Muse/News: Accumulations, Evolutions, and Dogs of The Sea

SAM News

For the new edition of ARCADE, Erin Langner reviews SAM’s John Akomfrah: Future History, which she was able to see just before the museum closed. She focuses on both the content and the technique of the artist’s immersive video essays.

“The film’s visceral urgency builds through a visual accumulation of histories. His technique calls attention to the ways that history converges with the present, often by unearthing and revisiting images that portray the brutalities many prefer not to see.”

The Olympic Sculpture Park is included in this round-up of staycation ideas from Chris Talbott for the Seattle Times; he notes “sunset would be perfect here,” which is exactly right.

Local News

Jasmyne Keimig of the Stranger returns to her “Currently Hanging” series with a snapshot of the art of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), documenting the various murals and objects while they are still in their original context.

Seattle Met shares a powerful series of photographs by Jana Early from the last weeks’ protests.

Our friends down on the waterfront, the Seattle Aquarium, have reopened. The Seattle Times’ Chris Talbott talks with visitors and Aquarium leaders, including director of conservation programs and partnerships Erin Meyer, about how it’s going.

“‘Reopening is about reconnecting with our mission inspiring conservation of our marine environment,’ Meyer said. ‘And we can’t do that without being able to interact with guests.’”

Inter/National News

Artnet’s Sarah Cascone speaks with Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, about the foundation’s reorientation—or “evolution”—of its grantmaking efforts entirely towards social justice issues.

With all the local focus on Seattle public art, let’s take a look at public art in New York City. ARTNews’ Claire Selvin explores everything “from Keith Haring to Dread Scott.”

The New York Times’ David Colman on a prescient augmented reality (AR) public art project by Nancy Baker Cahill that explores six historical sites and monuments across the Eastern seaboard.

“But the greater and more urgent question dangling here is: When is a public artwork an embellishment and when is it an eyesore? Arguments about patriotism and freedom, rights and responsibilities as well as what public art should do, and represent, have been thrown into high relief in 2020.”

And Finally

Swimming with the dogs of the sea.

 Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Installation view of “John Akomfrah: Future History” at Seattle Art Museum, 2020, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Protest art, citizen journalists, and radical quilts

SAM News

Brangien Davis of Crosscut reflects on art that protests and protest art, highlighting an 8-bit video game created by The Black Tones, Barbara Earl Thomas’s intricate paper cuts (to be featured in an upcoming show at SAM), and a “speculative fiction” press release imagining if SAM dissolved (which was erroneously published).

“Some art that erupts during social upheaval is momentary, some persists in minds and hearts, whether a poster, a painting, a flag, a fist or maybe even a video game.”

Local News

Jasmyne Keimig of the Stranger continues to cover both the action and the art around the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP); this week, she notes that “The Bathrooms at Cal Anderson Park Look Sick” after a recent paint job by two volunteers.

The Seattle Times features a comic from Lyla Dalnekoff, the 11-year-old creator of drawingthroughit.com. She explores our “new normal” and asks “what are you most excited to do once coronavirus pandemic restrictions are lifted?”

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores and Margo Vansynghel interview Omari Salisbury, Tessa Hulls, and Ulysses Curr, three citizen journalists who have been documenting CHOP. With portraits by Dorothy Edwards.

“Hulls says she prefers to see herself as a ‘bullhorn,’ amplifying the voices and stories that larger media outlets or reporters who don’t cover the protests from the ground might miss.”

Inter/National News

This week, opinion pieces by arts and culture leaders from around the country:

Yesomi Umolu of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago outlines “15 Points Museums Must Understand to Dismantle Structural Injustice.”

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, asks, “Are you willing to give up your privilege?”

Dr. Kelli Morgan, a critical-race and cultural historian, addresses the expressions of white supremacy she sees in the museum field.

“If we are to eschew this exclusionary culture in American art and its institutions, it is imperative that we change the value system upon which both our art museums and our art history is founded.”

And Finally

Wrap yourself in the radical quilts of Rosie Lee Tompkins.

Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

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