Object of the Week: A Tango Against Time

Elisabeth Smith on Oct 19 2018

Object of the Week: A Tango Against Time

The scene is a disturbing one: a woman’s silhouette, engulfed in flames, is set against a backdrop of further destruction—homes, pools, lawn chairs, and other debris are also mired in the far-reaching blaze. Painted by Hollis Sigler in 1983, A Tango Against Time is just one example of the artist’s intensely psychological and often autobiographical style.

Receiving her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later teaching at Columbia College in Chicago, Sigler was no doubt influenced by the Chicago Imagists, a group of artists whose figurative and folk-influenced work impacted her then-developing visual language. Hardly derivative, there is a certain way in which Sigler’s graphic style can be contextualized within the legacy of Imagists like Roger Brown and Philip Hanson.

However, Sigler’s faux-naïve mode of painting was purely her own and, after 1976, had political motivations as well. That is, her shift away from abstract expressionism and photorealism was a way for the artist to “disengage from what she viewed as a male-dominated academic tradition.”[1] Her evolution as an artist was thus inextricable from her feminist views.

In 1985, two years after the completion of A Tango Against Time, Sigler was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her struggle with cancer ended up informing her work for the next decade and a half. During this period her paintings took on pointed responses to the devastating illness and the psychological complexities of fighting what would eventually become a terminal disease for the artist. Much of this later work is formally similar to A Tango Against Time—with proscenium-like staging, vibrant colors, and surrealist undertones—but instead of human subjects, the paintings’ dramas focus on things. The absence of human figures heightens the roles that the various objects play, acting as metaphors for Sigler’s deeply personal narratives.

In this context, the presence of a female subject—soon to disappear from Sigler’s paintings—and the chaos surrounding her in A Tango Against Time takes on additional poignancy, foreshadowing the challenging personal and artistic changes that were to come. See this painting in person at SAM, it’s currently on view in On the Edge.

– Elisabeth Smith, Collections Coordinator

Images: A Tango Against Time, 1983, Hollis Sigler, oil on canvas, 47 7/8 × 59 3/4 in., Mary Arrington Small Estate Acquisition Fund, 84.142 © Hollis Sigler. The Young and Self Conscious, 1991, Roger Brown, oil on canvas. St. Anthony Pleasure Park, July 1968, Philip Hanson, etching in black, hand-colored in watercolor, on off-white wove paper. Renewed Hope of Recovery Fill Her Thoughts Every Day, 1998, Hollis Sigler, oil, pastel on paper with painted frame.
[1] Holland Cotter, “Hollis Sigler, 53, Painter Whose Theme Was Her Illness,” The New York Times, April 3, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/arts/hollis-sigler-53-painter-whose-theme-was-her-illness.html.

Muse/News: A Peacock party, a garment reborn, and a muse named Cardi B.

Rachel Eggers on Oct 15 2018

Muse/News: A Peacock party, a garment reborn, and a muse named Cardi B.

SAM News

Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India opens to the public this Thursday! The Seattle Times highlighted the free community opening celebration, which will include live performances, an art market, music, and art making.

SAM’s Día de los Muertos Community Night Out on Friday, October 26, is featured as one of “6 free Seattle area events to celebrate” the annual holiday.

Seattle Bride Magazine on the “art of love,” highlighting SAM among its recommendations for the best local museums to host a wedding.

Local News

City Arts’ Margo Vansynghel shares the news that Cornish has awarded its 2018 Neddy Artist Awards to Lakshmi Muirhead (painting) and Timea Tihanyi (open media).

Poet Natalie Diaz was awarded a 2018 MacArthur genius grant; The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig wrote about her recent reading at Hugo House, which in part touched on the legacy of Edward S. Curtis.

Tamiko Nimura for Crosscut on Tacoma artist Anida Yoeu Ali, whose sequined “Red Chador” that appeared across the world was recently lost. The artist is mourning the garment as a death—and planning its rebirth.

“Because the work was disrupted she has to come back,” she says, “but in solidarity with other issues that are going on.”

Inter/National News

Hyperallergic’s Zachary Small on the Met’s announcement of next year’s gala exhibition: Camp: Notes on Fashion, a “complete 180-degree turn toward sacrilegious” following last year’s Catholic-themed Heavenly Bodies.

Artnet’s Eileen Kinsella on the long overdue retrospective of Charles White, who inspired notable artists as both an artist and a teacher. Kinsella asks, “why did it take so many so long to learn about him?”

The Studio Museum and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts have announced the gift of over 650 works of art from the collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, including works by Kerry James Marshall, Theaster Gates, and Nick Cave.

“Tia Powell Harris, the chief executive of the school, said, ‘It’s as if we will now have direct access to Peggy’s amazing vision, seeing the world’s possibilities as she did.’”

And Finally

Went from makin’ tuna sandwiches to Mickalene’s muse.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Shiva and Parvati in Conversation; Shiva on His Vimana (Aircraft) with Himalaya, Folio 53 from the Shiva Rahasya, 1827, Jodhpur, opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 16 1/2 × 45 5/8 in., Mehrangarh Museum Trust, photo: Neil Greentree.

Object of the Week: #10

Seattle Art Museum on Oct 12 2018

Object of the Week: #10

As part of the For Freedoms’ 50 State Initiative put on by artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman, we’re contextualizing works in SAM’s collection within today’s political atmosphere. The program is inspired by American artist Norman Rockwell’s paintings of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (1941)—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

For this week’s post, we’re focusing on freedom from fear by looking at Frederic Edwin Church’s A Country Home painted in 1854, just seven years before the American Civil War. The painting illustrates an idyllic landscape, lush with vegetation and a tranquil pond. The mood is calm and serene with the sun casting a warm, comforting glow. Church, a member of the Hudson River School, paints the American landscape as a modern-day Eden. The artist’s view of his time and place is one of optimism, hope, and contentment.

 

As we compare Church’s work to Mark Rothko’s abstraction #10, painted in 1952, the differences couldn’t be greater. Rothko’s work was completed just 98 years after A Country Home, but during this period humanity witnessed two world wars (the second of which perhaps had the greatest impact on the views of artists). How much did their views of America change, as well as the times they lived in? After the horrors of World War II, how could one paint idyllic landscapes? Yet, even though freedom won the War, fear persevered—the ugly side of the human race was exposed. As a result, art turned abstract and humanity collectively wept.

So this brings us to today: even if divisiveness, racism, and hatred are overcome, what lasting effect will these times have on our art and how we view our time and place? If equality, respect, and compassion win politically, will we still be free from fear? Or is it too late and have we already exposed the darker sides of ourselves?

– Manish Engineer, SAM Chief Technology Officer

Images:
#10, 1952, Mark Rothko, oil on canvas, 81 3/4 x 42 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (207.65 x 107.95 x 5.72 cm), Gift of the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection, 91.98, © Artist or Artist’s Estate. A Country Home, 1854, Frederic Edwin Church, oil on canvas, 32 x 51 in. (81.3 x 129.5 cm.), Gift of Anna Robeson Baker Carmichael, 65.80.

SAM Gallery: 45 Years!

Seattle Art Museum on Oct 11 2018

SAM Gallery: 45 Years!
Did you know that SAM Gallery has been around for 45 years?! In 1973 the Seattle Art Museum’s Rental/Sales Gallery was started by a visionary group of docents led by Jackie Macrae. They operated out of a space in the Seattle Center, selling the work of local artists in order to raise money for SAM’s volunteer programs. When the gallery turned out to be successful, a part-time employee was hired in 1989. That person was Barbara Shaiman, a local ceramics artist who also ran Shaiman Contemporary Craft. Shaiman worked for the Seattle Art Museum for 24 years and continues to attend openings, as well as show her own work. In 2000, Jody Bento began to work for Shaiman at SAM and today, Bento continues to oversee the gallery. In the 45 years that SAM Gallery has rented and sold Northwest contemporary art, it has mounted hundreds of shows including thousands of Northwest artists. Check out the current roster of SAM Gallery artists.
To celebrate this milestone, we’re sharing some photos from over the years. Join in the success of the gallery and spend time with some of SAM Gallery’s Northwest artists at the opening for the 45th Anniversary Show on First Thursday, November 1.
Images: Photo: Natali Wiseman. Jody Bento, left, Barbara Shaiman, right, pictured with paintings by Deborah Bell. Photos: Ben Benschneider. Attendees at SAM Gallery opening, 2017. Jody Bento, Associate Director SAM Gallery, pictured in the gallery’s Seattle Tower location. Photo: Jen Au.

 

Athi-Patra Ruga’s Utopian Vision: In This Imperfect Present Moment

Pam McClusky on Oct 10 2018

Athi-Patra Ruga’s Utopian Vision: In This Imperfect Present Moment

Utopian visionaries are rare these days. If Black Panther moved you to consider what might be possible in the future, there’s an artist who is opening a new portal into the world of possibilities to come and you can see their work at SAM right now as part of In This Imperfect Present Moment. Athi-Patra Ruga introduces characters from a mythical metaverse. You can see what this means in his performances, which are available online. His avatars wear high heels and balloons, ride zebras, walk down dirt roads or city streets, and occasionally swim upside down. He knows how to turn heads and get people to stare at unexpected visions. For this sculpture, he covers a neoclassical bust with beads, flowers, and gems to mock the usual stagnancy of a bronze-cast monument. He has stated that “our statues are an indictment of our poor imagination.” Calling this sculpture The Ever Promised Erection, Ruga says, “The humorous tone of the title points to the fallacy and impotence of the posturing of the nation-state.”

Ruga replaces the failed state with an ideal femme-centric futurist nation called Azania, inspired by rumors of an ideal Africa described in ancient American myths. You can get to know Azania and see their queens and territories by looking at his large-scale tapestries and videos. His tapestry maps record an Ocean of Repentance, where cleansing waters protect and surround islands inhabited by women. It takes a distinctive rigor to create and carry an entire nation in your mind. When meeting Athi-Patra Ruga, you sense him as someone dedicated to keeping his alternative world alive and well. He’s now about to open his first one-person exhibition in London at the Somerset House, and for those who crave utopian universes, Ruga can take you there.

– Pam McClusky, SAM’s Curator of African and Oceanic Art

Images: Installation view of In This Imperfect Present Moment at Seattle Art Museum. 2018, photos: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Sculptures in fall, erasure poems, and the wonderful Kerry James Marshall

Rachel Eggers on Oct 8 2018

Muse/News: Sculptures in fall, erasure poems, and the wonderful Kerry James Marshall

SAM News

Curbed Seattle highlights the Olympic Sculpture Park as one of “26 best places to visit in Seattle this fall,” calling a visit to the sculpture park “the easiest way to feel artsy in Seattle without needing to spend half a day inside a museum.”

Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India is featured in the Stranger’s “Complete Guide to October 2018 Events in Seattle.” Diwali Ball, SAM’s annual fundraiser, and Night Heat, the 41st edition of our film noir series, also get mentions.

Did you know that SAM’s design team makes awesome videos? Don’t miss this fantastic My Favorite Things video featuring sailor Marc Onetto talking about the accuracy of Louis-Philippe Crépin’s Shipwreck off the Coast of Alaska, now on view at SAM.

Local News

Mayumi Tsutakawa for the Seattle Globalist on a documentary film about two women who—75 years apart—chronicled the cultures of Melanesia; one of the two held an exhibition on her work at SAM in 1935.

Here’s Emily Pothast for The Stranger on 10 not-to-be-missed gallery shows in Pioneer Square on view in October.

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis has a lovely review of Ballast, the Frye Art Museum’s new exhibition; Quenton Baker’s erasure and invented form poems were inspired by a massive historical research project into a little-known successful 1841 slave revolt.

“On the museum walls, their voices emerge like ghosts from the inky morass: ‘I am a crisis arrived.’ ‘A cargo of alarm.’ ‘Answer me.’”

Inter/National News

Way to go, genius: Three artists, including painter—and SAM Knight Lawrence Prize winner!—Titus Kaphar, were named “genius” grant winners from the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Think pink! Hyperallergic’s Dany Chan reviews a new exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology exploring the many meanings—from pretty to punk—of the color pink.

I get Google alerts for Kerry James Marshall, and here’s why: this week Hyperallergic shared a wonderful essay he wrote about Bill Traylor, and ARTNews reported his wonderful reaction to Chicago’s sale of one of his murals.

“Considering that only last year Mayor [Rahm] Emanuel and Commissioner [of the Department of Cultural Affairs Mark] Kelly dedicated another mural I designed downtown for which I was asked to accept one dollar, you could say the City of Big Shoulders has wrung every bit of value they could from the fruits of my labor.”

And Finally

Say goodbye to the last good thing on Twitter?

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Olympic Sculpture Park, 2015, photo: Nina Dubinsky.

Object of the Week: ChimaTEK Virtual Chimeric Space

Elisabeth Smith on Oct 5 2018

Object of the Week: ChimaTEK Virtual Chimeric Space

Want is the desire to possess or do, or the feeling of lack or being short of something desirable. As long as you’re wanting, you’re usually in a space of trying to gain something for yourself and yourself only. This is a result of individualized thinking, which is one of the pillars of the Western-American ideology. So what does freedom from want look and feel like? And what does it require of us to consider living free from want?

This possibility is explored by Saya Woolfalk, a New York-based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to reimagine the world in multiple dimensions. With her multi-year projects No Place: A Ritual of the Empathics and ChimaTEK: Virtual Chimeric Space—the latter of which is on view in Lessons from the Institute of Empathy—Woolfalk creates a world of Empathics, a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants. With each body of work Woolfalk says, “I want a person to experience something that simultaneously makes them slightly uncomfortable about the potential of the world that I have created, but also gives them an excitement about a harmonious, multi-cultural society.”

While seemingly very different from human beings, the Empathics actually reflect our multicultural society in myriad ways. Through these beings, who have developed the ability to think collectively, we learn just how powerful the effects of empathy are when honed and used to empower a society in the direction of cultural evolution.

Freedom from want has the potential to take us to a place where this kind of evolution can be realized. In this free state, we are enabled to shift our focus from individual want to helping others gain what they require in order to experience the satisfaction of their needs. With the pressures of scarcity and fear eliminated, a new form of thinking emerges from a place of equity and equality.

Moving closer to freedom from want as a reality—as opposed to an out-of-reach ideal—challenges us to consider others instead of only the self. It challenges us to remove the ego—to listen and understand. It challenges what we consider necessary in order to live happy and successful lives. It challenges us to move beyond individualized, self-centered thinking and towards an elevated level of collective thinking, which is necessary for harmonious living and ultimately stimulates our capacity for acceptance, benefiting every global citizen.

– Adera Gandy, Visitor Services Officer

Image: Installation view of Lessons from the Institute of Empathy at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, © Seattle Art Museum, photo: Nathaniel Willson

Volunteer Spotlight: Leanne Hawkins

Seattle Art Museum on Oct 4 2018

Volunteer Spotlight: Leanne Hawkins
Volunteers make SAM go! Some of our docents, like Leanne Hawkins, have been volunteering since the 1980s when SAM’s only location was our original home in Volunteer Park (now one of our three locations, Volunteer Park is home of the Seattle Asian Art Museum). Every volunteer has their own reasons for contributing their talents to SAM. For Leanne, the opportunity to see art across centuries through the eyes of children and youth always allows her to learn something new about an artwork. Our Manager of Volunteers asked Leanne some questions so you can get to know her and get familiar with the important role SAM’s volunteer play in the museum.
 
SAM: What is your current role?
Leanne Hawkins: I am the Docent Executive Committee (DEC) chair, though my title as part of the SAM Volunteer Association Executive Committee is Docent Program Chair.
How long have you been volunteering at SAM?
Counting my year of docent training in 1998, plus perhaps a year or so volunteering once a month on Thursday nights in the early 1980s at the original SAM, I’ve been a SAM volunteer for about 21 years.
Why is the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) important to you?
My association with SAM has provided so many ways to learn about artists, eras, cultures, and perspectives that are new to me, or different from what is comfortable for me, and I appreciate the opportunities to be delighted, amused, sometimes upset—but never bored. Most of my docent tours are with school groups, ranging from kindergartners through high schoolers, and I love seeing SAM and its myriad objects through their eyes and reactions—I always learn something new, for which I’m grateful.
What is one of your favorite artworks in SAM’s collection, and why?
This is tough. I feel a kinship with so many of the works. But one of my all-time favorites, which I hope comes back on view soon, is Some/One by Do-Ho Suh. For those who may not have seen the piece in a while, it looks like a chainmail tunic on steroids—the skirt can overflow a gallery space. From a distance, it’s elegant, evocative, imposing. When you get closer and find out that the “chainmail” is thousands of dog tags, each individually stamped with a name and ID number, all of which are made up—well, it provokes a lot of intense looking and thoughtful discussion.
When not at SAM, what do you do for fun?
My favorite non-volunteer activities are reading, doing needlework, attending concerts and lectures, weeding the yard, and walking in places near and far from home.
What is something that most people might not immediately know about you?
I’m often told that I seem calm and organized, but I’m actually quite emotional and reactive. Raising two sons helped me perfect my poker face.
What is a simple hack, trick, or some advice that you’ve used over time to help you better fulfill your role at SAM?
As a docent, I see my role as a facilitator. I’m here to help people, especially children and youth, feel more comfortable thinking about and responding to art. To do that, I supply a framework for guests to look and ponder, and then I try to ask questions that stimulate robust discussion. I also try to have fun, a bit of self-deprecating humor often sets people at ease in the museum.
– Danie Allinice, Manager of Volunteer Programs

Lawrence Lemaoana’s Cloth Banners: In This Imperfect Present Moment

Pam McClusky on Oct 3 2018

Lawrence Lemaoana’s Cloth Banners: In This Imperfect Present Moment

Laughing at leaders in public can be a welcome release. Lawrence Lemaoana created banners to shout back at the powerful president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma. Zuma, who was a controversial leader, had many annoying traits. One of his most despised public maneuvers was a tendency to dance as if there were no problems in his midst, and then add the antagonism of raising his fist as a sign of victory. Observers groaned. Lemaoana said of this, “Once the raised fist was a symbol used to motivate the people for a public cause, but here Zuma uses it as a tool to enrich himself, to bolster himself against any criticism or interference.”

In another cloth banner, the artist mimics a newspaper announcing “Things Fall Apart.” As the artist said, “You get hit by those headlines on the side of the road. On the one hand, it’s informative, but it’s also dangerous; there’s almost a propagandistic element to it. It shapes the way we live.” His choice of a cloth known as kanga is another obvious clue of disapproval. When Jacob Zuma went on trial for rape in 2006, he claimed that the young woman wearing a kanga cloth wrapped around her was signaling an invitation to assault her. Lemaoana turned that assault right back at Zuma by making his banners from that cloth, and by offering a chance to laugh or express outrage at Zuma’s dangerous absurdity. See Lemaona’s work as part of In This Imperfect Present Moment at SAM through June 16, 2019, and experience this welcome release.

– Pam McClusky, SAM’s Curator of African and Oceanic Art

Images: Newsmaker of the Year, 2008, Lawrence Lemaoana, South African, b. 1982, Cloth applique, 42 1/8 x 31 1/2 in., Private collection, © Lawrence Lemaoana, photo courtesy AFRONOVA GALLERY. Installation view of In This Imperfect Present Moment at Seattle Art Museum. 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Seattle Asian Art Museum: A Storied Past Inspires a Bright Future

Seattle Art Museum on Oct 2 2018

Seattle Asian Art Museum: A Storied Past Inspires a Bright Future

“Renovating a museum that is an architectural icon is no small task,” explains Sam Miller, Partner at LMN Architects, the firm overseeing the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s renovation and expansion design. Preservation of the landmark building is essential, but modern demands necessitate change. These changes include improved ADA accessibility, seismic and climate control upgrades, and other electrical/mechanical controls imperative to present-day museum standards. The renovation features a modest expansion that adds exhibition and educational space, allowing the museum to better serve the community.

The Art Deco building is considered one of architect Carl F. Gould’s greatest achievements. “Our goal has been to impact the existing spaces as minimally as possible,” Miller says of LMN’s approach to the renovation process. “When there’s any new intervention that’s not replicating or preserving the historic architecture, we’re distinguishing the work with a more contemporary detailing so it’s clearly different from the building’s historic fabric.”

Gould’s original design serves as inspiration to LMN’s renovation plan, as does historic Volunteer Park, designed by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm in 1903. “There is this beautiful building in a beautiful historic park, and yet the two weren’t connected. We felt restoring some of that connection would be a great opportunity,” Miller says.

He explained how Gould’s design incorporated skylights that flooded the galleries with light, as well as windows with views into Volunteer Park. However, later building additions and a transition towards artificial lighting closed off many of those elements. The renovations will include LED light boxes that allow display of light-sensitive objects in an environment inspired by the original skylights. LMN also designed a glass lobby addition that improves building circulation while also providing park views. Conceived by Gould as an indoor-outdoor space, the Fuller Garden Court will also offer those views, through two new openings that will connect it to the lobby. “As you stand in the Garden Court, you’re going to have this incredible view of the park,” Miller says.

The community was integral to the design process. SAM received feedback from the City, local parks groups, and other community members. In addition to suggesting changes to a building staircase and landscaping that were incorporated into the final design, the community also led the museum back to an important source of inspiration—the Olmsted Brothers’ historic design for Volunteer Park pathways. In response to this feedback, SAM is restoring a set of Olmsted-designed paths. This opportunity to complete and augment these walkways through Volunteer Park speaks to the nature of the restoration project: historic preservation that has led to design inspiration.

In the months ahead, we will continue exploring the future of the museum as the renovations progress towards the much-anticipated re-opening in 2019.

– Erin Langner, freelance writer

Images: Eduardo Calderón.

Muse/News: A dazzling assembly, fantasy as a tool, and experiencing “experiences”

Rachel Eggers on Oct 1 2018

Muse/News: A dazzling assembly, fantasy as a tool, and experiencing “experiences”

SAM News

Thump! That’s the happy sound of The New York Times fall arts preview hitting doorsteps. SAM’s major fall exhibition, Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India, was featured in their round-up of “Over 100 Not-to-Miss Shows From East Coast to West.” The show traveling from the Mehrangarh Museum Trust was dubbed “a dazzling assembly.”

Peacock in the Desert opens October 18; it was also a Seattle Times pick for one of the “hottest Seattle events for October” and is among The Seattle Weekly’s choices for “the best entertainment the season has to offer” for fall arts.

Local News

Think tiny! Curbed’s Sarah Anne Lloyd shares that the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture has posted an RFP for “tiny cultural spaces.” Applications are due on Friday, October 14.

Seek help: Here’s two reviews on the Frye Art Museum’s current exhibition, Group Therapy, from Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne and Seattle Weekly’s Seth Sommerfeld.

The October issue of City Arts is out now, with features on writer Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and poet Quenton Baker—and a blazing cover story on Double Exposure artist Tracy Rector.

“Rector’s ability to seduce through stories is the stuff of hallowed auteurs. But it’s her ability to vanish behind the story that makes her work so enthralling. Fantasy doesn’t always have to be an escape; rather a tool to reframe and change the world.”

Inter/National News

Yay for art history majors: When Denise Murrell’s professor ignored the Black servant in Édouard Manet’s Olympia, she made it her thesis subject—and it’s now an exhibition at Columbia that will travel to Paris’ Musée d’Orsay.

Five design proposals for a planned Boston monument to Marin Luther King, Jr. are now before the citizens of the city; the finalists are Barbara Chase-Riboud, David Adjaye, Hank Willis Thomas, Yinka Shonibare, and Wodiczko.

The New York Times’ “internet culture” writer Amanda Hess with a hilarious and haunting take on the now-ubiquitous pop-up “experiences” and what, exactly, they’re for.

“What began as a kicky story idea became a masochistic march through voids of meaning. I found myself sleepwalking through them, fantasizing about going to a real museum. Or watching television. Or being on Twitter.”

And Finally

Articles with titles like “Favorite Snacks of Famous Artists” will always get an instant click from me.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Maharaja Abhai Singh on Horseback, c. 1725, Dalchand, Jodhpur, opaque watercolor and gold on paper, Mehrangarh Museum Trust, photo: Neil Greentree.

Object of the Week: Dream of the Language Wheel

Elisabeth Smith on Sep 28 2018

Object of the Week: Dream of the Language Wheel

Freedom of worship is one of the founding principles of American democracy. After all, the First Amendment forms our constitutional religious rights: it protects the free exercise and establishment of religion. In President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1940 State of the Union, delivered before the United States’ entry into World War II, he reminded the American people that the United States was committed to securing a future in which four essential human freedoms are upheld, the second of which is, in his words, the “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.”

This is a powerful and important message, especially today. And while there are many works in SAM’s collection that give visual form to the freedom of worship, there are also a number of works that represent the opposite narrative: religious freedoms being taken away. For example, there are a number of objects in our Native American galleries whose value and function during potlatches tell a different story of persecution, as such ceremonies were banned by in 1885. Unfortunately, there are too many stories like this told through our material and visual culture. So, when thinking about freedom of worship, we must also ask who is free to worship.

In the piece pictured here, Dream of the Language Wheel, Guy Anderson offers up a unifying religious message. A member of the Northwest School, Anderson was a peer of Mark Tobey and Morris Graves and known for his abstract “mystic” paintings that incorporated motifs ranging from Zen Buddhism to Hinduism to Native American cosmologies, among others. Formally, the painting exhibits a degree of visual tension due to its divided canvas with dark and light elements. Embedded within the upper half are symbols from Northwest Coast groups—such as a fish and raven, whose treatments reference the iconic formline style of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples. In the lower half, we see early Christian symbols similarly contained within an abstract field.

While this work could be interpreted through a lens of cultural appropriation, Anderson’s blending of spiritual practices and cultures other than his own evinces the artist’s freedom of worship, developing a unique brand of spirituality which manifested itself artistically. It is also no accident that Anderson brings together Native American and early Christian iconography, given the long and fraught history between Native communities and Christian colonizers; however, the title of the work—Dream of the Language Wheel—holds, I think, an important key to the work’s meaning. A tool used to help find and translate words among different languages, a language wheel is meant to make things synonymous—that is, forge similarities. Perhaps Anderson believed that art was that thing, like a language wheel, that could unite us rather than divide us, showing us how we are more similar in our religious beliefs than we are different.

– Elisabeth Smith, Collections Coordinator

Image: Dream of the Language Wheel, 1962, Guy Anderson, oil on canvas, 81 x 48 in., Gift of the Marshall and Helen Hatch Collection, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2012.15.3 © Guy Anderson and Deryl Walls

My Favorite Things: Marc Onetto on “Shipwreck off the Coast of Alaska” at Seattle Art Museum

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Sep 26 2018

“This painting is in fact very good when you think about the fact that the painter only had a sketch from the logbook and some description. He had never seen it.”
– Marc Onetto

Take it from a sailor who has been to Lituya Bay—Louis-Philippe Crépin accurately captured the setting of this expedition disaster in his painting, Shipwreck off the Coast of Alaska. Born in Paris, Crépin became a specialist in marine painting and made his debut at the Salon of 1796 with a painting of the port of Brest. His primary patron throughout his long career would be the Naval Ministry of the government. Many of his works are in the National Maritime Museum in Paris, while others are in provincial museums throughout France. This work is likely the first painting by Crépin in an American museum.

Marc Onetto sails to Alaska annually. After finding a publication of explorer Count Jean-François de La Pérouse’s logbook in California, Onetto was inspired to visit Lituya Bay, among other uncharted Alaskan territories where La Pérouse’s expedition traveled in 1786. Thankfully Onetto has not encountered the early morning ebbing current in the pass of the bay that led to the tragic death of 21 sailors in a matter of minutes. Experience the drama of this painting in person when you see it hanging in Extreme Nature: Two Landscape Paintings from the Age of Enlightenment on view through December 9, 2018.

Want to know more about this painting and how it came into SAM’s collection? Read “The Ins and Outs of Acquisitions: A Newly Discovered french Masterpiece.” 

Subscribe to our My Favorite Things playlist on YouTube for more interviews featuring artists, innovators, specialists, and community leaders.

Artwork: Shipwreck Off the Coast of Alaska, 1806, Louis-Philippe Crepin, French, 1772-1851, oil on canvas, 40 15/16 × 58 11/16 in., Seattle Art Museum, European Art Acquisition Fund; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Art Acquisition Fund; by exchange Gift of Mrs. Lew V. Day in memory of her husband; Gift of Arthur F. Ederer; H. Neil Meitzler, Issaquah, Washington; Col. Philip L. Thurber Memorial; Gift of Mrs. Donald E. Frederick; The late Mr. Arrigo M. Young and Mrs. Young in memory of their son, Lieut. (j.g.) Lawrence H. Young; Phillips Morrison Memorial; Gift of Mrs. Oswald Brown, in memory of her parents Simeon and Fannie B. Leland; Gift of Miss Grace G. Denny in memory of her sister Miss Coral M. Denny; Gift of friends in memory of Frank Molitor; Purchased from funds contributed in memory of Henry H. Judson; Purchased from the bequest of Charles M. Clark; Gift of Mrs. John C. Atwood, Jr.; Norman and Amelia Davis Collection; Norman Davis Collection; Mrs. Cebert Baillargeon, in memory of her husband, 2017.15.

SAM Films: Night Heat – 41st Film Noir Series

Greg Olson on Sep 25 2018

SAM Films: Night Heat – 41st Film Noir Series

Who can sleep when the night is a fever of perfume and gun smoke, the wails of saxophones and police sirens, when acting on impulse is better than a dream? Called “the best series in Seattle film history” by Charles R. Cross, this is the world’s longest-running film noir celebration. Get your series tickets online now or try your luck day of for standby tickets on a first-come, first-served basis.

September 27: White Heat
(Raoul Walsh, 1949)

A tense, wound-up gangster’s (James Cagney) inner demons are always threatening to boil over. He’s got a beautiful wife (Virginia Mayo), but his heart, his tormented emotions, are all tangled up with his mother (Margaret Wycherley). He sits in her lap while she soothes his pounding headaches. A robber and a killer, Cagney’s sent to prison, where he doesn’t know that his cellmate (Edmond O’Brien) is an undercover cop trying to ferret further incriminating information from him. On the outside, Mayo’s falling in with Cagney’s hunky rival (Steve Cochran). Behind bars, Cody’s cut off from his consoling and advising mother, and he rages out of control in a famous mess hall scene. O’Brien’s a simpatico cellmate, but Cagney’s just got to crash out and become the man Ma wants him to be: grasping, destroying, making it to the top of the world. In 35mm, 114 min.

October 4: Leave Her to Heaven
(John M. Stahl, 1945)

The sensuous, saturated visuals of this film convinced everyone that a knockout film noir could be in Technicolor. It’s novelist Cornell Wilde’s lucky day. On the train he meets a stunningly beautiful woman (green-eyed Gene Tierney), who’s reading, and enjoying, his latest book. Within a few days Wilde and this most romantic woman are deeply in love. In record time she scatters her beloved father’s ashes to the winds, riding fast through the New Mexico desert, jilts her fiancé, (Vincent Price) and announces her coming betrothal to Wilde. Tierney’s ardor for him is absolute, but it’s a weaponized devotion. She wants to command his attention and affection, and sometimes she wishes that his typewriter, his crippled brother (Darryl Hickman), and her sweet sister (Jeanne Crain) would just go away. Luscious 1940s art direction gives us a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired desert house, a Maine forest retreat and a comfy New England cottage. As Martin Scorsese says, “a lost paradise, its beauty ravished by the heroine’s perverse nature.” Critic-author David Thomson calls the film “a mad goddess creation; if you want a wild thrill one night, I know which way I’d go.” In 35mm, 110 min.

October 11: Force of Evil
(Abraham Polonsky, 1948)

Director Polonsky and actor John Garfield, both Bronx-born, both scarred by the anti-Communist witch hunts, crafted this gritty blank-verse poem of the urban jungle, that conflates a soul’s and a society’s corruption. America is devoted to making money and strategizing to make more. Nothing new there, but there are gradations of commitment and devotion to the pursuit. Corporate racketeer Ray Roberts is all in, scheming to monopolize the symbiotic relationship between illegal betting and the banks that provide the winnings, and lawyer Garfield will make it happen. He arranges for the July fourth lucky number seven-seventy-six to win all over New York, so all the small-time betting banks will have to borrow money from Roberts to pay so many winners, and then he’ll take them over. Garfield will make a cool million, but his conscience troubles him. His estranged brother Thomas Gomez is one of the little guys who’ll get squeezed. Is it too late for Garfield to act on his better nature? Or is he too far on a path “going down and down, to the bottom of the world.” Music by David Raksin (“Laura”). In 35mm, 87 min.

October 25: On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1951)

Nicholas Ray is the cinematic poet of human alienation, and the saving grace of connection. He studied architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright, and understands the shaping influence of the places we inhabit. Tough cop Robert Ryan is brutal with himself and others in New York’s concrete labyrinth. His youthful sports trophies? Who cares? When he breaks the rules and savagely beats a suspect, he yells, “Why do you punks make me do this?” To keep from getting fired, he’s sent from the dark city to pristine snow fields upstate. But human wildlife is everywhere, and he helps track a child-killer with a man (Ward Bond) bent on illegal vengeance. Is there any way Ryan can see a different way of being? The suspect’s sister (Ida Lupino), herself isolated geographically and in her blindness, tells Ryan, who trusts no one, that she has to trust everyone. Music by Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite composer Bernard Herrmann (Psycho). In 35mm, 82 min.

November 1: Sudden Fear
(David Miller, 1952)

Wealthy Broadway dramatist Joan Crawford rejects actor Jack Palance as the lead in her new play, but falls for him big-time on a train trip to San Francisco. They marry, and Crawford is deliriously happy: she’s found her leading man for life. But Palance is secretly writing his own life script, which features a major part for his smoldering ex-flame Gloria Grahame, who’s got her eyes on Crawford’s substantial bank balance. Add some newfangled 1950s technology, and the elements for one of film noir’s most suspenseful climaxes are firmly in place. In 35mm, 110 min.

November 8: Wicked Woman
(Russell Rouse, 1953)

This seedy, down-and-dirty gem features luscious B-movie siren Beverly Michaels as the new waitress at the bar where muscular Richard Egan mixes the drinks. She can’t keep her hands off him, he responds in kind, and she concocts a scheme to have him sell the bar and carry her off to Mexico. But there are complications. Egan’s alcoholic wife (Evelyn Scott) is the one who owns the bar. And toad-like little Percy Helton, who’s always had lustful eyes for Michaels, can ruin everything. Maybe there’s something she can do to keep her dream alive. In 35mm, 77 min.

November 15: The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)

Film noir usually presents the shadow side of the human psyche in adult terms. But Laughton’s masterpiece immerses us in a child’s view of a grown-up world of greed, violence and twisted sexuality that’s almost overwhelming, where adults loom like monsters and angels, and reality, fairy tale and nightmare merge. Via cinematographer Stanley Cortez’s searing images, Laughton floats us into a world where playing kids find the molested body of a woman in a cellar, and a dead woman sits at the bottom of a river, her hair streaming in the current. Where a Bible-crazed preacher with a knife (Robert Mitchum) tries to get little Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce to tell him where some money’s hidden. They won’t say, and they have to get away, floating on that river, watched by innocent animals. Laughton’s aesthetic of power-through-simplicity was inspired by D.W. Griffith’s seminal films, and Griffith’s great heroine, Lilian Gish, provides a sanctuary for lost children. She’s got a spine of steel, but Mitchum, worse than any boogey man, just keeps coming. With Shelley Winters, Peter Graves. Screenplay by James Agee and Laughton. In 35mm, 93 min.

November 29: Lilith
(Robert Rossen, 1964)

In the Bible and the Talmud, Lilith is a female demon, a destroyer of men. In film noir, femme fatales can be brash and harsh, or as softly seductive as a spider web in a beautiful meadow. A young man (Warren Beatty) with a war-wounded soul returns to his home town. He needs to rediscover who he is and find a purpose in life. Working at a park-like mental hospital, he comes under the spell of Lilith (Jean Seberg), an artistic woman who wants to share her love with the world. But Seberg’s golden aura casts shadows, ensnaring patient Peter Fonda, who touchingly speaks of the life he’ll lead after he’s released. Beatty goes home to sleep at night, but home is where the heart is. Great acting all around, with Beatty trying to gather, and find himself in his pauses and hesitations, and Gene Hackman tense and wonderful in his first film. But Seberg is the sun. With Kim Hunter. In 35mm, 114 min.

December 6: Heat
(Michael Mann, 1995)

Two men in L.A. Both hunters, both prey. One takes money that isn’t his own, the other tries to stop him. A criminal, a cop. Robert de Niro and Al Pacino. Ice and fire, coming to a boil. Cool and controlled, De Niro and his pals (Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore) pull off big robberies with military precision. Steamed-up, swaggering Pacino uses intuition and manpower to track them down, with limited success. Master stylist Michael Mann gives this monumental crime saga irresistible forward momentum, but everything stops so two great American actors, De Niro and Pacino, can appear together for the first time and have coffee. The outlaw and the lawman are both doing what they’re best at, and it’s their nature to keep on with it. But for moments out of time they talk about the fullness and emptiness of their lives, person to person. This isn’t a truce, there will be skirmishes, machine gun fire on downtown streets, people lying dead. They’ll meet again at the airport at night, out in the field, where planes glide like souls, some coming in, some leaving, on the soft sultry air. With Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman. Digital Cinema, 172 min.

– Greg Olson, Manager of Film Programs

Photos: Courtesy of Photofest

Muse/News: A SAM award-winner, kinesthetic truth, and art goes lunar

Rachel Eggers on Sep 24 2018

Muse/News: A SAM award-winner, kinesthetic truth, and art goes lunar

SAM News

This week, the Seattle Times shared SAM’s news that multidisciplinary artist Natalie Ball is the winner of the 2018 Betty Bowen Award. Ball approaches her sculptural work through the lens of auto-ethnography. Look out for the artist’s solo exhibition at SAM in spring 2019.

Our major fall exhibition, Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India, is among the highlights in Zoe Sayler’s Seattle Times story on the upcoming visual arts season that promises “something for everyone.”

SAM participated in an important research collaboration between Artnet and In Other Words, exploring in-depth how institutions have—or have not—moved the needle on showing and buying art by Black artists.

RIP to the legendary architect Robert Venturi; he and his wife, Denise Scott Brown, designed the 1991 downtown Seattle Art Museum building.

Local News

Dance critic Sandra Kurtz previews Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Jerome Robbins Festival for Seattle Weekly, noting the iconic choreographer’s “kinesthetic truth.”

Seattle Eater reports: Food science nerd Nathan Myhrvold, creator of the Modernist Cuisine cookbooks, is opening a food photography gallery in SAM’s neighborhood.

Margo Vansynghel of City Arts spoke with artist Lawrence Pitre about community, the Central District, and his new narrative painting series We Are One at 4Culture.

“I knew the Central Area had been going through a lot of urban renewal. I went to see the Migration Series at the Seattle Art Museum and thought, I could do a series capturing urban life, showing the historical legacy of the Central Area.”

(Inter)National News

Just in time for the 10-year anniversary of the 2008 financial meltdown, a 26-foot-tall painted steel rose by German artist Isa Genzken has been installed in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, intending to inspire empathy and equality.

Speaking of the financial breakdown, the New York Times’ Scott Reyburn explores why “the art market remains one of the most glaringly visible symptoms of global income inequality.”

Artsy’s Scott Indrisek on photographer Robert Frank’s game-changing photography book The Americans, and why the monograph—turning 60 years old—matters today.

“’Frank revealed a people who were plagued by racism, ill-served by their politicians, and also rendered increasingly numb by the rising culture of consumerism,’ Greenough noted. ‘But it’s also important to point out that he found new areas of beauty in those simple, overlooked corners of American life—in diners, or on the street.’”

And Finally

“Finally, I can tell you that I choose to go the moon.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Portrait of Natalie Ball by Greg Wahl-Stephens, courtesy of the artist.

Object of the Week: Painting Number 49, Berlin

Rachel Eggers on Sep 21 2018

Object of the Week: Painting Number 49, Berlin

This Object of the Week is inspired by SAM’s special tour series, part of “For Freedoms’ 50 State Initiative,” which features programming held at arts institutions across the US to create civic dialogue about the 2018 midterm elections. Reflecting on artwork and exhibitions on view at SAM, staff members are presenting in-gallery tours that consider each of the four freedoms and connect to contemporary society.

“For Freedoms,” a collaborative project founded by artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman, is inspired by artist Norman Rockwell’s paintings of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” (1941)—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

This week’s post by SAM staff member Rachel Eggers explores freedom of speech in the work of Marsden Hartley.

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) was an innovative Modernist artist, incorporating elements of abstraction, Expressionism, Cubism, and Primitivism in his paintings. Born in Lewiston, Maine, Hartley is known for expressive visions of his home state, including landscapes and portraits of fisherman.

But Hartley was more than a regionalist. Perhaps his most intriguing body of work is his “German officer paintings,” created while living in Berlin from 1914 to 1915. SAM has one of these extraordinary paintings in its collection, and Painting Number 49, Berlin is now on view in tribute to the late arts patron and collector, Barney A. Ebsworth, who gifted it to the museum. The painting’s thick brushstrokes, vivacious primary colors, and mysterious abstracted symbolism reveal an artist enraptured and enrapturing, enticing the viewer with a deeply personal vision that melds the physical and spiritual—and, sometimes uncomfortably, the political.

Hartley arrived in Berlin in May 1913, though it felt to the artist like a homecoming. The imperial German capital was a hub of industrial innovation and social life; it also had a relatively liberal attitude toward homosexuality. He was delighted by the city’s grand military parades, with their ostentatious display of banners, flags, plumage, and men on white horses. In them, he saw a heroic ideal of Man.

He had befriended a Prussian officer named Karl von Freyburg, who may have been the love of his life. When von Freyburg died in battle at the age of 24, Hartley plunged into a deep grief—and eventually to the creation of this fascinating series of paintings.

Painting Number 49, Berlin is exuberant, loose, and colorful—but, at its heart, it’s a memorial portrait rendered in abstracted symbols. At the center is the Iron Cross, the medal for bravery that von Freyburg was awarded. There’s an officer’s plumed helmet and epaulets; the number “24” refers to Karl’s age when he was killed. Across the bottom blooms a setting sun, radiating red: the color of martyrdom.

The painting bursts with uncomfortable—even heartbreaking—tensions between youth and death, the state and the individual, openness and restriction, color and darkness. Unable to express his sexuality and his love, Hartley turns to a network of symbols and signs. In his unimaginable grief, he merges the physical, the spiritual—and of course, the political—inventing a highly personal visual language.

–Rachel Eggers, Manager of Public Relations

Image: Painting Number 49, Berlin, 1914-15, Marsden Hartley, oil on canvas, 47 x 39 1/2 in., Partial and promised gift of Barney A. Ebsworth, 2001.1067.

Seohee Kim: Emerging Arts Leader Intern Look at SAM

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 20 2018

Seohee Kim: Emerging Arts Leader Intern Look at SAM

During my first week as an Emerging Arts Leader Intern at Seattle Art Museum, I was told that by the last week of the internship this reflection post for the blog would be due. I remember thinking, “Oh, that sounds easy enough—just summarize what happened in a paragraph or two.” Clearly, I had no idea what was headed my way. The past week has been an endless cycle of drafting, writing, editing, only to draft again. (You know that feeling of when there’s so much you want to say, and say eloquently, that words and sentences are flying around your mind and you’re scrambling to make sense of them, but you actually just end up staring at the blinking text cursor for an hour? Yeah, that.)

When I reflect on the past 10 weeks of my internship, I imagine having one of those View-Masters (they’re still relevant, right?) and clicking through reels of moments at SAM. It starts with the welcoming faces of everyone I meet coming into view. Then, a whirlwind of back-to-back meetings; getting lost in the labyrinth of the administrative office; storage visits with Carrie (thank you, Carrie!); always pressing the wrong level in the elevator; researching objects; conducting informational interviews with staff; preparing for my My Favorite Things tour; taking part in Career Day, Seattle Art Fair, Summer at SAM, and Remix; and so much more. As if in slow motion, images of my last week include the nerve-wracking day of my tour and saying goodbye to everyone I had the privilege of working with.

I’m surprised how much I changed in this short time span. In the beginning, I thought I knew enough about diversity and equity work from courses at university and my past experiences that I was only focused on giving my perspectives rather than allowing myself to be vulnerable and molded by those far more experienced than I. Working closely with the equity team this past summer, I found myself constantly learning, practicing, and honing the use of an equity lens in my work. I experienced the behind-the-scenes of a museum and community working towards transparency and racial and social equity. I saw every meeting ask how to be inclusive, provide access, and advance equity. There was, and is, so much I don’t know, not only regarding the arts and museums, but also in becoming a better ally for community. Watching and working alongside these amazing and passionate individuals, I’ve come to reevaluate myself, my goals, and my passions on a weekly basis.

What resulted of this reevaluation was the “My Favorite Things” tour I had the privilege of leading (I still can’t believe I led a tour). To close off, I’d like to share a snippet from what I shared at the tour.

“We tend to get easily distracted if an issue doesn’t directly affect us. From this internship and conducting research for this tour the past few weeks, I’ve realized again and again that privilege doesn’t always mean monetary wealth or status. It could be not having to worry about being seen as a threat walking in your own neighborhood late at night. It could be not feeling your heart pound every time you see words like ICE and DACA and UNDOCUMENTED in the headlines. It could be your close friends and family asking you if you’re doing alright and being able to genuinely answer that you’re well instead of brushing it off with an “I’m okay” when you really cried yourself to sleep at night because you’re supposed to have everything under control. Just because it doesn’t affect us directly, doesn’t mean it’s not there nor does it mean it’s less important. As a community, in order to work towards true equity, we have to embrace and endure all pains as if they are our own. We must face our worst selves and acknowledge our lacking. It’s going to be difficult; it will be uncomfortable…but I invite you to join me in this continuing journey of becoming more aware, becoming more responsible, and becoming more informed not only for ourselves but also for each other.”

To everyone I met and worked with this past summer, thank you so much for your continuous kindness, encouragement, and acceptance. I’ve never felt more welcome and cherished in a workplace setting than at SAM. And, thank you for all you do on a daily basis to work for and better our community.

–Seohee Kim, 2018 SAM Emerging Arts Leader Intern

Amy Sherald’s Archetypes: In This Imperfect Present Moment

Pam McClusky on Sep 19 2018

Amy Sherald’s Archetypes: In This Imperfect Present Moment

Unless you’re looking at this image on a gigantic screen with perfect resolution, you’re missing the impact of this Saint Woman. She’s slightly larger than life, which fits the premise of the artist who elevates her subjects to a status that goes beyond our normal vision. Amy Sherald paints portraits that are not trying to convince you they are a substitute for the actual person. Instead, she paints archetypes. She is taking the time to change our minds about what a portrait can be, an evocation of a saint whose name you do not know, but who is standing and waiting for you to recognize them.

This saint is surrounded by a halo of what may appear as bright yellow on your screen. If you’re just seeing a flat expanse of color, you’re missing the depth of a painted surface that is full of nuance, with swirling dimensions that activate this setting. The same nuances of color are true of the skin, which is in variations of gray. Amy Sherald chose this color shift for a reason, “to exclude the idea of color as race.” She also has this woman’s body face forward, while her head is turned in profile. What captures her attention is unknown, and it challenges you to wonder why she’s holding herself so still while her dress is blown in a breeze of urgency. It’s the stance of a saint who’s worth coming to see in person. Visit her with a trip to see In This Imperfect Present Moment, an installation of artworks by 15 artists conveying vibrant narratives that resonate across global boundaries.

– Pam McClusky, SAM’s Curator of African and Oceanic Art

Images: Saint Woman, 2015, Amy Sherald, American, b. 1973, Oil on canvas, 54 x 43 in., Private collection, photo courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago. Installation view of In This Imperfect Present Moment at Seattle Art Museum. 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Man-altered landscapes, erasure poems, and a neon-hued restoration fail

Nina Dubinsky on Sep 17 2018

Muse/News: Man-altered landscapes, erasure poems, and a neon-hued restoration fail

SAM News

Don’t miss part two of Michael Upchurch’s write-ups for Crosscut on smaller installations now on view at SAM: this week, he highlights New Topographics, featuring photographs of “man-altered landscapes,” and American Modernism, which includes two incredible paintings from SAM’s collection by Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley.

The fall edition of The Stranger’s Art & Performance Quarterly is out! Lots of SAM shows and events are among their critics’ recommendations, including the exhibitions Peacock in the Desert and Noble Splendor, the annual Diwali Ball, and film events Night Heat: The 41st Film Noir Series and Indian Film Masterpiece: The Apu Trilogy.

Local News

Sarah Anne Lloyd of Curbed Seattle tracks the important news of the Mystery Coke Machine’s sudden public appearances following its recent Capitol Hill dislocation.

Seattle poet Quenton Baker’s Ballast opens at the Frye Art Museum on October 6; Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne interviews Baker about his erasure poems examining the 1841 revolt aboard the Creole slave ship.

Brangien Davis of Crosscut interviews surgical nurse and artist Andrea Gahl about the doctor portraits lining UW’s surgical department hallway—and her new portraits that combat stereotypes about what a surgeon looks like.

“I hope my portraits not only illustrate the diversity of the surgeons I work with,” Gahl says, “But also the myriad ways that that diversity enriches us.”

Inter/National News

TIME Magazine highlights “31 People Who Are Changing the South,” including Bryan Stevenson of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Christy Coleman of the American Civil War Museum.

Artnet’s Caroline Goldstein with a round-up of the best and worst of the art world this week, including the discovery of hidden treasure (best) and an eye-popping restoration fail (worst).

The New York Times’ Holland Cotter reviews Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which opens today at the Brooklyn Museum and explores expanding definitions of “black” art.

“The stakes were high, the debate could be bitter. But the results were win-win. What we see in the show itself is not suppression but florescence.”

And Finally

Finally some genius made the Pizza Patio Set.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of New Topographics at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Stephanie Fink.

Object of the Week: Caterpillar Suit I

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 14 2018

Object of the Week: Caterpillar Suit I

“True transformation occurs only when we can look at ourselves squarely and face our attachments and inner demons, free from the buzz of commercial distraction and false social realities. We have to retreat into our own cocoons and come face-to-face with who we are. We have to turn toward our own inner darkness. For only by abandoning its attachments and facing the darkness does the caterpillar’s body begin to spread out and its light, beautiful wings begin to form.”

– Julia Hill, The Legacy of Luna

As a child of immigrants, and an immigrant myself, I adopted the identity of being an “Other” and “Alien” from a fairly young age. My parents have depended on me to fill out official forms and documents since I was old enough to interpret 70% of the words on the page and Google the rest. Any time the question of citizenship came up, my hand would naturally gravitate towards the box next to the word “Other” as if it were second nature. I never really understood what it meant—I just knew it should be kept from my peers out of shame and fear of being different.

Walter Oltmann, through his sculpture Caterpillar Suit I, shares and explains his interest in the boundary between human beings and insects—referring to the latter as “[our] most extreme other.”[1] He explains that as “insects evoke notions of threat, especially when encountered in swarms,” we as human beings fail to identify with this “Other” and naturally recoil/feel repulsed by this exotic entity.[2] Thus, we create a divide between “us” and “them.”

In the current state of our country, the word “Other” seems to be thrown around more often than it has in the past. The media exposes us to “Other” and “Alien” in bold, red font, associated with terms and phrases such as “illegal,” “criminal,” and even “invading in swarms,” distancing the reader or viewer from this ominous other. It permits and trains the broader public to fabricate a certain image of these other beings, and subconsciously feel repulsed when they hear stories in the news framed around the politics of immigration. But how accurate are our expectations of this “other” entity, especially when they’ve been influenced by biased opinions of the media? Oltmann, in enlarging the scale of the normally miniscule caterpillar, purposefully forces his audience to “observe misunderstood insects closely” and “identify with the other” in hopes of shifting our perspective that’s usually fixated on their mechanical features and alien behavior and the threat they pose to us.[3]

Rather than turning to the immediate discomfort and repulsion that might follow a failure to identify with an “other,” or those different from ourselves, perhaps we can find inspiration through this Caterpillar Suit and practice shifting our perspective from distancing ourselves from otherness to understanding and accepting one another.

– Seohee Kim, SAM Emerging Arts Leader Intern

[1] Vargas, Cintia. “Interview with Walter Oltmann.” Cintia Vargas, 17 Apr. 2014, www.cintiareyes.com/interview-with-walter-oltman/
[2] “Walter Oltmann.” The Artists’ Press, www.artprintsa.com/Walter-Oltmann.html
[3] Leiman, Layla. “Walter Oltmann – In the Weave: 30 Years of Making Art.” Derriere, WordPress, 29 Jan. 2014, derriereartblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/walter-oltmann-in-the-weave-30-years-of-making-art/
Images: Installation view of Lessons from The Institute of Empathy at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photos: Natali Wiseman.

Community Gallery: Art for Growth and Healing

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Sep 13 2018

Community Gallery: Art for Growth and Healing

Sharing your deepest feelings in front of a group of people takes a lot of courage. It can be very transformative and therapeutic. This is what the Art with Heart Chill and Spill curriculum empowers students to do—it is a great tool that allows youth to navigate their emotions. Art with Heart is a nonprofit organization that uses art to help kids heal through their creative expression resources.

The day that Antonio confessed that even though his mother, who struggles with alcohol dependency, abandoned him, he still loved and cared for her. This young man took a huge step towards maturity and forgiveness, opening his heart while reading aloud his powerful last word letter, setting him free from his feelings.

Many of our program participants grow up in households without paternal or maternal figures or formal education. Many have had to escape and survive situations that most people cannot even imagine. Their resilience never ceases to surprise me. My hope and motivation is to teach them how to cope with their emotions through creative expression. Often times, when I observe their art and listen to their stories, I become the student and they become my teachers.

In every weekly class, the young men are able to express their varying emotions in a supportive, respectful, and safe environment. Our ground rules are very basic, as we all are looking for the same things: love, acceptance, and respect! I make sure that everyone understands that this is a special class, it is not about how cool their art projects might look, but about the process and what they learn about themselves.

Life is full of challenges and opportunities. Creating art means taking risks. Creative expression means exploring, recognizing, labeling, and understanding feelings. Sometimes it means confronting big emotions. Often it means accepting, surrendering, and forgiving the people who have hurt us, so that we find space to be free and to grow stronger, exactly as Antonio decided to do!

– Teresa Luengo, Art with Heart facilitator at Friends of Youth

Images: Making My Way, linoleum block, printmaking ink. Made by a Friends of Youth resident during Art with Heart’s Chill & Spill Program, Age: 17. Courtesy of Art with Heart. Photo by Alan Abramowitz, artwork by Art with Heart program participant at Brettler Family Place. Photo by Sera Rogers. artwork by an Art with Heart participant at Friends of Youth.

 

Dovey Martinez: Emerging Arts Leader Look at SAM

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 11 2018

Dovey Martinez: Emerging Arts Leader Look at SAM

As I walked towards the Seattle Art Museum to begin my Emerging Arts Leader internship, I was excited. I knew I would be working with the education and curatorial departments, but had only the minutest idea of what the internship would entail. At the staff entrance, I saw the other Emerging Arts Leader Intern for the summer nervously sitting on the couch. As Seohee Kim and I began to get to know each other, it was apparent we had many similarities. We are both passionate about immigrant rights and we both originally intended to take a law career track but found ourselves working in the arts, despite the initial backlash from our parents. I didn’t know it then, but Seohee and I would become an inseparable and fierce duo.

Everyone we met was genuine, welcoming, caring, and passionate. I honestly could not believe my eyes, it seemed almost suspicious. The education department glows with kindness and a love for the Seattle Art Museum’s mission to connect art to life. I went to college in Connecticut, and although I was raised in Seattle, I didn’t have many friends or connections with the arts community. This quickly changed. I could share with you about how I gained professional experience using The Museum System to research and organize objects. I could tell you about the meetings I sat in on where my voice mattered and my opinions were valued. I could tell you how I learned about the behind-the-scenes work that most people don’t know about. I could tell you how this internship opened my eyes to a possible career path that I would’ve never known about prior to this summer: exhibition design. I could write about each of these topics, but I want to focus on the amazing events that allowed me to get involved with the Seattle community and touched my heart with the amount of support and healing that took place at these events.

Three events, in particular, had a strong impact on me; the [Black] Power Summit, the Creative Advantage, and Remix. The Power Summit was a health and wellness conference for Seattle’s Black community. The first panel was one on mental health and mindfulness. The panel spoke about generational trauma and the stigma behind mental illness within the Black community. I could relate to these trends within the Latinx community. Often times, our parents work so hard to provide for our families that they dwell in survival mode. When we are raised in households where mental illnesses are stigmatized, we feel as if we are a burden to our family if we bring up issues we may be facing. As we keep hiding, the marble-sized issue becomes a bowling ball. One panelist suggested that we sit with our discomfort and strip it of its power over us. The trauma may still be present in the form of memories or thoughts, but it will no longer have power over our ability to thrive.

If you’ve never been to Remix, just know you’re sleeping! Remix is a beautiful event in which many people come together to share the dance floor, art activities, tours, drinks, as well as their most fly outfits. I loved the art activities, but what really impacted me was the dancing. With performing artists such as the Purple Lemonade Collective, Bouton Volonté, and Randy Ford, the dance floor was throbbing with presence and beauty. When the dancers dipped, catwalked, and, yes, even twerked, a semi-circle formed around them of mainly white allies. Space was created for queer and trans people of color to exist, express their passion, make art, and share joy. As they created magic with their bodies, the viewers cheered and recorded, but mainly they yelled words of encouragement and awe. This wonderful space for marginalized groups to feel at ease within a large group of white folks didn’t feel uncomfortable or unwelcoming though. At that moment, race, gender, and sexuality were being praised and we were allowed to take up space with the knowledge that our allies are there to support us. If I wasn’t so busy sweating through my orange romper from all the dancing, I probably would have shed a tear of joy and love.

The Seattle Art Museum is a highly inclusive environment that truly values racial equity. The institution is not building inclusive spaces or challenging our thinking because it is the trendy thing to do. The Seattle Art museum genuinely values equity work, from the director of the museum to interns like me and Seohee, and in between. This experience was one of healing for me after graduating from an institution on the East Coast that lacked passion for equality and often protests had to occur to demand visibility for underrepresented groups. The Seattle Art Museum is taking a stand and a leadership role to highlight and welcome all identities. When the mission statement says that the Seattle Art Museum connects art to our lives, I understand that they connect art to our lives because they know that our lives matter and want to be a space for healing, learning, and unity.

– Dovey Martinez, SAM 2018 Emerging Arts Leader Intern

Photos: Natali Wiseman

 

Object of the Week: Soundsuit

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 7 2018

Object of the Week: Soundsuit

In this special edition of Object of the Week, the three Empathics who have taken up residence at SAM in the installation Lessons from the Institute of Empathy share their thoughts on Nick Cave’s Soundsuit. The Empathics are part of ChimaTEK: Virtual Chimeric Space by contemporary artist Saya Woolfalk. They have surrounded themselves with works from our African art collection and are asking questions and sharing information about the art as a way to help visitors awaken their own empathy.

EMPATHIC LESSON: CONSIDER THE CHIMERIC

Nick Cave’s suits mix anatomical features in a perplexing way. Are they human or not? This question is being asked in science as human and nonhuman species can be merged to create new forms of life, known as chimeras. Does this combination show disrespect for human dignity or is it a step toward progress? The Empathics wonder what the potential of crossing species might be.

Using hair collected from barber shops in Chicago is a strategic move that Nick Cave explains: “The hair creates an animal sensibility. You know it’s hair, but you don’t know where it comes from. It’s seductive, but also a bit scary. Animals have so much to teach us. I hope that by merging animal parts with human parts in these Soundsuits, I force people to pay attention to what they are doing to our earth and the animals living here with us. I’m having fun and using whimsical circus imagery to ask people to consider the underlying tragedy we are perpetrating. We have to find ways to live with each other, extend our compassion to other communities and take care of our natural resources.”

Nick Cave goes on to share the history of his Soundsuits, two of which are on view. “My first Soundsuit was made out of twigs. The initial concept came from the Rodney King incident and the Los Angeles riots in 1992; as I was reading about the riots, I was thinking about the feeling that I was dealing with as a black male, feeling smaller, devalued, invalid . . . the incident was larger than life: six policemen bringing Mr. King down. . . . I was in the park one day, sitting, thinking about everything around the riot, and then I looked on the ground and found a twig. I created a sculpture from twigs. . . . When I put it on and started to move in it, I realized that it made a sound and I began to think a lot about protest, that in order to protest you have to be heard, and in order to be heard you have to be aggressive.”

– The Empathics, The Institute of Empathy

Images: Soundsuit, 2006, Nick Cave, fabricated fencing mask, human hair, sweaters, beads, and metal wire, approx. 6 feet tall, on mannequin, Gift of the Vascovitz Family in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2007.70 © Nick Cave. Installation view of Lessons from the Institute of Empathy at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photos: Natali Wiseman.

 

SAM Field Trips: Native Art You Need to See Now

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Sep 6 2018

SAM Field Trips: Native Art You Need to See Now

During Double Exposure: Edward S. Curtis, Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, Will Wilson, the SAM social team took a few Friday afternoon field trips to visit other museums in Washington that are currently exhibiting work by Native artists. If you missed our Instagram stories, here’s a quick round up of a few exhibitions currently on view around the state that are not to be missed.

Museum of Northwest Art

In Red Ink
Through September 23, 2018

Curated by RYAN! Feddersen and featuring art by Asia Tail and Fox Spears, we just had to stop by for more creative output from these artists who have also been involved with SAM during Double Exposure. The collection of art on view offers a range of styles from contemporary Native artists in a variety of mediums by artists hailing from tribes across the extended Pacific Northwest and beyond. Feddersen is the mastermind behind the Post Human Archive, the social media activity that was installed at SAM.

Asia Tail, also a curator (we can’t wait to see yəhaw̓ at the King Street Station opening in January 2019) is the hand behind the words on the Double Exposure website but we hadn’t seen her art previously! Fox Spears is one of the teaching artists offering free Drop-In Studio workshops at SAM (there’s one more workshop on Sunday led by Sondra Segundo before the exhibition closes) and it was so nice to see this work after learning so much about his process!

Tacoma Art Museum

Native Portraiture: Power and Perception
Through February 10, 2019

 

The lens we look through changes everything. In Native Portraiture, Tacoma Art Museum asks the question: What is communicated when an outsider portrays someone from another culture?

In the galleries you will have the chance to see contemporary Native artists representing Indigenous cultures for themselves. These works are interspersed by a few examples of depictions by non-Native artists that romanticize, stereotype, or appropriate Native people and cultures. We recommend spending at least an hour or two in this gallery to fully absorb the impact of this contrast.

Suquamish Museum

Ancient Shore, Changing Tides
Ongoing

Do yourself a favor and enjoy the ferry and short drive that it takes to get to Suquamish Museum. Well designed and chock-full of information, the permanent installation tells a detailed and important story through movement, textures, the forest environment and the symbolic movement of the tide. The objects on view, many never before exhibited, are a combination of works owned by the Suquamish Museum and on loan from Suquamish families and other museums. The way these objects are arranged creates an environment where you will want to spend some time. The museum describes their goal  as an attempt to “displace the modern way of historical contextual understanding. Culture is more than historical events strung together.  The passing of knowledge and values, generation to generation, is the core of Suquamish culture.” Based on our visit, the Suquamish achieves their goal, and then some!

Where your day trips take you, SAM recommends you make the time to visit the wealth of museums in Washington featuring work by Native artists!

7 Places To Experience Native Art and Culture All Year Round

Nina Dubinsky on Sep 5 2018

7 Places To Experience Native Art and Culture All Year Round

Double Exposure: Edward S. Curtis, Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, Will Wilson closes at SAM on September 9, but here are 8 places you can visit in Seattle (and beyond) where you can continue to widen your lens on Native culture. Indigenous peoples have been living in the Puget Sound area for well over 4,000 years making for a rich but complex history that has left a lasting mark on the region. Despite the hardships faced by Native communities, Native culture continues to thrive.

1. Duwamish Longhouse & Cultural Center

After decades of planning and fundraising, the Duwamish Longhouse & Cultural Center opened its doors to tribal members, visitors, and the community in 2009. Located at a historic archeological site along the Duwamish river in West Seattle, the lobby displays archeological materials from the site and has a resource center filled with photographs, interviews, field notes, and other literature about the Duwamish and coastal Salish people. Visit the longhouse’s gallery and exhibit area—it’s free! In addition, the longhouse holds monthly special events as well as ongoing workshops, demonstrations and lectures.

2.  wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House

Located on the University of Washington Seattle campus, the wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House, pronounced “wah-sheb-altuh,” aims to provide a welcoming space and a supportive educational environment for all Native students. Though this longhouse-style facility is on a college campus and many events are reserved for UW students, it also hosts a variety of different events like film screenings and concerts that are also open to the public. Check out their Facebook page for details on upcoming events.

3. Makah Cultural & Research Center

If you’re in Neah Bay be sure to stop by the Makah Cultural & Research Center—the center includes the Makah Museum, as well as the Museum store, Makah Language Program, Archives and Library Department, Makah Education Department, and Tribal Historic Preservation Office. Their permanent collection boasts 300-500 year old artifacts recovered from a Makah village in Ozette, Washington. The Makah Museum also offers demonstrations and lectures by Makah Tribal Leaders plus workshops where you can learn to make crafts from Makah tradition.

4. Sacred Circle Gallery at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center

Located in Seattle’s Discovery Park, Sacred Circle Gallery is a gallery space inside of Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center. Along with a permanent collection of Native American art, they show curated exhibits featuring contemporary and traditional Native American Art by global and local artists.

5. The Elwha Klallam Heritage Center and Carnegie Museum

This Port Angeles heritage center is the home of a permanent exhibit of Kallam Village artifacts along with contemporary works by local tribal members. Across the street from the Heritage Center you’ll find The Carnegie Museum, managed by The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the space displays cultural and historical artifacts of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and other tribes of the Olympic Peninsula.

6. s’gʷi gʷi ʔ altxʷ: “House of Welcome,” Longhouse Education and Cultural Center

Located on the Evergreen State College campus in Olympia, “House of Welcome” Longhouse Education and Cultural Center’s mission is promoting Indigenous arts and cultures through education, cultural preservation, creative expression, and economic development. Come to the longhouse to learn about indigenous arts and cultures through Native art markets, exhibitions, performances, films, and other public events.

7. Hibulb Cultural Center & Natural History Preserve

Learn about the legacy of the Tulalip Tribe and people via interactive displays and stories told in both Lushootseed and English at the Hibulb Cultural Center. In addition to the museum’s permanent collection and rotating special exhibitions, they host public events and workshops from weaving and beading classes to salmon bake fundraisers. And, to top it all off, the Cultural Center also happens to be located on a 50-acre natural history preserve, with a research library and a longhouse!

– Nina Dubinsky, Social Media and Communications Coordinator

Images: Photo courtesy of the Longhouse at Evergreen. Photo courtesy of the Hibulb Cultural Center & Natural History Preserve.

Translation, Identity, and Native Language in Book Arts

Traci Timmons on Sep 4 2018

Translation, Identity, and Native Language in Book Arts

Recently, the Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library acquired two works by book artist, designer, and member of the Oneida Nation Erin Mickelson. Mickelson’s work is often about language, particularly translation. Sometimes her work is as straightforward as a translation from one language to another, but often she attempts to translate an idea between seemingly disparate forms—language, image, code, and movement. You can see Mickelson’s works in person in the reception area just outside of the Bullitt Library on SAM’s 5th floor until Double Exposure: Edward S. Curtis, Marianne Nicholson, Tracey Rector, Will Wilson closes on September 9, 2018.

Mutterfarbe

Mutterfarbe, published in 2017 by Broken Cloud Press (Santa Fe, NM), the imprint of Mickelson, is a limited-edition artist-book collaboration between poet, translator, and visual artist Brandi Katherine Herrera and Mickelson. The work, which uses Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s seminal work Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors, 1810) as its primary source, features experimental text, visual translations, and poems.

The work includes three sections, plus front matter and back matter. In the first section, Natürlicher, sixteen color swatches sourced from photographs of Herrera’s environment are accompanied by poems whose words are drawn from translations of Goethe’s text. The second section, Ursprünglicher, includes erasure poems by Herrera with “visual translations” of Goethe’s illustrations by Mickelson. The third section, Farbe Gespräch, is an imagined text conversation between Herrera and Goethe regarding the surrealist film, The Holy Mountain (directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973) using contemporary language, texting, and the Google Translate app. Mickelson sources the illustrations in this section directly from screenshots of the film, rendering them in the sixteen colors used throughout the work. This particular section utilizes a leporello structure, creating an accordion-like fold, and can extend to thirteen feet wide. The front matter includes a unique lenticular print, a technology that creates a three-dimensional effect. The three pamphlet-stitched books (Anhang I–III) that make up the back matter feature a translator’s note, color source photographs, scans of the original text erasures, and the translation of Zur Farbenlehre.

 

Mickelson and Herrera worked with Zachary Schomburg to create this informative video which helps us understand the many parts of this fascinating work.

He Wears a Feather

He Wears a Feather (2015) demonstrates a move for Mickelson toward more socially and politically informed work. It is also a work inspired by a deep and personal topic: controversial blood quantum laws dictate that the artist’s son be excluded from the Oneida Nation’s tribal rolls—the first generation of Mickelson’s family.

“He Wears a Feather is very much about a disappearing cultural identity. I’ve had a lot of conversations about this idea with my mother, who, as an Oneida artist, has dedicated her career to telling the stories and history of the Oneida people through her paintings. She’s talked at length about the changing attitude toward identifying as Native. Her grandmother (my great-grandmother) was at the Carlisle Indian boarding school, where students were forced to assimilate to Euro/American culture. It created a huge rift between those students and their families who remained on the reservation. Subsequent generations have dealt with racism and colonialism as well as the effects of the previous generation’s forced assimilation, and connections to history, language, and identity have become frayed. Particularly for those living off the reservation. I am mixed-race and the last generation of my family to be a tribal member (due to blood quantum laws). It feels imperative to me to do what I can to stay connected to my family history. I can do this by trying to learn and preserve the language, history, and stories of the Oneida people.”

—Erin Mickelson, book artist

The work takes the form of a drop-spine box and includes an electronic sound module that, when the soapstone turtle is removed and the module is exposed to light, allows the reader to hear the book’s text being read aloud. Mickelson utilized text and an audio recording from the Oneida Language Revitalization Program, originally a Works Progress Administration project started in 1939, whose goal is to preserve and continue the Oneida language.

Learn more about this initiative by visiting: The Oneida Language Revitalization Program’s Website and The Oneida Language Revitalization Program: A History Website.

To get a closer look at these works, or other works in our Book Arts Collection, make an appointment to visit the Bullitt Library. Appointments can typically be scheduled Wednesday–Friday, 10 am–4 pm.

– Traci Timmons, Librarian

Photos: Natali Wiseman

Muse/News: Small but mighty, a black velvet jaguar, and the definitive moment

Rachel Eggers on Sep 3 2018

Muse/News: Small but mighty, a black velvet jaguar, and the definitive moment

SAM News

Don’t sleep on SAM: Now on view are several small but mighty installations. Michael Upchurch of Crosscut offers this excellent write-up of In This Imperfect Present Moment, and Seattle Magazine features New Topographics on its list of “13 Best Things To Do in Seattle in September 2018.”

Why, thank you! SAM was voted “Best Art Museum” in Seattle Weekly’s annual “Best of Seattle” readers’ poll.

Sarah Bloom, SAM’s Senior Manager for Teen, Family & Multigenerational Programs and Learning, was interviewed for this ParentMap feature that combines fall arts recommendations for the family with the reasons why exposure to the arts is so important.

“Building the skill of close looking is something we try to instill in children and caregivers together,” Bloom says. “Looking at art is a skill that you build over time.”

Local News

Margo Vansynghel of City Arts speaks with Maja Petrić, whose installation We Are All Made of Light is now on view at MadArt; it’s the latest of her “immersive experiences that get at the core of shared experience.”

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis on the Bellwether Festival, which debuts a revamped format this year with more happenings and a companion show at Bellevue Art Museum; I definitely want to see Tariqa Waters’ giant pack of Quilted Northern.

Emily Pothast of the Stranger reviews Pocket Full of Posies, Juventino Aranda’s first solo museum exhibition, now on view at the Frye Art Museum.

“Aranda’s work follows the magic all the way to its source, pointing to a reality where every manufactured object may be read as a text containing layers of history and meaning.”

Inter/National News

The United States Tennis Association has commissioned artist-designed tennis courts in celebration of the US Open’s 50th anniversary.

Manhattan’s High Line will debut a section devoted to art, with a new commission every 18 months. Up first: Simone Leigh’s Brick House, a 16-foot-tall bronze bust of combining human and architectural elements.

LaToya Ruby Frazier contributes to The Guardian’s “My Best Shot” series; the winner of the 2013 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize talks about how she captured this photo of her “guardian angel” grandmother.

“I set up the camera and the moment she came into the frame, I moved in, sat next to her and asked her to look at the lens. I had no idea what her expression was, I just turned and pressed the shutter release – you can see it in my right hand.”

And Finally

The Louvre can have Beyoncé and Jay-Z; SAM has Saeed and Isaac! Keep an eye out in September for Buzzfeed’s AM2DM road trip stories from Seattle, including their visit to the museum.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of In This Imperfect Present Moment at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Object of the Week: Power Plant I

Elisabeth Smith on Aug 31 2018

Object of the Week: Power Plant I

Born in 1880, Arthur Dove was a master of abstraction, light, and color, always seeking to capture the hidden rhythms and feeling of his given environments—whether natural or man-made. In Power Plant I (1938), Dove transforms a looming building into shifting planes of color and shape. The plant, its smoke stacks, and surrounding telephone poles are in reality solid and immutable, but Dove renders them formless, with all dimensionality equalized on the canvas.

One of four artists recently installed in our American galleries, Dove (like the rest of his cohort) is celebrated for his unique approach to abstraction, which evokes—rather than describes—the world around us. Below is an excerpt from an essay by Dove, titled “Me and Modern Art,”[1] that sheds light on his thinking and approach to painting that sheds light on his thinking and approach to painting:

It is sometimes refreshing just to be painting with no plans; by that I mean pure painting, with no further intention.

            It has a tendency to make one feel the two-dimensionality of a canvas, a certain flatness which is so important in the balance of things, and often so difficult to attain.

            I have seen a child of five do it beautifully, and after three years in school be absolutely unable to accomplish it again. How well I remember the answer when two grown ups came in and asked the child what he was thinking of when he painted those things. Simply “I wasn’t thinking of anything, I was just painting.”

            Pure painting is extremely helpful in finding one’s own instincts. It helps us to see how much stronger is our imagination than our intellect. There is too much of the intellectual in art nowadays, and pure painting tends twoard [sic] the elimination of this intellectual forcing process.

            We must learn by our own mistakes and find our own find. Profiting by the mistakes of others, and building up knowledge through the findings of others may make an artist successful but it will never make him creative.

            They may say that we cannot create anything, that everything has been done. Perhaps, it doesn’t matter—if we have not done it. That may be the real reason that I am writing this—because I have never done it.,[sic]—instinctively I dislike the idea of writing “about” things and painting “about” things. Have always felt that it is much better to write things and paint things that exist in themselves and do not carry the mind back to some object upon which they depend for their existence. We lean too heavily on nature. I would rather look at nature than to try to imitate it. In the same way I enjoy looking at a Greco, a Cezanne [sic], or an Afircan [sic] sculpture, but have no desire to do one. And if we find at any time that we are depending too much on any one thing, we will also find that it is by just that much that we have missed finding our own inner selves.

– Elisabeth Smith, Collections Coordinator

Image: Power Plant I, 1938, Arthur Dove, oil on canvas, 25 x 35 in., Partial and promised gift of Mr. and Mrs. Howard S. Wright, in honor of the Museum’s 50th year, 84.64 ©
Artist or Artist’s Estate
[1] Arthur Dove essay, “Me and Modern Art,” not after 1946. Arthur and Helen Torr Dove papers, 1905-1975, 1920-1946. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

A Dedicated Collector: Griffith Way (1920–2018)

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 29 2018

A Dedicated Collector: Griffith Way (1920–2018)

The Seattle Art Museum is saddened to have lost a tremendous friend of the museum. Griffith Way was appreciated for his gentle nature combined with fine humor that enriched everyone who knew him. He became a Trustee of the Seattle Art Museum in 1995 and received honorary distinction in 2009. A graduate of the University of Washington, Griff was part of the first graduating class specializing in Japanese law. He was also an Adjunct Professor, University of Washington School of Law and spent decades periodically practicing law in Tokyo. In 2007, he was honored with the Order of the Rising Sun by His Imperial Majesty Emperor Akihito of Japan in recognition of his long-standing support to increase economic and cultural development between the United States and Japan.

Early in their years in Japan, after the conclusion of WWII, Griff and his wife, Pat, became interested in the then-new style of modern Japanese painting executed in traditional media and formats, known as nihonga; a late 19th-century style among artists seeking both cultural continuity and to address Japan’s emergence as a modern nation. Griff and Pat went on to develop a remarkable nihonga collection that they have shared broadly with the public.

In winter of 1999, SAM welcomed Modern Masters of Kyoto: The Transformation of Japanese Painting Traditions, Nihonga from the Griffith and Patricia Way Collection presented at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Their gift to SAM of 150 nihonga paintings has made SAM the repository of the largest collection of nihonga outside Japan.

As a member of SAM’s board, Griff served as Chair of the Seattle Asian Art Museum Committee and then as Honorary Chair of the Seattle Asian Art Museum Campaign Committee. As Trustee Emeritus of the Blakemore Foundation, Griff facilitated critical funding from the Foundation, which has supported SAM since 1992, most notably through the Blakemore Internship Program for Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum.

Griff’s unwavering dedication to the Seattle Asian Art Museum will be remembered by the museum and community in a future reading area named in his honor, of our McCaw Foundation Library. Griff’s commitment to Asian art and culture will continue to inspire us and our role in connecting with Asia as never before.

Photo: Team Photogenic

Volunteer Spotlight: Kimber Bang

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 28 2018

Volunteer Spotlight: Kimber Bang
SAM runs on the love and dedication of our talented volunteers. With varied interests and backgrounds, each volunteer brings their unique perspective to the art at SAM and to the community that grows out of it! Kimber Bang is a tennis enthusiast with an interest in Greek mythology, specifically depictions of Leda and the Swan. Our Manager of Volunteers asked Kimber some questions so you can get to know her and give her a smile the next time you have an appointment at the Bullitt Library!
SAM: What is your current role?
Kimber Bang: SAMbassador/library volunteer/SAMVA executive committee chair.
How long have you been volunteering at Seattle Art Museum?
Five years this fall.
Why is SAM important to you?
Art is for everyone! SAM does an amazing job with its variety of exhibitions. I started coming to SAM in the early 80’s when I moved here. Being able to contribute to its mission of connecting art to life and engaging the community is a privilege and a real pleasure. I also enjoy all the volunteers and employees I have met here!
What is one of your favorite artworks in SAM’s collection, and why?
I have two. Leda and the Swan by John Cobert. The simplicity and angles are a joy. I can’t help but also look at the small pencil flower drawing in the bottom right corner that I was told was done by his young daughter. If it is on display I try to get visitors to go to the 4th floor to see the same subject in Leda and The Swan and Her Children by Vincent Sellaer from 1540.
I also love The Doge’s Palace and the Grand Canal, Venice by Luca Carlevariis. It could be Venice today if you changed the outfits! The best part is how the perspective/size of the palace and view changes as you walk side to side in front of the art work.
When not at SAM, what do you do for fun?
I am an avid tennis player—particularly mixed doubles with my husband. I play golf, ski, run, hike, and travel. We are headed to the Amalfi Coast this fall. I also do Ikebana.
What is something that most people might not immediately know about you?
I am a retired ER/research nurse. I moved to Seattle in 1981 so I could work at Harborview in the trauma center.
What is a simple hack, trick, or advice that you’ve used over time to help you better fulfill your role?
A smile is never wasted! As a SAMbassador you may encounter visitors that may not want to interact but they always enjoy and appreciate a smile as they get off the escalator or cross paths in the galleries.
I find that knowing an obscure or special fact about an artwork helps to start a conversation while someone is viewing or is just finishing viewing a piece. If I share something interesting it can lead to further conversation or even the visitor teaching me something. I have learned so much about other museums and artists by listening to guests. Everyone likes to be heard! I have gotten many tips about places and things to see when I travel which only helps with my positions here.
– Danie Allinice, Manager of Volunteer Programs
1 … 28 29 30 31 32 … 61
SAM Stories