The art of protecting time-based media with Liz Brown

Sara Butler on Oct 11 2025

The art of protecting time-based media with Liz Brown

“The intricate nature of the work provides so many rich opportunities to connect the artworks in our care with audiences young and old, a pursuit so core to why we are here in museums.”

There are many elements Liz Brown, Director of Objects Conservation at SAM, loves about working in conservation. Each day presents new challenges—including the complexities of preserving artworks involving technology, media, and interactive elements. Among these artworks are Paranoid Mirror (1995), a mixed media video installation by Lynn Hershman Leeson and the subject of Brown’s upcoming talk “Inside and Outside Gallery Walls.”

On October 16, Brown continues the 2025 season of Up Close with Conservators, our member-exclusive lecture series, with an inside look into SAM’s collaborative strategies for preserving time-based media. Before she takes the stage, we talked with Brown about the complicated artwork—its background, preservation, and impact. Plus, Brown shares her favorite aspects of working in conservation (spoiler: there are a lot).

Could you provide a brief description of Paranoid Mirror and how visitors can interact with it?

Paranoid Mirror is an interactive video artwork where the visitor is both the observer and the performer. As the visitor approaches the gilt mirror on the wall, they see themselves reflected in a video that changes as they trigger hidden sensors. The installation then switches between clips, challenging them to question what they are seeing and “looking at.”  At the same time, the viewer is captured by a video camera; the live footage is sometimes played back to the viewer in the mirror and simultaneously streamed to a surveillance monitor watched by other visitors. In her 1995 book, Lynn Hershman Leeson shares that the piece is “inspired by the paintings of Jan Van Eyck and in particular the Arnolfini Wedding (1434) … and engages ideas of reflection, tracking, surveillance and voyeurism and uses the viewer as a direct interface.”  

This mixed media piece uses older technology, including laserdiscs. What are some of the contemporary tools you use for conserving the original components?

One of the first steps was to learn from Lynn Hershman Leeson which components of the original installation are important to preserve and what could be replaced. to understand the essential performances and aspects of the artwork. We learned, for example, that although video on the 1995 CAV laser disc could be migrated and the laser disc could be replaced, she believed that the current artifacts of age in the video should not be removed because the work’s place and time should not be erased.  Once we had a better understanding of her approach, we employed a variety of tools, often drawn from related fields. For example, we use a write blocker developed in forensics to safely examine drives without inadvertently altering any of the information. We also made use of disc imaging tools from software preservation and migration apps from archivists. Additionally, tools such as current video editing software and applications to examine metadata and other aspects under the hood are incredibly helpful.

Preserving this work ensures it can reach future audiences. Why is this piece important in our current moment?

In our current world dominated by screens, selfies, online identities and avatars, and images and information manipulated and real, Paranoid Mirror’s reflections on illusion, identity, seeing and being seen, and youth and age resonate both forward and backward in time.

According to MoMA’s 2024 retrospective of the Hershman work, “One of the world’s most prolific media artists, over five decades Lynn Hershman Leeson has produced an innovative body of work that probes and plays with the complex relationship between humans, technology, and social structures. Her videos navigate the fluid space between perception and truth, constantly exposing our collective and individual biases.”

In preserving this work—though I struggle with word “preserve” in regard to new media artworks—we are not just attempting to maintain a particular piece of hardware or electronics. We also want to ensure the performances of the work continue with its questions and challenges, that the refrain “You are not real” echoes into the future. 

What do you like most about working in conservation?

The nature of the work is so multifaceted that it’s difficult to choose one thing—can I choose several and a few more tomorrow? One of the truly magical and inspiring aspects of working with contemporary artworks is the opportunity to work with and hear directly from creators. To be able to learn from the artist how they work, select materials, and would like the work preserved (or not) is a great privilege. Additionally, I love the investigative nature of the work in conservation. Due to the breadth of materials and artworks in the collection, no one day is the same; each day presents new challenges and opportunities to learn, uncover, and discover. And the intricate nature of the work—which draws on so many fields such as chemistry, archeology, art history, imaging, and programming—provides so many rich opportunities to connect the artwork in our care with audiences young and old, a pursuit so core to why we are here in museums.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2025: Explore works from talented artists at SAM

Sara Butler on Oct 8 2025

Hispanic Heritage Month 2025: Explore works from talented artists at SAM

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! This annual celebration—recognized between September 15 and October 15—honors the contributions and influence of Hispanic and Latinx Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States. In honor of the holiday, we’re spotlighting four Hispanic and Latinx American artists with thought-provoking pieces in SAM’s permanent collection.

Alfredo Arreguín

Installation view of “American Art: The Stories We Carry” at Seattle Art Museum, 2025, photo: Chloe Collyer

Alfredo Arreguín was one of the Pacific Northwest’s most prominent Chicano artists. SAM has five of his pieces in our collection, including the striking canvas Four Self-Portraits (1995).

Arreguín painted nearly his entire life, starting his craft at age 9. After graduating from the prestigious Escuela Nacional Preparatoria at the University of Mexico, he moved to Seattle to study architecture, interior design, and art at the University of Washington.

Layered with bright colors, intricate patterns, and hidden symbols, Arreguín’s mosaic masterpieces blend his internal and external surroundings. Through his art, he explored the natural and spiritual environments of both Mexico and the Pacific Northwest, crafting tapestries that reflected his multifaceted identity, cultural heritage, and adopted hometown.

Sadly, Arreguín passed away in 2023—but his legacy lives on at the Seattle Art Museum in our ongoing exhibition “American Art: The Stories We Carry.”  (Learn more about Arreguín in our 2023 blog post by Theresa Papanickolas, SAM Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art.)

Isabella Villaseñor

Grabado en Madera, mid 20th century, Isabel Villaseñor, Mexican, 1910-1954, Print, Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Davis Hatch Jr., 44.613, Photo: Elizabeth Mann.

From sculpting to composing, post-revolutionary Mexican artist Isabella Villaseñor was a woman of nearly all creative trades. She is well-known for her woodcut prints, such as Grabado en Madera (1929) in SAM’s permanent collection.

Growing up in Mexico City, Villaseñor inherited a love of popular Mexican music and had an intrinsic knack for writing, winning numerous literary awards. She then pursued art at Centro Popular de Pintura, where she developed her signature style in engravings and paintings.

Her engravings and paintings often featured women in the domestic sphere. Villaseñor’s woodcut print Grabado en Madera depicts three women huddling together in conversation, connecting over personal stories or community gossip. Through her signature linework, shading, and composition, Villaseñor’s dichromatic artwork tells a powerful story of womanhood and connection.

Villaseñor died in her early 40s, but her multifaceted art—including work with revolutionary artist group ¡30-30!—left a major impact.

Paloma Contreras Lomas

El ciudadano más oscuro (el árbol que mira), 2023, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Mexican, b. 1991, Graphite, charcoal, pastel, and oil stick on linen, with artist frame. Seattle Art Museum, General Acquisition Fund, 2023.6, ©️ Paloma Contreras Lomas, Photo: Scott Leen.

Paloma Contreras Lomas, a mixed media artist who uses her work to tackle contemporary issues, particularly those facing her home country of Mexico. She also addresses injustices that resonate universally: gender, violence, inequitable political structures, class differences, post-colonialism, and the destruction of the environment. 

Contreras Lomas utilizes multiple types of media in her art, demonstrated in her piece from SAM’s collection, El ciudadano más oscuro (el árbol que mira), which translates to “The darkest citizen (the tree that watches).”

Using graphite, charcoal, pastel, and oil stick, she covers a framed piece of linen canvas with hidden symbols to address stereotypes of Mexican culture. Her work often incorporates the aesthetics of horror films and the macabre, while also using pop culture, color, and cartoon figures that add an ironic and often humorous lens.

Emilio Amero

Installation view of “American Art: The Stories We Carry” at Seattle Art Museum, 2025, photo: Chloe Collyer.

Emilio Amero was a major figure of the Mexican Modern art movement. Though he only lived in the Pacific Northwest for six years, Amero—a painter, printmaker, muralist, and filmmaker—made a significant impact on Seattle’s art scene and SAM’s collection.  

After training as an artist in Mexico City, he worked between Mexico and New York City for many years, including a stint as an assistant to painter Diego Rivera. In 1941, Amero received a teaching fellowship at the University of Washington and then taught at the Cornish College of the Arts.

Some of his pieces were purchased by SAM’s first director, Richard Fuller, as early as 1942. (Today, 46 of his works are in SAM’s collection.) In 1946, Amero received an honorable mention in oil for his painting, Four Female Figures, at the Annual Exhibition of Northwest Artists held by SAM. He went on to serve as the jury chairman for several years.

His surrealist works depict scenes that are more metaphorical and allegorical than realistic representations. Amero’s modernism and experimentation with form and composition was influenced by the mural traditions he learned at home, as well as ancient Indigenous art of Mexico.

—Nicole Block, Curatorial Manager of SAM’s permanent collection, and Sara Butler, Marketing Copywriter at SAM

Preserving outdoor art at Olympic Sculpture Park with Erin Fitterer

Sara Butler on Sep 16 2025

Preserving outdoor art at Olympic Sculpture Park with Erin Fitterer

Ever wondered how we keep the outdoor art at Olympic Sculpture Park looking beautiful? It’s all thanks to the hard work and expertise of SAM’s talented conservation team members.

Among them is Erin Fitterer, Assistant Objects Conservator at the Olympic Sculpture Park. She is the newest member of SAM’s conservation team, joining us from a prestigious Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art.

A graduate of Seattle University, Fitterer left the Pacific Northwest for the East Coast to pursue studies in art history and criticism and conservation at New York University and Rutgers University. Her experience includes internships at the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Staff portrait of Erin Fitterer on July 2, 2025. (Photo by Chloe Collyer)

Fitterer returned to Seattle earlier this year to care for the Olympic Sculpture Park’s 22 monumental sculptures by modern artists. On September 18, Fitterer kicks off this season of Up Close with Conservators, our member-exclusive lecture series, to discuss the process of preserving and presenting the outdoor art at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Ahead of her talk, we chatted with Fitterer about the maintenance behind the magic, as well as her experience at SAM so far.

What is one of the major challenges of outdoor art conservation at the Olympic Sculpture Park?
One of the consistent challenges of working with outdoor sculpture is simply their scale. When working on objects in the museum, you are able to pick them up and maneuver them to help facilitate treatment. When working on outdoor sculpture, their scale is such that not only can they never be moved, but they generally require equipment such as ladders and lifts to be able to reach all of the areas to assess and treat them.

Prior to accepting this job, you were working on the East Coast. How does the Northwest environment impact the conservation process?
The environment here offers a lot of interesting challenges. While conservators are always keeping an eye out for corrosion on our metal surfaces, it’s especially important here to monitor for changes as this is the kind of the environment that really encourages metals to corrode. 

Eye Benches II, 1996-97, Louise Bourgeois (American, born French, 1911-2010), black Zimbabwe granite, 48 x 76 15/16 x 46 1/2 in. each, Gift of the artist, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2005.114.1-2, © Louise Bourgeois, photo: Paul Macapia. Currently on view in the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Do you have a favorite sculpture at the park? Is it one of the easier—or harder—pieces to take care of?
My favorite sculpture is often the one that I am working on at the moment. Treating sculptures allows us to look closely at their surfaces and really appreciate the details and care each artist took when creating their works. However, overall, I’d have to say my favorite are the three sets of eye benches by the artist Louise Bourgeois. I have always liked working on stone, ever since I worked on archeological material as a preprogram conservator. I particularly like the contrast between the highly polished surfaces with the surfaces she allowed to remain matte.

As the newest member of SAM’s conservation team, what are you most looking forward to in your role as assistant objects conservator?
I am excited to be working at SAM and am especially looking forward to learning from the more experienced conservators in SAM’s conservation department. While I had experience as a student and fellow working on outdoor sculpture, in this position, I am now able to learn more about their long-term care and major treatments such as repainting projects from SAM’s experienced conservation team. 

Featured image credit: Wake, 2002-03, Richard Serra, American, 1938-2024, 10 plates, 5 sets of locked toroid forms, weatherproof steel, each set, overall: 14 ft. 1 1/4 in. x 48 ft. 4 in. x 6 ft. 4 3/8 in.; overall installation: 14 ft. 1 1/4 in. x 125 ft. x 46 ft.; plate thickness 2 in.; weight: 30 tons (each plate), Purchased with funds from Jeffrey and Susan Brotman, Virginia and Bagley Wright, Ann Wyckoff, and the Modern Art Acquisition Fund, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2004.94, photo: Benjamin Benschneider.

Think outside the box at an exhibition inspired by Ai, Rebel

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 22 2025

Think outside the box at an exhibition inspired by Ai, Rebel

This is a guest post from Columbia City Gallery.

In partnership with the Seattle Art Museum, Columbia City Gallery presents Answer as Question, a juried exhibition inspired by Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei.

Juried by José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, Answer as Question invites artists and audiences to lean into investigation as a form of artistic expression. Featured pieces respond to contemporary artist Ai Weiwei’s retrospective curated by FOONG Ping, SAM’s Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art.

Inspired by Ai Weiwei’s iconoclastic questioning of authority, Columbia City Gallery and SAM invited artists to channel Ai’s investigative spirit and submit work that reflects the theme Answer as Question. Artists were encouraged to practice and ignite inquiry, emphasize work rooted in research, and uncover obscured perspectives.  

Out of over 500 works submitted, 31 pieces from artists across the US are on view at Columbia City Gallery through August 31. From the selected works, three stood out to the jurors for their powerful engagement with the exhibition’s themes and their ability to embody Ai Weiwei’s spirit of investigation. Each top submission takes a distinct approach—whether through political critique, material inquiry, or personal sacrifice—yet all three artworks share a commitment to asking urgent questions that reverberate beyond the gallery walls. 

Immunity by Amber Aguirre  

“Immunity explores the consequences of a politically biased Supreme Court that has effectively granted the President unchecked power—placing him above the law and edging the nation toward authoritarianism. In the sculpture, a rat serves as the President, seated on a throne reminiscent of Game of Thrones, symbolizing absolute rule. Surrounding him are six kneeling conservative Supreme Court justices, depicted kissing his ring in a gesture of submission and complicity. Beside the throne stands a “Navy SEAL” figure, representing the president’s ability to command military or paramilitary force without accountability—even to the point of ordering unlawful acts such as murder.” – Amber Aguirre  

Amber Aguirre is a child of immigrants and a child of the arts. Hearing her parents share their powerful Holocaust survival stories instilled in her the necessity of speaking up against intolerance and on behalf of the silenced. Her forays into art practice and theory since her youth equipped her with potent methods to communicate outside of language.  

Aguirre’s artistic process always begins with an idea, often related to a topic that upsets her. Touching on urgent issues from disability access to the broader political climate, Aguirre combines skillful technique, metaphor, and cheeky pop culture references into accessible, narratively rich sculpture that speaks volumes. 

The Search for Purple by Madeleine Marino 

“The Search for Purple is inspired by Ai Weiwei’s Snake Ceiling. Just as Ai documented the hidden realities of the Sichuan earthquake, I investigated the often-invisible systems behind ceramic glaze materials. Mineral supply chains are volatile, with costs and availability shifting according to global markets and politics. This year-long experiment in recreating purple glaze highlights both the fragility and persistence of creative practice—reminding us that questioning and adaptation are what allow us to continue.” – Madeleine Marino (condensed from full artist statement) 

As a trained scientist from New York City, questioning is second nature to Madeleine Marino. From the research lab to her analysis of social forces, she intuitively formulates questions and pursues them with a single-minded focus. In The Search for Purple, Marino applies experimentation and perseverance to cut through uncertainty.  

Her use of miniaturization in clayworking allows her greater flexibility to approach a chosen challenge from many angles, while her research into the murky global mineral trade demands tenacity in the face of obfuscation. Through her serpentine work, Marino speaks to the surprising journey of inquiry and the pressing urgency of engagement in the search for answers. 

What You Owe by Jess Cheng  

“Ai Weiwei’s work is often political and speaks to personal sacrifice. This work consists of letters from the IRS demanding payment and the names and ages of Palestinians killed with US tax dollars. In this work I reflect on my own complex position within the US as an immigrant, a taxpayer, and a dissident. War Tax Resistance is a form of protest in which one withholds some or all of their taxes, half of which goes towards the military and weapons of war.” – Jess Cheng  

Growing up in rural Arkansas as one of the few Chinese Americans in their community, Jess Cheng understood from an early age that they never had the option to be invisible. Despite the difficulties of growing up in that environment, the experience taught them to not be afraid of speaking up.

What You Owe is a meditation on sacrifice. Cheng speaks about their process as an aspect of meditation, where the repetition of motions allows them to enter a meditative state. In their piece, Cheng lists out every name to spend time with all those who have been killed in Gaza, and to remind viewers that it often takes time to pay attention to something. 

Together, the top three works—alongside the 28 other pieces on view—demonstrate how artists continue to push inquiry into public life, echoing Ai Weiwei’s call to question authority and uncover silenced perspectives.

Experience Answer as Question at Columbia City Gallery through August 31, and Ai, Rebel at the Seattle Art Museum through September 7.

– Julia Azarcon, Gallery Manager of Columbia City Gallery.

Artwork image credits:

Immunity by Amber Aguirre  

The Search for Purple by Madeleine Marino 

What You Owe by Jess Cheng  

Explore three key moments of Ai, Rebel

Sara Butler on Aug 18 2025

Explore three key moments of Ai, Rebel

Over 130 pieces by contemporary artist Ai Weiwei now grace the Seattle Art Museum galleries in the Ai, Rebel exhibition. Organizing a 40-year retrospective is a massive undertaking; this robust collection cannot be haphazardly thrown on the walls or placed in random corners. Luckily, the exhibition was at the helm of FOONG Ping, Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art, who arranged the diverse group of works with the utmost care. Here are three key moments she cultivated for the ultimate Ai, Rebel experience. 

Rooted in Ai’s History

Stepping off the escalator, guests are greeted by an enormous tree constructed of gnarled wooden branches and ancient trunks. Comprised of salvaged wood of various species, the tree represents the myriad experiences that molded Ai into who he is today. Surrounded by black-and-white photographs captured early in his career, along with a touching poem by his father about human connection in the face of adversity, the space introduces us to Ai’s personal and professional identity.

Challenging ‘Made in China’ Mentality

Enveloped by dark blue walls and dimmed lighting, the mood shifts in the Real Fakes gallery. At first glance, the arrangement of blue-and-white porcelain look like relics of the past—but a closer look at the object labels reveals Ai’s replicas are displayed side-by-side with actual 18th-century examples from SAM’s collection. This double-take confronts us with the question of why we assign more value to the original versus the copy. By highlighting the extraordinary skills of Chinese artisans, Ai’s porcelain works challenge us to rethink assumptions about the quality of Chinese-made goods.

Engaging with the Present

Much of Ai Weiwei’s practice is grounded in Chinese history and antiquities. However, Ai is not only interested in the past. Ai, Rebel concludes with a black-and-gold wallpapered hallway spotlighting artworks of various mediums: marble surveillance cameras, large-scale LEGO reconstructions of two pages from the Mueller Report, and a rusted mailbox representing claims of mail-voting fraud. Ai’s reflection on the fragility of American democracy highlights his engagement with today’s political crises, which extend beyond the exhibition.

—Sara Butler, Marketing Copywriter

Photos by Alborz Kamalizad and Chloe Collyer

Anila Quayyum Agha rebuilds sacred spaces

Sara Butler on Aug 12 2025

Anila Quayyum Agha rebuilds sacred spaces

For Anila Quayyum Agha, strength can be found in fragility. The Pakistani-American artist’s work is influenced by the discrimination she has faced throughout her life—but through large-scale installations, she transforms perceived weakness into power.

Growing up in Lahore, Pakistan, Agha was drawn to architecture from a young age. However, she was excluded from many of these places—such as prayer rooms in mosques—due to her gender. Instead, she stood on the outside looking in, yearning for entry to male-only spaces.

Warhead II (detail, framed), 2023, Anila Quayyum Agha, Pakistani-American, b. 1965, mixed media on paper and mylar (cut paper, encaustic, embroidery, and beads), 37 1/4 x 29 in., Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, and the artist, © Anila Quayyum Agha, photo: Randy Pace

In 1989, Agha earned a BFA in textile design from the National College of the Arts, Lahore. From there, she made the tough decision to leave her homeland behind and migrate to the United States. Though she faced less gender discrimination outside of Pakistan, she was met with different obstacles at the University of Northern Texas, where she pursued an MFA program in fiber arts. Critiques labeled her work as too decorative and feminine to be relevant, and she was encouraged to reference more Euro-Western ideas in her practice.

Agha didn’t let their words dim her spirit. She continued to pursue art on her own terms, inspired by the architecture, fabrics, and colors of her South Asian heritage. In addition to her fiber art, Agha began experimenting with large-scale metal structures, leading to her critically acclaimed work Intersections (2013). When the piece took home the 2014 ArtPrize, she became the first artist to win both the public and jury prize for the competition.

A Beautiful Despair (Blue), 2021, Anila Quayyum Agha, Pakistani-American, b. 1965, lacquered steel and halogen bulb, 60 x 60 x 60 inches, Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, the artist, © Anila Quayyum Agha, photo: Steve Watson/Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX.

Her lacquered-steel cubes are laser cut with intricate designs inspired by Islamic architectural latticework. Bright lightbulbs live inside the suspended structures, illuminating dark rooms and spilling ornate geometric patterns onto the surrounding surfaces. Her exploration of binaries cultivates an immersive and emotional environment for guests, who are physically covered by the shadows.

By transforming a typically masculine material, she infiltrates the male space and spotlights the stories of women, migrants, and other disadvantaged groups. Agha uses her experiences of exclusion to create inclusive environments—reconstructing the buildings of her childhood and unlocking their doors. Although her work is deeply personal, everyone is welcome in the spaces she creates. She hopes engaging with the installations encourages visitors from all walks of life to consider new perspectives, prompting them to learn more about diverse cultures and speak up for communities facing discrimination.

This is Not a refuge! (2), 2019, Anila Quayyum Agha, Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, and the artist, photo courtesy of Columbia Museum, Columbia, NC.

Agha continues to construct these steel installations, which have graced galleries all over the world and revitalized public spaces, including a park in her adopted hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. Along with her 3D structures, her social commentary is infused in her flatworks, including embroidery, beading, paintings, and drawings.

Agha’s solo exhibition Geometry of Light opens at the Seattle Asian Art Museum on August 27.

—Sara Butler, Marketing Copywriter

Image credits:

A Beautiful Despair (Blue), 2021, Anila Quayyum Agha, Pakistani-American, b. 1965, lacquered steel and halogen bulb, 60 x 60 x 60 inches, Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, the artist, © Anila Quayyum Agha, photo courtesy of Masterpiece Art Fair, London, UK.

Warhead II (detail, framed), 2023, Anila Quayyum Agha, Pakistani-American, b. 1965, mixed media on paper and mylar (cut paper, encaustic, embroidery, and beads), 37 1/4 x 29 in., Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, and the artist, © Anila Quayyum Agha, photo: Randy Pace

A Beautiful Despair (Blue), 2021, Anila Quayyum Agha, Pakistani-American, b. 1965, lacquered steel and halogen bulb, 60 x 60 x 60 inches, Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, the artist, © Anila Quayyum Agha, photo: Steve Watson/Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX.

This is Not a Refuge! (2), 2019, Anila Quayyum Agha, Pakistani-American, b. 1965, laser-cut, resin coated aluminum, light bulb, 93 x 58 x 72 in., Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC, and the artist, © Anila Quayyum Agha, photo courtesy of Columbia Museum, Columbia, NC.

From ravers to art partners: The journey of FriendsWithYou

Sara Butler on Aug 1 2025

From ravers to art partners: The journey of FriendsWithYou

This summer, Samuel (Sam) Borkson and Arturo (Tury) Sandoval III transformed the Brotman Forum into a lofty dreamscape with Little Cloud Sky. Forty thermoplastic cloud structures symbolizing peace unity fill the space, meticulously molded and mapped out on the ceiling using 3D programming. We talked with the artist duo—who go by the moniker FriendsWithYou—about their practice and partnership.

For the “Little Cloud Sky” exhibition, 40 thermoplastic clouds hang from the Brotman Forum’s ceiling. Could you take us through the process of making these clouds?

Sam: This cloud is our iconic symbol for peace and unification between humans and the natural world. We have been developing this icon for a few decades. We have made them all in different ways, from animated to inflatable. And now, these will be molded so they can stay happy and strong in the SAM lobby for a couple of years.

Tury: The process of installing the Little Cloud is always fun. We have to carefully simulate the space in a 3D program, and then we scale and place the clouds in the space to carefully craft the experience that we imagine. The Little Clouds are very simple and this makes it extra important to place them in the space exactly as we imagine it.

I would love to hear Little Cloud’s origin story. Has the character’s design, or meaning, transformed over the years?

Sam: Little Cloud is one of our main icons of FriendsWithYou. At the center of our practice is healing and a redesign of modern connectivity and ritual. So Little Cloud is a symbol of that for us. A world unifier. A model for light and peace. 

Tury: Another core idea behind the Little Cloud is that nature is conspiring to help us. This idea that it is humans versus the natural is such a bad way to frame our existence—we believe the opposite. Nature is FriendsWithYou. We are all contained within the natural sphere and this is something to be in awe of, and a little reminder of this condition could be as simple as thinking of clouds as our little friends.

Speaking of origin stories: how did the two of you meet? What led to your collaboration and the start of FriendsWithYou?

Sam: Some magic telepathy. From the jump we had a shared vision of art as experience and a healing tool. Playing with fine art as an entry way to cultural engineering and playing and experimenting was something we really have always enjoyed. Twenty three years later and we are still learning, growing, and building our dreams, one at a time.

Tury: We met in our teenage years—early in our college days we were ravers. I think that we had a shared arrested development that helped us hold on to this sense of wonder, this kid-like enthusiasm, a sense of trusting that there is more to existence than adulthood promises. I think those were the shared conditions.  

Then, when we started to hang out together and make art, we came to the realization that we wanted to make art that was democratic and experiential; we wanted to make art that was new, structurally new. This drove us to make many, many experiments, finding and looking for ways to develop and design modern ways to create communal experiences. We have been working together now for almost 25 years—it’s like a true brotherhood at this point. I feel blessed to have Sam as my partner and as my brother, mirror, and art collaborator.

You’ve been creating art about connection and community building since 2002. Those concepts have always been important, but they proved even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. How did stay-at-home orders and social distancing influence your art?

Sam: As the world becomes smaller we can reach more like-minded people. We started FriendsWithYou as an antidote for isolation, and we are so happy we get to do this work in all the mediums we play with. The world can be hard but there is so much beauty, so much magic. We just focus on highlighting that and building an ever-expanding garden as far and as wide as possible.

Tury: Yeah, that was a wild twist in the story… we took the time to focus and make art in our studio, as well as keep developing ideas to deploy once the pandemic was over. Soon after the stay-at-home order got implemented we made a pact that we would share a social bubble and we started going to the studio. All the art assistants were home but Sam and I were going in by ourselves, and we would spend the entire day painting and thinking and developing ideas.

Part of your artistic statement is to “create modern modes of spirituality.” What does contemporary spirituality look like to you? How is it woven into your practice?

Sam: We are uncovering it work by work. We created an overarching conceptual religion which we rename Earth to OCEAN to connect us to ourselves and our natural world beyond all borders. We are all connected.

Tury: Art is the way we interpret and make tangible the ethereal, the ideas and concepts just beyond comprehension to all of us. This is what is so fascinating about art: the myth making. Everything gets reimagined, redesigned, updated, etc. at a constant pace. Why is mythology anchored on such dogmatic tradition? Why is it not being redesigned with new symbols, new figuration that takes the core ideas that are timeless but reimagines them for our modern time? This has been the center of our work. 

Accessibility is another guiding tenet of your art. How does Pop art engage folks who may have previously felt intimidated by or left out of the art world?

Sam: We open our art and make a pathway for everyone. Experience and relational aesthetics helps us to engage everyone who comes across it.

Tury: We want to make sure that the work we do is tangible and accessible to everyone, independent of if they have a deep historical knowledge of art. We hope that the work we do is available to everyone. This is why we use simple popular language to convey this, rather than lofty spiritual ideas. 

Since the Brotman Forum does not require paid admission to the museum, “Little Cloud Sky” aims to increase accessibility and introduce more folks to this style of art. What do you hope visitors take away from their experience with the installation?

Sam: We want anyone that comes to be joyful and hopefully the optimism of the Little Cloud Sky is infectious.

Tury: I hope people smile. I hope visitors get to have a moment of joy when they raise their gaze up to the heavens and see a cluster of Little Clouds smiling back at them. I hope they get a sense that is all going to be alright… I hope they giggle, I hope they take a deep breath. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Photo by Chloe Collyer

In Memory of Dr. Barbara Brotherton (1950–2025)

Seattle Art Museum on Jun 2 2025

In Memory of Dr. Barbara Brotherton (1950–2025)

This past weekend, we lost an extraordinary scholar, curator, and friend. Dr. Barbara Brotherton, who served as SAM’s Curator of Native American Art for over two decades, passed away after a brief battle with cancer surrounded by loved ones.

Barbara’s contributions to the museum world, Native communities, and the field of art history are immeasurable. For more than two decades at SAM, she championed the work of Native artists, built lasting relationships with tribal communities, and helped shift the curatorial model toward one grounded in trust, mutual respect and admiration, and deep reverence for Indigenous knowledge.

She brought with her not only curatorial expertise but also longstanding ties to Native communities in the Puget Sound region. Barbara received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Washington, where she studied with renowned scholars Bill Holm and Robin Wright and learned the Salish language and culture with Vi taqwseblu Hilbert. These early formative experiences shaped the course of her career and her deep respect for Coast Salish heritage.

In the early 1990s, Barbara served as a curator at the Burke Museum, where she developed exhibitions of Northwest Coast Native art and supported a Native oral history project. She collaborated with then-SAM curator Steven Brown in 1992 to write a tour for the museum’s Northwest Coast Native art collection. In 1994, she was appointed a research associate at the Burke to work on Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) issues—an experience that deepened her commitment to ethical stewardship and Indigenous sovereignty in museums.

Before joining SAM, Barbara was an associate professor of art history at Western Michigan University, where her research centered on the arts of the Salish peoples of western Washington and southern British Columbia. She joined SAM in 2001, where she would go on to lead groundbreaking exhibitions and serve as a vital connector between the museum and Native communities.

Among the many exhibitions she curated or co-curated at SAM are:

  • Reinstallation of the Native American Permanent Collection (2007)
  • S’abadeb: Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists (2008)
  • Behind the Scenes: The Real Story of the Quileute Wolves (2010)
  • Seattle Collects Northwest Coast Native Art (2014)
  • Pacific Currents (2015)
  • Double Exposure: Edward S. Curtis, Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, Will Wilson (2018)
  • Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water (2022)
  • American Art: The Stories We Carry (2022)

Many of these projects were created in close collaboration with Community Advisory Committees composed of local tribal members—reflecting Barbara’s commitment to community-based curation and Native leadership in exhibition planning and interpretation.

Barbara was also a longtime board member of Lushootseed Research, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Puget Sound Native art, language, and oral traditions. Her work outside the museum was just as influential as her curatorial projects, reflecting her belief in the connection between community, culture, and education.

Barbara was not only a brilliant scholar and curator—she was a deeply compassionate colleague, a generous mentor, and a fierce advocate for Indigenous voices in museum spaces. Her legacy lives on in the relationships she nurtured, the exhibitions she created, and the many lives she touched.

We invite you to learn more about Barbara’s life and career through this oral history interview recorded in 2024, where she reflects on her personal and professional journey and the values and community connections that guided her.

Barbara Brotherton’s impact on SAM, the region, and the field of Native American art will be felt for generations to come. We are humbled to have walked alongside her.

AANHPI Heritage Month: Discover the backstory of three artists in our collection

Sara Butler on May 24 2025

AANHPI Heritage Month: Discover the backstory of three artists in our collection

Happy Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month! Every May, we take the opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the impact that generations of people from this diverse group have made on our shared history. This year, it’s even more urgent to tell these stories that reflect the diversity of American life, as the current political administration attempts to erase them from our cultural institutions. Here are some stunning works from SAM’s collection created by artists from these communities.

Fay Chong

First up is Fay Chong (1912-1973), a Chinese-born artist who moved to Seattle in 1920. In high school, he studied art alongside classmates George Tsutakawa and Morris Graves, who would also become well-known artists in the Pacific Northwest. Though Chong suffered from financial instability in the 1930s, he was still able to learn and grow as an artist during the Great Depression thanks to funding from the Works Progress Administration. During the Great Depression, this government agency provided jobs in many different fields, including for artists, writers, actors, and dancers. Chong was paid to create a certain number of artworks in a month, including black and white linocut prints like these. 

In his block print “Self-Portrait” (1936), Chong surrounds himself with symbols of the arts—a harp, drama masks, books, and paintbrushes—and looks back at the viewer with a serious expression. He seems to be positioning himself as a rising figure in the arts community, claiming this identity even as a young man of 24. 

Another piece from this period, “Marine Hospital” (1938), depicts a building in Beacon Hill that still stands today, now as Seattle College’s Pacific Tower. Rather than focus on its decorative details, Chong honed in on the structure’s unique silhouette. He used various hatching techniques to contrast the black facade of the building, creating different qualities of light and forming a mysterious glow against the dark background.  

Chong may have been familiar with this place due to his friendship with local artists Kenneth Callahan and Julius Twohy. Government programs commissioned Callahan and Twohy to paint murals inside the hospital in the 1930s. (Fun fact: Twohy painted the watercolor sketch “To My Friend Fay Chong” as an homage to Chong; this piece is also in SAM’s collection.)

Though Chong sometimes used traditional calligraphy and brush painting that reflected his cultural background as a Chinese immigrant, he also made works like these block prints that emphasize his training in the US and the impact of modern, Western design. He was influenced by his fellow artists in the Northwest, and these artists also began to incorporate Asian techniques into their work. Chong found a sense of belonging as an artist in Seattle. Throughout his life, he participated in several artist groups, including a Chinese Art Club he co-founded, as well as more established museum spaces. In 1942, the Seattle Art Museum recognized Chong’s work with a solo exhibition. Nine of his works now live in SAM’s permanent collection.

Kenjiro Nomura

Painter Kenjiro Nomura (1896–1956) is an integral part of the Seattle Art Museum’s history—when we opened our original location in 1933, SAM’s debut solo exhibition showcased Nomura’s work.

Born in Gifu, Japan, Nomura immigrated to the US as a young boy. Though his parents returned to Japan five years later, Nomura stayed in his adopted hometown of Tacoma, Washington. Soon after, he moved to the International District in Seattle; there, he became an apprentice sign painter and began taking art lessons.

Nomura’s American realist style of landscape painting captured streetscapes, working waterfront, and rural scenes. His unique approach blended Western and Eastern art methods, drawing on the color, composition, and line conventions characteristic of Japanese paintings.

Nomura’s painting “Street” (1932) depicts the busy intersection of Fourth Avenue and Yesler Way, which was once the heart of the Japanese American community in Seattle. In this neighborhood, he teamed up with Kamekichi Tokita—a fellow painter of Japanese descent—to establish Noto Sign Co., a signage manufacturer and community space for local artists. Contrasting his life in the city is the 1933 piece “Red Barns,” traveling outside of Seattle to highlight the farmlands of western Washington.

After tragic events of the 1930s and 1940s—including the closure of Noto Sign Co. due to financial troubles and he and his family’s forced relocation to a concentration camp during WWII—Nomura resumed his practice in 1947; these later works include two in SAM’s collection (both untitled). In 2011, Nomura and Tokita’s work was featured side-by-side in an exhibition at SAM.

Suchitra Mattai

Known for her mesmerizing mixed media artworks, Indo-Caribbean artist Suchitra Mattai uses vintage saris, embroidery, and storytelling to honor her ancestors and reimagine memory. Her solo exhibition she walked in reverse and found her songs is now on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum!

Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Mattai moved to Canada as a young child. She was deeply influenced by the history of her ancestors, who were forcibly relocated from India to the Caribbean to work as indentured laborers on sugar plantations. 

Her grandparents played a central role in both her life and art. One of her pieces “Pappy’s House” (2024) reimagines their home in Guyana by braiding together vintage saris to construct a large-scale structure. Primarily sourced from India, these saris are also collected with the help of her mother, who receives them from friends and sari drives in New Jersey.

Mattai’s work is committed to honoring the generations of women who came before her. Growing up, she learned sewing, embroidery, and crocheting from her grandmothers. By using these techniques in her practice, she challenges the idea that craft is inferior to art. She also honors the women of her South Asian heritage by stitching brown heroines on found embroideries.

Mattai is an alum of University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where she earned an MFA in painting and drawing and a MA in South Asian Art. Now based in Los Angeles, Mattai’s work has appeared in group and solo exhibitions all over the country. She is also the recipient of the 2023 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.

– Sara Butler, Marketing Copywriter, and Nicole Block, Collections Associate

Image credits:

Self-Portrait, 1936, Fay Chong, American, 1912-1973, Ink on thin Japan paper, Comp.: 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm), Sheet: 13 1/4 x 9 5/8in. (33.6 x 24.5 cm), Seattle Art Museum, PONCHO, 84.173, ©️ Fay Chong Jr., Photo: Elizabeth Mann.]

The Marine Hospital, 1938, Fay Chong, American, 1912-1973, Ink on thin Japan paper, Comp. h.: 16.8 cm, Comp. w.: 18 cm, Sheet h.: 20 cm, Seattle Art Museum, PONCHO, 84.172, ©️ Fay Chong Jr., Photo: Elizabeth Mann.

Street, ca. 1932, Kenjiro Nomura, American (born in Japan), 1896-1956, Oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 28 3/4 in., Seattle Art Museum, Gift of West Seattle Art Club, Katherine B. Baker Memorial Purchase Award, 33.225, ©️ Kenjiro Nomura, Photo: Paul Macapia.

Red Barns, 1933, Kenjiro Nomura, 1896-1956, Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 in. (71.1 x 91.4 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 33.224, ©️ Kenjiro Nomura, Photo: Scott Leen.

Suchitra Mattai: she walked in reverse and found their songs at Seattle Asian Art Museum, 2025, Photos by Natali Wiseman.

Artist Nicholas Galanin Invites You

Rachel Eggers on Apr 7 2025

Artist Nicholas Galanin Invites You

“I’ve composed a new American national anthem: take a knee and scream until you can’t breathe.”  – Nicholas Galanin

An invitation, a provocation, a plea: The startling neon artwork on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry is all of these things. Commissioned by SAM to create a new work for its reimagined American art galleries, Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangaẋ) responded with the scorching Neon American Anthem (2023), a “participatory performance” installation comprised of text in custom neon and welcome mats that offers visitors a place to engage their voice, body, and mind in a cathartic experience. 

The project to dramatically transform the museum’s American art galleries first opened in October 2022. It came together in an inclusive-planning model as part of SAM’s commitment to centering equity at the museum. The effort was led by Theresa Papanikolas, Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art, in collaboration with Curator of Native American Art Barbara Brotherton, who retired at the end of 2022, along with other SAM staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. 

Galanin is one of the three contemporary artists who worked with SAM, and his work debuted in April 2023. Wendy Red Star’s (Apsáalooke,) lightbox installation, Áakiiwilaxpaake (People of the Earth) (2022) and Inye Wokoma’s curated gallery, Reimagining Regionalism, both went on view with the exhibition’s opening. Red Star’s work is now part of SAM’s permanent collection. 

Neon American Anthem fills the gallery with white light from a custom neon installation that offers a proclamation and an invitation in all-caps text: “I’ve composed a new American national anthem: take a knee and scream until you can’t breathe.” On the floor lies a grid of “Daisy Doormats,” the iconic AstroTurf welcome mats with plastic daisies in the corners; this symbol of Americana becomes both unsettling and humorously ironic in this setting. Visitors ring out with sounds of protest, mourning, or celebration, their sounds filling the museum’s spaces.

In an artist’s statement, Galanin says, “The neon sign embodies capitalism, its text a pointed reference to the murders of Eric Garner, George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, and all people of color who have been murdered at the hands of police and agents of the American state. Asking participants to take a knee is a position of deference and worship turned refusal. Asking them to scream until they can’t breathe encompasses protest and prayer aimed at tearing down the systems built to enforce Whiteness, White privilege, heteropatriarchy, and capitalist control.”

SAM is proud to have hosted this powerful artwork that takes on American history and seeks to inspire a new future. May the sounds—and ideas—it has inspired echo for years to come.

– Rachel Eggers, Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Nicholas Galanin by Alborz Kamalizad.

Stand with Us: A Message from SAM’s Director and CEO

Seattle Art Museum on Apr 1 2025

Stand with Us: A Message from SAM’s Director and CEO

Usually on April 1, we post something light on social media for April Fools’ Day—a playful faux exhibition announcement or cheeky art joke. But this year, there’s nothing funny about the cultural sector being under attack.

In recent weeks, there have been Executive Orders and actions aimed at the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and other cultural organizations and universities. The reality is that museums, artists, and cultural institutions across the country are under siege. 

These moves are troubling because they are an attempt to diminish the role of the arts, humanities, and higher education. Museums, artists, and the communities we serve are facing increasing scrutiny. 

At SAM, our mission and values remain unchanged. We believe museums matter—as spaces of dialogue, community connection, creativity, and activism. We believe in truth. In inclusion. In history. In facts. We believe in public service. 

That’s why we’re taking this opportunity to speak out and ask our community to stand with us and support the arts. Because the arts matter and bringing together our community matters, we’re offering everyone 50% off admission for the entire month of April to the Seattle Art Museum. This is our way of opening our doors even wider—inviting people in to experience the power of art and stand with us in supporting cultural spaces during a time when they’re being challenged.

It couldn’t be a better time to visit the Seattle Art Museum, too: Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei is now on view. This exhilarating and expansive retrospective explores 40 years of the globally renowned Chinese artist’s life and career as he questions forms of power, disrupts artistic canons, and challenges political authoritarianism. We invite everyone to come see the show, be inspired, and stir up some good trouble. 

Because the best way to push back is to show up. 

– Scott Stulen, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO

Photo credit: Installation view of Study of Perspective—White House, Eiffel Tower, San Marco, Hong Kong, Long Island City, Mona Lisa, Tiananmen Square, Bern (detail), 1995–2011, Ai Weiwei. Eight (8) black-and-white photographs, 19 11/16 x 29 9/16 in. each. Photo: Chloe Collyer.

A Symbol of Devotion: Ghiordes Pattern Prayer Rug

Seattle Art Museum on Mar 30 2025

A Symbol of Devotion: Ghiordes Pattern Prayer Rug

Both an ornamental piece of fabric and a symbol of devotion, the Ghiordes Pattern Prayer Rug is intricately woven by hands whose names we will never know, yet whose reach stretches to the present day. Dated to the late 19th to early 20th century, this prayer rug is in SAM’s collection. A field of flowers—infused with the history of ancient Gordion, located in modern western Turkey—buzzes in abundance around a central portal in the shape of a mihrab, an architectural niche that indicates the direction of prayer.

The intensity of the mihrab draws you in, blurring the flowers into the periphery and directing your focus to a single hanging lamp in the distance. A common motif in mosques across the world, the lamp is the only illumination in the dark, serving as a quiet symbol of guidance and hope. The worn patterns at the bottom of the rug reveal a story of use—a record of those who stood, knelt, and bowed here in prayer, day after day.

Ghiordes pattern prayer rug

I like to imagine who might have used this rug—whose feet pressed into its fibers, whose hands traced its woven details, whose forehead met its surface in an intimate moment of reflection. How many prayers were whispered here in a secret shared only with their Creator? How many hopes and burdens were carried into each moment of stillness? This rug, though inanimate, holds within it a history of devotion—a continuity that stretches across generations and geographies. Prayer rugs like this offer a space of solace, whether in grand mosques or in exile, in places of peace or in lands shaped by struggle. From ancient Gordion to present-day Seattle, I am connected to the humanity of all those who prayed.

Read More: Object of the Week: Oiling

Eid Al-Fitr, meaning “Festival of Breaking the Fast,” marks the celebratory end of the holy month of Ramadan. After a month of fasting from dawn to dusk, it is a time of renewal, generosity, and community. But beyond celebration, Eid is also a moment of reflection. It is a reminder that faith is both personal and collective; it is a force that calls for compassion, justice, and responsibility toward others.

This year especially, I am reminded of the importance of standing with those who face hardship, both across the world and within our own communities. As we stand in prayer this Eid, let our hearts be filled not only with gratitude but with the resolve to uphold dignity wherever it is threatened. This rug, worn by the passage of time, is a testament to continuity—to the unbroken thread of faith, resilience, and hope that connects us all.

– Raziah Ahmad, Curatorial Division Coordinator

Image credits: Ghiordes pattern prayer rug, late 19th-early 20th century, Islamic, Anatolia, Ghiordes (modern western Turkiye), Pile-woven wool, 73 1/4 x 55 in. (186.06 x 139.7 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Breck P. MacAllister in memory of her mother, Mrs. William C. Heussy, 62.169. Oiling, 2012, Faig Ahmed, hand-knotted wool, 59 × 39 1/2 in., Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund, 2013.13 © Faig Ahmed

Explore Four Artworks by Women Artists in SAM’s Collection That Embody the Spirit of Women’s History Month 2025

Sara Butler on Mar 20 2025

Explore Four Artworks by Women Artists in SAM’s Collection That Embody the Spirit of Women’s History Month 2025

Happy Women’s History Month! March is a time to celebrate women’s many contributions to society, which are often overlooked and underappreciated. Let’s take a look at four artworks by talented women artists that dismantle gender stereotypes, honor family matriarchs, and celebrate the female body, among other feminist themes.

Woman Landing on Man in the Moon (1971)
Ann Leda Shapiro

Kicking off the list is Woman Landing on Man in the Moon, a bold watercolor from Ann Leda Shapiro (b. 1947), an artist based on Vashon Island in Washington State. In the 1971 painting, a female astronaut in a silver spacesuit stands tall atop the moon’s surface and shines bright against the cosmic void. Bucking NASA’s dress code, her space getup features three American flag patches with cutouts to expose her breasts…and penis. She stands tall atop the moon’s surface as six male astronauts topple off into the abyss.

Shapiro’s blunt and edgy humor exposes male privilege and highlights the barriers women face to reach the same heights. Through her art and activism, Shapiro has dedicated her career to feminist expression. In the ’80s, she was an early member of the Guerilla Girls, a group of rebellious women artists famous for wearing gorilla masks as they covered NYC with provocative posters, sharing information about sexism and racism prevalent in the art world.

Tiger Lily (1976)
Patti Warashina

Feminist themes radiate throughout the work of Seattle ceramicist Patti Warashina (b. 1940). Inspired by her grandmother’s religious shrines, Warashina created a 12-part altar series that injects the devious into the divine, unpacking the female dilemma.

Her 1976 sculpture Tiger Lily places a woman between two candles and a blooming flower, common altar elements associated with the Virgin Mary. Yet this woman is far from saintly. Surrounded by a ring of fire and clad in an animal print bodice, she embodies the rebellious Eve. She radiates power and resistance, transforming into a Tiger Goddess.

By utilizing ancient clay techniques, Warashina pays homage to generations of family matriarchs. However, the transformation of these sacred statues into statement pieces flips tradition on its head. Her piece acknowledges the demure behavior women have been expected to embody and seeks to empower them to challenge these gender norms.

Susanna and the Eldest (1981)
Honoré Sharrer

Painter Honoré Sharrer (1920–2009) marched to the beat of her own drum throughout her 75-year career. Tucked away in her rural upstate New York studio, she bucked trending art styles and sometimes spent years on a single painting. Known for her satirical work, Sharrer loved poking fun at female stereotypes and creating alternate realities. She was also drawn to the craft, themes, and metaphors of Northern Renaissance art.

Her 1981 oil painting Susanna and the Eldest is based a tale from the Old Testament about sexual violence. In the story, two men spy on a woman while she is bathing and attempt to force her into having sex, then blackmailing her when she refuses. Eventually, their lies are exposed.

In her reimagining, Sharrer gives Susanna unabridged agency. Instead of the demure victim, as she has been depicted throughout art history, Susanna splays out naked on the floor and stares directly at the viewer. An odd assortment of objects surround her to cultivate a dream-like state in the colorful room. This includes a skeleton in a top hat set upon a plinth that hovers above Susanna—a monument of death upon the leering men of her past?

Fun fact: Susanna and the Elders (Novelty Hotel) by Robert Colescott is another famous piece found in our collection. In Colescott’s acrylic piece, men ogle at a woman stepping out of a hotel bathtub, showcasing the problematic idolization of European beauty.

Stillness #15 (1999)
Laura Aguilar

As a Chicana and lesbian photographer, Laura Aguilar (1959–2018) broke barriers by making herself and her community visible in the art world. Sometimes she did this by physically inserting herself into her artwork, as in Stillness #15. This 1999 photograph features Aguilar and another woman perched on rocky terrain, slouched over their naked bodies.

Often in the history of art, nude women with idealized thin, white bodies represent mythological figures or sexual objects. Aguilar complicated these norms by depicting herself and her models in unexpected poses and obscuring their faces. In this black-and-white image, the women become part of the environment—their curves, creases, and textures echo the rocks around them.

Stillness #15 focuses on both the body and the mind. Aguilar explained that this series stemmed from her experience as a caretaker for her dying father; during this time, she began contemplating spirituality. Aguilar’s use of the female nude is not about beauty or ideals—it’s about reckoning with grief, mortality, and self-exploration.

Sadly, Aguilar passed away in 2018, but her powerful contribution to the art world lives on.

– Sara Butler, Marketing Copywriter and Nicole Block, Collections Associate

Image credits: Woman Landing on Man in the Moon, 1971, Ann Leda Shapiro, American, b. 1947, Watercolor on paper, 20 x 14 in. (50.8 x 35.6 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Matthew Offenbacher and Jennifer Nemhauser with funds from the 2013 Neddy Award in Painting, 2015.2.3, ©Ann Leda Shapiro, Photo: Elizabeth Mann. Tiger Lily, 1976, Patti Warashina, American, b. 1940, Low-fire ceramic with acrylic, 24 x 15 7/8 x 13 1/4 in. (60.96 x 40.31 x 33.66 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 89.78, ©Patti Warshina. Susanna and the Eldest, 1981, Honoré Sharrer, American, 1920-2009, Oil on canvas, 41 x 30 in. (104.1 x 76.2 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Adam Zagorin and Perez Zagorin, 2012.16.1, © Adam Zagorin, Photo: Elizabeth Mann. Stillness #15, 1999, Laura Aguilar, American, 1959-2018, Silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm), Seattle Art Museum, General Acquisition Fund, 2021.39.1, © Laura Aguilar, Photo: Scott Leen.

“We Possess the Ability to Imagine Boundlessly”: An Interview with Tariqa Waters

Rachel Eggers on Mar 4 2025

“We Possess the Ability to Imagine Boundlessly”: An Interview with Tariqa Waters

In October 2023, SAM announced that Seattle-based artist Tariqa Waters as the winner of the 2023 Betty Bowen Award, an annual juried award that comes with an unrestricted cash award of $15,000 and a solo exhibition at SAM. Now, that show is soon to debut. Venus is Missing (May 7, 2025–January 5, 2026) is an exuberant entry in her innovative and multidisciplinary practice that pushes the aesthetics of commercial advertising into surreal, otherworldly territory. We emailed with Waters to learn about what’s on her mind.

Rachel Eggers: Well, I hope this doesn’t spoil the surprise for any of our member readers, but you’re landing a spaceship in the gallery of your show…tell us about the story and experience of Venus is Missing.

Tariqa Waters: Yes, a pink rocket ship with my blown glass adornments! I’m pretty stoked about how it’s coming together! One of my favorite films from childhood, and one that continues to resonate with me as an adult, is Back to the Future. I have always admired the friendship between Doc Brown and Marty McFly. This buddy-comedy/action film navigates various eras in human history, correcting multigenerational events through the time-traveling DeLorean while maintaining the integrity of existence. In today’s world, where humanity stands at a pivotal juncture, the rocket ship serves as a metaphor for my perspective on life on this planet.

In my work, I employ everyday consumer products as narrative devices, revealing deeper meanings behind these objects. The context often simplifies complex memories tied to notable products that I struggled to fully comprehend at the time. We frequently find ourselves constrained by the limitations imposed by others. Trapped. While we enter different spaces burdened by various influences, we often neglect to look upward. We forget the extraordinary nature of this journey; even if we cannot physically escape, we possess the ability to imagine boundlessly and harness that joy to reach new heights. The immersive environment I create aims to embody this very sentiment.

RE: Incredible. I can’t wait to jet off. Also, you have a book coming out from Minor Matters at the same time as this exhibition. That’s so exciting! Tell us about WHO RAISED YOU? A Martyr Sauce Guide To Etiquette. Is this your first publication?

TW: Yep, my first book! Although I’ve been an artist for over 20 years, 10 of my most notable years have been in Seattle. It’s the first time in my career that I decided to approach my work on my terms, to chart my own path. What started as a small gallery named Martyr Sauce, showcasing the work of myself and others, ballooned into two galleries, a pop art museum called MS PAM (Martyr Sauce Pop Art Museum), and a television show, Thank You, MS PAM. I have partnered with numerous organizations and institutions, all while maintaining my artistic endeavors as an interdisciplinary installation artist. Oh yeah, and I’m a mother of two creatives and the wife of a world-renowned musician.

My story is one of a kind, with a mixed bag of experiences. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me over the years and ask for advice or some kind of guidance on mentorship or just unpacking—“So this happened, and I don’t know what to do with it.” I thought it would be funny to lampoon those 1960s etiquette books by creating a monograph of all my work since being in Seattle—installation works and exhibitions—with the framework of it being A Martyr Sauce Guide to Etiquette.

RE: Must. Read. In addition to being a joyful and impactful artist on the Seattle scene since arriving here in 2012, as you mentioned, you have also always been at the forefront of the conversation about making space for artists in Seattle, with your gallery Martyr Sauce and other projects. What’s your take on the current state of the scene for local artists?

TW: I’ve had to detach myself from the scene in Seattle. I think it’s important to do that from time to time to avoid getting so immersed in what others are doing that you neglect your own needs as an artist. I do check in on occasion and have been very encouraged by what I’ve seen from young and up-and-coming artists! From what I can tell, the art scene seems active and vibrant.

RE: What did it mean to you personally to win this award?

TW: My first job ever was in 1993 when my uncle, an established artist and educator at Pratt, invited me to Seattle from Maryland to take part in a summer program focused on public arts for teenagers. During this program, I contributed to painting murals on the bus shelters throughout Seattle. This experience marks the beginning of my long journey in the art world. Receiving this award is a testament to the countless hours, sleepless nights, and unwavering commitment I have dedicated to my art. I am the first Black woman to win the Betty Bowen Award, a significant milestone in my artistic journey. This achievement represents a full-circle moment in many respects.

– Rachel Eggers, Associate Director of Public Relations

This article first appeared in the February through May 2025 edition of SAM Magazine. Become a SAM member today to receive our magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Future to the Back ’85, 2024, Tariqa Waters, Masonite, wood, plastic, glass, and blown glass ball barrettes, overall: 96 x 48 x 36 in., Ball Barrettes: 10” diameter each, Photo courtesy the artist, © Tariqa Waters

Celebrate Black History Month 2025 with Four Artworks by Contemporary Black Artists On View at SAM

Rachel Eggers on Feb 20 2025

Celebrate Black History Month 2025 with Four Artworks by Contemporary Black Artists On View at SAM

Happy Black History Month! Founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in February 1926, this month is a time to learn and share about Black history, life, and culture in the US. Nearly 100 years later, this work remains urgent, especially in the face of ongoing efforts to dismantle the vision of a pluralistic society and target Black people specifically.

This year, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) has chosen “African Americans and Labor” as the central theme. We’re spotlighting four artworks by contemporary Black artists that you can see on view now in SAM’s galleries. And we’ll be thinking about how their art connects with the idea of labor, whether through the physical acts of their creative process or the deeper themes expressed in their work.

The Odyssey: 1862 / 1837 (2024)
Bethany Collins

“Collins’s eraser lends particular poignancy to Odysseus’s feelings of statelessness, grief and unrecognition – whether we are watching a new presidency take shape or seeing a flame flicker on the horizon.” – Claudia Ross, Frieze Magazine. 

Bethany Collins is the recipient of the 2023 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize, awarded biennially by SAM since 2009 to an early to mid-career Black artist—defined loosely as an artist in the first decade of their career. At Sea is the solo show in honor of her win, debuting 15 works that have never been on view.

In her conceptual work, the Chicago-based artist uses strategies of erasure and redaction to point out the limits and possibilities of language. Her own intense labor is a key part of her practice. Using a Pink Pearl eraser and her own spit, she obstructs select words from familiar texts, revealing deeper meanings in the process. In The Odyssey: 1862 / 1837, she takes on Book 13 of the ancient Greek epic, obstructing every line but one from the two translations. From the 1837, it’s the timely line:

‘Then he bewail’d / His native isle, with pensive steps and slow / Pacing the border of the billowy flood, Forlorn.”

Two Way Connection (2021)
Woody De Othello

Woody De Othello’s deep blue ceramic sculpture Two Way Connection requires a full 360-degree turn around the work to see all the shapes that emerge. Different body parts—lips, ears, and fingers—meld together. On top, there’s a clearly defined green telephone receiver, a handle, and a spout.

Othello created this work during the COVID-19 pandemic when human connection was mostly limited to the virtual realm. Othello brings the body and the senses back into those distanced conversations and, in this piece, the two faces become one, connected through the phone.

The sculpture is also influenced by face vessels, a distinctive art form created by enslaved Black potters in Edgefield, South Carolina during the 1800s. These potters created stoneware for food and water at a mass scale under slavery, but also with artistry, creativity, and their own representations of Black people. Edgefield face vessels capture theatrical expressions with intricately sculpted features protruding from the surface and the spout emerging from the top of the head, which is echoed in Othello’s work.

Opposing Parallels – Blues Up and Down for G. Ammons and S. Stitt (2015)
Thaddeus Mosley

At 98 years old, Thaddeus Mosley works in his studio every day making his large-scale wood sculptures. Often, the sound of jazz rings throughout the space while he works, mingling with the sounds of his tools as he carves and buzzes and sands the wood into the shapes and textures he wants. Mosley is a passionate fan of classic jazz, and his studio is stocked with vinyl records of this essential Black art form. 

Opposing Parallels – Blues Up and Down for G. Ammons and S. Stitt (2015) is one of 17 of the artist’s works on view in Following Space: Thaddeus Mosley & Alexander Calder. The sculpture is installed so that visitors can walk around the entire work and look through it. The title recognizes two virtuoso jazz saxophonists, Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, who frequently played and recorded together starting in the 1950s. Just as Ammons and Stitt engaged in a dynamic call-and-response style of improvisation, Mosley’s process embraces spontaneity and rhythmic flow—translating the spirit of jazz into three-dimensional form.

All she wants to do is dance (Fran) (2009)
Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas celebrates the complexity and individuality of Black women by bringing them into the art world and refuting stereotypes. She cites inspiration from Blaxploitation films of the 1970s that capitalized on exaggerated portrayals of the Black community and particularly the promiscuousness of Black women.

Thomas doesn’t shy away from sexuality or sensuality and portrays her subjects in control of their bodies and their environment. The women Thomas depicts are not restrained or holding back but overflowing with confidence and personal style—bold patterns, glitter and glam, accessorized to the max, and staring back at the viewer.

In some of her pieces, Thomas recruits models from her everyday life—Fran, depicted here, was her hairdresser.  In this collage, Fran is striking a pose with her hand on her hip, pursing her lips, and looking directly into the camera, showing off her chunky metal jewelry and reptilian boots. Fran isn’t overly sexualized or idealized as someone’s image of a party girl; she’s just herself and “all she wants to do is dance.”

Celebrate Black History Month in Seattle with these suggested events. 

Through Feb 28
Coloring Outside the Lines

The Northwest African American Museum invites you to celebrate Black art, culture, and communities all month long. Plan a visit to the Central District to enjoy a wide range of free and ticketed programming, including art exhibitions, lectures, and workshops galore. Ticketed events include an interactive painting workshop with AshaAung Helmstetter (Feb 22).

Through Feb 28
Call to Conscience

Every Tuesday through Sunday in February, Columbia City Theater transforms into the Call to Conscience Black History Month Museum. Experience powerful exhibitions, displays, and installations that honor the legacy of the Black communities in the Pacific Northwest. Learn about the untold stories of local groups, including Seattle Black Panther Party. Make sure to secure your time slot and tickets online.

Sat Feb 22
Black Art Takeover

As part of Coloring Outside the Lines, the Northwest African American Museum hosts the Black Art Takeover. This free community event highlights local Black artists working across many mediums, from photography to ceramics. Explore the pop-up market to meet artists and purchase artwork. Other offerings include artist panels, film screenings with Scope Screening, family-friendly art activities, and guided museum tours. 

Sat Feb 22
Black History Month Soirée 2025

Dance the night away to live music and performances at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. When you need a water break, wander through Seattle’s Black Love Market, full of goods from Black-owned businesses and vendors. All ages are welcome, so bring the whole family!

Sat Feb 22
SAM Body + Mind: Poetry Evening featuring Bay Davis

Join us at the Olympic Sculpture Park for a poetry show focused on self-discovery and healing curated by Inside. The headlining poet, Bay Davis, draws from her experience as an Afro-Indigenous Black trans woman and utilizes her work to weave the tools of her own survival as offerings to challenge, heal, and question the systems and climate we exist in today.

Sun Feb 23
Black Ice: An American Sitcom Improvised

Get ready to laugh at this unique comedy show. Unexpected Productions Improv presents a 1970s sitcom-style performance, inspired by TV shows centered on the Black experience, such as All in the Family and The Jeffersons. Audience participation is expected!

Wed Feb 26
Victor Luckerson: A Scheme to Forget, a Demand to Remember

Head to Town Hall Seattle to hear an insightful public lecture from writer Victor Luckerson. The journalist and author will discuss the heartbreaking story of Greenwood and black Tulsans, which is the subject of his book, Built from the Fire. Presented by the University of Washington Office of Public Lectures, the event will be held in the Wyncote NW Forum. If you can’t make it in person, a livestream is also available.

Thu Mar 6
Living Voices: Fly for Freedom

Head to Museum of History and Industry for a multimedia program that spotlights Black women who worked in the aeronautics industry during World War II. Through live theater and archival film, these sidelined stories will take center stage in the Joshua Green Foundation Theater.

– Rachel Eggers, Associate Director of Public Relations and Nicole Block, Collections Associate

Photo credits: The Odyssey: 1862 / 1837, 2024, Bethany Collins, graphite on Somerset paper in 2 parts, overall 46 1/2 x 69 x 1 3/4 in., Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York; PATRON Gallery, Chicago, © 2024 Bethany Collins, Keith Nkeze, Natali Wiseman, Keith Nkeze.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Her Existence Was a Miracle

Rachel Eggers on Feb 5 2025

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Her Existence Was a Miracle

Artist, activist, curator, and educator Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) has died at the age of 85. Born in 1940 at Saint Ignatius Mission on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, as a child she drew animals in the dirt. She grew to pursue her art and education relentlessly, becoming one of the most innovative and significant artists of her generation over an illustrious six-decade career. She leaves behind a long legacy of positioning Native American art and ideas at the center of critical dialogues around land, social justice, history, and culture and nurturing the next generation of Indigenous artists.

SAM had the honor of hosting Smith’s largest-ever retrospective, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map (February 29–May 12, 2024). The Seattle Art Museum was the only West Coast stop and the last venue of the tour for this monumental exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and curated by Laura Phipps. Theresa Papanikolas, SAM’s Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art, shared her experience of working with Smith to bring together the SAM iteration of Memory Map.

Laura Phipps, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Theresa Papanikolas, and Neal Ambrose-Smith.

“It was such an honor and a pleasure to get to know Jaune when I curated SAM’s stop on her major career retrospective. As a specialist in American art, I always appreciated how she recast American art and history from her perspective as an Indigenous artist, but having the chance to know her and become immersed in her work at every level was truly transformative. Spending time with her paintings and sculptures and hearing her talk about their many layers opened my eyes to new ways of thinking about everything from climate change to landscape painting to transnational geopolitics. Then seeing our visitors do the same was truly rewarding. I will never forget how she, along with artist Neal Ambrose-Smith and Whitney Museum of Art curator Laura Phipps, brought the house down when they presented their work on the exhibition to our members. It is a memory I will always cherish, second only to having the great fortune to be a part of Jaune’s universe, at least for a little while.”

When Smith was in Seattle to share Memory Map, she and her son and fellow artist Neal Ambrose-Smith shared reflections with us for a video series you can enjoy on SAM’s YouTube channel. 

We’re giving Barbara Brotherton, SAM’s former Curator of Native American Art (2001–2022), the final words on Smith’s work and legacy.

“As Jaune’s family and friends send her into the arms of her ancestors, it is good to remember her courage and kindness. Jaune broke every glass ceiling there was, not by stepping on others but by bringing them along. Knowing there is strength in numbers, she brought Native artists together by organizing exhibitions and events when there were few venues for Native fine art. She persuasively convinced curators and gallerists to invest in promoting Native artists. She was a visionary, presaging a time when the art establishment would stand up and take notice of the important work being enacted all over Native America. Like the legendary Chief Seattle that she paid homage to in work over decades, Jaune was a diplomat, a community convenor, and a strident voice for honoring ancestral land and promoting social justice and sustainability. Her storied landscapes in paint, print, collage, and sculpture expose the stain of racism, genocide, and degradation of the land using the conventions of canoe, map, and trickster figures from Native oral histories. Using her enormous talent and vision, she showed us that Native artists have important things to say. We should be listening.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad, Chloe Collyer.

“From Rooted to Airy”: Middle Fork Makes Way For FriendsWithYou Commission

Rachel Eggers on Feb 4 2025

“From Rooted to Airy”: Middle Fork Makes Way For FriendsWithYou Commission

After eight years on view and countless imaginations inspired, this week John Grade’s Middle Fork is being deinstalled from the Seattle Art Museum’s Brotman Forum. And that means something new will soon be taking residence in the soaring entrance lobby of the museum, which is a community space free to the public to enjoy without a ticket. Margo Vansynghel of The Seattle Times broke the news today that it will be a new commission from FriendsWithYou, the internationally celebrated LA-based duo of Samuel (Sam) Borkson and Arturo (Tury) Sandoval III. Little Cloud Sky (2025) will debut on June 27 and be on view for at least two years.

The new work is curated by José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, who told Vansynghel that “the beauty of [FriendsWithYou’s] work is that it creates really uplifting atmospheres.” Little Cloud Sky (2025) is composed of 40 sculptures of the artists’ signature “Little Cloud” character, each custom made of plastic, four feet wide, and suspended from the ceiling of the Brotman Forum. The work is designed to spread positivity and inspire a sense of connection, encouraging museum visitors to reflect on the beauty of togetherness and the power of joy and nature. While versions of this interior skyscape have been displayed in cities around the world, including Las Vegas, Miami, Tokyo, and London, this is a brand-new iteration and the artists’ first long-term museum installation.

“Sam and Tury create Pop-inspired projects across the globe where visual joy takes center stage,” says Diaz. “We cannot wait to see our lofty entrance come to life with FriendsWithYou’s uplifting work that reminds us of the magic in public spaces and the boundless power of collective happiness. As visitors are captivated by the smiling clouds floating above their heads, we hope they will feel the sense of optimism in the atmosphere.”

A cloud figure with a smile and eyes

The “Little Cloud” character serves as a symbol of peace and connectivity and can be found throughout the artists’ work. In August 2024, London’s Covent Garden featured Little Cloud World, an installation with 40 inflatable “Little Cloud” characters. In January 2024, Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park hosted an iteration of Little Cloud Sky, accompanied by a large-scale parade, “The Happy Dancing Rainbow Alliance,” featuring FriendsWithYou’s iconic characters.

FriendsWithYou’s work has been exhibited around the world. Their latest work, The BAND, an interactive performance-based installation featuring five large-scale autonomous robots, is currently on view at the Cleveland Public Library. In Miami Beach, the artists have a permanent public artwork 50-foot-tall sculpture titled Starchild, commissioned by The City of Miami Beach. FriendsWithYou has had recent projects in Covent Gardens in London, MOCA LA, the Telfair Museum in Savannah, the Dallas Contemporary as well as several gallery shows in Japan and Hong Kong.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photos: Arturo Sandoval III and Samuel Borkson in front of Little Cloud World in Covent Garden, 2024, Courtesy of FriendsWithYou. Rendering of “Little Cloud,” 2024, Courtesy of FriendsWithYou.

The Seat of Knowledge with Joyce J. Scott

Rachel Eggers on Dec 31 2024

Earlier this year, the SAM team had the honor to film in the galleries with artist Joyce J. Scott inside her large-scale installation The Seat of Knowledge (2024), created for her major retrospective that is now on view at SAM. Walk a Mile in My Dreams features over 140 works from the 1970s to the present—including sculpture, bead work, jewelry, textiles, artwear garments, performance compilations, mixed-media installations, and a new large-scale commission. It’s a summative career retrospective that reveals the full breadth of Scott’s utterly unique artistic vision to challenge unequal social roles, confront traumatic histories, and agitate for freedom.

She settled into the magnificent seat, which is a place that brings together lineages, ancestries, birthrights, histories, memories, mentors, friends: the collective experience of Joyce J. Scott. From her perch she spoke as a fluid winding river, making some hilarious diversions now and then, sharing all that she has learned and unlearned and learned again in her travels around the world and back again, dropping gems as quickly as we could capture them with our cameras. Experience her vision of beauty, humor, and fearlessness in life and in art.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Access to Art: Rebuilding School Tours at SAM

Seattle Art Museum on Nov 11 2024

Access to Art: Rebuilding School Tours at SAM

For most school districts, the 2024–25 school year began in September, and after a month of getting settled, school tours began to ramp up across all three SAM locations. Though we offer some type of school tour year round, our most robust offerings take place between late September through the end of June each year. Like many programs at the museum, supporting school tours is a team effort that spans across various departments. Through institutional collaboration, school tours have mostly returned to their pre-pandemic form after a few years of rebuilding from school and museum closures in 2020 and 2021.

Since I started working at SAM six years ago, interacting with students on field trips has always been my favorite part of the job. The students’ excitement at being in a new place and their imaginative responses to the artwork on view always gives me energy, in spite of all the walking and vocal projection needed to lead tours. However, nothing drove home the value of an in-person museum experience more than when I was giving a dozen virtual tours every week during the 2021–22 school year. Though we tried our best to stay connected with schools, it just wasn’t the same to look at a work of art together on a computer screen instead of in the galleries together. For so many students, there is something about a museum visit that sticks with them, even if they don’t remember specific dates or materials used in certain artworks. We often hear from teachers that students still talk about their field trips months later. As we’ve rebuilt school tours at SAM, we’re reflecting on their impact. I wanted to share what they mean for students in our region.

Based on our 2023–24 school tour evaluations, 82% of educators agreed that their students felt welcomed and valued at SAM. This is especially meaningful, considering how many students who come on field trips have never been to an art museum before. It sets a positive tone for a possible lifetime of museum going and engaging with visual art.

A graphic with quotes

Educators can choose to lead the group through the galleries themselves on a self-guided tour, or select a guided tour, which includes a tour led by a volunteer docent and an art workshop led by a teaching artist. Each SAM location has a different tour and art workshop curriculum that aligns with national, state, and district standards across a range of subjects. Those subjects include National Core Arts Standards, Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts/Literacy, Social-Emotional Learning, Social Studies/Ethnic Studies, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math), and more. We work with educator advisors and school district partners throughout the year to make sure this curriculum is relevant and engaging for students.

In the 2023–24 school year, SAM served over 11,000 students across 339 tours total, with over 50% of these students coming from Title I schools. While we are not quite back at pre-COVID numbers, which saw peaks of over 20,000 students during the 2016–17 school year, for example, it is heartening to see the increase from the 2022–23 school year across our different locations. School tour gains can be largely credited to the reintroduction of hands-on art workshops led by teaching artists, which many educators voiced were needed in 2023–24 evaluations.

School tours at SAM are free for all public schools. We offer full or partial bus reimbursement for Title I schools, which means 40% of their students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. These initiatives contribute to SAM’s mission to make arts access more equitable, particularly for historically underrepresented communities. Though the creative economy of Washington makes up almost 10% of overall state GSP, Washington is ranked 45 out of 50 states in providing public funding for the arts, which includes arts education. This disproportionate funding impacts who is able to gain entry to this thriving part of our state’s economy. Creative Advantage Seattle notes that there are “significant barriers facing students in accessing quality arts instruction — especially students of color, those receiving free and reduced lunch, those in special education programs, and multilingual language learners.” Many of our Title I partner schools do not have visual art teachers, or they split one teacher between two schools. They also typically do not have funding through PTAs or district grants for specialized supplies or field trip costs. We are very appreciative that we can offer these learning opportunities free of charge to so many students.

Learn more and book a school tour for your students!

– Yaoyao Liu, SAM’s Manager of School Tours

Photo: Graphics: Naomi Chan.

An Interview with “Meot” Guest Curator HJ Han

Rachel Eggers on Oct 23 2024

An Interview with “Meot” Guest Curator HJ Han

Frank Bayley (1939–2022) was a generous art patron who dedicated himself to uplifting the innovative practices of seven internationally-renowned contemporary Korean artists. With Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection now on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, we spoke with Hyongjeong “HJ” Kim Han, Joseph de Heer Curator of Arts of Asia at the Denver Art Museum and the exhibition’s curator, about her own relationship to Bayley and his appreciation for the past, present, and future of Korean art.

What was your relationship with Frank Bayley like? What can you tell us about him as a collector?

I used to call him Frank a-jeo-ssi, which translates to “Uncle Frank” in Korean. His inquisitiveness about Korean culture made him a generous and patient supporter of Korean artists and curators, including myself. Frank made his first trip to Korea about half a century ago; it was then that he began collecting Korean art, primarily Korean ceramics.

How does Frank Bayley exemplify the term meot?

Meot (pronunciation: mʌ̹t or mŏt) is a Korean word in Hangul (the Korean alphabet) that originated from the word ‘mat,’ meaning taste. The word encompasses multiple meanings, including charming, stylish, elegant, creative, and intellectual. Frank certainly possessed these characteristics, and I would add one more: humor. Frank loved to laugh and he truly loved art. In his own, personal way, he embodied meot.

A woman stands in front of a wall with text

What are you excited for Seattle audiences to encounter in the exhibition?

I’m looking forward to exhibiting some of the artworks that were in Frank’s living room, including Bohnchang KOO’s FM 01 BW, a photograph of a long-necked white bottle that was gifted to Frank by the artist, as well as a series of ceramics by YOON Kwang-cho that originally sat atop Frank’s wooden cabinets. I’m confident Seattle audiences will appreciate the powerful white slip surface decorations of these works. As a curator, it’s always interesting to see artworks go from the intimacy of a domestic space to the galleries of a public institution; it’s exactly what Frank wanted with this gift to SAM.

Meot features both contemporary and historical artworks. What is the benefit of setting these works in dialogue?

A key component of Frank’s interest in collecting Korean art was the continuity of its artistic traditions and how contemporary artists innovate within these histories. Artworks from the past provide enormous inspiration for today’s artists, and the contemporary works featured in Meot are excellent models for this phenomena. I believe art museums are the perfect platform to demonstrate the continuous dialogue between the past and present, while simultaneously providing direction for the future of art.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photos: Installation view of Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection, 2024, photo: Chloe Collyer

Meet the 2024 Betty Bowen Award Winner: Samantha Yun Wall

Rachel Eggers on Oct 13 2024

Meet the 2024 Betty Bowen Award Winner: Samantha Yun Wall

The Seattle Art Museum and the Betty Bowen Committee are proud to announce Portland artist Samantha Yun Wall as the winner of the 2024 Betty Bowen Award! The juried award comes with an unrestricted cash award of $20,000—increased this year by the committee from $15,000—and a solo exhibition at SAM. This year’s committee was Gary Glant (Chair), Mike Hess, Mark Levine, Catharina Manchanda, Llewelyn Pritchard, Greg Robinson, Norie Sato, Anthony White, Merrill Wright, and Rob Rhee.

Samantha Yun Wall (b. 1977, Seoul) creates drawings that reflect her experience navigating her transcultural identity as a Black Korean immigrant. She primarily works with ink delicately layered on Dura-lar, drawing inspiration from female archetypes described in global mythologies, folktales, and creation narratives. In her highly detailed, monochromatic images, she reveals how these figures are made alternately invisible or hyper-visible in their roles as social outcasts or even menaces. By deconstructing and reframing these vilified figures, Wall challenges patriarchal norms and stigmatization. Details for her solo show at the SAM will be announced at a later date.

Wild Seeds No.2, 2024, Samantha Wall, ink and conté crayon on clay-coated board, 37 x 37 in.

Wall’s work has been exhibited throughout Washington and Oregon, including Boren Banner Series: Samantha Wall (April 10–October 06, 2024) a solo show at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, and Black Artists of Oregon (September 9, 2023–March 31, 2024), a group show at the Portland Art Museum. She has been awarded multiple prizes and grants, including the Ford Family Foundation Grant, the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship, and the Arlene Schnitzer Prize. Wall is a previous finalist for the Betty Bowen Award, winning the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award in 2023.

“I am ecstatic to have been selected as this year’s recipient. The committee’s recognition, trust, and support are invaluable encouragement to continue the hard work artists know intimately,” says Wall. “Our contributions are not always validated, yet we wake up every day inspired to create meaningful work. I am grateful for the resources and platform provided by this award, because they allow me to take bolder risks and create from my wildest imaginings.”

– Samantha Yun Wall

This year, the cash awards were increased by the Betty Bowen Committee:

  • The winner’s prize increased from $15,000 to $20,000.
  • Special Recognition Awards increased from $2,500 to $4,000.
  • Special Commendation Awards increased from $1,250 to $2,500.

“The Pacific Northwest has an outstanding community of artists, and it is essential and a great privilege to celebrate and support their work and efforts,” says Gary Glant. “On behalf of the Betty Bowen Committee, we were delighted to raise the dollar amount of all the awards granted for this important annual recognition of local talent, which is now in its 47th year and going strong.”

Art by Sally Scopa
Mountain Couple 1, 2024, Sally Scopa, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 in.
Untitled (Bus Tray), 2021, Sol Hashemi, archival pigment print with potential to receive updates, 30 x 40 in.
Toppled Over on the Futon from One Week in January: New Paintings for an Old Diary, 2023, Carson Ellis, gouache on watercolor paper, 10 x 11 in.
Omitted Matter (Recto), 2024, Tannaz Farsi, handmade rug, steel, wood, conspicuity tape, strap, 40 x 38 x 20 in.
Dreaming of Paradise 1, 2024, Nahom Ghirmay, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in.

Sally Scopa won the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award and Sol Hashemi won the Gary Glant Special Recognition Award. Finalists Carson Ellis, Tannaz Farsi, and Nahom Ghirmay will each receive Special Commendation Awards. The six finalists were chosen from a pool of 410 applicants from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to compete for the $35,500 in awards.

Founded in 1977 to continue the legacy of local arts advocate and supporter Betty Bowen, the annual award honors a Northwest artist for their original, exceptional, and compelling work. Betty Bowen (1918–1977) was a Washington native and enthusiastic supporter of Northwest artists. Her friends established the annual Betty Bowen Award as a celebration of her life and to honor and continue her efforts to provide financial support to the artists of the region. Since 1977, SAM has hosted the yearly grant application process by which the selection committee chooses one artist from the Northwest to receive an unrestricted cash award, eligible to visual artists living and working in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Recent past winners include Elizabeth Malaska (2022), Anthony White (2021), Dawn Cerny (2020), Lynne Siefert (2019), and Natalie Ball (2018). The 2023 winner is Seattle artist Tariqa Waters. Her solo exhibition, Venus is Missing, will be on view at the Seattle Art Museum May 7, 2025–January 5, 2026.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo of Samantha Wall by Stephen Slappe.

Make Like a Tree: It’s Time to Say Goodbye to John Grade’s Middle Fork

Rachel Eggers on Oct 12 2024

Make Like a Tree: It’s Time to Say Goodbye to John Grade’s Middle Fork

Since February 10, 2017, a dynamic, 105-foot sculpture of a tree created by Seattle-based artist John Grade has graced the Seattle Art Museum’s main entrance lobby, greeting each visitor that walks through the doors. Recently, the museum announced that the work will be deinstalled from the Brotman Forum in early 2025 after eight years on view. The last day for visitors to experience Middle Fork at SAM is February 2, 2025. Margo Vansynghel of The Seattle Times broke the news, noting that the “beloved” artwork has welcomed more than a million visitors in its time at SAM.

The highly detailed sculpture was created by Grade, his team, and over 3,000 volunteers using a plaster cast of a 150-year-old western hemlock tree in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. The cast was used as a mold to assemble a new tree from nearly one million reclaimed cedar segments. Suspended horizontally from the museum’s ceiling and above the viewer, Grade’s sculpture offers a mesmerizing new perspective on a familiar form, and its collaborative energy has made it a symbol of Seattle’s arts community. 

“We bid a fond farewell to Middle Fork,” says Scott Stulen, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. “For the last eight years, this sculpture has inspired awe and delight in every visitor to the museum. John Grade’s deep appreciation for the interconnectedness of nature and people in the Pacific Northwest has reflected our mission to connect art to life these past years. We look forward, along with everyone else, to see the next part of its journey.”

Middle Fork (2014–2017) was first conceived at MadArt Studio, a Seattle gallery from 2009–2024, and debuted there in January 2015. Following that, it was included in the WONDER exhibition at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC (November 13, 2015–May 13, 2016) and was displayed at the 2017 Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland. At SAM, the sculpture was presented in its largest iteration yet, more than doubling from its previous length of 50 feet to 105 feet. Grade’s intention has always been to continue the sculpture’s growth to match the length of the living tree that it is based on, 140 feet. Eventually, he plans to bring the sculpture back to the forest, allowing it to decompose and return to the earth at the base of that original tree.  

Middle Fork is only the second installation to make a home in the Brotman Forum. The first was Inopportune: Stage One (2004) by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang. The large-scale installation featured nine Ford Taurus cars that appeared to be arrested in an animated sequence of explosions via numerous LED light tubes. It was on view at SAM as part of the expansion of its downtown building on May 5, 2007. The installation closed on January 19, 2016.

The Brotman Forum will welcome a new installation in June 2025, to be announced at a later date. From a massive tree, where do you think the museum will go next?

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photos: Middle Fork, 2014–2017, John Grade, American, b. 1970, cedar, 105 ft. long x 30 ft. diameter, Seattle Art Museum commission, Photo: Ben Benschneider.

Translating the Untranslatable: Emerging Arts Leader Amelia Ossorio Reflects

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 30 2024

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.

SAM Welcomes Back Evening Hours Thanks to Funding from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation

Rachel Eggers on Sep 24 2024

SAM Welcomes Back Evening Hours Thanks to Funding from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation

Big news was announced today! The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation will give a suite of eight grants totaling $9 million+ to support the cultural vitality of downtown Seattle, and SAM is among the recipients along with fellow grantees Base Camp Studios (BCS), Common Area Maintenance (CAM), Friends of Waterfront Park, Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall, Shunpike, SIFF, and Theatre Off Jackson (TOJ).

SAM will receive $500,000 over two years to support extending our Free First Thursday program into the evening. Free First Thursdays at the downtown museum—when the museum is free to all, all day on the first Thursday of each month—will now run until 8 pm and feature programming inspired by the exhibitions on view from 5 to 8 pm.

“We are grateful for this funding from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and excited by the opportunities it presents,” says Scott Stulen, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. “Local artists will create dynamic programs, our community partners will have a platform, and audiences will be able to visit the museum who may not otherwise have been able to do so. We’re also proud to join with these other incredible local arts organizations as we work to revitalize downtown Seattle and show how important the arts are to those efforts. Philanthropic support like this is critical for organizations of all sizes, and SAM relies on substantial investments like this to be sure that we are here for generations to come.”

With this day of free admission and programming offered every month, SAM is able to advance its mission to connect art to life and contribute to making downtown welcoming and lively. Free First Thursday also serves the museum’s efforts towards being an equitable institution by decreasing barriers for those with financial need or who cannot visit during daytime hours.

The first edition of Free First Thursday supported by the grant will be held on October 3, 2024, and will feature a DJ set from Kennedy Quille; gallery tours by SAM staff, docents, and local artist Stefan Richmond; tabling by the Lavender Rights Project, a SAM Community Pass Program partner; and a meet-and-greet with new SAM CEO Scott Stulen.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

Muse/News: Museum Futures, Sea to City, and Everyday Excellence

Rachel Eggers on Sep 9 2024

Muse/News: Museum Futures, Sea to City, and Everyday Excellence

SAM News

“Can you really compare these selfie stations to Seattle’s best cultural institutions?” Seattle Met’s Allison Williams takes a look at the new Museum of Illusions and compares their “edutainment” value to mission-driven institutions, speaking with José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, who isn’t mad at Insta moments. 

“‘I think in the future, we’re probably going to see more and more acceptance, or even embracing of, new ways of presenting art,’ Diaz says. ‘Real works, but then also something very immersive and very emotional.’”

Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection is charming visitors at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Susan Kunimastu wrote about the exhibition for Preview Magazine, and Madeline Ewing checked out the galleries for SEAtoday. And don’t miss The Ticket’s look at the “very demure, very mindful” artwork on view.

Seattle Refined’s “Artist of the Week” is Troy Gua! Don’t miss their interview with this beloved SAM Gallery artist. 

Local News

Jas Keimig of South Seattle Emerald is back with another roundup of “Arts in the South End”; one of their picks is the Mouthwater Festival: A Disabled Dance Festival, and SAM is proud to host one of its performances, Grow Green Man, on October 5 and 6 at the Olympic Sculpture Park’s PACCAR Pavilion.

Margo Vansynghel of The Seattle Times selects “top Seattle art shows to see in fall 2024,” including some shows outside of the city that feature local artists.

Go with Rachel Gallaher for Seattle Magazine and “Dive into the Design Behind Seattle Aquarium’s New Ocean Pavilion.”

“‘The extraordinary thing about this site is that one edge of it is the Salish Sea, and the other is the urban center of Seattle,’ says Mark Reddington, a partner at LMN. The new 50,000-square-foot Ocean Pavilion, with its sweeping yellow Alaskan cedar-clad façade and nearly half-million gallon Reef ecosystem, houses 3,500 sustainably sourced tropical fish, invertebrates, and plants, representing more than 150 species.”

Inter/National News

Hurray for arts writers! Tessa Solomon for ARTnews reports on the 2024 winners of grants for visual arts journalists from the Rabkin Foundation: Greg Allen, Holland Cotter, Robin Givhan, Thomas Lawson, Siddhartha Mitter, Cassie Packard, TK Smith, and Emily Watlington.

Sarah Cascone for Artnet: “Tschabalala Self Lands a Colorful Ode to the Bodega at the Armory Show.” 

Via Nancy Princenthal for The New York Times’s Fall Arts Preview: “Amy Sherald, Brazen Optimist.”

“Unlike many members of her generation, she is resistant to depicting personal experience. Her sublimity is of the abstract kind: ‘The idea,’ as she puts it, ‘is of portraying everydayness as excellence.’”

And Finally

Watch “The Best of James Earl Jones.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Chloe Collyer

Muse/News: Meot’s Treasures, September Shows, and Ailey’s Sparkle

Rachel Eggers on Sep 3 2024

Muse/News: Meot’s Treasures, September Shows, and Ailey’s Sparkle

SAM News

Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection is now on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum! NW Asian Weekly wrote about its “treasures, past and present” and how they exemplify the meaning of the Korean term “meot.” The exhibition was also featured on the Wall Street Journal’s Arts Calendar for the week.

And there’s even more opportunities to see it! Capitol Hill Seattle Blog shared the news that Wednesdays are back at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, bringing it back to a full five-day-a-week schedule. Visit Meot and the collection galleries Wednesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm.

Local News

Mike Lindblom of The Seattle Times reports on the recent renaming of the light rail station closest to the Seattle Art Museum. University Street Station is now called Symphony Station for our neighbor, Benaroya Hall.

“New director hopes to hit the right note at Seattle Opera”: KUOW’s Diana Opong speaks with James Robinson on his arrival in Seattle after his long-time tenure as artistic director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

“Seattle’s must-see September art exhibits”: The Seattle Times’s Margo Vansynghel spots shows at the Nordic, Davidson Galleries (in its new home!), Traver Gallery (right across the street from the Seattle Art Museum!), and more to see this month.

“September brings lower temps and, for the visual art scene, plenty of good tidings with a brand-new art walk, the return of a Pioneer Square staple, scores of fun events and exciting new shows.”

Inter/National News

Via Tim Brinkhof for Artnet: “A Show of Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces Invites You to Smell Them, Too.”

“Turkey chili, frizz, and turtlenecks—in. Raves, book clubs, and little gem salads—out.” CULTURED gathers a gaggle of entertainers for a chaotic round-up of what’s in and what’s out this season.

“Alvin Ailey, the Man and the Mind Behind the Unapologetic Sparkle”: Gia Kourlas of The New York Times on the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new exhibition on the choreographer.

“One of the most ambitious shows the museum has ever presented — six years in the making and bigger than any Whitney biennial — it tracks the development of an American art form through Ailey’s singular vision. Here is a chance to better understand the man behind that vision, to watch his dances with new eyes.”

And Finally

“Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art” by Ted Chiang.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Installation view of Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection, 2024, photo: Chloe Collyer

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Susanna and the Elders

Nicole Block on Aug 26 2024

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.

How SAM’s Interpretation Team Brought Poke in the Eye to Life

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 23 2024

How SAM’s Interpretation Team Brought Poke in the Eye to Life

Have you ever wondered who creates interactives at SAM? Hi! We’re Emily and Ramzy and we design interpretive experiences at all three of SAM’s locations. We work on SAM’s Interpretation team which creates educational in-gallery experiences designed to spark creativity, connect visitors to the art, and share dynamic storytelling.

We hear from visitors regularly that they are hungry for more opportunities to interact with the exhibitions on view, learn about the art in our galleries, and show off their creativity. We considered Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture to be the perfect opportunity to pull out all the stops and create a cohesive suite of interpretive offerings that further explore the exhibition’s themes. In close collaboration with Carrie Dedon, SAM Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art and the exhibition curator of Poke in the Eye, and Justin Scoltock, SAM Exhibition Designer, we developed four interpretive offerings: a ceramic touch table, a counterculture response wall, a hands-on art activity, and rotary phone audio guides.

Ceramic Touch Table

How many times have you been in an art museum and thought “I wanna touch that”? For the average art museum, encouraging visitors to touch is a rarity. Making museums multi-sensory allows visitors to show up as their whole selves, ensuring museum-going can be more memorable, educational, and welcoming to all.

Since Poke in the Eye focuses so heavily on ceramics, we wanted to ensure that people had the chance to experience all the shiny, globby, sharp, and rough textures that make the ceramic works what they are. This led us to develop the centerpiece of the interpretive gallery space: a giant blob-shaped table we affectionately call the “touch table.” The table features 25 samples covering the various stages of the ceramics process, all with completely different textures, colors, and glazes, that any visitor can walk up and touch.

To guide visitors as they touch, we wrote accessible didactic signage to accompany each type of ceramic. This presented a natural opportunity to try something new for SAM: incorporating braille labels into the galleries. We hope this is one small step of many toward SAM’s progress in making art and interactives more accessible.

So far, it has been clear that people simply love to touch stuff. Visitors respond with visible and often audible joy when they see the words “please touch” in the galleries. There’s also a huge variation in how people engage with this table. Some read every word of the educational signage, some talk out loud with a friend about the different textures they’re touching, and others don’t read any signage and just touch the ceramics. Any of the above is fine by us!

Counterculture Response Wall

We knew the interpretive space wouldn’t be complete without an opportunity for visitors to express themselves and share their ideas. Counterculture is a key throughline of the exhibition, and we wanted to give visitors a chance to understand the concept more concretely by making it personal and related to their own lives, not just as an abstract idea from the 1960s and 70s. After selecting one of four prompt cards about counterculture, visitors can respond however they’d like using colored pencils: with words, with illustration, or most popularly, a mix of both.

An unexpected but welcome outcome of this interactive is how much visitors love reading other visitors’ responses. Any time we pop into the interpretive space, we’re bound to see visitors looking at others’ responses and pointing, smiling, or remarking on the ideas, impressive illustrations, or multiple languages they see on the shelves. We’ve been blown away by the creativity that people are exhibiting in their responses to these prompts.

From Ordinary to Extraordinary Art Activity

Expressing yourself conceptually in response to a prompt is a great way to share your personal connection to the exhibition’s themes, but why stop there? We know that a dose of creativity is powerful for both learning and well-being, so we wanted to provide a more visual opportunity for visitors to create.

Many of the artists featured in  Poke in the Eye use mundane, everyday objects as inspiration for forms that they included in their art. These ordinary objects are transformed into new, original, and extraordinary art by the artist. We wanted to give people a glimpse into this perspective and a chance to try out a version of this process themselves, by transforming an illustration of a trailer, a toilet, a teacup, or a rotary phone into something extraordinary.

And wow, “extraordinary” is an understatement! Our visitors have really understood the assignment. As of mid-August, visitors have transformed about 7,000 object cards. It seems that the rotary phone is one of the most popular cards that visitors choose to transform. As designers, we’re thrilled to know that visitors are engaging with both the activities in the interpretive gallery and our final interpretive offering which is sprinkled throughout the exhibition: the rotary phone audio guides.

Rotary Phone Audio Guides

While exploring Poke in the Eye at SAM, you may have noticed a few old-school rotary phones in several of the exhibition’s galleries. Pick one up and you’ll hear exclusive content about some of the artworks on view in the exhibition. These phones are part of the Interpretation team’s latest efforts to break out of the box and put a new spin on a classic museum offering: the audio guide.

To create this retro experience, we tackled two major obstacles: hacking 60 year-old rotary phones to play MP3 files, and developing engaging audio content to connect our visitors with the art. To hack the rotary phones, we called in Sasha Falsberg, SAM Systems Engineer, who took each one apart, studied the mechanics, and reassembled them with a tiny raspberry pi computer. Now when you pick one up, the pins on the phone trigger the Pi and an MP3 plays until you place it back down— it’s magic!

For the audio content development, we had two main goals: 1. Feature the voice of artists and 2. Develop family-friendly content. We interviewed artists Fay Jones, Patti Warashina, and Jeffry Mitchell, who shared their unique perspectives on creativity, process, and the stories behind their artwork. For the family stops, we developed scripts in the form of a thoughtful dialogue between a teeanger and a kid, encouraging close-looking and connection to the art. This kind of scripted, theatrical conversation was a new approach for SAM, so we collaborated closely with educators, parents, and kids to ensure that the content would land with our younger visitors.

Since opening Poke in the Eye in June, we’ve seen the phones spark joy in our visitors, regardless of age. Even though we designed the family stops with kids in mind, it’s been a pleasant surprise to see that adults have been enjoying the rotary phones just as much, if not more, than kids! There’s something about the tactile and playful experience of picking up a vintage phone in the galleries sparks the curiosity of visitors of all ages, leading to meaningful connections with each other and the art.

What’s Next?

Creating interpretive experiences for Poke in the Eye has been an incredibly rewarding experience for our team. From hands-on experiences, to art-making and rotary phones, we’ve had the opportunity to flex our creativity and collaborate across departments throughout the museum. In the last two months, it’s been exciting to see firsthand the impact on the visitors’ experiences at SAM. In the galleries, we see friends showing off the everyday objects they’ve transformed, toddlers using the step stool to reach for the ceramic touch table, and kids leading their parents to the vintage phones in the next gallery. We can’t wait to continue this momentum into our future exhibitions at SAM, designing interpretive experiences that foster creativity, belonging, and connection with the art for all of our visitors.

– Emily Gardner, SAM Assistant Manager for Gallery Learning, & Ramzy Lakos, SAM Digital Interpretation Specialist

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

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

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 22 2024

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.

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