SAM will receive $500,000 over two years to support extending our Free First Thursday program into the evening. Free First Thursdays at the downtown museum—when the museum is free to all, all day on the first Thursday of each month—will now run until 8 pm and feature programming inspired by the exhibitions on view from 5 to 8 pm.
“We are grateful for this funding from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and excited by the opportunities it presents,” says Scott Stulen, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. “Local artists will create dynamic programs, our community partners will have a platform, and audiences will be able to visit the museum who may not otherwise have been able to do so. We’re also proud to join with these other incredible local arts organizations as we work to revitalize downtown Seattle and show how important the arts are to those efforts. Philanthropic support like this is critical for organizations of all sizes, and SAM relies on substantial investments like this to be sure that we are here for generations to come.”
With this day of free admission and programming offered every month, SAM is able to advance its mission to connect art to life and contribute to making downtown welcoming and lively. Free First Thursday also serves the museum’s efforts towards being an equitable institution by decreasing barriers for those with financial need or who cannot visit during daytime hours.
The first edition of Free First Thursday supported by the grant will be held on October 3, 2024, and will feature a DJ set from Kennedy Quille; gallery tours by SAM staff, docents, and local artist Stefan Richmond; tabling by the Lavender Rights Project, a SAM Community Pass Program partner; and a meet-and-greet with new SAM CEO Scott Stulen.
– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations
Join SAM and the Seattle Weavers’ Guild (SWG) for a free and public art-making workshop on Thursday, May 4 and Friday, May 6. Members of SWG will offer a hands-on demonstration of the steps involved in the ikat weaving process with participants having the opportunity to try their hand at weaving with magic heddle looms that have been pre-warped with thick fiber “dyed” using markers to simulate the resist dye process used to create an ikat pattern. Then, purchase your tickets to explore SAM’s ongoing exhibition Ikat: A World of Compelling Clothat the museum’s Ticketing Desk and head upstairs to see outstanding examples of ikats from across the globe.
Public programs like this art-making workshop invite visitors to explore art on view at SAM in exciting and hands-on ways. SAM is fortunate to have Amazon’s sponsorship of our exhibition-driven public programs, which create a deeper connection to the museum’s exhibitions and installations. These programs are free for visitors, and typically offered on Free First Thursdays when the museum is free to all, all day, bringing more people into the museum engaging with the art on view.
SAM hosts community programs in conjunction with our exhibitions year round. Regular events include My Favorite Things tours, drop-in art-making workshops, and pop-up performances. Recently, Claudia Webb, an artist and member of the Pacific Northwest African American Quilters (PNWAAQ), hosted a My Favorite Things tour focused on two quilt pieces on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry. At another workshop, participants worked with artist and educator Valencia Carroll to explore drawing techniques and tips for sketching, and later with artist Klara Glosova to practice drawing from a live model. These programs are vital to ensuring that all members of our community have access to interactive and enriching artistic experiences.
Amazon is an important supporter of the arts and cultural sector, and we are grateful to have their partnership. In addition to their support of SAM, Amazon is known for its Artist in Residence program, which awards grants and studio space to seven local artists annually. Their dedication to our region includes giving more than $96 million to over 180 local organizations, and last year they won the Puget Sound Business Journal’s Corporate Citizenship Award for Arts & Culture.
Keep your eyes on our website to see what free programs and events we’ll be hosting next. We can’t wait to see you at an upcoming event!
– Kelly Buck, SAM Institutional Giving Coordinator
In honor of Black History Month, Object of the Week will feature artworks from SAM’s collection that explore Black art and artists. Black lives matter every day of the year, but this month is a particular opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments and legacies of Black leaders in civic and cultural life. Exploring and reflecting on the past and present of Black lives is one important way to continue to imagine better futures. Here’s the first of four reflections from four different SAM voices on one artwork and what it means to them.
In January of 2016, I began working at the Seattle Art Museum. It was like going to a new school—I felt ready with an open heart, looking to shake up my norm, help me step out of my comfort zone, and provide me with something that I didn’t know how to express with words quite yet. After 16 years of working at the University of Washington, I left the stability of what had become a predictable world and delved right in. Part of this terrifying new world that I was immediately immersed in included giving a public tour for Free First Thursday, talking about artworks in our collection that I loved and connecting them to my life. My background was in communications and American Ethnic Studies, and so art was something I knew and loved, but not from an academic perspective. It seemed like everyone at SAM knew so much more than me, but I have always tried to lead with authenticity and leaned on that to guide me.
Priya Frank leading a My Favorite Things tour during Free First Thursday at SAM in 2016.
The artwork I knew I wanted to end the tour with that night was my favorite in our collection: Hair Portrait #20by Mickalene Thomas. The beautiful Swarovski crystals, the powerful face depicted over and over again, the magnitude of its size… all of those things drew me. I wore a sequined top so I could match. The piece stood out. It was so much different from everything else I saw at SAM and so different from all the neighboring art in that gallery. It felt… like me at that time. I felt so out of place, with such a different perspective and aesthetic from everyone else. But I kept remembering that that was why I was hired: to beat to my own drum and do things the way I do them. Hair Portrait #20 brought me comfort, and it reminded me that it was okay to do things differently, to stand out unapologetically and shine brightly, as a beacon of hope, light, and realness.
Thomas’s work continued to come back to me over the years, reminding me of the valuable lesson that MORE is MORE and not to be less in order to make others more comfortable. In 2018, the museum presented Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, exploring the work of these three pivotal Black artists. By then I was feeling more comfortable at SAM, and it helped that I had my colleague David Rue, who had become my SAM soulmate. He and I started working at SAM the very same day, and we had a similar love for all things bright, extravagant, beautiful, and authentic. David helped me feel so much more comfortable in my skin, and when Figuring History opened, it meant so much to both of us. We brought everyone we knew and created programming and partnerships that are still talked about in our community today. We reveled in the glory of Thomas’s muse, Racquel Chevremont, and dreamed of what it might be like to be someone’s muse (David has since pretty much become EVERYONE’s muse so there’s that!).
Priya Frank and David Rue pose in Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas at SAM (2018). Photo: Natali Wiseman.
After years of working from home, I recently made the commitment to spend more time in SAM’s galleries in order to inspire my own creative practice, which is a big focus for me this year. And lo and behold, I ran into an old friend: Hair Portrait #20, back on view again as part of a reinstallation in the modern and contemporary galleries called Reverberations. Immediately, I broke out into the biggest smile, thinking of all of the times that that piece made David and I feel like we were home. There she was: a continued beacon of hope. These last seven years have been the best of my life, and I continue to live unapologetically, unwilling to take shit, and more willing to shine bright like the Swarovski crystals that Thomas interweaves into this room-filling artwork. Getting to see a whole new generation of folx also experience the piece for the first time is the greatest joy. A few weeks ago, the UW Sisterhood Initiative came for a visit, and there was a gorgeous impromptu photoshoot in front of that pivotal piece. The mission of SAM is to connect art to life, and this piece provides exactly that: an opportunity to feel seen, and not just tolerated but acknowledged, celebrated, and seen. Unapologetically.
Same top, different era: Priya in 2023 with the same sequined tank from the 2016 My Favorite Things tour, displaying her own body art creation.
– Priya Frank, SAM Director of Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion
Photo: Jen Au.
Celebrate Black History Month in Seattle with these suggested events and additional resources.
The Seattle Times arts team helpfully gathered all the “ways to stretch your entertainment dollars in the Seattle area” with free or discounted tickets and events. They mention the free days at SAM’s three locations—Seattle Art Museum (First Thursday!), Seattle Asian Art Museum (Last Fridays!), and the Olympic Sculpture Park (365 days a year!)—as well as other hot tips for free or discounted admission. Now, go ART!
Though the exhibition was no longer on view when Savita Krishnamoorthy’s International Examiner review of Embodied Change: South Asian Art Across Time was published, it’s still very much worth a read. And you can still see Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s neon installation Kali (I’m a Mess) in the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s park lobby.
“We are witnessing an aspirational South Asianfuturism, dreaming of a world without war and human suffering.”
Check out KNKX’s new series, Aux Cord Privileges, which puts “musicians from the Puget Sound area in charge of the stereo.” The first two editions feature vocalist Shaina Shepherd and rapper Da Qween.
“‘You felt a sense of community in the fields because it was people talking your language, people hearing the kind of music you hear at home, people eating the foods you eat,’ [Exhibition subject Luz] Iniguez said. ‘It really felt like a community of people that were just working hard trying to make the most of a situation that was hard.’”
Arthur Lubow for the New York Times on a five-screen film installation by Isaac Julien now on view at the Barnes Foundation that “looks at the place of African art in the Barnes and other Western museums.”
“‘I’m calling this the poetics of restitution, which is something I’m trying to explore in the work,’ Julien said in a telephone interview from London. ‘The debates that we’re having today that seem contemporaneous were happening 50 years ago, if not before. I think that’s really interesting.’”
