Muse/News: Native Culture, T. Rex Turns, and Digital Benin

SAM News

November is Native American and Alaskan Native Heritage Month. For The Spectator, McKenna White shares resources for learning and engaging from Seattle University’s Indigenous People’s Institute (IPI); the article also references art to see around the city, including at SAM. And Seattle Met recommends SAM show Indigenous Matrix: Northwest Women Printmakers, on view now through December 11. 

Local News

Margo Vansynghel of Crosscut with a deep dive into the past, present, and future of Paul Allen’s estate and foundation.

The Seattle Times’ Grace Gorenflo on the Pacific Science Center’s 60th anniversary and their plans to survive into the future.

Grace’s colleague Jerald Pierce continues their series of “frontline favorites,” this time visiting with a Burke Museum staff member and a “T. rex rotisserie.”

“Usually, you go to a museum and you look at the objects and they’re all pretty and they’re all on exhibit and we just go, ‘ta-da!’” [visitor services specialist Connie] Eggers said. “But nobody sees what happens before that. Stuff like this goes on in every museum, but the visitors don’t get to see it.”

Inter/National News

“How the Lucas Museum Plans to Tell Riveting Stories Through Art”: The forthcoming museum’s director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont appears on Artnet’s Art Angle Podcast. 

“Paul G. Allen and the Art He Didn’t Sell”: Blake Gopnik for the New York Times on Paul Allen’s wide-ranging collection, and the possible real-life future of his more sci-fi works. 

Tessa Soloman for ARTnews on the launch of Digital Benin, a database of “looted artworks from the Kingdom of Benin.” SAM was among the first institutions to engage with the project; you can also learn more in our galleries in Benin Art: Collecting Concerns

“Digital Benin currently identifies 131 institutions across 20 countries with Benin cultural heritage in their collections. Entries include provenance details provided by participating institutions, high-resolution images, and the title of the work in the English and Edo languages. Visitors to the website can also access a collection of oral histories narrated by Benin artists and elders that expand on the significance of the artworks to local art and culture.”

And Finally

RIP and thank you, Gal Costa

 Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Emerging from the Matrix: Kari Karsten on Curating for SAM

Indigenous Matrix: Northwest Women Printmakers, now on view through December 11 in SAM’s third floor galleries, was a year-long journey, the culmination of my thesis project for the University of Washington Museology masters program. Overseen by Barbara Brotherton, Curator of Native American Art at SAM, and Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Curator of Northwest Native Art at the Burke Museum, the curation process involved many hours of reflecting on and researching how Indigenous women artists are represented within museums. Western museological practices have on the whole lacked recognition of the importance of women within Indigenous communities, but women have always been a driving force of their creative practices and creations.

I came to this topic because I am Seneca, an Indigenous Nation located in Western New York. Growing up, I was immersed in the creative expressions of my people and was taught the importance of artistic freedoms and legacies. It was not until I graduated high school that I started putting together the pieces of how our artworks carry our stories and culture, aiding in the revitalization and celebration of who we are. Coming into the museological field, my goal is to highlight and promote Indigenous culture through the arts. With great thanks, that is what I was able to accomplish working with SAM over the past year to curate this exhibition. 

For the exhibition, I selected works by Pitseolak Ashoona, Francis Dick, Myra Kukiiyuat, Jesse Oonark, Susan Point, and Angotigolu Teevee. Our women have continued to drive many aspects of life for Indigenous communities across the world, yet only in recent years have we seen museums and galleries approach working with a feminized view of Native arts. The purpose of this exhibition is to create a learning environment conducive to promoting woman-centered Indigenous narratives and to educate the public on histories and cultures that they may have yet to encounter. Bringing contemporary Indigenous art into an institutional setting helps reframe harmful historical narratives and highlights Native women’s current lived experiences through research that is informed by traditional knowledge and community revitalization efforts.

With this exhibition, I hope to impact the future of Indigenous peoples who work and exhibit within museums and more specifically, art institutions. This work breaks down some of the barriers that many Native peoples face when working with art institutions. As the first exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum to be curated by an Indigenous female-identifying student, Indigenous Matrix is a small—but significant—step in creating more institutional accessibility for emerging museum professionals and Indigenous curators.

– Kari Karsten, SAM Emerging Museum Professional Curatorial Intern

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

Muse/News: SAM opens up, the Burke goes “inside out,” and art history’s blind spots

SAM News

Recently, SAM announced that the Asian Art Museum will reopen to the public on February 8, 2020. Curbed Seattle and NW Asian Weekly both wrote about the building project, which “gives the historic building both a home of its own and a stronger connection to the park around it.”

Local News

Last week, city council candidates appeared at Town Hall to talk arts policy. The Stranger’s Rich Smith—and candidate Alex Pedersen’s “art tie”—were there.

Dinosaurs, but make it fashion: Seattle Met presents their fall fashion editorial set amongst the new digs (get it?) of the Burke Museum.

And the Seattle Times has wrap-around coverage on the new Burke, including a story from Brendan Kiley, photos, video, and graphics to get you ready to explore.

“This Burke, director Julie K. Stein says, isn’t just a new museum. It’s a new breed of museum, imagined and designed with the incantation ‘inside-out.’”

Inter/National News

Fred Armisen is an art aficionado. No, really! Hyperallergic explores his segments on Late Night with Seth Meyers in which he shares his knowledge of literally “every painting that has ever been painted.”

Here’s the New York Times’ Roberta Smith on the new Roy DeCarava retrospective at David Zwirner; his photographs, she says, “constantly flip between visual fact and a metaphor for difference of all kinds.”

In Artforum’s October issue, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen reflects on the recent exhibitions Posing Modernity and Black Models, together “one of the most consequential events to take place in the field of nineteenth-century art in Euro-America in recent decades.”

“Murrell achieved something more profound, and more challenging, than archival ‘discovery.’ Her exhibition placed the past blindnesses of art history on very public view, making devastatingly clear the remedial nature of the lesson in seeing required by this discipline—a lesson that could be encapsulated in a question as elementary as: Tell me, class, how many figures are in this picture?”

And Finally

I keep thinking about this squirrel.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: © Tim Griffith

Muse/News: Physicality at SAM, labs at the new Burke, and the wonder of Beverly Pepper

SAM News

Fall arts previews continue hitting newsstands! The New York Times and The Seattle Times both recommend our major fall exhibition, Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum.

“. . . physicality will be on full, glorious display at the Seattle Art Museum.”

Artnet and In Other Words released their findings and features on the representation of women in the art world. SAM was one of 26 prominent American museums to share data about their acquisitions and exhibitions. The takeaway? While all museums claim greater attention to women artists, “just 11 percent of all acquisitions and 14 percent of exhibitions over the past decade were of work by female artists.”

Local News

Don’t miss the Seattle Times’ full fall arts coverage—which recommends getting out of the house to experience art, with recommendations for music, theater, books, and more.

Crosscut’s Samantha Allen asks what’s lost when a city defined by its beloved neon signs makes the shift to LED.

Press got to visit the new Burke Museum recently. Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne wasn’t overly impressed with the mastodon and T-rex skulls, but loved the labs.

“All over the museum—sometimes behind glass, but also out in the open—you see people doing the actual work of keeping natural history and science alive.”

Inter/National News

Artsy is out with its “Vanguard” list for 2019, with their picks for artists who are “emerging,” “newly established,” and “getting their due”—including SAM favorites Jeffrey Gibson, Ebony G. Patterson, and Jacolby Satterwhite.

Here’s Artnet on a weathered oil painting depicting Saint Jerome that turned out to be by Anthony van Dyck. Art collector Albert B. Roberts picked it up at an auction for $600; it’s now on view at the Albany Institute of History & Art.

Megan O’Grady for the New York Times Style Magazine on Beverly Pepper, the sculptor whose Persephone Unbound and Perre’s Ventaglio III grace the Olympic Sculpture Park.

“Public art can sometimes feel ponderously corporate or impersonal, but the unroofed splendor of Pepper’s site-specific works can prompt unexpectedly potent encounters . . . They are framing devices for wonderment.”

And Finally

A Friday for the future.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Danae, 1544–45, Titian, Italian, 1488/90–1576, oil on canvas, 34 15/16 x 44 3/4 in., Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.

Muse/News: Melancholy smiles, love letters to dance, and Swizz Beatz’s art collection

SAM News

Last week, SAM announced the launch of the public phase of a $150 million campaign to support all aspects of the museum’s mission. To date, the campaign has raised more than $125 million towards its goals. Artnet and Patch.com shared the news.

Armon Mahdavi of UW Daily with a lovely look at The Magic Lantern of Ingmar Bergman, the museum’s centennial celebration of the legendary Swedish writer-director, curated by Greg Olson, SAM’s Manager of Film Programs.

“Olson was seated near me during the showing, and after the film finished, we exchanged glances. ‘I hope we’ll all be alright in the end,’ he said to me with a melancholic smile.”

Local News

The Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Crosscut’s Mason Bryan speaks with Michael Spafford, Barbara Earl Thomas, C. Davida Ingram, and others about the artist’s legacy.

Crosscut’s Aileen Imperial with another great video story, this time featuring six local dancers—including David Rue, SAM’s Public Engagement Associate—performing love letters to their art form.

Bones! Feathers! Forklifts! Brendan Kiley of the Seattle Times gets a behind-the-scenes look as the team at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture move their collection into its new “inside-out” digs.

“The coolest thing I found? I don’t want to admit it,” he said. “Mostly evidence of my co-workers from decades ago—someone had been sitting at a desk, smoking while working on specimens, and used one of the shells for an ashtray! They should give it a label: ‘archaeological tool used by museum employee 30 years ago.’”

Inter/National News

Andy Battaglia of ARTnews on the (very sad) news that gallerist Mariane Ibrahim is closing her Seattle space and moving to Chicago. Pam McClusky, SAM’s Curator of African and Oceanic Art, spoke with Andy, noting that “She couldn’t be a more distinctive catalyst for international art.”

Artnet’s Henri Neuendorf reports on the reaction from the arts community to the big news that Amazon has abandoned plans to establish an HQ in New York City.

M.H. Miller of the New York Times Style Magazine profiles producer Swizz Beatz on how he created interest in contemporary art in the hip-hop world—and how he is bringing change to the art market itself.

“Over the past 20 years, he and his wife have built one of the great American collections of contemporary art, and he has quietly become one of the art world’s most important power brokers, a singular advocate for artists in an industry that often exploits creativity for the sake of the bottom line.”

And Finally

Parkland survivors, one year later.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Jen Au
SAM Stories