Made from ceramic, bronze, copper, or even jade, water droppers are small vessels used in calligraphy and brush painting. Designed with two small holes, one for adding water and one for dispensing water, only a few drops fall out at a time—a crucial feature when preparing liquid ink, which involves grinding a stick of ink against an inkstone with water.
Though an unassuming instrument, water droppers have a long
history. The earliest known examples of Chinese water droppers can be dated to
the 5th and 6th centuries, while Japanese water droppers date to the 8th
century. Centuries later, during the Edo period (1603-1868) and into the Meiji
period (1868-1912), Japan saw the emergence of more complicated water droppers
in various shapes and sizes, ranging from plants and deities to animals and fruits.
Such decorative droppers became popular accessories for the nobility and literati, and were often inscribed or made in auspicious forms. The zodiac animals are a set of calendar symbols that came to Japan from ancient China, and their representation served to invoke good luck and prosperity. This 19th-century dropper in SAM’s collection, modeled in the shape of an undeniably expressive and charming rat (the first animal in the zodiac), was likely intended to symbolize success, creativity, and intelligence.
– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collection and Provenance Associate
Image: Water dropper modeled as a rat, 19th century, Japanese, bronze, 1 5/8 x 3 1/2 x 1 7/8 in., Gift of Frank D. Stout, 92.47.119
The Japanese art gallery at SAM’s downtown location was recently reinstalled with a focus on the Mingei movement in Exceptionally Ordinary: Mingei 1920–2020, on view through Novemeber 8, 2020. Initiated in the 1920s by the Japanese collector and connoisseur Yanagi Soetsu (1889–1961), Mingei elevated functional, everyday crafts to art objects. Since its foundation, Mingei’s broad applications range from mid-century decorative arts to contemporary designs, ceramics, textiles, sculptures, and prints, examples of which are hanging in our gallery. Prominently featured, are works by the late Seattle-based artist George Tsutakawa on loan from the George Tsutakwa Art Legacy. The Tsutakawa family share below about George’s inspiration and how his furniture fits in the installation at SAM!
George Tsutakawa began to build bronze fountain sculptures in 1961 with the installation of his first fountain at the Seattle Public Library. He eventually created 75 fountain sculptures in the United States, Canada, and Japan. The fountains reflect his intense interest in the cyclical flow of water from the heavens to earth, creating rivers and oceans that nourish life. His basis of humanity in the Shinto religion indicated reverence for life in all forms made by nature, such as trees and rocks.
Tsutakawa’s professional art career spanned 60 years. He was a professor of art at the University of Washington for 37 years. In his personal statement from The Pacific Northwest Artists and Japan in 1982, he expressed that sometime in the 1960s his travels and studies of traditional Japanese arts allowed him to reaffirm his “conviction in the Oriental view of nature school which sees Man as one part of nature, a part that must live in harmony with the rest of nature.”
Thus Tsutakawa’s furniture from the 1940s and 1950s reveals this conviction to nature within his art and serves as the starting point for his later artistic forms. Although he was a modernist, even in his furniture forms, his work relates to the Japanese Mingei movement, which is largely based on traditional and folk art.
Tsutakawa’s early furniture is functional and evokes a connection to nature through fluid organic shapes and materials.
The Tsutakawa family is currently reorganizing the artist’s collection with the hope of preserving his work and making it more open to the public as well. You can visit SAM to see Tsutakawa’s artwork in Exceptionally Ordinary: Mingei 1920–2020, on view through November 8, 2020.
– Mayumi Tsutakawa & Chyenne Andrews
Images: Installation view Exceptionally Ordinary: Mingei 1920–2020, Seattle Art Museum 2019, photos: Nina Dubinsky. Kizamu Tsutakawa
The Seattle Asian Art Museum reopens February 8 and we want to be
sure you know all the free and discounted ways that you can visit the
reimagined and reinstalled museum!
Even though the Housewarming:
Free Reopening Weekend is sold out and we are not accepting walkups on
February 8 or 9, there are many other opportunities to visit for free. Today’s
Seattle Asian Art Museum breaks
boundaries to offer a thematic, rather than geographic or chronological,
exploration of art from the
world’s largest continent. The restoration of the historic Art Deco building,
improvements to critical systems, expanded gallery and education spaces, and a
new park lobby that connects the museum to the surrounding Volunteer Park are
just some of the ways the Asian Art Museum has been transformed and preserved
as a cultural and community resource for future generations.
An important part of the work that took place while the Asian Art
museum was closed for renovation and expansion isn’t something you will notice
about the architecture or art. The City of Seattle financially supported the
preservation and improvements of SAM’s city-owned Art Deco home and in return,
we made a commitment to offer more free ways for members of the community to visit
the Asian Art Museum!
Many programs such as lectures, performances, and tours at the museum are free and include free entry to the galleries. Check out our Free First Saturdays series for kids!
SAM provides discounted rates for students, teens, seniors, and military with ID.
Seniors (65+) and military can visit for $12.99
Students and teens age 15–18 can get tickets for $9.99
Children (14 & under) are always free.
SAM members are free. Join today and RSVP to see the museum before it opens to the public during the Members Open House on February 5 and 6.
First Saturdays and the Second Thursdays of every month are free to all.
The First Friday of every month the Asian Art Museum is free for seniors.
Bring a group of 10 or more and get discounted tickets. Find out more about group visits!
Educators can visit for free anytime with ID. Mark your calendars for a special Educator Open House at the Asian Art Museum on February 27!
Did you know that we now offer free school tours for all public schools at all SAM locations? We also offer bus subsidies for title 1 schools. School tours at the Asian Art Museum start march 1—find out more!
“It’s an image I’ve
seen hundreds of times—as misandrist memes across the internet, a patch on the
back of my partner’s denim jacket, to list a few iterations—but witnessing
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith
and Holofernes in person at the Seattle Art Museum last weekend still sparked
a visceral reaction.”
Local News
Crosscut’s Margo
Vansynghel reports on the
“badass” PNW artists who received prestigious Creative Capital
grants, including J Mase III and Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi.
“To him, the
preprogrammed voice trapped in a mass-market workhorse metaphorically resonated
with the life of the average Korean millennial. The ironic sadness of being
comforted by a product of a system that creates the discomfort in the first
place seemed ripe for dramatic inquiry.”
Artnet’s Sarah Cascone
reports that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has acquired
the Separate Cinema Archive, a collection “documenting
African-American cinema history from 1904 to the present day.”
“In an election
year in which the country is bitterly divided between those for and against
President Donald Trump, and over who is welcome to immigrate and become a
citizen, it seems likely to resonate.”
This 1975 screenprint by Jacob Lawrence was commissioned on the occasion of the United States’ bicentennial. The prompt: to create a print that reflects an aspect of American history since 1776. Lawrence, one of 33 artists to contribute to the portfolio An American Portrait, 1776-1976, chose to depict the infamous incident in Alabama known as ‘Bloody Sunday’.
On Sunday, March
7, 1965, hundreds of unarmed protesters—led by civil rights leaders such as
Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis—organized a 54-mile march from Selma to
the state’s capitol, Montgomery, advocating for the voting rights of African
Americans. As demonstrators began their route out of Selma, they were met by a barrage
of state troopers at Edmund Pettus Bridge. With orders from Alabama Governor
George Wallace “to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march,” the
state troopers attacked the activists—resulting in the death of 26-year-old
Jimmie Lee Jackson—using clubs and tear gas. Though the march dissipated due to
this senseless violence, two days later the protesters safely reached
Montgomery (thanks to court-ordered protection) and numbered nearly 25,000.
As horrible
as these events were, what took place on March 7—publicized nationally and
internationally—helped galvanize public opinion and finally mobilize Congress
to pass the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson
five months later.
In Lawrence’s screenprint, the troopers’ brutal actions are represented through the presence of a vicious, snarling dog. To its right, we see African American men and women of various ages clustered together, their political solidarity conveyed through their visual unity. A tumultuous sky surrounds them, whose jagged cloud forms find likeness in the choppy waters below.
This horrible event would leave an indelible mark on our nation’s history and is remembered today for the courage shown by the thousands of activists who marched for a more equitable world. When articulating his choice to depict this important moment, Lawrence recalled: “I thought [the Selma-to-Montgomery march] was part of the history of the country, part of the history of our progress; not of just the black progress, but of the progress of the people.”
– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collection and Provenance Associate
Since John Baldessari’s death last week, there has been a
commensurate stream of articles recounting his outsized influence as a
pioneering artist and educator, with a prolific career spanning decades.
With beginnings as a painter, Baldessari, like many artists of the 1960s and 70s, eventually gravitated toward conceptual art and the pre-eminence of ideas over objects. However, unlike many of his contemporaries, Baldessari imbued his conceptual art practice with humor and wit, employing “a sort of Dada irony and sometimes colorful Pop Art splashes . . . to rescue conceptual art from what he saw as its high-minded self-seriousness.”[1]
Baldessari’s enduring interests included the relationship
between text and image—which often meant pitting them against one another to
challenge their assumed accuracy—and the appropriation of images from
photography and film. His 1999 painting, The
Important an Unimportant (from the
Tetrad Series), in SAM’s collection is an exemplar work in this regard, a
combination of digital printing, hand lettering, and acrylic paint on canvas.
The composition, made up of quadrants, juxtaposes square
images—a glass with red daisies, a woman’s finger pointing down, and two skeleton
hands playing an organ—with a textual element that reads, “the important an
unimportant.” If these sequences appear heterogeneous and somewhat
anachronistic, it is because they are. For example, the excerpt in the upper
right is lifted from Goya’s 1797 painting The
Duchess of Alba, painted while the duchess mourned her husband’s
death. In the lower left, a still from Erich von Stroheim’s 1928 silent film, The Wedding March, is a not-so-subtle
harbinger of the fate which befalls the romance and aristocratic aspirations of
the film’s protagonist lovers. The text in the lower right, even, is an excerpt
from Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), “for whom nullity was a
muse.”[2]
Taken together, these citations enrich our understanding of
Baldessari’s wide range of influences. And whether we know the exact origins of
his chosen references or not, the appropriated images and texts are here imbued
with new meaning. We are invited—and, importantly, required—to participate as viewers to consider their relationship
to one another and the history of visual representation more broadly.
A serial creator, Baldessari always adhered to his now-famous maxim to “not make any more boring art.” A simple enough credo, such a motivation directly impacts us as viewers, who are on the receiving end—simultaneously empowered and challenged by his work. Perhaps best articulated by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith, “[Baldessari’s] work amuses, unsettles, questions and makes you look twice and think thrice; laugh out loud; and in general gain a sharpened awareness of the overlapping processes of art making, art viewing, and art thinking.”[3]
– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collection & Provenance Associate
“The wrinkles on
his face, his palms and his right heel are visible, as are the toenails on his
forward foot. His setting may be remote, but this Jerome is a real human
being.”
In case you missed it:
The Seattle Times’ December 21 print edition featured photojournalist Alan
Berner’s behind-the-scenes look at the Do Ho Suh
installation in progress with Liz Brown
David Carrier for
Hyperallergic on the
“endlessly inventive” Jörg Immendorff, whose solo show is now on
view in Madrid; his Café Deutschland 38. Parteitag, just added to SAM’s
collection in honor of Kim Rorschach, is now on view.
“The most
compelling aspect of the show is its focus on faces. Radiant faces loom out
from images on the walls. At a time when immigrants are being described as
dangerous, faceless people, these faces ask visitors to pause and look.”
The New York Times’
Will Heinrich reviews the Brooklyn Museum’s reinstallation of its Chinese and
Japanese collections, calling it “5,000 Years of Asian Art in 1 Single,
Thrilling Conversation.”
“Redesigning an
American museum’s Asian wing is no mean feat. How to convey the very real
throughlines that make terms as broad as ‘Chinese art’ and ‘Japanese art’
meaningful, while also doing justice to the staggering variety of these
ancient, and hugely populous, cultures?”
This 16th-century Flemish rosary bead or “prayer nut,” not even two inches in diameter, is a virtuosic display of wood and ivory carving. Floral patterns encircled by delicate ivory bands adorn each hemisphere. These swirling petals draw the beholder in for a closer look, which turns out to be worthwhile: the bead’s subtle hinge and clasp lead to hidden depths.
Opening the prayer nut reveals two impossibly small and
detailed scenes from the life of Christ. The smaller side shows Saint
Christopher bearing the young Jesus safely across the river, while the larger
side bears an intimate scene of the Virgin and Child with Mary’s parents, Saint
Anne and Saint Joaquim.
The sight of the intricate carvings alone is breathtaking, but these objects were wonderfully interactive as well. At the height of their popularity, most prayer nuts were worn on rosaries. These strings of beads were central to a multisensory experience of worship, where different beads loosely corresponded with recitations of ‘Aves’ and ‘Pater Nosters’, among other prayers. We can imagine the feeling of the prayer beads in hand, the sound of them clacking together in time with the holy words, combining into a trance-like meditation, in which the worshipper was meant to visualize and contemplate scenes from the Bible.[1] Those men and women lucky enough to have a beautiful prayer nut at the end of their rosary would open it carefully at the culmination of their prayers and be rewarded by an actual vision of these scenes.
However, we can’t only call these people lucky—they were
also wealthy. Prayer nuts were symbols of status as much as faith, and church
Reformers specifically criticized prayer nuts as empty claims to piety by the
superrich.[2]
This beautiful example in SAM’s collection would likely have been particularly
precious, as it is made of sandalwood (an unusual choice) and ivory, both
import goods from faraway continents.
I am continually in awe of the way objects like these, with
a bit of context and empathy, can connect us to people we have not remembered
in written archives. They never mean only one thing, and their stories will
keep unfolding as long we care to look under the surface.
– Linnea Hodge, Curatorial Division Coordinator
[1] Reindert Falkenburg, “Prayer Nuts: Feasting the Eyes of the Heart,” in Prayer Nuts, Private Devotion, and Early Modern Art Collecting, ed. Evelin Wetter and Frits Scholten (Abegg-Stiftung, 2017), 15-17.
[2] Falkenburg, “Prayer Nuts”, 13
Images: Rosary Bead, Miniature Religious Scenes, early 16th century, Flemish, sandalwood, pear wood, and ivory, 1 9/16 x 1 7/16 in., Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 67.4, photo: Craig Boyko Art Gallery of Ontario, 2016
One of the few successful female painters of her time, Gentileschi’s famous painting is hanging at SAM in Flesh and Blood, an exhibition of Renaissance and Baroque paintings. Judith and Holofernes provides one of the characters from the play, Blood Water Paint, recently restaged at Seattle’s 12th Ave Arts Studio by Macha Theatre Works. Playwright Joy McCullough‘s YA novel adaptation of Blood Water Paint won the 2019 Washington State Book Award and we couldn’t pass up the chance to bring these actors into the galleries to recreate a scene for you!
See this important artwork at SAM during Flesh and Blood, on view January 26. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience the fierce beauty of art from the 16th and 17th centuries. Renowned Renaissance artists such as Titian and Raphael join Baroque masters including Artemisia Gentileschi, Jusepe de Ribera, Guido Reni, and Bernardo Cavallino to reveal the aspirations and limitations of the human body and the many ways it can express love and devotion, physical labor, and tragic suffering.
Based on true events, Blood Water Paint unfolds lyrically through interactions with the women featured in Artemisia’s most famous paintings and culminates in her fierce battle to rise above the most devastating event in her life and fight for justice despite horrific consequences.
Macha Theatre Works is a fearless female non-profit arts organization showcasing exceptional artists, delivering innovative education programs, and staging new theatrical works that feature strong female characters.
Learn a little about one of the newest artists to join the SAM Gallery roster. Anne Marie Nequette‘s work will be on view in SAM Gallery from January –February 1 in the show New Art, New Artists 2020!
Nequette approaches her work from a background in sculpture, installation, and architecture. Her current body of work, Sea Change, focuses on the rapidly increasing displacement of people in coastal cities worldwide that are considered at high risk. She thinks about all of the people who live at the sea’s edge, and how water levels are now expected to rise, and where will those millions of people go? and how? She has long been concerned about “where we humans are headed regarding climate change, from forest fires to coastal flooding, from collapse of agricultural lands and practices to collapse of necessary species, oceans, and safe drinking water, etc. The power of water is something that many people underestimate, and only those who have survived a flood or hurricane have some idea of what that might be like.”
The idea and the initial list of cities for Sea Change came from an article in TheGuardian in 2017.[1] It included interactive maps of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, Miami, The Hague, and Alexandria that showed the grave danger these cities face, given their high population numbers (Shanghai at 34.8 million in 2015) and/or precious agricultural land (Alexandria and the Nile Delta). She works abstractly, primarily in paint and collage. If she has been to the city depicted, she relies on her experience to create a color and texture palette from paper on which she draws and paints. If she has not been to the city, she reads about the city and travels via Google image, and Google satellite maps looking at the city from above as well as from the street, to get a feel for what it is like. As she works, she imagines a city that has become inundated, though not completely underwater. Each of these works is titled with the population figures from governmental sources for the metropolitan areas and the works are named for the people, their cities, and the year the population number was last updated, i.e., ‘Shanghai, China, 39.4 million in 2015’.
– Pamela Jaynes SAM Gallery Coordinator
[1] The three-degree world: the cities that will be drowned by global warming, (Friday, November 3, 2017) Josh Holder, Niko Kommenda and Jonathan Watts (updated May 28, 2018).
Bangkok, Thailand, 14.6 million in 2010, Anne Marie Nequette, Collage on canvas. Keihanshin (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe), Japan, 19.3 million in 2010, Anne Marie Nequette, Collage on canvas.
The Seattle Review of
Books is asking local luminaries, “if you could give everyone in Seattle one
book as a gift this holiday season, what book would you choose and why?” Here
are selections from Amada Cruz, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom
Director and CEO.
“While remembering
people like Pratt or Mississippi activist Medgar Evers by erecting a bronze statue
or naming a park after them is also meaningful and important, there’s something
about the domesticity and “everyday-ness” of a face on a stamp that’s
just as appealing. It carries emotional power.”
The “inside-out” trend
continues: Nina Siegal for the New York Times on Rotterdam’s Boijmans van
Beuningen Museum and its forthcoming “Depot,” which will house completely
open-to-the-public collection storage.
In the weeks
leading up to the winter solstice, light—increasingly subsumed by
darkness—feels like a precious resource. It can be easy to forget just how much
we rely on daylight, and difficult to remember what life was like even six
months ago. Luckily, Saturday brings with it the shortest day and longest night
of the year, and longer and longer days thereafter.
For artist Edda
Renouf, the solstice is a perfect subject given her interest in light, nature,
and the passage of time. Known for her minimal and meditative compositions,
Renouf’s paintings and works on paper often engage material qualities that are
intrinsic to her given mediums. In Solstice
Echo, for example, the weave of the paper is enhanced by the verticality of
the composition’s emergent form, further dramatized by deep red and black oil
pastel hues.
In the words of Renouf, whose work is
often linked to post-minimalism and the work of Agnes Martin: “Materials speak
to me and unexpected things happen. It is from a silent conversation between materials
and imagination, from intuitive listening that the paintings and drawings are
born.” Renouf’s quiet and meditative compositions reveal essential truths about
painting and drawing through simple formal decisions.
In Solstice
Echo, the oil pastel sits on the surface of the textured paper—calling
attention to its two-dimensionality—but also highlights a depth and deeper
material structure that belies the paper’s inherent flatness. Taken together
with the work’s title, Solstice Echo
is indeed a meditation on light and space, capturing the subtle tension between
lightness and darkness.
– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collection & Provenance Associate
The paintings in Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum span the High Renaissance and the Baroque eras, so it’s only fitting that the Early Music Youth Academy from Seattle Historical Arts for Kids would play these two pieces by Salamone Rossi in SAM’s galleries while this exhibition is hanging through January 26.
Rossi’s music displays the transition from late Renaissance compositions to more Baroque-style arrangements. This selection, “Gagliarda detta la Norsina” and “Passeggio d’un Balletto” was published in 1607. Behind the talented youths performing this music, glimpse Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith and Holofernes, painted sometime between 1612 and 1617. You can also spot Ribera’s Saint Jerome, 1626, and The Virgin of the Souls with Saints Clare and Francis, 1622–23, by Battistello Caracciolo. Don’t miss seeing these paintings that have never before been exhibited in Seattle—Get tickets to visit SAM today!
While this Haida cedar bark mat from ca. 1900 reads like a painting—mounted and viewed two-dimensionally—its function was primarily utilitarian. This mat, meticulously woven from cedar bark, and others like it would serve a multitude of purposes: such mats could be found on walls or in doorways to prevent cold drafts and rain, or used as room dividers. Other times they might be used when foraging and drying berries, or for comfort when digging clams and cleaning fish. On more special occasions, these mats would be presented as potlatch gifts or as ceremonial ground cover.
A number of
things can be fashioned from cedar—its bark is especially versatile, processed and
turned into what is in essence a thread. Cedar tree people appear throughout
Haida oral tradition, and cedar bark, essential to everyday life, is known as
“every woman’s elder sister.” Like an older sister, cedar bark deserves respect
and helps its younger sister by providing material for clothing, baskets, and
other important items. The mat itself, with its overlapping bands and geometric
gridding, was also woven by a Haida woman. (The painting on the mat was likely
added by another—male—Haida artist.)
Yaqui poet
Richard Walker wrote a poem, The Cedar
Tree (excerpted below), which celebrates the importance of the cedar tree for
First Nations and Northwest Coast peoples, and the wide-ranging activities and
traditions that are passed on from one generation to the next as a result:
And what else do we know, but that
This tree continued the life,
growing to great heights,
providing shelter for birds and
other animals,
providing bark fiber for clothing,
and for fishing nets,
providing bark fiber for baskets
in which to collect berries or cook shellfish,
fine woven baskets that are passed from
mother to daughter, and from grandmother
to granddaughter?
– Elisabeth Smith, SAM
Collection & Provenance Associate
Image: Cedar bark mat, ca. 1900, Haida, painted cedar bark mat mounted on burlap and panel board, 70 x 35 in., Gift of R. Bruce and Mary-Louise Colwell, 2019.3.7
Aaron
Fowler: Into Existence
“gleefully disrupts standard boundaries between painting and sculpture,” says
Seattle Met, recommending the solo show of the 2019 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob
Lawrence Prize-winner as one of the “Top
Things to Do This December.” The show opens on Friday.
Local News
Seattle Met’s cover
story for December is “The
30 Women Who Shaped Seattle,” including women with connections to
SAM such as Guendolen Carkeek Plestcheeff and Zoë Dusanne.
“Honestly, I wanted
to avenge them,” Martin said. “At Cascadia, you will never see wall text that
says ‘Morris Graves and his close friend’ like a lot of museums do — even in
New York and Los Angeles, even in Seattle. No. Here you will always see ‘Morris
Graves and his boyfriend’ or ‘and his partner.’
Artsy gives us a look
at Mickalene
Thomas’ celebratory new show, Better Nights, at The Bass in
Miami Beach, replete with her signature installations and the work of her
fellow artists.
“Despite the
proliferation of dance in museums over the past decade, exhibitions focused on
the work of a single living choreographer remain rare. The America That Is to Be presents an
in-depth portrait of a bold, enigmatic artist.”
Throughout
the early part of the 20th century, an art and design movement known as Art
Deco grew in popularity. First originating in France as Arts Décoratifs, it was characterized by its use of rich materials
and amalgamation of different artistic styles, including Ancient Egyptian,
Chinese, and Persian influences. Art Deco quickly gained influence, and shaped
everything from architecture to car designs, with artists and designers working
to achieve a sleek elegance that was distinctly modern. One artist who worked
within the style was Boris Lovet-Lorski. Born in Lithuania in 1894,
Lovet-Lorski gravitated towards the highly stylized and flattened aesthetic of
the Art Deco movement, and throughout the 1920s and 30s he showcased his skills
through allegorical female nudes sculpted in bronze.
Lovet-Lorski
often found inspiration in antiquity and mythology, and Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist in SAM’s collection is no
exception. Designed around 1930, the piece draws from the story of Salomé’s “Dance
of the Seven Veils.” Salomé was the daughter of Herod II, prince of Judaea, and
Herodias. Sometime after Salomé’s birth, Herodias chose to divorce Herod II and
marry Herod Antipas (Herod II’s half-brother), a decision opposed by John the
Baptist, who was imprisoned for his criticism. For Antipas’ birthday, he asked
for his new step-daughter, Salomé, to perform a dance for him. Antipas was so
taken with her skill and beauty that he agreed to grant her any wish. Fueled by
her mother’s continuing anger towards John the Baptist for criticizing her
divorce from Herod II and subsequent marriage to Antipas, Salomé asked for John
the Baptist’s head, delivered to her on a platter.
In
Lovet-Lorski’s work, Salomé is portrayed in the middle of her dance, erotic in
her slinky half-split. As is often the case, Salomé takes on the role of a femme fatale, a seductive woman using
her wiles for her own gain. This is emphasized by the Art Deco sleekness of the
sculpture, as she hangs her head over the half-shown face of John the Baptist.
Hailing from the Philippines, bulul
figures are perhaps the most common and well-known of Ifugao sculptural
traditions. An isolated and landlocked province surrounded by rugged and
precipitous terrain, Ifugao and its people long resisted Spanish colonization,
which left much of their culture, religion, and artistic traditions intact.
For the Ifugao people, known for their elaborate terrace
farms and complex irrigation systems, rice is a cornerstone of daily life. Representing
a rice deity, bulul are highly
stylized and carved from a single piece of wood. Standing bulul figures are often depicted with hands resting on their knees,
slightly bent, while the arms of seated bulul
figures are typically folded. Most often carved in male and female pairs,
figures could also be androgynous.
The figures are understood as fundamental in ensuring a good harvest,
as well as guarding the season’s crop from thieves. They also represent the
harmonious union of oppositional elements and the promise of good fortune. Every
harvest, bulul would be brought out to
share in the bounty of rice, chicken, pig, and rice wine. The rich, mottled
patina of the bulul in SAM’s
collection demonstrates its use in various rituals and ceremonies, which would
include smoke and grease from food offerings.
Bulul can be venerated and
passed down for generations, ultimately overseeing many harvest seasons, as
well as a number of ceremonies celebrating the abundance and generosity of the
earth.
– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collection & Provenance Associate
Image: Bulul, late 19th, early 20th century, Philippines, wood, 22 x 6 x 6in., Gift of Georgia Schwartz Sales, 2003.96
“I believe great art helps us see the world around us a little differently and can often provide a sense of purpose and fresh perspectives.”
– Paul G. Allen
Right now SAM has a Botticelli hanging in its galleries! The Madonna of the Magnificat by Sandro Botticelli is part of a series of paintings on loan from the Paul G Allen Family Collection that is rotating. Botticelli’s Madonna expands on our current exhibition Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterworks from the Capodimonte Museum.
Widely known as the co-founder of Microsoft and a philanthropist, Paul G. Allen also had a lifelong interest in visual art that is reflected in his collection that spans centuries, genres, and media. A Cultural Legacy: A Series of Paintings from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection showcases singular masterworks that connect to works in SAM’s collections and special exhibitions.
The first painting in the series was Large Interior W11 (after Watteau) by Lucien Freud. This intimate, insightful group portrait exemplifies the 20th-century British painter’s distinctive style—one that invites us to “see the world around us a little differently.” The future featured work is White Rose with Larkspur No. 1 by Georgia O’Keeffe, which will be on view in 2020 in time for Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstract Variations to open at SAM on March 5.
Image: The Madonna of the Magnificat, ca. 1483–87, Sandro Botticelli, Italian, 1444/45–1510, tempera on wood panel, 24 3/4 in., Allen Family Collection.
We partnered with our friends at Seattle Opera to bring you a double dose of all things Baroque. Here is “Vidit suum dulcem natum” from the Stabat Mater by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi performed in front of Guido Reni’s painting, “Atalanta and Hippomenes,” on view at SAM right now as part of “Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum.”
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi studied in Naples and premiered all but one of his operas there. This piece, Stabat Mater, was composed in 1736. An example of Guido Reni’s more Baroque approach to painting that developed during his time Naples, “Atalanta and Hippomenes” was completed between 1620–25 and is visiting Seattle Art Museum from Naples. Enjoy this video of these Baroque works of art together before you visit SAM to see this and other important Italian paintings in person. Let this opera set your mood!
“Flesh and Blood” offers a rare opportunity to experience the fierce beauty of art from the 16th and 17th centuries. Renowned Renaissance artists such as Titian and Raphael join Baroque masters including Artemisia Gentileschi, Jusepe de Ribera, Guido Reni, and Bernardo Cavallino to reveal the aspirations and limitations of the human body and the many ways it can express love and devotion, physical labor, and tragic suffering. You have until January 26, 2020, to see this exhibition.
Last week, Gina
Siciliano—the author I Know What I Am:
The True Story of Artemisia Gentileschi—gave a My Favorite Things tour at
SAM, and Crosscut’s Brangien Davis recommended it in last week’s
“Things to Do”. If you missed it, don’t despair: there’s still
plenty of time to experience Gentileschi’s masterpiece, now on view in Flesh and Blood:
Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum.
Local News
The Seattle Times’
Paul de Barros on Seattle
jazz club The Penthouse, which presented A-list performers in the
’60s. Now, archival recordings from the club will be released on November 29.
Real Change’s Lisa Edge on the mixed-media work of Jite Agbro; her work Deserving is on view at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (BIMA).
“Within the piece,
I was more mindful of my steps because of the way the mesh was ever so slippery
beneath my boot. I became aware of a slight unease at being so close to a
skylight I’d admired from the concrete floor below.”
Inter/National News
Paul Laster writes about Do Ho Suh’s work for White Hot magazine, including past presentations at SAM and his theme of displacement. The artist’s Some/One will be a centerpiece of Be/longing at the Asian Art Museum.
Here’s Max Duron of
ARTnews on the
hiring of Denise Murrell as associate curator at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art; Murrell’s work will overlap the modern & contemporary and
European painting departments.
“From our
conversation, Gates seems to envision a city-sanctioned and -funded memorial.
‘I want to believe that the city is open to it,” he said. “I believe Samaria
has the right to ask the city to receive this sacred space.’”
This etching by Francisco José Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), titled Foolish Extravagance, is part of series titled Los Disparates (The Follies) from 1815/16–1823/24. Completed by an artist who lived through the oppressive Spanish Inquisition, among other sociopolitical events, each print from the series variously address themes of foolishness, misrepresentation, abuse of power, and fear.
Disparates was published posthumously in 1864 by The Royal Academy of San Fernando, from the 18 (of 22) plates in their possession. When The Royal Academy first produced this edition, they did so under the title Los Proverbios, sending scholars on a quest to match the prints with their respective proverbs. Later proofs by the artist—with handwritten titles beginning with the word “disparates”—shifted their meaning: these images were not illustrative of proverbs, but rather of follies. In the time since, the series has evaded clear interpretation, and “any promise of clear symbolic meaning that these things might offer is empty.”[1]
In Foolish Extravagance, four
bulls twist, jerk, and careen one on top of another, seemingly free-falling against
an amorphous black background. Offering little information, this black void
heightens the sense of disorientation and absurdity that the image conveys.
Lacking any rationalism that would be signaled by a horizon line, or other
compositional cues, this and other etchings from Los Disparates evidence an absence of reason and coherent meaning.
– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collection & Provenance Associate
Image: Foolish Extravagance, 1815, Francisco José Goya y Lucientes, aquatint and etching, 8 5/16 x 12 3/4 in., Manson F. Backus Memorial Collection, 35.133
If you haven’t heard, Artemisia Gentileschi’s renowned painting Judith and Holofernes is currently hanging at SAM as part of Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum. This particular painting by Gentileschi has gotten a lot of attention in recent years as discussions of representation of women in the arts as well as rape culture have become part of mainstream media. A graphic novel, I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschiby Gina Siciliano was recently published by Seattle-based Fantagraphics. This Pacific Northwest illustrator and author conducted research for seven years to offer a picture of Italy’s cultural climate in the 17th century as well as an unflinching look at Gentileschi’s life whose artistic success and documented rape trial have cast her as a feminist hero in her time, one that we can still learn from today.
After giving a talk on the Contemporary Resonance of Artemisia Gentileschi at the opening of Flesh and Blood with Chiyo Ishikawa, SAM’s Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, and Estelle Lingo, Professor of Early Modern European Art at University of Washington, we wanted to learn more about her enthralling graphic novel. Done entirely in ballpoint pen, the book is an education in world history that is full of drama, tragedy, and passion. Italian artists in the 1600s don’t seem too hesitant about stabbing each other. Read below for more information on this talented author, feminism, and the figure of Gentileschi. If you’re planning to visit the exhibition to see Gentileschi’s painting, come on Thursday, November 21 and take a tour of the galleries with Gina!
SAM: What drew you
to Artemisia? When did you realize you were making a book-length work?
Gina Siciliano: I knew immediately that I was going to make a
graphic novel about Artemisia, right when I was introduced to her work in art
school, and then when I first saw the Judith painting in the Uffizi back in
2007. When I was ready, I broke the story into three parts and dove in, piecing
her life and times together in chronological order. Initially I wasn’t going to
extend it all the way to the end of her life, but I changed my mind. I decided
to make a full biography because I sensed a lack of older women characters in
movies, novels, comics, media, and our culture in general. It feels like once
women reach a certain age they’re just thrown out of the picture or relegated
to stereotypes, and it became important to rise against that.
What’s one piece of
information that got you really excited when you found it?
There were so
many exciting discoveries throughout this process, it’s very difficult to
choose just one example! When Jesse Locker’s book came out in 2015 that
completely changed the third part, and also when Elizabeth Cohen wrote about
the recently discovered handful of letters written by Artemisia and Pierantonio
to Francesco Maria Maringhi around 1620. They haven’t been entirely translated
into English, but Cohen revealed snippets of Artemisia’s writing in English,
and it was intense and wonderful to get a sense of Artemisia’s voice at that
point in her life. I got chills reading about her breakdown after the death of
her children and during her harrowing journey back to Rome. I rearranged that
whole section of the book after that. I’m also currently very excited about
Sheila Barker’s new scholarship on Artemisia.
But if I had to
pick the most exciting discovery of all it would be the 1647 revolt of
Masaniello! Rosario Villari’s book on the subject was a landmark for me, and
since there’s so little information in English I read his book several times,
taking extensive notes. I was struck by the Neapolitan people’s desperation,
and the way they repeatedly rose up violently against severe oppression and
corruption. I was startled to learn that Artemisia survived a ten-month
revolution, and it had barely been mentioned in my sources at all.
There seem to be
many versions of Artemisia’s life. The details of female life were not much
documented at the time so how did you decide to present the version of her life
that you did?
The goal was to stay as historically accurate as possible and invent as little as possible. I was influenced by Alexandra Lapierre’s approach. She spent five years doing research in various Italian archives, then strung together the holes in the information—the gaps in history—with fiction. Rather than project my own agenda onto Artemisia or use her story as a jumping-off point for my own artistic expression, I wanted to find out as much as I could about Artemisia—how she felt, how she lived, how she interacted with others. I see her as inseparable from Italian history. I wanted to re-create her world, and then put her into it. The goal was to put her life and work into context, not take her out of context. That being said, of course, bits of myself and my own outlook slipped in all over the place. But I included a big notes section, to show the reader that we’ll never know exactly what happened—all we can do is continue to discuss how we come to conclusions, how we piece together history based on a variety of sources, ideas, and perspectives. My version of Artemisia is based on academic research, as well as my personal, emotional connection to her work.
What about the
decorative symbols and icons in the full-frame character illustrations?
Each one of these
full-page portraits is comprised of Renaissance and Baroque symbolism, and also
my own impressions. Each one has its own mood, based on the character’s role in
the story. Some of these people—Caravaggio, Orazio, Artemisia, Galileo, the
Duke of Alcala, Masaniello—we know quite a bit about, so I had a lot to work
with. For example, Masaniello was a fisherman, so there are fish surrounding
him, Galileo has a diagram of the Copernican view of the cosmos above him, etc.
For these people, I used images of them from their own time to re-create how
they looked. But other figures—Loredan, Arcangela Tarabotti, Tuzia Medaglia,
Giovanni Battista Stiattesi, Artemisia’s daughters—are more mysterious. I had
to do more inventing and cobbling together whatever scraps of information I
could, to show what they might’ve looked like.
There isn’t space here to describe all the symbolism, but I’ll give a few examples: Artemisia’s daughters are shown with large, rounded, upright vessels—a common Renaissance symbol for chastity and sexual purity, whereas a spilled, horizontal vessel was a symbol for sex and impurity. The Duke of Alcala is surrounded by fig trees—lush and full of fruit—a Renaissance metaphor for sexuality again, in this case, male virility. Pierantonio stands below two bull skulls, alluding to his being a cuckold (Loredan’s epitaph about Artemisia on page 224 claims that she carved the horns of a cuckold for her husband). The glowing candles foreshadow Pierantonio’s later night-time swordplay. The characters with close ties to the Medici—Francesco Maria Maringhi, Christine of Lorraine, Maria Maddalena of Austria, Galileo—all feature the Medici’s famous logo/crest—a group of small, round, fruit-like balls. Loredan’s portrait is surrounded by water since he serves as an introduction to Venice, and below him is the logo of his famous academy (the Incogniti)—the mysterious Nile River, the source of which was still unknown at the time.
Can we have a
feminist hero and still have context and historical time and place?
My book is meant
to present a loud and enthusiastic YES to this question!
Will you talk a bit
about proto-feminism?
This is
essentially an earlier version of feminism. To me, the best biographies don’t
idolize or sentimentalize the subject, nor do they gloss over the
inconsistencies and contradictions of a person. Rather, they go deep into
history and analyze their subject’s position, and all the potential factors
that made them who they were. I love Paul Avrich’s writing about anarchists for
this reason. I’m also reading Lily Tuck’s wonderful biography of Elsa Morante.
Elsa Morante was an incredibly independent Italian woman, one of the first to
wear pants! At the same time, Tuck mentions how Morante chastised another woman
for having hairy armpits and sometimes scorned the feminist movement. I tried
to be open to these types of contradictions when writing about Artemisia too.
There’s reason to believe that Artemisia was a militant Catholic who didn’t
always treat her servants very well. But she also wrote about the disadvantages
she faced as a woman, she refused to let Agostino Tassi (the man who raped her)
off the hook during the trial, and we know that she worked within the same
circle as the Venetian Libertines who talked a lot about the roles of women
(the querelle des femmes). We can judge Artemisia by the standards of her own
time, and we can judge her according to the standards of our time. I think
there’s room for both.
Proto-feminism didn’t look like our modern first-, second-, or third-wave feminism. There wasn’t a political movement, it was more social. There was an ongoing intellectual debate about women and plenty of writing about women’s rights. Most of the early modern feminist writers made their point by listing numerous examples of virtuous women from the bible and ancient history and mythology, as these were the touchstones of Italian humanist and Counter-Reformation thought. Sometimes they listed contemporary examples too. But, as powerful as these lists of women were, they also conformed to the proper (men’s) definition of honorable women. Even the most outspoken feminists of the time, like Arcangela Tarabotti, used only the most chaste, angelic examples of women to argue for women’s rights. But she was trying to refute the prevailing notion that women’s sexuality was toxic, out of control, and evil (Eve and the original sin, remember?). Her argument that women are inherently pure and chaste seems weird to us (like we don’t even get to have our own sexuality?), but in that intensely Catholic environment it makes sense. That’s only one aspect of her writing, and I would argue that her feminism is still important.
Likewise, we can see that the powerful Medici women—Christine of Lorraine and Maria Maddalena of Austria—were, like most queens and noblewomen, arranging marriages within their courts to solidify their family’s (and their own) wealth and power. But this doesn’t negate the radical way in which they intervened to prevent domestic violence, and their attempts to give women some say in who they would marry. That meant a lot within a society where marriage had very little to do with choice, especially among the upper classes.
At first glance,
Artemisia’s world looks like a grim, unrelenting, misogynist hell hole, but
when we look closer and dig deeper, we can see that women (and men) were
pushing back against the status quo in all kinds of ways. The fact that so many
powerful men got behind Artemisia, aided her career, and continually bailed her
out (Orazio, Francesco Maria Maringhi, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Galileo, etc.) also
says a lot. These men probably saw her as an exception to the norm—an
exceptional woman—rather than seeing women collectively as equals. Artemisia
probably saw herself as an exception to the norm too, and probably capitalized
on that to a certain extent. But I still think the roots of feminism lie in
these early attempts to widen the expectations of what women were capable of.
Plus, there’s still so much we don’t know. Feminist scholars are trying to
bring a lot of buried, unknown, misattributed, and misrepresented women’s
writing, art, and music to light. This is an ongoing process, an ongoing
discussion.
What is your
favorite Artemisia painting?
Oh geez, I don’t know! I guess the second Judith Slaying Holofernes in the Ufizzi. There’s just nothing else like it in the world.
– Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, SAM Content Strategist and Social Media Manager
Images: Gina Siciliano, I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi. Seattle, Fantagrahics Books, 2019.
“And there’s
something else about being close to it, the actual object, which Gentileschi
made with her own hands, just as Judith carried out Holofernes’s death with her
hands. A Google image search doesn’t cut it. The power of the painting—and the
perspective given through it—must be experienced in the flesh.”
“There’s a lot that
the visitor can’t see that is just as important: all the infrastructure that
makes this historic jewel a thoroughly modern museum, equipped to safely
display delicate artworks,” [SAM Director and CEO Amada] Cruz said. “The reimagined
building will allow us to better fulfill our mission to connect visitors to the
art and cultures of Asia.”
Margo Vansynghel
debuts as an official Crosscut writer covering arts and culture with this look
at the
pushback from some in the film community to Seattle City Hall’s new
“creative economy” strategy.
The Stranger’s Rich
Smith reviews
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Locally Sourced, which closed this past
weekend. He mostly loved it.
“It was all a
liiiiittle on the corny side, I must admit, but it was hard not to get swept up
in this impressive celebration of our green-gothic corner of the world.”
ARTnews announced
that Ashley
James has been hired as associate curator of contemporary art at the
Guggenheim Museum. She is the first Black curator hired to the museum’s staff.
“[An earlier show]
also unveiled an important new body of research revealing an unknown
relationship between the two artists, who first met in the early 1930s and,
despite having a 20-year age difference, formed a strong bond, writing to each
other often about their artistic creations and arguing over the return of realism
after World War II.”
Artist
James Castle was born in Garden Valley, Idaho in 1899. The fifth of seven
children, he was born deaf, and spent his whole life unable to speak, read,
write, or sign. Castle started drawing at the age of six, leading to a lifetime
of creativity with art serving as his own personal form of communication.
In
1931, Castle moved with his family to Boise, Idaho, where Castle remained until
his death in 1977. There was much that was unconventional about the artist:
largely self-taught, his primary drawing materials included soot from the
family woodstove, mixed with his saliva, which he would apply to an upcycled piece
of cardboard (e.g. a milk carton) with a found utensil, oftentimes a sharpened
stick. His drawings were heavily influenced by the environment he lived in, and
were sometimes a mix of highly realistic and abstract imagery. He also drew
many scenes from the family’s previous homes, which are believed to be
recreated from memory.
Though
Castle was seemingly content to produce artworks for himself and his family, in
1951 his nephew shared some of the drawings with his art professors in Oregon,
who immediately expressed interest. Thus began a new stage of Castle’s life, in
which Castle’s work continuously garnered more attention, culminating in an
exhibition of his works at the Boise Art Museum, the highest honor he achieved
during his lifetime.
Today Castle is considered one of the most recognized self-taught artists. Two Totems with Man No. 56, in SAM’s collection, was produced using stove soot and saliva to make charcoal, which was then applied using a matchstick to a found salvaged piece of cardboard. As with many of the artist’s pieces, it has a knotted string hanger. A more abstract example of Castle’s oeuvre, the meaning behind the totems in Two Totems continues to evade scholars, although it is a motif Castle returned to often. Even so, with this and other works, we are able to gain valuable insight into how Castle viewed the world around him.
Ask of Naples, and you will likely receive a description comprised of contradictions. A sprawling Italian city at the foot of towering Mount Vesuvius. A dense metropolis bordered by open sea. A vibrant place with a violent side to its history. Visitors to SAM through January 26, 2020, will become familiar with Naples through the exhibition Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum. Drawn from the collection of one of the largest museums in Italy—dramatically situated in a former palace, atop a hill overlooking Naples—the exhibition brings together renowned artists of the High Renaissance and Neapolitan Baroque periods as it explores the intersection of physical and spiritual existence.
Naples
has historically been claimed by a range of ruling powers, including the
Spanish Empire for two centuries, beginning in 1503. At this time in Rome
Alessandro Farnese was building a monumental collection of works by Italian
Renaissance masters, including a powerful portrait of himself as Pope Paul III
that he commissioned from Titian in 1543, which is on view in Flesh and Blood.
This art collection was ultimately inherited by Charles of Bourbon, who brought
it to Naples when he assumed power over the city in 1735.
“I
am struck by the way that Neapolitan artists seem to collapse the distance
between heaven and earth. This was also my sense of Naples itself—the sea, the
dense city, and the hills are all squeezed into a narrow space, so you get the
most amazing visual juxtapositions,” says Chiyo Ishikawa, Susan Brotman Deputy
Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture. Juxtapositions
are also pronounced in the development of the chiaroscuro style of painting
that became a signature of the Baroque era.
In the early 17th century, a uniquely Neapolitan school of painting emerged. Among the school’s founders, was Naples native Battistello Caracciolo (1578–1635), whose stunning painting, The Virgin Rescuing Souls from Purgatory (1622–1623) presents a group of figures—saintly and earthly alike—against a darkened background that at once feels confined and infinite. Also featured prominently is Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652), a Spanish painter who relocated to Naples in 1611. Like many of the works in this exhibition, his dramatic portrayal of Saint Jerome and the Angel of Judgement (1626) echoes the vivid contrasts of Naples, eternally oscillating between an enthralling light and a violent darkness. Visit Flesh and Blood to develop your own sense of Naples.
Images: The Virgin of the Souls with Saints Clare and Francis, 1622–23, Battistello Caracciolo, Italian, 1578–1635, oil on canvas, 114 3/16 × 80 11/16 in., Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte. Pope Paul III, 1543, Titian, Italian, 1488/90–1576, oil on canvas, 44 3/4 × 34 15/16 in., Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte. Saint Jerome, 1626, Jusepe de Ribera, Spanish, 1591–1652, oil on canvas, 105 1/8 × 64 9/16 in., Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.
Oracle-bone script (jiaguwen) is a form of Chinese writing that emerged during the Shang Dynasty—dating from the 14th–11th century BCE—and is considered the earliest known form of systematic Chinese script.
Some of the oldest oracle-bone inscriptions were short texts
inscribed on the flat shoulder blade bones of oxen and shells of tortoises.
Such bones were used for divination, a process which involved the inscription
of a question with a bronze pin—lending the script its characteristic angularity—and
then heating the bone to reveal cracks, which would be divined for answers.
The symbols used eventually became words, which were later developed
into a Chinese script that is recognized today as part of China’s long
tradition of calligraphic arts. This work by Rao Zongyi, titled Couplet, utilizes the ancient script,
brought to life for a contemporary audience.
Rao—a poet, calligrapher, painter, and scholar of the humanities—produced
the couplet in 1971 while a visiting professor at Yale University. Composed by
Rao, the poem describes in red ink a kun-style operatic performance by Chang
Ch’ung. Together the two scrolls read: The
wind makes the snow dance amidst the sunlight, the music hangs like clouds on
her garments.
– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collection and Provenance Associate
When the Seattle Asian Art Museum reopens next year, visitors will experience the museum’s renowned collection of Asian art in a whole new way. Most of the original galleries will showcase the museum’s collection, while the building’s new gallery—housed in the expansion—will focus on rotating special exhibitions. SAM’s curatorial team saw the renovation process as an exciting chance to rethink how visitors engage with the Asian art collection. “How often does a museum go offline and move everything out?” notes Foong Ping, Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art. She continues, “This was an opportunity to dream a little bit.”
The curators convened groups of scholars and community advisors to explore approaches to displaying SAM’s artworks. Moving away from the chronological and geographic organization of most museums, they took a thematic approach instead. Each gallery of Boundless: Stories of Asian Art, the new collection installation, focuses on a theme central to Asia’s diverse arts and societies, ranging from worship and celebration, to visual arts and literature, to clothing and identity. For instance, a gallery titled Spiritual Journeys brings many objects together, from a Pakistani Bodhisattva, to an Indian Stupa, to a Chinese demon, to explore spiritual imagery through unifying ideas such as spiritual guides and guardians. The reinstallation provides an experience of great diversity and a broad context within which to engage with artworks.
Boundless also presents varied voices and perspectives on artworks to offer visitors a wide array of approaches to appreciating SAM’s collection. Along with traditional curatorial texts, artists and Seattle community members also offer their perspectives. The Color in Clay gallery presents a large selection of ceramics from China as well as vibrant works from Vietnam to Iran in a natural light-filled gallery without any contextualizing text. Monitors with more information will be available, but Foong’s hope is for visitors to be immersed in looking closely at subtle differences in tones and textures in the clay and the glazes. “I’m particularly excited about this display because it represents a completely different experience than we’ve ever had at the Asian Art Museum,” she says.
The first special exhibition Be/longing: Contemporary Asian Art also draws primarily from the museum’s collection. It brings together works by 12 artists born in different parts of Asia—Azerbaijan, Iran, India, Thailand, China, Korea, and Japan—who have all lived outside of Asia and are exploring their Asian heritage from global perspectives. Be/longing features Some/One by Do Ho Suh—a sculpture so large that we were previously unable to exhibit it at the Asian Art Museum. SAM’s Curator of Japanese and Korean Art Xiaojin Wu explains, “Some/One is an imposing work that compels the viewer to think about identity and our relationship with society—issues we all care about.” Positioning Some/One alongside works by other contemporary artists, visitors will encounter its powerful resonance in a new exhibition, a new gallery, a new building, in the new year.
“Throughout the
exhibition, we are reminded of how art — much like a pitcher of wine or a human
body within the paintings — is a vessel for meaning and message. Gender, race,
class, age, ability and size play roles in communicating these meanings, in
ways that feel historically remote, intimately resonant or disappointingly
familiar.”
Seattle Magazine’s Gavin
Borchert writes up an
exciting new SAM commission; Carpe
Fin, a “Haida manga” mural by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, is now
on view downtown.
“The mural conveys
a vitally timely moral—a warning about the dangers of human disconnection from
the natural world.”
“Conservators
approach art from a unique vantage point, intimately located between science,
art, and museum politics. ‘We’re kind of in an ivory tower, but we’re looking
at the front line.’ Nicholas Dorman explains.”
Local News
Lisa Edge of Real
Change reviewsIconic Black Women: Ain’t I a Woman, now on view at the Northwest
African American Museum.
And Crosscut’s Agueda
Pacheco Flores visits
the Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture, which is now open.
“The new museum
draws attention to an often overlooked slice of Washington state history, which
includes major Mexican American contributions to agriculture, railroad
transportation and civil rights. It also breaks ground as the first museum in
the Pacific Northwest to highlight the Mexican American experience in this
region.”
Also
in California: Fires.
Artnet traces the threats to the Getty Museum and Charles M. Schulz Museum.
The New York Times’
Robin Pogrebin on a
new Bill Traylor show at David Zwirner, with proceeds mostly going
toward the Harlem Children’s Zone.
“’There is
something terribly natural, terribly right, about having the Bill Traylor
collection turn into money for his progeny,’ he added, referring to the Zone’s
students. ‘I think he would have been — or he is — delighted about that. And I
am, too.’”
Two
identical, white clocks sit on a scale. One—reading 12:15—appears the heavier
of the two, sitting ever so slightly below its counterpart at 12:04. Of course,
the minute discrepancy (pun intended) between the weights of the two
clocks—correlating with their respective times—is impossible, but the power of
the photographic image lies in its ability to convince us otherwise.
Ever
a master of the conceptual punchline, photographer Kenji Nakahashi plays with our
interpretation of time and its assumed objectivity. His longstanding interest
in the documentary value and, again, assumed objectivity of photography—a
time-based medium—is also at play, and clearly inextricable. In his
characteristically understated way, Nakahashi tackles the subjectivity of both
time and photography in one fell swoop.
Born in present-day Ibigawa, Japan, Nakahashi moved to New York City in 1973, where he lived until his death in 2017. His time in Japan was formative, but living and working in the United States is where Nakahashi developed a robust studio practice centered on everyday objects and materials. This is when he began turning the mundane—such as two clocks and a scale—into a source of poetic beauty, conceptual rigor, and humor. For Nakahashi, such small observations and actions became an important activity that allowed him to render the world anew.
– Elisabeth Smith, Collection and Provenance Associate
“Vulnerability” has been a bit of a buzz word ever since Brené Brown’s TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability.” Having watched Brené’s TED Talk and read one of her books, I value vulnerability a lot, but being vulnerable myself can still feel fairly nerve-wracking. So when the other Emerging Arts Leader Intern and I were asked to lead a My Favorite Things Tour, little did I know that the next 10 weeks would also include a road trip down vulnerability lane.
When I first heard about
the tour, I thought this tour would remain in the realm of theoretical,
academic concepts. To be fair, a large part of the process involved researching
the history behind each piece, utilizing resources from SAM’s libraries
(thanks, Traci, Jordyn, and Yueh-Lin!), and meeting with curators (thanks, Pam
and Chiyo!). But along with the historical research, our mentors and
colleagues, Rachel, Seohee, David, and Priya (thank you all!), encouraged us to
delve vulnerably into our stories and weave them into each piece.
Because of this, I began asking myself some questions about my story, including being mixed race. For a while, I’ve been nervous about my voice because being mixed race often feels like a grey area between two distinct points of view and voices in society. But as I worked on the tour, each of our mentors and countless people shared their time, insight, stories, and vulnerability to help me process, ask deeper questions, and craft the content of the tour. Without them, the tour and this blog post would look entirely different.
Not to mention, I’ll
always cherish the times the other Emerging Arts Leader Intern, Cat, and I
practiced nearly 50 versions of our ever-evolving tour with each other. Because
our tours delved into more personal topics, we became each other’s support and
cheerleader through a lot of ups and a few downs. Together, we also arranged
informational interviews with staff across many departments, assisted at events
like SAM Remix, DragonFest, and Summer Institute for Educators, and attended
department and equity team meetings. I learned so much from working with Cat
(miss you!) and love the ways in which SAM values and integrates
collaboration.
Throughout this entire internship, I’ve learned so much about museums, equity work within museums, and about myself. The interdisciplinary focus provided the opportunity to learn about many of the departments that comprise SAM. All throughout and above the galleries, it’s inspiring to see how many dedicated individuals play a role – from fundraising to checking coats to communicating with the press to leading student tours—to make SAM the museum that it is.
I also learned a lot
about equity work in museums that I didn’t know before. I’ve realized that it’s
not enough to know some terms or read some papers or books, but it takes the
vulnerability to ask myself the same questions within these papers. And it
takes the bravery to answer these questions honestly.
SAM gave me a safe space to ask questions and come from a posture of growth and progression rather than perfection. More than ever, I’ve learned how crucial and empowering it is to connect with people who share both similar and different experiences. The ways that SAM strives for equity within education, programming, exhibitions, staff, and every part of SAM is inspiring. SAM is opening up dialogue, asking themselves, and others, critical questions, and aiming to lead and learn with each step towards furthering inclusivity and equity. SAM taught me that it takes vulnerability and guts to genuinely look at equity within ourselves in order to implement equity institutionally and beyond.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who made this internship so special. And guess what? I’m so grateful, honored, and thrilled to continue on with SAM’s amazing Development Team as a Campaign Assistant! See you around!
– Lauren Farris, SAM Campaign Assistant & 2019 Emerging Arts Leader Intern
