rarely on display in museums. Moreover, only a few survive and, in some cases, they are associated with very lofty individuals, including emperors and empresses. It is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to obtain access to them in China. Perhaps surprisingly, my first encounter with a burial shroud, and my only travel related story pertaining to one, was in California. This shroud was part of an exhibition entitled Royal Taste: The Art of Princely Courts in Fifteenth-Century China held at the University of Southern California Pacific Asia Museum in 2016. At that time, I had never heard of this burial shroud, nor did I know that Buddhist burial shrouds even existed China. The shroud was massive and was entirely covered with text and image printed in red. I probably spent a half hour looking at it, totally captivated. Sometime soon, I will travel to see another burial shroud in the collection of the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art on Staten Island. Beyond that, I’m not sure I’ll be able to see any of the precious shrouds in person, unfortunately. 

SAM: The Seattle Art Museum is home to nearly 25,000 works of art. What’s one artwork from the museum’s collection that resonates with you? Why?

AC: The Seattle Art Museum has a fantastic collection of East Asian art, so it is difficult to choose just one. But I’m fascinated by this sleeveless undergarment with Buddhist text from 19th century Japan. The garment, made of hemp and silk and printed with Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist text, was meant to protect the wearer from evil spirits. According to the object’s description, it may have been worn during rituals or when going into battle. The talismanic function of the sacred writing on this garment is analogous to that of the burial shrouds that I will be discussing in my talk. However, it obviously differs in the sense that it is fabricated into an item of clothing and worn by the living. I would love to be able to study this garment more closely.

SAM: Is there anything we didn’t ask that you want to share with the public in advance of your lecture?

AC: It might be useful for the audience to think about what the burial shrouds examined in my talk tell us about what Buddhists living in the Ming and Qing dynasties believed and how they practiced. I have often felt that there is a general misconception that Buddhism is not a religion, but rather a “philosophy” centered on meditation. While that may be true in some times and places, these shrouds reveal that spells, magic, rituals, and notions of salvation were actually much more closely associated with lay Buddhist practice at this time than was meditation.

SAM: What’s one book you’d recommend to those interested in learning more about your lecture topic?

AC: Paul Copp’s The Body Incantatory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) provides an excellent introduction to the apotropaic function of Buddhist writing in China. He investigates spells inscribed onto a wide range of objects that were situated in temples, worn on the body, and buried with the deceased. The book is richly illustrated and full of interesting material that has not traditionally been examined in academic scholarship. Although the book focuses on an earlier period than I will cover in my talk, it helps set the scene for the Ming and Qing period by demonstrating the longstanding perceived efficacy of Buddhist texts and images in a funerary context. 

– Simon Tran, SAM Manager of Public Engagement at the Seattle Asian Art Museum

Photos: Headshot by Ashley Craig. Wang Shancai 王善才, ed. Zhang Mao fufu hezang mu 張懋夫婦合葬墓 (The tomb of Zhang Mao husband and wife). Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 2007. Sleeveless Undergarment with Buddhist Text, early 19th century, Japanese, Hemp and silk with ink, 36 x 24 in. (91.44 x 60.96 cm), Purchased with funds from the Estate of Pauline King Butts, 93.166.

Connecting Art to Life in Every Way: Accessibility Updates from SAM

“This bronze sculpture of a seaweed stalk sits on a freestanding pedestal a few feet off the ground. The overall shape is abstracted, made of rounded, wavy, leaf-like shapes. The surface color is a dark, chocolatey brown that blends with lighter patches of deep caramel. As you move around the sculpture, the color shifts as light reflects off the patina from different angles.”

This is an excerpt from the verbal description for the collection work Mo (Seaweed) (1977) by George Tsutakawa. These detailed audio explanations bring artworks to life for visitors with low or no vision and are available for smartphones via QR codes.

With the guidance of an accessibility trainer and contributions from community members—including SAM Visitor Experience Representative Derek Bourcier and former SAM docent Donnie Wilburn—we’ve revamped our production of verbal descriptions. In addition to creating them for many artworks in special exhibitions, such as Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map and Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection, we are also working to create them for collection galleries such as American Art: The Stories We Carry at the Seattle Art Museum and Boundless: Stories of Asian Art at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

“We want our verbal descriptions to meet the needs of the people they’re serving,” says Ramzy Lakos, SAM Museum Educator for Digital Learning, who leads their development. “The goal is to have one for every artwork on view. We get a little closer to achieving that every year.”

In addition to verbal descriptions, the museum offers large-print copies of the object labels for select exhibitions as well as transcripts of all smartphone tours. SAM also offers ASL interpretation upon request. At Coat Check, visitors can borrow baby carriers and strollers, canes, stools, wheelchairs, disposable magnifying glasses, earplugs, large-print maps, colorblind glasses, a text telephone device, and Android phones with headphones for accessing online audio tours and descriptions.

“It’s all about progress,” says SAM Visitor Experience Manager Chelsea Leingang. “It’s about acknowledging that SAM can do better and actively working to make the artwork in our galleries more accessible to visitors.”

Check out visitsam.org/accessibility or call us at 206.654.3210 for more information about our accessibility options, to request accommodations, or obtain a large-print version of SAM magazine.

– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator

This article first appeared in the February through May 2024 edition of SAM Magazine and has been edited for our online readers. Become a SAM member today to receive our quarterly magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

In the Studio with SAM Gallery Artist Nichole DeMent

In the Studio highlights the private workspaces of local artists represented by SAM Gallery. For more than fifty years, SAM Gallery has supported artists from across the Pacific Northwest and provided private and corporate clients with a wide range of services, from purchasing their first work of art to building extensive collections. To browse a featured artist’s entire catalogue of artwork available for rent or purchase, visit SAM Gallery on the lower level of the Seattle Art Museum.

The sun shines into Nichole DeMent’s beautiful West Seattle studio on the winter day of our visit. DeMent has spent eleven years in this space, creating mixed media encaustic works. Her encaustic artworks are characterized by their intricate layers, producing depth and complexity.

“I really fell in love with layers because life is complicated,” she said. “Layers portray my understanding of the world in a way that I hope helps bring peace.”

Nearly three decades later, DeMent’s process still begins with photography. When she is taking photographs, there are instances when she has a clear plan and others when she is open to wherever her intuitive process leads. She most commonly photographs people, animals, and botanicals.

After printing her photographs, she fuses them to wood panels using the basic ingredients of the encaustic medium: beeswax, resin, and pigment. She then brushes layers of the encaustic over her photographs, incorporating layers of organic materials including rust, tea, and mica flakes. Once there are enough layers of encaustic, she affects the layers using heated carving tools, creating texture and movement. She wants the surface to “have its own history with scars that are representative of the image and very organic.” 

One artwork that illustrates her multi-layered process is part of a series titled Inner Sanctum of Pech Merle (25,000 BCE). Hanging on her studio wall, this large-scale work depicts a horse in profile, in the midst of a step forward. DeMent took the photo of the horse on a colleague’s farm in Snohomish, WA. When the owner let all of the horses out, DeMent took photos while standing in the center of the field. The horse depicted in this work, she said, ran straight toward her before turning to its side to avoid colliding. DeMent views the horse as a strong, powerful, and beautiful animal who carries others when needed.

In closely examining this artwork, its intricate details and layers begin to reveal themselves. The complex artwork’s deeper layers incorporate pages from books embedded in the wax. Meanwhile, sepia drawings inspired by prehistoric cave paintings are set amongst the layers. DeMent studied prehistoric art and architecture in college, visiting many caves during travels abroad. She brings the inspiration from ancient paintings of spotted horses seen in Pech Merle, a prehistoric art site in France into this work. These subtle details, she said, “leave little treasures for the attentive viewer.”

View Nichole DeMent’s available artworks at SAM Gallery on the featured sliding wall or online. Stay updated on all that’s happening at SAM Gallery by following us on Instagram at @atSAMGallery.

– Pamela Jaynes, SAM Gallery Specialist

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

Reaching My Full Potential at SAM: Emerging Arts Leader Teagan Nathe Reflects

Growing up, I was always allured by the welcoming mystique of museums. There’s something soothing in the ever-changing exhibitions, never knowing what you’ll find around each corner. A gallery is a space where you can be swallowed up by the art on every wall and forget about the world outside for a moment. I never dreamed that I would be able to be a part of the magic that is Seattle Art Museum and its team of dedicated individuals.

Throughout the course of my internship, I found myself questioning what it meant for a person or community to be reflected on museum walls. Art institutions have historically been a place of exclusion and were known to primarily display the artwork of white male artists. Yet, as society changes before our eyes, these institutions are also changing as they adopt equitable values and acknowledge the harm of their past actions. From my first day on the job, it was clear that everyone at SAM was (and still is) committed to doing this necessary work. The existence of my own role at the museum is evidence of the thought that SAM is putting toward greater inclusion.

In January of 2023, I was offered the position of an Emerging Arts Leader Intern in Equity and Communications. In the six months I spent at SAM, I was able to gain a unique perspective on the inner workings of an incredible institution and highlight the internal work necessary in connecting art to life. During one of my last weeks at SAM, I led a gallery tour discussing artworks that made me feel at home and the significance of changing canon museum artifacts. I took a Socratic approach to my tour, posing critical questions in order for participants to engage deeply with two works: Dawoud Bey’s David Hammons, Pissed Off (1981) and excerpts from Jim Goldberg’s Rich and Poor (1977–1985). I was drawn to these pieces partially because I’m a photographer and these photos were shot on black and white film. More so, these images portray the raw and emotional nature of life. Whether it’s the complexities of race within the arts world or economic class barriers, these artists capture the reality of our contemporary moment.

One of my favorite aspects of this internship was the opportunity to meet so many individuals who are palpably enthusiastic about their jobs. I would like to say thank you to everyone who made me feel at home on the SAM staff, and particularly to my supervisor, Priya Frank. Priya made me realize that I don’t have to sacrifice a single part of myself to be successful and that giving a commencement speech at T-Mobile Park while wearing sparkly Doc Martens, big hoops, and a bright pink lipstick is not only acceptable, but also aspirational. Anyone who’s had the pleasure of meeting Priya will tell you how she exudes pure light and embodies the philosophy of using “joy as my weapon.” Thank you for everything Priya, you’re my idol.

As a newbie to Seattle, I felt disconnected from the art world, as it’s always hard to break in and form connections in a new city. Throughout my time at SAM, I was able to meet many different artists and worked alongside so many talented interns. Thank you to Emma, Zak, Alexa, Jo, Aranya, Elizabeth, and many more folks who brought a smile to my face every day at work.

This opportunity has made me believe in myself as an artist and leader, showing me that nothing can stand in my way from achieving what I want. I am immensely grateful for the ways my SAM internship pushed me to my full potential, and for everyone at SAM who believed in me.

– Teagan Nathe, SAM Emerging Arts Leader in Equity and Communications

This article first appeared in the February through June 2024 edition of SAM Magazine and has been edited for our online readers. Become a SAM member today to receive our quarterly magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

Curator Jeannie Kenmotsu on the Untold Stories of Women Printmakers in Postwar Japan

SAM’s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas presents the 2023–24 season of the Saturday University Lecture Series, exploring various topics on Asian art and culture across time. On Saturday, March 9, Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu, Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum, will share insight on the remarkable influence of women printmakers in postwar Japan. In advance of her talk, SAM spoke with Dr. Kenmotsu about what visitors can expect to learn about in her upcoming talk, the persistence of sexism in art history, and the significance of bringing the stories of these women printmakers to light.


SAM: What can the public expect to learn about in your upcoming Saturday University lecture? What initially drew you to this topic?

Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu: In 2020, I organized the exhibition Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965: Japan’s Women Printmakers at the Portland Art Museum. This was the first close examination of the activities of this important group, Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, or the Women Printmakers Association. I was fascinated by this collective, which organized collaborative exhibitions together over the course of ten years and seemed to serve as a catalyst for a number of artists, yet had received so little scholarly attention. Of course, I am indebted to many colleagues who have also championed the work of women printmakers in Japan, through their writing, teaching, and exhibitions. But two things remain true: one, that women printmakers were overshadowed by their male counterparts in the twentieth century, a situation that persists today. And two, that there is much more primary documentation and excavation to do in this area, particularly in terms of exploring the depth and richness of individual artists’ stories.

My upcoming Saturday University lecture will provide a broader introduction to the topic of postwar women printmakers, so it is suitable for anyone with an interest in, but limited knowledge, of Asian art, of creative prints (sōsaku hanga), or even of printmaking more generally. I’m interested in the historical conditions that shaped their work, their contemporary reception, and how we do—or don’t—talk about them today. I’m equally interested in bringing to light both the commonalities and the diversity of their career trajectories. Therefore, my focus will be on bringing their stories into greater focus and celebrating their work.

SAM: Academic research often involves travel. Is there a travel experience related to your lecture experience that you could share with us?

JK: In a funny way, my work in this area has been shaped by a lack of an ability to travel. In early 2020 I was making plans to pursue research in both Japan and North America for the Joryū Hanga Kyōkai exhibition. That quickly became impossible, but I was fortunate to have already received a trove of amazing archival materials related to that artist collective, which I could sort through once I was able to get back into the museum building. After that, it became very much “research by mail” — on the one hand, I was able to secure some fantastic loans for the exhibition that were critical to telling the story; on the other hand, secondary research was virtually impossible, as I had very limited library access. The exhibition opened September 2020. While one of my big regrets is that so few people were able to see it, it was one of the intellectual and personal bright spots for me during a difficult time in the world.

Yoshida Chizuko (Japanese, 1924–2017), Ao no fūkei (Landscape in Blue), 1972, color woodblock print with blind embossing on paper, image: 22 in x 16 1/2 in; sheet: 25 in x 18 3/8 in, Museum Purchase: Funds provided by Asian Art Auction proceeds. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2016.23.1.

SAM: The Seattle Art Museum is home to nearly 25,000 works of art. What’s one artwork from the museum’s collection that resonates with you? Why?

JK: Choose just one? Goodness, that’s hard. The Deer Scroll, with calligraphy by Hon’ami Kōetsu and decorated paper painted by Tawaraya Sōtatsu, makes my heart sing. Another favorite is Tsuji Kakō’s two-panel folding screen, Green Waves, from SAM’s excellent nihonga collection, for the artist’s deft handling of mineral pigments on silk to explore light on water. It’s stunning in person, and captures that mesmerizing sensation of watching the ocean.

SAM: Is there anything we didn’t ask that you want to share with the public in advance of your lecture?

JK: My lecture will introduce some understudied but wonderfully creative artists. But of course my research is also driven by some deeper scholarly questions about discourse and reparative history, in this case through the lens of gender and art. I consider my work in the area of postwar printmaking to be just one contribution to a larger, ongoing conversation, and it is my hope that these projects will spark questions and critical engagement from other scholars, particularly the younger generation.

Iwami Reika (Japanese, 1927–2020), Mizu no fu 78-H (Song of Water 78-H), 1978, color woodblock print with embossing, gold leaf, and metallic pigments on paper, image: 16 1/8 in x 10 15/16 in; sheet: 20 3/16 in x 14 in, Gift of Marge Carter. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2018.58.2.

SAM: What’s one book you’d recommend to those interested in learning more about your lecture topic?

JK: Alas, to date there is limited English-language literature focused specifically on the women artists I will discuss in my talk, let alone on the collective conditions that shaped and attended their careers despite their highly individual practices. That said, they are widely collected and have been included in many group exhibitions, catalogues, essays, and academic monographs over the last few decades. But the point is that these artists have rarely been the focus, with a few notable exceptions, such as solo retrospectives (usually focused on artists who have lived abroad). Some broader publications on modern Japanese prints more generally that might be enjoyed by those new to the topic include Made in Japan by Alicia Volk or Hanga by Chiaki Ajioka, or the classics Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn by Oliver Statler and The Modern Japanese Print by James Michener. These last two are still widely available, and I’ll touch on them in my talk.

– Simon Tran, SAM Manager of Public Engagement at the Seattle Asian Art Museum

Photos: Courtesy of Jeannie Kenmotsu.

TAG Talks: An Ancient Tour of Achaemenid Arts and Culture

SAM’s Teen Arts Group (TAG) is an intensive internship program for high school-aged youth who are eager to learn about themselves and the world through art, and are excited to make SAM a fun and engaging space for teens. TAG members meet weekly from October to May to learn about the behind-the-scenes work of an art museum, lead engaging gallery tours, plan Teen Night Out, and so much more. TAG Talks is an ongoing SAM Blog series on SAM Blog that serves as a space for SAM’s teen leaders to express themselves and their love of art. Keep up with all TAG adventures by following @samteens on Instagram and stay tuned for more TAG Talks to come!

I’m assuming you are confused as to what is happening. Where you are, how you will get back, why you are here, all these questions are dancing in your mind. It’s okay, all will make sense in due time. Here are the basics we should begin with. Yesterday, on your way home from work, you stumbled upon a rectangular, wooden box. The box had the symbol of a lion and a sun engraved on its wooden exterior. Naturally curious, you opened the box and saw spinning gears. The gears seemed to get faster as you continually observed them. That can’t be right; there was nothing powering the box. Yet it was. The gears kept accelerating until they vanished completely and the box was left empty. Confused, you placed your hand inside. This was the turning point. 

Sucked into a cloud of debris, your senses blurred, losing contact with the physical realm. The sensation of disconnect lasted for five or so minutes. Covered in dust, you tumbled to the foot of an elderly woman dressed in robes draped in sweeping folds. Are you beginning to remember now?

I am the woman you met. I welcome you to the sixth century BC Achaemenid Empire. You are one of the first to make it here successfully. I know you may be scared; the Greeks painted our history to be uncivilized compared to their own. Under Cyrus the Great however, our reign has promoted religious tolerance and human rights regardless of nationality. We also contributed to innovations in commerce and trading networks, as well as funding for public works to improve the lives of our people. But that’s all textbook information I doubt you care for. Your purpose here is to travel and explore, that’s it. You’ll be home before you realize, so make the most of your stay.

Our empire is in the lands you now call Egypt, Eastern Europe, and east of Asia to the Balkans. It will go on to be considered one of the largest empires of the ancient world. Even as a resident, I can’t help but marvel at the sheer magnificence of what we have. While you’re visiting, I recommend you see Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of our empire. Thank goodness you are arriving in the springtime. Due to the remoteness of the region, travel is often difficult here during the rainy Persian winters. The mountainous terrain, however, allows the city to remain a secret from the outside world, protecting our art, artifacts, archives, and royal treasury.

Here you’ll also find residential quarters, a treasury, and ceremonial palaces. One palace you can’t miss is the Apādana Receiving Hall. Built by Darius I, the roof of the structure is supported by 72 columns each standing at 24 meters, with the whole palace having the footprint of 1,000 square meters. The column capitals are either twin headed bulls, eagles, or lions to represent authority and kingship. The monumental stairways on the North and East sides depict 23 subject nations bearing gifts to the King. If you tell the King I sent you, he will take you as a guest. Don’t forget to bring some form of tribute though. A cypress tree will do.

One final thing – you will need money and proper clothing. I will give you some gold coins known as daric. Use these at the market and buy yourself some long robes. As the palace welcomes you, you shall be greeted with lavish feasts, drinks, and games. Do wander into the sensuous gardens and hunt if you so please. Alright, now I believe my job here is done. I recommend you embrace the chaos and uncertainty this land will reveal. I’ll send you the box once when you’re ready to go. I wish you the best on your journey. 

– Smriti Tiwari (she/her), 16, Second-Year Teen Arts Group Leader

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

The Boys in the Boat: See UW Rower Robert Moch’s Vase Collection at SAM

Originally published in 2014, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown recounts the true story of how nine University of Washington rowers beat the odds to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Following the December 2023 release of the story’s film adaptation, we thought we’d take this opportunity to share about one of the rowers’ special connection to the Seattle Art Museum.

While browsing through SAM’s European art galleries, you may spot the name Robert G. Moch. Known as Bob and Bobby to those who knew him, Moch led the University of Washington rowers to victory as the team’s coxswain. Following his retirement from rowing and an illustrious law career, he and his wife, LaVerne Moch, donated several pieces of 19th century French glass to the museum. 

These 10 vases, donated by the Moch family in 1995, were designed by well-known glass designer Émile Gallé (1846–1904) around the end of the 1800s and utilize the popular technique known as cameo glass. With their stylized floral patterns—like silhouettes layered atop the lighter glass—the artworks demonstrate the Art Nouveau style and the influence it derived from Japanese designs.

The 1936 Olympics in which Moch and his teammates competed were particularly notable as a result of increasing political tensions brought on by Adolf Hitler’s dictatorial rule. Although the city of Berlin had been chosen to host the Games before Hitler’s rise to power, he used the international attention of the Olympics  as a way to propagandize Germany’s superiority and bolster his fascist and racist beliefs. The Nazi Party intended to ban Black and Jewish athletes from competing, but decided against enforcing these restrictions after the US and other nations threatened to boycott the Games.

Some Jewish members of the US Olympic team, including Moch, described feeling tense as they competed in front of Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Moch had learned of his Jewish heritage shortly before making the voyage to Berlin. 

Despite the fraught political and social circumstances of 1936, the story of the “boys in the boat” is inspiring in itself. The rowing team was composed of young men attending a public university to seek a better life and financial stability amid the hardships of the Great Depression (1929–1939). They beat out other Ivy League collegiate teams to qualify for the games and launched a public fundraising campaign to travel to Berlin. During the actual race, the team faced horrible crosswinds, one of their rowers was dealing with a severe bronchial infection, and Moch missed the starting call. Yet, the rowers managed to steadily pull up from last to first place in a nail-biting finish.

In addition to rowing, the US brought home the gold in many other events, including Black athlete Jesse Owens’s historic four gold medals in track and field.

The release of Daniel James Brown’s book brought renewed attention to this epic moment in American history. In 2016, PBS produced the documentary The Boys of ‘36 and in December 2023, a film adaptation of the book directed by George Clooney was released with Luke Slattery portraying Moch.

Ten years after donating his vases to SAM, Moch passed away. While we don’t know much about how he and LaVerne collected these glass vases, the museum is grateful for their donation to SAM and to retain a piece of Moch’s legacy. Many of the vases the Moch family donated are now on view in SAM’s fourth-floor European art galleries through March 2024 and will return later in 2024 when the museum’s European art galleries reopen!

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

Professor Christina Sunardi on the Spiritual Knowledge of East Javanese Performing Arts

SAM’s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas presents the 2023–24 season of the Saturday University Lecture Series, exploring various topics on Asian art and culture across time. On Saturday, February 10, Christina Sunardi, Associate Professor in the School of Music at the University of Washington and Chair of the Department of Dance, will explore the spiritual knowledge, or ilmu, that performers imparted on her while conducting fieldwork on gamelan music and dance in Malang, east Java from 2005–2007. In advance of her talk, SAM spoke with Sunardi about what visitors can expect to learn about in her upcoming talk, her travels in Malang, and the raw, emotional power of the performing arts.


SAM: What can the public expect to learn about in your upcoming Saturday University lecture? What initially drew you to this topic?

CHRISTINA SUNARDI: I will present some of my research on ilmu (spiritual knowledge) that performers imparted and encouraged me to obtain while I conducted fieldwork on gamelan music and dance in Malang, east Java from 2005–2007 and subsequent visits. I intend to analyze the importance performers placed on ilmu as substantive, embodiable knowledge, often secret and esoteric, which can be physically transferred from one being to another, or from an object, and which provides the ability to do something remarkable or remarkably well, including performing music, dance, and theater. I will contend that through their ilmu-related beliefs, practices, and verbal discourse, Malang performers were maintaining and producing local systems of knowledge, transmission, and competence. I am also so excited to be partnering with master gamelan musician and puppeteer Ki Midiyanto as he demonstrates how one of the instruments from the gamelan ensemble is played throughout my presentation. We’ll also allow plenty of time for questions from the audience!

SAM: Academic research often involves travel. Is there a travel experience related to your lecture experience that you could share with us?

CS: Although it’s hard to choose just one, one experience that may be of interest is the ceremony that my first dance teacher in Malang facilitated to ensure that my studies of gamelan, dance, and the Javanese language would go smoothly. I now understand this ceremony as him preparing me to receive ilmu. I remember feeling a tingling sensation on the back of my neck during the ceremony. Maybe it was the smell of the burning incense cubes, or that I was moved by my teacher’s wish for me to succeed, or maybe it was both—I haven’t totally sorted all of that out yet.

SAM: The Seattle Art Museum is home to nearly 25,000 works of art. What’s one artwork from the museum’s collection that resonates with you? Why?

CS: Ooh! I really love this 19th-century Wayang Topeng Mask. I had the opportunity to study masked dance while in Malang and it is such a beautiful, entrancing form. I love how the individual dancer sort of disappears into the character and how the dancers can make their masks come to life. ilmu can certainly be involved with this, as I will speak about in my presentation!

SAM: Is there anything we didn’t ask that you want to share with the public in advance of your lecture?

CS: Thank you so much for inviting me and thank you so much to those who are interested in attending. It is always such an honor to be able to share my research and to share what I have learned from the artists I was fortunate enough to study with during my fieldwork.

SAM: What’s one book you’d recommend to those interested in learning more about your lecture topic?

CS: I hope this is not too bold, but my book, Stunning Males and Powerful Females: Gender and Tradition in East Javanese Dance (University of Illinois Press, 2015), may be of interest.

– Simon Tran, SAM Manager of Public Engagement at the Seattle Asian Art Museum

Photos: Steve Corn & Christina Sunardi.

Improving Your Museum Experience with Technology: Emerging Arts Leader Shuprima Guha Reflects

I’ve always enjoyed spending time in art museums. With ambling hallways and multiple rooms featuring a variety of historic and contemporary art, it’s the excitement of not knowing what I’ll discover next that first got me interested in working at one. I joined SAM with the intention of learning more about how different museum departments come together to facilitate ideas. Suffice to say, I checked off this goal during my first few weeks at SAM. 

As an interpretation intern, I learned how SAM uses technology and verbal descriptions to improve accessibility for different audiences at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Verbal descriptions explain a work of art in terms of its color, size, texture, and other features so that individuals with low or no vision can better experience the piece. I developed the skill of writing for auditory purposes in this process. Conducting research on the most inclusive ways to approach writing these descriptions—along with the continuous feedback provided from the rest of the verbal description team—helped me overcome this learning curve of shifting from writing for reading purposes to writing for listening purposes and led me to produce some of my best work. 

While conducting this work, I began to ask questions about the smartphones that museum visitors can check out while browsing the galleries—part of SAM’s effort to improve in-gallery accessibility. This led to important conversations about how we envision visitors interacting with these devices and what museums can do to support such interactions (thank you to the visitor experience team for their expertise). Beyond these tasks, I also helped in developing the interpretive elements of Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, including the touch cart, in-gallery guide, and the digital collage interactive.

The support I received from the museum’s staff, security, volunteers, and my fellow interns played a tremendous role in how I approached my work. Asking questions to people from different departments created a system of support in which I knew everyone at the museum was eager to help. From isolating digital elements of Hokusai prints with the design team to prototyping a touchscreen interactive with staff from multiple departments, I believe collaboration was essential to my time at SAM. Deciding which topics to research and conducting meetings related to the Hokusai interactive taught me about not only project management, but also about Japanese culture and history. In writing the guide the exhibition’s interpretive touch cart, I also became familiar with the materials used in Japanese woodblock printing—thank you Jessica and Sorrel for your help!

As I began my SAM internship, it was exciting to see all of the tasks that SAM’s staff had planned for me; there was so much to do and so little time! Prioritizing tasks was one of the most important skills I developed. Although each new day was filled with exciting events and meetings, I made important decisions on which ones I attended and which I did not to ensure I could independently complete my tasks within a timely manner. Another skill I learned through this internship was networking. I learned how to ask questions about different staff members’ experiences and took advantage of the opportunity to get to know new people in the office, kitchen, elevators, and galleries. These skills are something I will carry forward in my academic and professional life. 

This internship showed me the initiatives the museum takes in making art accessible to visitors— something that I am particularly passionate about. Knowing that so many people care about the same things gives me immense hope for the future of museums. From accompanying docent-led tours to conducting surveys in the galleries, I learned how to engage with the public and lead conversations about art. As someone who has always been a bit hesitant to voice my opinion in large groups, my newfound confidence and eagerness to speak in public is one of the most valuable lessons I learned at SAM.

None of this would have been possible without the support of my incredibly supportive and encouraging coworkers. I want to particularly thank my supervisor, SAM Educator for Digital Learning Ramzy Lakos, whose creative ideas played an integral role in shaping my SAM experience. His optimism and sense of humor always made even the most challenging task feel simple. I want to thank everyone on the education team as well. Their excitement about the museum’s future shines through in everything they do. Lastly, I am grateful to everyone who I reached out to at various points in the last few months: thank you for making me feel like a part of the SAM community. I look forward to carrying these experiences into the next step of my career.

– Shuprima Guha, SAM Emerging Arts Leader in Interpretation

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

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