Muse/News: Still plenty of summer, feeling an opera, and the next generation of curators

Rachel Eggers on Aug 13 2018

Muse/News: Still plenty of summer, feeling an opera, and the next generation of curators

SAM News

Our family-friendly Summer at SAM programming at the Olympic Sculpture Park is recommended by ParentMap’s JiaYing Grygiel in this segment on KING’s New Day Northwest.

“But the skull must move on!” Crosscut’s Brangien Davis with a shout-out (ha) for the Basquiat before it leaves SAM. Today’s the last day to see the extraordinary painting.

Some news on the Seattle Asian Art Museum renovation and expansion project: The building “topping out” is complete. Capitol Hill Seattle shares the news.

Local News

Eileen Kinsella of Artnet with a report on the fourth edition of the Seattle Art Fair; interest and sales led one gallerist to note that “patience will pay off—and it has already.”

Stefan Milne of Seattle Met reviews both shows now on view at the Henry, finding explorations of the female gaze in the work of Mickalene Thomas and Martha Friedman.

Gemma Wilson of City Arts speaks with ChrisTiana ObeySumner—Seattle Opera’s social impact consultant—about Porgy and Bess, the six sides to every story, and how not to be scurred.

“I wish for the days when you go to an opera or musical or a symphony or fine arts gallery and go looking for the message. It’s not about watching the movement or seeing the color or hearing the music. But feeling the music, having a connection with the movement.”

Inter/National News

For Vanity Fair, curator Kimberly Drew visited Tina Knowles Lawson’s Hollywood home, which houses her incredible art collection including works by Elizabeth Catlett, Genevieve Gaignard, and Romare Bearden.

Artnet’s Taylor Defoe on the Australian TV show called Everyone’s a Critic; it “invites everyday people to act as art critics,” generating responses ranging from dismissive to funny to profound.

Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times with a feature on how museums are “addressing diversity with new urgency,” highlighting institutions that are cultivating curators of color.

“’When you have people in an institution who have a range of perspectives, you have a much richer program,’ said Eugenie Tsai, citing ‘openness to consider exhibition proposals, to consider programming, to consider hires, to consider things another group might want to dismiss as not what’s important.’”

And Finally

Four excellent words: Will Smith, art critic.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Robert Wade

Muse/News: Basquiat Unpacked, Public Poetics, and The Magic of The Shirelles

Rachel Eggers on May 7 2018

Muse/News: Basquiat Unpacked, Public Poetics, and The Magic of The Shirelles

SAM News

The latest episode of Seattle Channel’s ArtZone features their interview with curator Catharina Manchanda about Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled.

Artsy debuts their “Vanguard” series, recognizing influential contemporary artists at various points in their careers. Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize-winner Sondra Perry is included among the “newly established”—artists at “crucial tipping points in their careers.”

Los Angeles-based magazine Riot Material reviews Figuring History, in advance of its closing on May 13.

“Figuring History is as visually stunning as it is historically significant. For Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall and Mickalene Thomas, the show is validation that they succeeded in their passionate quest to make themselves visible. These artists matter and their art will be a beacon for us all, for those who write the histories and create the shows and for those are able to see themselves represented in museums for perhaps the first time.”

Local News

Seattle Times has the first look at the Nordic Museum as it prepares for its grand opening this weekend.

The Stranger staff picks their top 15 art shows in Pioneer Square for the month of May.

City Art’s Margo Vansynghel reviews A LONE, a series of 10 public artworks across the city co-curated by Vignettes and Gramma Poetry.

“Dealing with themes such as gentrification and the mass media’s (biased) coverage of the events in Charlottesville, the works in A LONE blend poetry and visual art and speak to the intricacies of being alone in a big city full of people. ‘You’re alone together,’ Stinson says. ‘That’s kind of a fascinating thing.’”

Inter/National News

The fun we’re not having at Frieze: Roberta Smith of the New York Times goes on the hunt for “artistic gems” at the annual art fair. (There’s a shout-out to Everyday Poetics artist Sonia Gomes!)

The American Antiquarian Society has digitized 225 photographs of Native people; taken decades before Edward S. Curtis began his project, these photos “represent the chapter one of the photographic history of Native people.”

The Baltimore Museum of Art has an “absolutely transformative” plan for their collection: deaccessioning works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Franz Kline, and Robert Rauschenberg in order to acquire works by contemporary artists who are women and artists of color.

“’The decision to do this rests very strongly on my commitment to rewrite the postwar canon,’ Bedford told artnet News. And while institutions sell art to fund new acquisitions every so often, the BMA’s latest deaccession stands out. ‘To state it explicitly and act on it with discipline—there is no question that is an unusual and radical act to take,’ Bedford says.”

And Finally

I will still love them tomorrow—and forever. The New Yorker’s Elon Green interviews Beverly Lee of The Shirelles about a “magical ten seconds” of the legendary group.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Installation view of Basquiat—Untitled at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman.

10 Surprising Facts about Artist Basquiat

Nina Dubinsky on Apr 19 2018

10 Surprising Facts about Artist Basquiat

In 27 short years artist Jean-Michel Basquiat has left a legacy far from the same-old same-old. Learn more about the artist’s life and career with 10 facts that might surprise you before you come see the one-work exhibition Basquiat—Untitled at the Seattle Art Museum, on view for the first time on the West Coast through August 13.

1. At the start of his meteoric rise to art stardom, Basquiat was a graffiti artist. Strategically spray painting near hot artist hubs, museums, and galleries—Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz graffitied NYC under the pseudonym “Samo©” which stood for same old sh*t.

2. With exhibitions around the globe 30 years after his death, it’s hard to believe that both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art rejected Basquiat’s work. Collectors Lenore and Herbert Schorr offered to donate Basquiats to both institutions in the 1980s but they declined.

3. Aside from painting and drawing, Basquiat was also a musician. He started the industrial sound band, Gray, and produced a hip-hop track called “Beat-Bop” featuring artist Rammellzee and rapper K-Rob. Original vinyl of this track featuring artwork by Basquiat sells for thousands of dollars and it’s named one of the most valuable hip-hop records of all time.

4. Basquiat hung out with a lot of celebrities, including pop artist Andy Warhol. Though some questioned the integrity of the friendship between this seemingly unlikely pair, Warhol and Basquiat were close friends and collaborated on a plethora of works and projects until they had a falling out.

5. Growing up in Brooklyn with a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father Basquiat was trilingual and spoke English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.

6. Bought at a whopping $110.5 million dollars by Japanese art collector Yusaku Maezawa, Basquiat’s painting Untitled broke the record for the most expensive American artwork ever auctioned.

7. For a period of time while Basquiat was homeless he was able to support himself by dealing drugs and selling postcards and clothing with his art on it.

8. A man of many talents, Basquiat also starred in the 1980s movie Downtown 81 also known as New York Beat Movie. Due to financial reasons, the film was abandoned in the mid-80s only to be released in 2000 at the Cannes Film Festival.

9. Basquiat dated Madonna in 1982 when she was still an aspiring entertainer. In an interview Madonna said that after they broke up he asked for all the paintings he gifted her back then painted them black.

10.Blondie fans you may have seen a familiar face in the “Rapture” music video. In addition to Basquiat making a cameo in their music video, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein bought his first painting for $200.

—Nina Dubinsky, SAM Social Media Coordinator

Image: installation view Basquiat—Untitled at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Arts News from SAM, Seattle, and Beyond

Rachel Eggers on Apr 2 2018

Muse/News: Arts News from SAM, Seattle, and Beyond

SAM News

Last week, SAM’s Associate Director for Community Programs, Priya Frank, appeared on KING 5’s morning talk show New Day NW to talk about Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas and a couple of the dynamic events the Education team has produced for the exhibition. She killed it!

SAM staff was everywhere last week: another member of the Education team, Public Programs Coordinator David Rue, was featured in Seattle Refined’s recurring “Movers and Shakers” series. He talked about the connections between his work for SAM and in the Seattle arts community at large.

“If your heart is in the right place, if you put in the work, and have the diligence to be the best at your craft, and people can see that, they’ll want to help you. When I do my job better, people get to interact with the arts better, so that demands that I rise to the occasion because there’s a lot of other people’s work on my shoulders that I don’t want to disappoint.”

Also: Basquiat—Untitled was highlighted in Lisa Edge’s First Thursday preview in Real Change; the Seattle Times included our upcoming Molly Vaughan solo show in their preview of spring’s hottest events, and KING 5’s Evening Magazine featured Seattle Magazine’s Gwendolyn Elliott talking about their spring arts preview that included our summer exhibition, Double Exposure: Edward S. Curtis, Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, Will Wilson.

Local News

Gayle Clemans of the Seattle Times on the celebration of the local artist Michael Spafford, with his work on view in an “unprecedented collaboration” among Davidson Galleries, Greg Kucera Gallery, and Woodside/Braseth Gallery.

Brett Hamil of City Arts on Zoo Break Productions, a huge soundstage owned by Mischa Jakupcak and Robyn Miller that’s proposing an “alternate future for Seattle filmmaking.”

In case you missed it: last week saw a new work by choreographer Alice Gosti about the objects we hold onto at On the Boards; Michael Upchurch of Crosscut even donated something to the community “ritual release” of emotionally fraught objects.

“We have a very particular way of relating to objects,” she notes. “They can generate emotion. They can literally transport you to the moment in which you received the object. Or they can tell you the story of your whole family or of your whole culture.”

Inter/National News

The Art Newspaper is out with their annual survey of the most popular exhibitions for the year; they’re also celebrating the impressive milestone of their 300th issue. Long live print!

Artsy on the psychedelic cats of British illustrator Louis Wain, who “wine and dine, grin and wink, dress up and boogie down.”

This week, on April 4, marks 50 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis. The New York Times asks what the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel can tell us about this moment.

“What they’ll find in its permanent collection is a monument to a movement and, secondarily, to a man, in a display that focuses on difficult, sometimes ambiguous historical data more than on pure celebration. And they’ll find, if they are patient, useful information for the 2018 present, and for the future.”

And Finally

“Did somebody mention ART?” Art history + celebrity culture = genius.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas at Seattle Art Museum, 2018. Photo: Natali Wiseman

Muse/News: Art News from SAM, Seattle, and beyond

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Mar 26 2018

Muse/News: Art News from SAM, Seattle, and beyond

SAM News

Definitely not that same old, same old: Seattle Times photojournalist Alan Berner was there to capture opening day of Basquiat—Untitled on Wednesday; his image ran on the front page of the Seattle Times’ Thursday edition. See more of his images in their online gallery.

Stories on the painting also appeared on KOMO News and on Crosscut.

“The piece is a stunner. A thickly sketched, disembodied skull floats on a vivid blue background that disintegrates in places, revealing primary colors and countless more layers of paint. The skull is possibly alive, and definitely vibrating. Its square mouth is agape, exposing piano-key teeth. At lower left, an uppercase A sits next to its lowercase sibling, as in a children’s primer. It looks like it might be a sound, like Aaaah. But is the skull shouting or singing?” –arts writer Brangien Davis.

Local News

Geekwire shares that New York-based conceptual artist Tavares Strachan is the first-ever artist-in-residence at nonprofit research organization the Allen Institute; his show at the Frye Art Museum is on view through April 15.

Lizz Giordano of Crosscut reports on the passage of an ordinance by the King County Council that tightens its control over arts and culture agency 4Culture—and what it will mean for the arts in Seattle.

The National Arts Education Association was in town last week. Here’s a Q&A with their convention speaker, artist Barbara Earl Thomas, on her years as an artist and community leader.

Inter/National News

Never seen a ceiling, but got a lot of walls: six-year-old Blue Ivy Carter placed the winning bid at the Los Angeles’ Wearable Art Gala for a work by Samuel Levi Jones.

“It’s definitely art. I would say. I think…” You’ve got to see Will Ferrell and Joel McHale visiting a contemporary art exhibition, Stories of Almost Everyone at the Hammer Museum.

The New York Times Style Magazine with “an ode to joyful, self-consciously naïve design,” including drawings by Andy Warhol and Gregory Blackstock (now on view at the Greg Kucera Gallery).

And Finally

“Ich möchte eine Weissweinschorle”—“I would like a white wine spritzer”: A new tongue-in-cheek book teaches important German phrases for navigating the art world.

—Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Installation view of “Basquiat—Untitled” at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Arts News from SAM, Seattle, and Beyond

Rachel Eggers on Mar 19 2018

Muse/News: Arts News from SAM, Seattle, and Beyond

SAM News

The spring edition of the Stranger’s Art & Performance Quarterly hit newsstands last week; recommended SAM shows in the visual arts listings include Basquiat—Untitled, Molly Vaughan: 2017 Betty Bowen Award Winner, Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, Everyday Poetics, and Sondra Perry: Eclogue for [in]HABITABILITY. Don’t miss their recurring “Anatomy of a Painting” feature, which takes you through the finer points of Resist, the incredible painting by Mickalene Thomas created specifically for our exhibition.

And the reviews keep coming in for Figuring History. Lisa Edge of Real Change writes up the exhibition for the cover story of their current edition, and the Stranger’s Katie Kurtz shares her thoughts on the show that’s “about righting the wrongs of erasure” in their arts section lead story.

Also out last week: The New York Times’ annual “Museums” section. Figuring History was mentioned in a round-up of exhibitions around the country showing “art in startling variety.”

“This show of three African-American artists creates a solid counternarrative on general history, art history, black identity and gender identity.”

Local News

The Seattle Times was there as 2,800 high-school students from 39 area schools attended a matinee of Hamilton—and performed raps, songs, and poems inspired by the musical and their own studies.

The art of food: last week, Edouardo Jordan of JuneBaby and Salare was nominated for two James Beard Awards and glowingly reviewed in the New York Times. That oxtail tho!

Rachel Gallaher interviews Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist and choreographer Ezra Thomson; his work The Perpetual State has its world premiere in the ballet’s Director’s Choice program, showing now through March 25.

“One thing I always try to do in my choreography is to make the dancers as human as possible. I want the audience to be able to relate to them as people, as opposed to classical 18th-century ballet figures.”

Inter/National News

Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times broke the news of the sudden firing of MOCA Los Angeles curator Helen Molesworth, which stunned many in the art world last week.

Brian Boucher of Artnet on the historic vote last week by the board of New York arts and engineering school, which approved a 10-year plan to offer free tuition for every student.

Photographer Dawoud Bey’s The Birmingham Project brings to life the four girls and two boys who died violently in 1963, with portraits of children their ages alongside adults the same age that the kids would be if they’d lived.

“It hurts because those Birmingham girls, often commemorated in what look like class portraits, could have been goofy, self-conscious, bookish, or disobedient. Maybe they didn’t even want to go to church that day; maybe one had a sore throat. They were kids.”

And Finally

Former mallrats may be just as moved as the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino by this video of “Toto’s ‘Africa’ edited to sound as though it were playing in an empty mall.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Natali Wiseman.
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