SAM Celebrates Pride: Between Rabbit and Fox

Nicole Block on Jun 21 2024

SAM Celebrates Pride: Between Rabbit and Fox

In honor of Pride Month, SAM Blog features reflections by SAM voices on collection artworks that explore LGBTQIA+ art and artists. Queer lives matter every day of the year, but this month is a particular opportunity to celebrate histories of joy, advocacy, and resistance. Check out more Pride-related content on SAM Blog, including another object spotlight and a list of queer film recommendations curated by SAM’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972) foregrounds his Indigenous, queer identity in his artwork, often with bold colors and materials that make his personal history and intentions undeniable. As Gibson has noted in many of his interviews, he celebrates a state of “in-between-ness”: between cultures, between aesthetics, and between normative gender expectations.1

Gibson is also in-between in a few places at SAM—Gibson’s 2017 work, Between Rabbit and Fox, is on view on the third floor, in the space between the modern and contemporary galleries and American Art: The Stories We Carry. 

This large abstract painting on canvas depicts a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors, refracted in a vibrant pattern. Although at first the painting seems like a smooth solid surface, its raised lines cut through different shapes and shimmery paints in the center to reveal the texture of the canvas. Looking closely, every diagonal is intentional, forming more and more triangles, and they create the effect of overlapping pieces and colors that change as they are layered.

As a painter, Gibson draws upon the major art historical movements of modernism and abstraction that explored minimalism and color theory, including the work of Josef Albers, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Al Held, and Barnett Newman, all of whose works are in SAM’s collection.

Yet abstraction has long been a part of Native American artistic traditions as well, adorning many types of functional and cultural objects, such as Navajo textiles and Osage ribbonwork.2 Between Rabbit and Fox also references Gibson’s own earlier abstract paintings on hide, where he directly connected abstraction to Indigenous history by painting upon this culturally significant material. In the same room as Between Rabbit and Fox, you can see contemporary Tlingit/Unangax artist Nicholas Galanin’s work on deer hide, Architecture of return, escape (The British Museum) (2022).

Gibson grew up in Germany and South Korea, among other places with his father’s military assignments, but came back to the US to attend the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, for his BFA, and then the Royal College of Art, London for his MA in painting. While growing up abroad, he felt he was treated as an “American,” but back at home in the US, he was seen only as Native American.3

Gibson is of Choctaw and Cherokee lineage, but didn’t grow up on a reservation. Many Americans he encountered had assumptions about a monolithic Native American culture and artistic aesthetic. Facing these reductive stereotypes, Gibson felt limited by this necessity to explain Native American art and concepts to an unaware audience, but also wanted to make work that reflected his identity. He found there was even less acceptance for a queer Indigenous man and artist.4

Instead of trying to avoid representing these identities in his art, Gibson came to a realization that he needed to incorporate them all and create a new path for himself in the art world. Around 2011, Gibson began reaching out to other Native American communities to learn about and collaborate on artworks that involved beadwork and drum making.5 He chose to use these techniques and make works on animal hide rather than on canvas, and he incorporated text and pop culture references to make his messages more visible.

Gibson’s work often addresses US history and the government’s failings toward Native Americans as well as queer communities. His other work in SAM’s collection, IF I RULED THE WORLD (2018), is a repurposed punching bag covered with beading, fringe, and metal jingles, and embedded with the title of a song by the rapper Nas. Here, Gibson also uses abstract geometric decoration with bands of primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) interrupted by black triangles.

The punching bag evokes physical action and even a sense of violent masculinity, which is immediately undercut by the delicate and detailed ornamentation that Gibson applies. He questions gender identity by using techniques like beading that are associated with women makers, as well as integrating quotes from queer club and music scenes and performing in gender-bending costumes he designs. Combining popular culture, canonical art influences, and Indigenous art forms and materials, Gibson has forged a new way forward that combines his identities with activism. The Seattle Art Museum exhibited a survey show of Gibson’s work in 2018, LIKE A HAMMER, and this year, Gibson was selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, one of the largest and oldest international art fairs. Gibson’s presentation, the space in which to place me, was the first solo show by a Native American artist at the prestigious event. With this platform, Gibson has brought his queer, Indigenous identity to the forefront, raising issues and history that his communities and all of us have to face in making a more just world.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

1  “Innovation and Tradition: Jeffrey Gibson Interviewed by Emily Zimmerman,” Bomb Magazine, May 6, 2019, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/innovation-and-tradition-jeffrey-gibson-interviewed.
2 John P. Lukavic, “What Should Have Been, What Is, and What Will Be,” Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. Munich, London, New York: Denver Art Museum, with DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2019; p. 29.
3 David Pagel, “Jeffrey Gibson: American. Native American. Gay. An artist’s life outside labels,” Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-jeffrey-gibson-20171007-htmlstory.html.
4 “Material & Identity Merge in Jeffrey Gibson’s ‘Like A Hammer’ at Seattle Art Museum.” YouTube January 31, 2019. https://youtu.be/-RrqDSZKtLQ?si=1NN66Iigx6HO0685.
5 Anne Ellegood. “Jeffrey Gibson: Critical Exuberance,” Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. Munich, London, New York: Denver Art Museum, with DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2019; pp. 83-84.

Consider supporting our Community Pass Program partners who serve queer communities:

Celebrate Pride Month in Seattle with these suggested events:

Sat Jun 22
Youth Pride Disco
Break out your disco wear for this LGBTQIA+ Pride party, planned for and organized by LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 13 and 22! Join us for drag performances, great music, friend-making activities, food and soft drinks, a quiet room, and more.

Through Sun Jun 23
Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales: Together Again, Again!
Experience the comedy, music, and saucy stylings of two of the Pacific Northwest’s standout drag entertainers, in this wildly hilarious extravaganza set in an apocalyptic future. Check the event calendar for information about performances for teens, ASL interpretation, captions, and masking.

Fri Jun 28
Trans Pride Seattle 2024
Started in 2013, Trans Pride Seattle is an annual event organized by Gender Justice League. Visit the Volunteer Park Amphitheater from 5 to 10 pm for live music, community speakers, performances, and a resource fair all dedicated to increased visibility, connection, and love of the Seattle-area TwoSpirit, Trans, and Gender Diverse (2STGD) community.

Sat Jun 29
PrideFest Capitol Hill
Spanning six blocks of Broadway and Cal Anderson Park, this all-day market features queer local businesses, beer gardens, family and youth programming, and three stages with an unforgettable lineup of live performances.

Sun Jun 30
Seattle Pride Parade
Spend the final day of June by taking part in the 50th annual Pride Parade led by grand marshals Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. Then, head over to Seattle Center for the can’t-miss performances, hundreds of acts, beer gardens, food vendors, a new family area—and dancing in the iconic International Fountain.

Visit the official Seattle Pride website for even more suggested events.

Photos: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Impressive SAM, Not Static, and Baltimore Queen

Rachel Eggers on Jun 17 2024

Muse/News: Impressive SAM, Not Static, and Baltimore Queen

SAM News

“Art-loving families should visit the Seattle Art Museum” this summer, says Mark Sissons for Vancouver’s VITA Magazine, thanks to our “impressive” collection galleries and our summer exhibition Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture, which opens this week on Thursday, June 20!

Nick Hilden for The Observer comes to town to discover “Where to See the Best Art in Seattle” and while at SAM finds that “the museum boasts an impressively eclectic range of works.” 

Via Nura Ahmed for South Seattle Emerald: “Tacoma Artist Anida Yoeu Ali Demands to Be Seen.”

Local News

Have you been keeping up with this season of Cascade PBS’s Black Arts Legacies? They’ve rolled out eight incredible profiles; earlier we shared the one of Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, but you won’t want to miss the ones of DJ Riz Rollins, painter Moses Sun, glass artist Debra Moore, and more.

Sara Jean Green of The Seattle Times reports on the “long-promised Super Block” coming to the Central District that will feature a public art installation on the neighborhood’s history.

Via Rachel Gallaher for Seattle Magazine: “Tacoma Art Museum’s latest show reconsiders the meaning of Western American art.”

“The four curators are giving space to 17 contemporary artists whose work is often excluded in the context of collections like the Haub. ‘The art of the American West is not static,’ [curator Faith] Brower says. ‘There are many artists creating work that will further our understanding and deepen our connections to this iconic region.’”

Inter/National News

“I can act a fool, I can be delirious, I can give into anger, I can give into joy, into love”: Anthony Hudson AKA Carla Rossi interviews Jeffrey Gibson for BOMB Magazine. While you’re at it, rewatch this video of Carla’s visit to Like a Hammer (it’s our…52nd rewatch? But who’s counting?). 

Arun Kakar for Artsy with “The 10 Best Booths at Art Basel 2024,” including works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith at Garth Greenan Gallery’s booth.

“How an Artist Became the Queen of Baltimore”: Aruna D’Souza of The New York Times spends the day in Baltimore with Joyce J. Scott on the occasion of her career retrospective, which is co-organized by BAM and SAM and travels to Seattle this fall.

“She sees her life as an artist as modeling for others another way of being and living,” said Catharina Manchanda, a curator at the Seattle Art Museum. “She has an incredibly strong conviction that every artwork has a role in bringing people together and offering people an opportunity to learn together, but she also models a whole new way of being an artist within a community. It’s not as much a career for her as a way of life.”

And Finally

“A Photographer Wins a Top Prize in an A.I. Competition for His Non-A.I. Image.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Muse/News: Big Deal at SAM, Art Labyrinth, and Joyful Revolt

Rachel Eggers on Apr 15 2024

Muse/News: Big Deal at SAM, Art Labyrinth, and Joyful Revolt

SAM News

Theresa Papanikolas, Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art, appeared on KING5’s New Day Northwest to talk about Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map. You have four weeks left to see this powerful retrospective at the Seattle Art Museum before it closes on May 12!

And Anida Yoeu Ali: Hybrid Skin, Mythical Presence is on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Haley Ha wrote about the exhibition for International Examiner. 

Local News

Seattle Met recommends “Washington Museums Worthy of a Road Trip.”

In her latest ArtSEA post for Crosscut, Brangien Davis touches on a new book about local street trees and a can’t-miss Pacific Northwest Ballet bill.

For the Seattle Times, Rachel Gallaher gets a look inside the art-filled home of artists Dennis Evans and Nancy Mee. The couple announced last year that they will leave their collection to Seattle University. 

“It feels like a never-ending labyrinth of discovery; ducking into each room reveals something exciting, with pieces juxtaposed against each other, such as a swirling bronze sculpture by Gerard Tsutakawa placed near work by Ann Hamilton made from deconstructed books.”

Inter/National News

Via CBS Sunday Morning: “From the archives: Faith Ringgold’s colorful and daring art.” The acclaimed artist has died at the age of 93.

Artnet has pictures and details of the Brooklyn Museum’s glamorous Artist’s Ball held last week. 

Jillian Steinhauer for the New York Times previews artist Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibition that will debut this weekend at the US Pavilion in the Venice Biennale. 

“That, in the end, is the message of Gibson’s art: Everything is multifaceted. His over-the-top aesthetic is a joyful revolt against the reductiveness of fixed categories and the pressure he’s felt, both externally and internally, to always show up on behalf of Native Americans.”

And Finally

Meet Roger, the dog hero of the Taiwan earthquake.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Memory Map Smartphone Tour: Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People)

Lily Hansen on Apr 2 2024

Memory Map Smartphone Tour: Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People)

In Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), images related to American colonization appear alongside newspaper headlines describing the dark reality of reservation life. Above, an array of cheap toys, souvenirs, and sports memorabilia—which speak to the commodification of Native American identity—are offered as gifts to white people in exchange for the return of stolen lands. Presented together, the large-scale mixed-media collage is illustrates the historical and contemporary inequities between the United States government and Native American communities.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith created this work in 1992 as a response to the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in North America. Part of the series The Quincentenary Non-Celebration, the work is one of the earliest ‘trade canoes’ Smith developed across her career.

Tune in to the free smartphone tour of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map to hear contemporary Native American artist Jeffrey Gibson further explore the themes and significance of Smith’s trade canoe. All 19 stops of the exhibition’s are available via our SoundCloud or by scanning the QR codes next to select artworks on view. Memory Map closes Sunday, May 12—reserve your tickets to see it now at the Seattle Art Museum before it’s gone!

Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), 1992

NARRATOR: This is one of Smith’s earliest “Trade Canoes.” From the beginning, she drew on the importance of canoes to Native peoples in order to make complex statements about their experience of American history. 

JEFFREY GIBSON: I think for Indigenous people, it is mobility. It is the ability to be able to travel. 

My name is Jeffrey Gibson. I’m an artist. I live in the Hudson Valley, and I’m a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and half Cherokee.

What’s interesting about this painting is we don’t know the direction. All the directions are removed. There is no front end of the canoe versus the back end of the canoe. It’s empty and it’s in a chaotic world that that version of the canoe doesn’t really make sense.

All of the kind of text and imagery that she’s put here are the things that have robbed us of knowing the Indigenous definition of a canoe. And I think putting the trash on the string above the painting, those are also just those images and those texts brought into object form, mass-produced all over the world, cheap and plentiful.

This painting of the canoe down below and all of the text and imagery that surrounds it speaks in the same way of this kind of difficult, challenging world for Indigenous people to find and navigate who they are as contemporary people, who they are as traditional people, who they are in relationship to their communities and their families. And then you hang this… I’m going to use the word trash, and I don’t mean that, but I mean it sort of like this very much throwaway culture…this kitsch and camp racist memorabilia hanging above it on the string. I think it’s sort of the audacity of this painting that makes it really successful.

– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator

Photo: Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), 1992, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, oil, paper, newspaper, and fabric on canvas with thirty-one found objects on a chain, four parts: 86 × 170 in. overall, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; museum purchase in memory of Trinkett Clark, Curator of American and Contemporary Art, Fabricated by Andy Ambrose, © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.

Memory Map Smartphone Tour: Introduction

Lily Hansen on Mar 7 2024

Memory Map Smartphone Tour: Introduction

“It’s that maybe [my art] will start to crack this whole issue of Native Americans being invisible. Being Indigenous in making art means that you’re looking at the world through lenses that are curved or changed by your upbringing and by your worldview.”

– Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

Welcome to the world of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith! With Memory Map now on view at SAM, we’ll be sharing excerpts from the exhibition’s free smartphone tour throughout its run in Seattle. Produced by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the tour is accessible via our SoundCloud or through your own device by scanning the QR code next to select works on view in the galleries. Verbal descriptions of some of the artworks on view are also available for low/no vision visitors.

The tour’s first stop introduces listeners to Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and the many themes her artwork explores. It also introduces listeners to the guest artists featured throughout the tour, including Neal Ambrose-Smith, Andrea Carlson, Jeffrey Gibson, G. Peter Jemison, Josie Lopez, and Marie Watt. Tune in now!

Memory Map Introduction

NARRATOR: Welcome to Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map. Together we’ll explore five decades of Smith’s career, looking at paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture. 

JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH: Most people will never have heard of me. And that’s not off-putting.

NARRATOR: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith:

JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH: It’s that maybe it will start to crack this whole issue of Native Americans being invisible. Being Indigenous in making art means that you’re looking at the world through lenses that are curved or changed by your upbringing and by your worldview. 

NARRATOR: For Smith, who is a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, that worldview first began to form in the Pacific Northwest and western Montana. Today, Smith lives and works in New Mexico. Throughout her life and work, she has underscored the importance of the land and of Indigenous communities. As we move through the exhibition, we’ll look at the ways in which Smith addresses the traumas of Native American people with rigor, inventiveness, and critical humor. 

You can use this guide to explore the works in any order you wish. As you go, you’ll be hearing not only from Smith but from writers and other artists including Neal Ambrose-Smith, Andrea Carlson, Jeffrey Gibson, G. Peter Jemison, Josie Lopez, and Marie Watt. 

– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Endless Possibilities in the Art World: Emerging Arts Leader Samantha Companatico Reflects

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 21 2023

Endless Possibilities in the Art World: Emerging Arts Leader Samantha Companatico Reflects

Originally from Rhode Island, I spent countless hours roaming the galleries and storied halls of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), soaking in all of the art, and hearing new concepts. I wondered if one day I would be someone whose artwork would be up on those walls. I thought about how I could be a part of creating these special places for others. From there, I attended the San Francisco Art Institute where I obtained my BFA in Printmaking and was selected for the Arion Press Bookbinding Apprenticeship. I recently moved to Seattle for this internship from Portland, Oregon where I was the recipient of the Undergrowth Educational Print Fund, a studio scholarship program at Mullowney Printing Company. I had the opportunity to work closely with several well established artists over the course of both these apprenticeships such as Enrique Chagoya, Marie Watt, Jeffrey Gibson, and Kara Walker. As I move forward in my career, I am eager to find ways to incorporate myself into the local book and print arts community in Seattle.

Admittedly, I felt scared and scattered during my first few weeks at SAM, trying to find my place while putting my best foot forward. When I was first asked to consider the personal and professional goals I hoped to achieve, I only had questions for myself about what I wanted to do and about what I wanted to try next. Is working in a museum for me? Is conservation something I want to pursue further? Do I want to or need to go back to school? These questions shaped my conversations at SAM, and I am so thankful for the support from the conservation department as I confronted these uncertainties. 

While at SAM, I learned about the education and career paths of other conservators and museum professionals. It was eye-opening to see how conservators at SAM build connections and community with other artists and academics. As I focused on conservation writing and object preparation for future gallery rotations, I am now more excited than ever to take my newfound skills into my future endeavors in the art world, whatever they might be.

I believe the path to a better world is through respect for art, the skill of craft, an understanding of people, and a recognition that art has a powerful role to play in supporting a hopeful transformation of the world. The ways in which I see SAM aiming for equity within the entire organization has been inspiring. To have this symbiotic relationship between my personal artwork, my passion for historical objects, and my political convictions is why I continue my work in uncovering hidden histories and sharing my knowledge with others.

It’s bittersweet as my Emerging Arts Leader Internship comes to a close. My experience at SAM has been nothing short of life-changing and my work with the conservation team has been a dream come true. I will always look back on this experience and my time with Geneva, Liz, Nick, and fellow intern Caitlyn fondly. I hope one day again I might have the chance to color match tissue to an object for repair, attempt to reattach a broken handle on a cedar bark purse again, or write one last condition report. I will forever cherish being able to work so closely with objects from around the world. Forming such a personal relationship with the art that I grew up enamored by and considering it in a completely different way has been one of the greatest learning experiences I could have ever hoped for.

– Samantha Companatico, SAM Emerging Arts Leader Intern in Conservation

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

Muse/News: Vivid Joy, Upcycled Fashion, and Expanding Indigeneity

Rachel Eggers on Jul 31 2023

Muse/News: Vivid Joy, Upcycled Fashion, and Expanding Indigeneity

SAM News

Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks, the Ghanaian artist’s debut museum solo exhibition, is now on view at SAM! Marcus Harrison Green says the show “urges reflection on Black identity and the self” for the cover story of last week’s Real Change (also reshared in South Seattle Emerald). 

“Bringing these paintings alive are the vivid colors he uses: marigold yellows, starch whites, olive oil greens and cherry reds that are all catnip to the eye. No matter the direness of what Boafo’s subjects may have been through, brightness (i.e., joy) never abandons them. It all has the effect of making one muse over the origins of these not-so-make-believe characters.”

The Stranger’s Charles Mudede includes the exhibition in a recent “Stranger Suggests”; he has his own take on the exhibition’s connection to W.E.B. Du Bois’s idea of double-consciousness. 

As Soul of Black Folks tours the US, ARTnews’ Gameli Hamelo reports on how the artist is “using his star power to support Ghana’s art scene.”

“Boafo’s quest to show his work in Ghana attests to his dedication to his home country, which tends to get lost in discussions of his art, the prices for it, and his celebrity. Rather than coasting by on fame, Boafo is using his star power to support Ghana’s art scene.”

Also: The Seattle Times was among the outlets that announced major news from the museum last week. Amada Cruz will depart SAM for a director role at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, a place where she has a personal and professional connection. Stay tuned for more on the institution’s leadership transition plan.

Local News

“Free Seattle waterfront shuttle bus returns,” reports the Seattle Times’ Mike Lindblom. It offers a fun way to experience the downtown waterfront, including the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Junko Yamamoto and her “vibrating substances” are featured as the Stranger’s “artist of the week.”

Jas Keimig for Crosscut on the “slow-fashion” Seattle designer dan mcLean.

“‘When it’s a dan mcLean show, it’s Fashion Week,’ said one partygoer wearing a giant hat and shades.”

Inter/National News

Via ARTnews’ Francesca Aton: “Ancient Glass Workshop Discovered in Czech Republic May Have Hosted Sacred Rituals, Archaeologists Say.”

Naomi Polonsky for Hyperallergic on Carrie Mae Weems’s new show, now on view at London’s Barbican Art Gallery.

Exciting headline via Zachary Small for the New York Times: “Jeffrey Gibson, Indigenous U.S. Artist, Is Selected for Venice Biennale.” SAM is a big fan: Gibson’s solo exhibition Like a Hammer was on view at SAM back in 2019; a work by the artist in SAM’s collection is now on view in Reverberations. 

“‘The last 15 years of my career have been about turning inward and trying to make something I really wanted to see in the world,’ said Gibson, 51. ‘Now I want to expand the way people think about Indigeneity.’”

And Finally

RIP, Sinead O’Connor. 

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Pride Month: The Fleet’s In and Queer Art at SAM

Seattle Art Museum on Jun 30 2023

Pride Month: The Fleet’s In and Queer Art at SAM

This July marks my one-year anniversary at SAM and June was my first Pride in Seattle. I even had the honor of walking the parade with the city’s Consulate of Mexico. As a gay professional of Mexican descent, this is all a big deal for me!

In my role as the museum’s deputy director for art, I work among so much art, and every day I’m actively discovering captivating items within the SAM collection. Thinking about LGBTQ+ artists, I was surprised to learn that the collection has a print of The Fleet’s In (1934) by gay artist Paul Cadmus. He created this work on paper in response to the censorship of his painting of the same subject. In it, a raucous group of sailors enjoy shore leave while in Manhattan. The original painting, commissioned through the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) during the Great Depression, caused quite a stir in its day. So much so that it was removed from view for what Naval officers and critics considered “outrageous” for the behavior depicted in the work: the figures, many from the LGBTQ+ community, merrymaking with the featured service men. A queer celebration appropriate for Pride Month! The original painting is part of the Met’s collection, and you can learn more about it here.

To this day, the painting has had limited exposure but it is well known within queer art history. The print version, like the one in SAM’s collection, is important because it was intentionally created by Cadmus in an act of rebellion to disseminate the image and prevent its censorship. He would even credit the uproar with making his work more well known during his life. The work may have garnered a negative response, but the image itself carries gay culture, much of it coded and strategically placed by Cadmus, during a period when homosexuality was illegal. The print at SAM is interesting because it was gifted to the collection in 1944 by the founder of our museum, Dr. Richard Fuller. Could he have known about its notoriety and importance before gifting it to the museum? To more surprise, we also have a 1937 photographed portrait of Cadmus by Carl Van Vechten in the museum collection.

Reflecting on the collection during Pride Month, I sought other queerness currently on view in SAM’s galleries and by gay artists. Pop artist Andy Warhol has a strong presence in the museum; he even came to the museum for a solo exhibition in 1976. His large painting of the musician Elvis Presley as a young gunslinger heartthrob immortalized in silver is not only a reference to the future but to the reflective aesthetic of his famed studio the Silver Factory. It was an inclusive space for its day and a beacon for anyone who felt different, including members of the LGBTQ+ community. Some individuals who stood out even took on a role as  “Superstar” of the Factory for their beauty, personality, or talent. While Warhol’s universe tended to focus around himself, his impact on popular culture included making queerness more visual, and many artists today follow in his footsteps.  

Everywhere you turn, the museum also has a younger generation of queer artists on view: Mickalene Thomas’s large bedazzled painting, Chicano artist Laura Aguilar’s evocative and haunting black-and-white photography, Native American multidisciplinary artist Jeffrey Gibson’s beaded punching bag with the phrase “If I Ruled the World” in colorful plastic beadwork, Jacolby Satterwhite’s projected video work about his mother and Ballroom culture, Kehinde Wiley’s portrait featuring a Black subject in a classical style and Nick Cave’s maximalist soundsuit. There’s a recent acquisition by Naama Tsabar, an Israeli artist (and friend) whose practice includes intimacy and contact through the tactile materials that she uses, sculptures she builds, and evocative sonic performances. In my previous role at The Andy Warhol Museum, I hosted a performance of hers in conjunction with the exhibition Fantasy America. Titled Stranger, it comprised a double-sided guitar and two nearly physically identical women (the artist and Kristin Mueller) struggling through a non-verbal but acoustic conversation. Many of these artists I have followed for years and have even met. Having them in the collection is so inspiring and special for Seattle.    

Although marginalized peoples enjoy this honorary month of acknowledgement, the support in this city is ongoing and Pride Month felt the most festive during a time of nationwide hate and oppression against LGBTQ+ people. In addition, I’ve met so many people, including colleagues at SAM, who are also part of the community or dedicated allies. We work across many departments in the museum and it’s clear we really care about the community in Seattle. Pride Month has passed, but the visibility and support of LGBTQ+ artists has and will continue at SAM.

– José Carlos-Diaz, SAM Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art

Photos: The Fleet’s In, 1934, Paul Cadmus, American, 1904-1999, print, Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 44.229. © Estate of Paul Cadmus. Paul Cadmus, 1937, gelatin silver print, 10 x 7 5/8 in. (25.4 x 19.4 cm), Mary Arrington Small Estate Acquisition Fund and Photography Purchase Fund in honor of Cheryl Ann Christie, 98.87. © Estate of Paul Cadmus.

 

Muse/News: Year of the Rabbit, Untold Voices, and Art’s Questions

Rachel Eggers on Jan 23 2023

Muse/News: Year of the Rabbit, Untold Voices, and Art’s Questions

SAM News

Happy Lunar New Year! The Seattle Times, EverOut, and ParentMap all have round-ups of all the ways to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit and all of them include the Lunar New Year Family Celebration at the Seattle Asian Art Museum on February 4! Join us for a live Lion Dance, drop-in art activities, and a storytime inspired by the holiday.

In other holiday news: Forbes finds the “most romantic museum shop gifts” for Valentine’s Day shoppers, including the SAM Shop-exclusive “Love” sweatshirt designed by Jeffrey Gibson.

Local News

Jerald Pierce of the Seattle Times interviews Jamilee Lacy, the Frye Art Museum’s just-announced new director and CEO. 

Travel writer and novelist Jonathan Raban has died at the age of 80. The Stranger’s Megan Seling offered this remembrance with many links to his writing in their pages. 

Rachel Gallaher for Seattle Magazine on actor-playwright Reginald André Jackson’s play, History of Theatre: About, By, For and Near, which will play at ACT January 28 through February 12.

“When [Jackson] started doing workshops for his upcoming play, History of Theatre: About, By, For and Near, which looks at the untold stories of African American thespianism, he kept getting the same reactions over and over again. Comments of ‘I didn’t know about that’ and ‘Why wasn’t I taught this?’ were common refrains at the reading circles.”

Inter/National News

(When will it be me, though?) Via Artnet: “An Oil Sketch Found Covered With Bird Droppings in a Farm Shed Is Actually an Early Van Dyck.” 

The Guardian’s Wilfred Chan speaks with those who do and do not embrace the recently unveiled sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King. 

The New York Times’ Holland Cotter visits the Met’s new exhibition of Maya art and asks the question, “can art ever be innocent?”

“As an expression and reflection of culture, art too is the opposite of innocent, and the idea of beauty attached to it is always complicated for that reason, a generator of questions as much as a giver of answers.”

And Finally

The physics of swing.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Jen Au.

Muse/News: Super Cuts, States of Names, and Hopper’s Myth

Rachel Eggers on Oct 13 2020

Muse/News: Super Cuts, States of Names, and Hopper’s Myth

SAM News

“Cuts through the chaos”: Go into the studio of Barbara Earl Thomas with Crosscut’s video series, The New Normal. Video producer Aileen Imperial and team captured the thoughts of the artist as she worked on her series of cut-paper portraits of Black children, which will debut at SAM later in November in her solo exhibition, The Geography of Innocence.

Local News

It’s tough to focus on a book these days, right? Well, let this list of “11 Localish Books to Read This Autumn” collected by Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne provide some inspiration (or guilt, whatever works).

Jasmyne Keimig of the Stranger declares time meaningless; switches up “Currently Hanging” to “Previously Hanging” to talk about Susan Dory’s Containment series. The artist’s show at Winston Wächter closed in June but is now back “on view” again via their website.

“Does Washington have a George problem?” As communities across the country make demands and ask questions about their public monuments and symbols, Ron Judd of Seattle Times’ Pacific NW magazine explores the history and possible future of the name of Washington State itself.

“We are a questioning people; questions will be asked. To wit: Is the name simply settled history, a historical bridge too far to even discuss? Is it a tad troublesome, but not enough to skip lunch over? Or is it a betrayal, wholly unjustified, a historical wrong deserving of righting?”

Inter/National News

Anyone else miss having an Artemisia Gentileschi painting at SAM (visited as part of last fall’s exhibition Flesh and Blood)? Us, too. Have a listen to The Art Newspaper’s podcast that visits Artemisia, the National Gallery in London’s highly-anticipated-then-delayed-but-now-open exhibition.

Jeffrey Gibson? Lowery Stokes Sims? Count us in for this essay on the artist by the scholar, reprinted from the catalogue for the 2018 exhibition This Is the Day.

Blake Gopnik for the New York Times examines a recent discovery by graduate student Louis Shadwick on Edward Hopper, regarding early works originally thought to be, well, original.

“One aspect of this ‘Americanness’ involved the image of the lone male — tall, taciturn, remote, just like Hopper — bravely forging his own path. This was precisely the image of himself that Hopper helped to propagate; even after his death, it went on to shape the story, now revealed to be a myth, of the miraculous early oils that Hopper is supposed to have come up with on his own.”

And Finally

A new Google app helps you put on the pearl earring (yes, THAT pearl earring).

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Color Wheel, 2020, Barbara Earl Thomas, American, cut paper and hand-printed color backing, 40 x 26 in., Courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, photo: Spike Mafford.

Object of the Week: Between Rabbit and Fox

Elisabeth Smith on Oct 2 2020

Object of the Week: Between Rabbit and Fox

Acquired last year and newly installed in SAM’s third floor galleries, Jeffrey Gibson’s 2017 painting Between Rabbit and Fox is a commanding and alluring work. Measuring 70 x 50 1/8 inches, the painting’s luminous acrylic and graphite surface, with its alternating and overlapping blocks and triangles of color, captivates from even across the gallery.

A citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and also of Cherokee heritage, Gibson grew up between the United States, Germany, and Korea. Much like his personal background, which evades easy categorization, Gibson’s artistic practice engages a wide range of materials, ideas, and forms. He has characterized his mode of making in the context of anthropophagia, borrowing from Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954), whose concept centers on the idea of metaphorically cannibalizing, or absorbing, other cultures as a way to gain strength and assert creative autonomy.[1]

Abstraction is inextricable from the long and unique histories of Indigenous visual and material culture in America. Gibson, deeply invested in these histories, also forges his own connections to Modernist geometric abstraction. Whether he blends the hard edge abstraction we see in parfleche designs with the abstraction of Modernist painting, or reimagines traditional beadwork for entirely new applications, Gibson is able to succinctly explore complex themes of cultural hybridity and the history of abstraction and craft.

Gibson has, over time, learned to embrace and celebrate a certain state of “in-between-ness”—being between different cultures and different aesthetic histories.[2] And as the title of the painting Between Rabbit and Fox suggests, even the pattern we see is in-between. Like a highly abstracted Rorschach test or Magic Eye stereogram, our eye flits about the surface of the canvas, seeing both a stylized rabbit and fox flash before our eyes. This state of indeterminacy—of being in flux—is important for Gibson, and it’s important for us, as viewers, to experience and embody this hybridity (if even for a moment) as well.

– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collections and Provenance Associate

[1] “Innovation and Tradition: Jeffrey Gibson Interviewed by Emily Zimmerman,” Bomb Magazine, May 6, 2019, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/innovation-and-tradition-jeffrey-gibson-interviewed.
[2] Jasmyne Keimig, “Jeffrey Gibson’s Like a Hammer Strikes Today,” The Stranger, Feb. 28, 2019, https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/02/28/39366995/jeffrey-gibsons-like-a-hammer-strikes-today.
Image: Between Rabbit and Fox, 2017, Jeffrey Gibson, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 70 x 50 1/8 in., Purchased with funds from the Contemporary Collectors Forum and General Acquisition Fund, 2019.30 © Artist or Artist’s Estate

My Favorite Things: Jeffrey Gibson

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Mar 17 2020

“I think many people may not know all of the stories behind these objects. They’re not just an image, they’re an object and they’re an object that’s been in use.”

– Jeffrey Gibson

Artist Jeffrey Gibson discusses the sculptural and metaphorical interest of this human-form neck ring used as a piece of dance regalia in Hamat’sa ceremony. Made from cedar and bark, this sculpture is installed hanging as it would be worn around the neck of a dancer. Consider the sound that it would make when activated by movement and the ceremony that it is part of the next time you visit SAM’s Native Art of the Americas galleries.

Artwork: “Bagwikala (Human Being Neck Ring)”, ca. 1910, Mungo Martin (Nakapankam), Kwakwaka’wakw, Kwagu’l, Fort Rupert, British Columbia, ca. 1884–1962, red cedar bark, yellow cedar, paint, human hair, 68 x 12 x 6 in. (172.72 x 30.48 x 15.24 cm), Gift of John H. Hauberg, 83.241. Music: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Baroque drama, soap bubbles, and Colescott’s good trouble

Rachel Eggers on Sep 30 2019

Muse/News: Baroque drama, soap bubbles, and Colescott’s good trouble

SAM News

Are you ready for DRAMA? SAM’s trailer for the major fall exhibition is here in all its glory. Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum opens October 17; both Seattle Met and Seattle Magazine recommend it.

Jeffrey Gibson, whose solo show Like a Hammer graced SAM’s walls earlier this year, is officially a genius. He, along with 25 other noteworthy doers, was named a MacArthur Fellow last week. Congrats, Jeffrey!

Local News

The Seattle Times’ Brendan Kiley reports on the conflict within Intiman Theatre between the board and staff, as the organization again comes under threat. The Stranger’s Rich Smith also reported on the rumblings.

The Frye just opened three new shows. Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne loved Pierre Leguillon: Arbus Bonus, calling it “direct, elegant, inquisitive, multitudinous.”

And the Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig loved Unsettling Femininity, their first thematic show from the founding collection that explores male and female gazes—and one ensorcelling soap bubble—amid newly lavender walls.

“It’ll last forever. It’s been here since before my grandparents were born and will be here for longer than my grandchildren. This bubble with outlast my life as a symbol of how my own life is fleeting. Amongst all that oil paint!”

Inter/National News

GRAY Magazine’s Tiffany Jow on Andrea D’Aquino’s new collage book on Ruth Asawa, which explores the artist’s fascinating personal history. It’s directed at readers age 5-8—but I think you’ll want a copy, too.

Reggie Ugwu of the New York Times reports on last week’s unveiling in Times Square of Kehinde Wiley’s bronze sculpture Rumors of War, of a man and “the horse he rode in on, from a previous century, perhaps, or was it a future one?”

Artnet’s Taylor Dafoe reviews Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott, now on view in Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center. Lowery Stokes Sims and co-curators grapple with his amazing work—and his underappreciated status.

“He misbehaved,” she explains matter-of-factly. “He did not conform to any of the canonical ideas about painting, about depictions, about points of view—he just misbehaved and we’re all better for it.”

And Finally

It’s been a month. Farewell, September.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Atalanta and Hippomenes, ca. 1620–1625, Guido Reni, Italian, 1575–1642, oil on canvas, 75 9/16 x 103 15/16 in., Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.

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

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Sep 23 2019

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: Wrapping up, bobbling macarons, and going to camp

Nina Dubinsky on May 13 2019

Muse/News: Wrapping up, bobbling macarons, and going to camp

SAM News

That’s a wrap on Jeffrey: Gibson: Like a Hammer. As a farewell, here’s Emily Zimmerman interviewing the artist for BOMB Magazine.

“I needed to let go of whether I was an artist or not, and I needed to pursue the things that I want to see existing in the world that don’t exist. What are the things that would leverage this world that didn’t meet my expectations?”

Celebrated Brazilian artist Regina Silveira has debuted a new site-specific installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park’s PACCAR Pavilion called Octopus Wrap. A glimpse of the installation process was captured by the Seattle Times’ Alan Berner. Seattle Met and Crosscut also previewed the installation, which features a series of tire tracks wrapping around the walls, windows, and floor of the building, looking like the arms of an octopus.

“The startling change to the familiar park building embodies elements of play, but also reminds us of the luxury of presuming our surroundings will always stay the same.”

And Smithsonian Magazine featured the sculpture park on their round-up of the “world’s most spectacular sculpture parks.”

Local News

Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture announced that Christopher Paul Jordan has been selected to create the centerpiece artwork for the planned AIDS Memorial Pathway project on Capitol Hill.

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores and South Seattle Emerald’s Jessie McKenna both wrote up Alexis Taylor’s Black Among Other Things, an installation at AURA in the Central District about her experiences as a Black woman.

The art of food: Chef Brady Williams won Best Chef in the Northwest at James Beard Awards; the Seattle Times’ Bethany Jean Clement recently picked up a shift at Canlis to learn about their legendary service.

“By the top of the stairs, the macaron begins to bobble; on the penultimate step, it leaps to its death, in its final act somehow managing to shatter on the soft carpeting. A man seated at one of Canlis’ well-spaced, snowy-white-linened tables regards me with a mixture of pity and horror.”

Inter/National News

But is it CAMP? The Met’s latest exhibition—and attendant over-the-top Gala—has everyone reaching for their undergrad copy of Sontag. Here are some thoughts.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) announced this week that Mia Locks will be their new senior curator and head of initiatives; interestingly, they don’t have plans to hire a chief curator to replace Helen Molesworth.

Nadja Sayej for the Guardian on Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman, now on view in New York, which traces her work as a “trailblazer of African American arts.”

“She said her legacy is in the work of her students,” notes Ikemoto. “Even when they didn’t have money to buy their own art supplies, she let them use hers. She often said, ‘I know much I was put down and denied, so if I can teach these kids anything, I’m going to teach it to them.’”

And Finally

Can we please do something now?

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of “Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap”, 2019, Seattle Art Museum site-specific installation, photo: Mark Woods.



Artists on Art: Carla Rossi

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on May 7 2019

Artists on Art: Carla Rossi

“Approach the art, do not cross the line, look, turn to your friend and say, ‘my kid could do that,’ and then walk away!”

– Carla Rossi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1jlanSSplo

Follow Carla Rossi, an immortal trickster and your unofficial tour guide through Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. Gibson’s contemporary art combines powwow, pop culture, and punching bags to explore what modernity means within Indigenous cultures. Carla Rossi combines drag, clowning, and entitlement to address complacency, and the confusion of “mixed” identities. See through Carla’s eyes when you visit Like a Hammer.

This video is one of a series presenting Northwest Native American artists responding to Gibson’s work. The character of Carla was created by Anthony Hudson, a multidisciplinary artist, writer, performer, and filmmaker. Hudson, a member of the Grand Ronde tribe, started performing as Carla as an art project in 2010 and has since turned Carla into a full-fledged persona, body of work, and occupation. Hudson prefers the term “drag clown” over “drag queen” because he’s not trying to emulate women. Carla is a tool for critique. When he performs as Carla, Hudson wear whiteface in direct allusion to whiteness, clowning, and as a critical inversion of blackface.

Jeffrey Gibson believes, “everyone is at the intersection of multiple cultures times, histories. . . . that there’s a lot more to be gained at the space in between mapped points then there is at the mapped points. . . . I’m always looking for these in-between spaces of things.” Similarly, Anthony Hudson (Grand Ronde), is interested in “in the edge – that line between satire and sincerity, between critique and reification—as a site where transgression and transformation occur.”

Jeffrey Gibson is of Cherokee heritage and a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. He grew up in urban settings in Germany, South Korea, the United States, and England, and his work draws on his experiences in different cultural environments. In his artwork, materials used in Indigenous powwow regalia, such as glass beads, drums, trade blankets, and metal jingles, are twined together with aspects of queer club culture as well as the legacies of abstract painting. Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer is a major museum exhibition presenting a significant selection of this contemporary artist’s exuberant artwork created since 2011. The presentation in Seattle closes on May 12.


Muse/News: Pie art, Seattle style, and obvious plants

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on May 6 2019

Muse/News: Pie art, Seattle style, and obvious plants

SAM News

Lauren Ko creates stunning pie art on her @lokokitchen Instagram—check out the pie she made inspired by SAM’s show! There’s more details here. Get yourself to SAM: Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer closes this Sunday, May 12!

Ring in wedding season—you know you love it!—with this Seattle Bride look at a beautiful wedding at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Aww.

Local News

The Seattle Times’ Moira Macdonald takes a look at the new fashion exhibit at MOHAI on—yes, really—Seattle style.

Watch the Seattle Channel’s CityStream story about the forthcoming return of the historic Louisa Hotel, including the fate of their rediscovered Prohibition-era murals.

Seattle Magazine’s Gavin Borchert and Gwendolyn Elliott on Amazon’s internal creative program, Expressions, which gives employees opportunities to get creative.

“Reverberating beyond the badge-required halls of Amazonia is a bigger conversation about the company’s contributions—or lack thereof—to Seattle’s creative community as a whole, considering how much it’s altered the city’s physical and cultural footprint.”

Inter/National News

John Grade does it again: Check out this stunning installation by the artist set in a clearing of an Italian forest, which turns rainwater into the droplets of a natural chandelier.

An appreciation for the “guardian of Black cinema” by the New Yorker’s Doreen St. Felix of the director John Singleton, who passed away this week at the age of 51.

Artnet’s Melissa Smith talks with Black artists about the paradigm shift of increased interest in their work—and the attendant pressures, including stress, burnout, and exploitation.

“Navigating the limited existing roles for [black artists] is exhausting, and never-ending,” Jemison says. “And black artists are very aware that being selected is super arbitrary and predicated on partial understanding of the work.”

And Finally

All Alone Bert. Pre-Cracked Egg. Funeral Kazoo. They’re all an Obvious Plant.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Pop-Art Video: I Put a Spell on You, Jeffrey Gibson

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on May 2 2019

Pop-Art Video: I Put a Spell on You, Jeffrey Gibson

How many Everlast punching bags has Jeffrey Gibson turned into hanging sculptures? What number did Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You” reach on the Billboard chart? What do these two things have to do with each other? Visit Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer and find out before it closes May 12!

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer is a major museum exhibition presenting a significant selection of this contemporary artist’s exuberant artwork created since 2011. Gibson’s complex work reflects varied influences, including fashion and design, abstract painting, queer identity, popular music, and the materials and aesthetics of Native American cultures. The more than 65 works on view include beaded punching bags, figures and wall hangings, abstract geometric paintings on rawhide and canvas, performance video, and a new multimedia installation.

Muse/News: First Thursday, drawing darkness, and a monument to Shirley Chisholm

Rachel Eggers on Apr 29 2019

Muse/News: First Thursday, drawing darkness, and a monument to Shirley Chisholm

SAM News

The Seattle Times includes this week’s First Thursday on their community calendar; it’ll be the last one at which to see Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer! Don’t miss this exhibition.

SAM is included in this CNN Travel story on Pike Place Market and what to see and do nearby.

Local News

Fill up that calendar: The Seattle Times has collected all the best arts events launching in May.

Lisa Edge of Real Change reviews Soy yo at Vermillion, one of the many satellite shows of yəhaẃ̓; she notes “the works have an overarching theme of the care and nurture that femme and female folks provide.”

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig on Bad Gateway at Bellevue Arts Museum, the first museum exhibition of graphic artist Simon Hanselmann; every single hand-painted page of his forthcoming book will be on view.

“It’s impossible to read the whole story just standing there (though do try, if you wish). But stepping back, you get a sense of the artist’s ambition and vision, his diligence in exploring the dark recesses of his visual imagination.”

Inter/National News

Jets to Dakar! Artsy takes a look inside Kehinde Wiley’s just-launched artist residency in Senegal; called Black Rock, he says it will offer artists “the opportunity to rub up against sameness and difference at once.”

Cartoonist Sarah Glidden draws her obsession with the Guggenheim’s recent Hilma af Klint exhibition, finding a kindred spirit and a dizzying array of insights and questions.

Famous for firsts, the late Shirley Chisholm marks another: the first female historical figure with a public monument in Brooklyn. The New York Times has the details on the design by Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous.

“It allows you to be enveloped in a conversation about interacting and bringing others along. This approach to a monument is that it’s an invitation to participate.”

And Finally

A journalistic project to tuck into (save room for spumoni!).

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Jen Au

Artists on Art: Like a Hammer

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Apr 25 2019

Listen as poet Sasha LaPointe shares a piece of her writing in response to Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. An Indigenous writer incorporating themes of survival and mixed heritage, LaPointe is the artist in residence at ARTS at King Street Station and recipient of a 2018 Artist Trust GAP Grant.

Jeffrey Gibson, the artist behind Like a Hammer is of Cherokee heritage and a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and grew up in urban settings in Germany, South Korea, the United States, and England. His sculptures, abstract paintings, and multimedia installation draw on his experiences in different cultural environments. Similarly, Sasha LaPointe’s work is influenced by a wide range of things: from the work her great grandmother did for the Coast Salish language revitalization, to loud basement punk shows and what it means to grow up mixed heritage.

See the exhibition that LaPointe’s piece, below, connects to before it’s too late—Gibson’s complex and colorful contemporary art is on view in Like a Hammer now through May 12!

Blue

I emerge from our small, yellow linoleum bathroom, blue. The bathroom is at one end of our single wide trailer, and I have the length of narrow hallway to consider before reaching the living room, blue.

“Blue!?” And I know my mother is furious.

“You look ridiculous.” It’s all she says. And I do look ridiculous. 

I had torn out the pages from a magazine. Lined my bedroom floor with them, and studied. Those punk rock, spiked hair, white teeth, high fashion, popped collar, leather studded glossy photo squares were strewn across my small space like a spread of tarot cards telling me a future I would never get to. Not out here. Not in the white trailer rusting amber, thick of trees, stretch of reservation, of highway that stood between me and whatever else was out there. Record stores. The mall. Parking lots where kids were skateboarding and smoking pot, probably. Kids with boomboxes and bottles of beer. Out there, were beaches with bands playing on them. And these faces, these shining faces, with pink, green, purple and BLUE hair. Blue. I could get that, at least. I could mix seventeen packets of blue raspberry Koolaid with a small amount of water, and get that. It was alchemy, it was potion making.  But no one told me about the bleach, about my dark hair needing to lift, to lighten, in order to get that blue. No one told me that the mess of Koolaid would only run down my scalp, my face, my neck and would stain me blue.

Blue, is what you taste like, he says still holding me on the twin bed, in the early glow of dawn and my teenaged curiosity has pushed me to ask what does my body taste like, to you? His fingers travel from neck to navel, breath on my thigh and here in our sacred space he answers simply. Blue. You taste blue. And I wonder if what he means is sad. You taste sad.

Taqseblu. The name is given to me when I am three. To understand it my child brain has to break it apart. Taqsweblu. TALK. As in talking. As in to tell. As in story. SHA. As in the second syllable of my English name. As in half of me. BLUE. As in the taste of me. Blue as in Sad.  Blue. My grandmother was Taqsweblu before me. And now I am Taqseblu too.

– Sasha Lapointe

Artists on art: “Someone Great Is Gone”

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Apr 23 2019

“I think that Gibson’s work holds a lot of humor, and this piece specifically does, which I find to be such an accessible entry point to much more nuanced conversations around Indigenous issues.” – Christine Babic

Watch as visual and performance artist Christine Babic unpacks Jeffrey Gibson’s use of Indigenous materials in his abstract painting on rawhide, Someone Great Is Gone on view in Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer, on view at SAM through May 12. Gibson is of Cherokee heritage and a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. He grew up in urban settings in Germany, South Korea, the United States, and England, and his work draws on his experiences in different cultural environments. In his artwork, materials used in Indigenous powwow regalia, such as glass beads, drums, trade blankets, and metal jingles, are twined together with aspects of queer club culture as well as the legacies of abstract painting.

Christine Babic’s artwork explores geographical heritage, colonial discourse & her Chugach Alutiiq identity. She was SAM’s annual artist in residence at the Olympic Sculpture Park in winter of 2019. You can learn more about her and her artwork in an interview she did with SAM.

Pop-Art Video: Like A Hammer

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Apr 19 2019

How old was artist Jeffrey Gibson when he started going to the club? How do Peter, Paul, and Mary influence Gibson’s work? What did Nietzsche have to say about hammers? Find out in this video of info nuggets about Gibson’s sculpture, Like A Hammer, on view at SAM in the special exhibition of the same name!

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer is a major museum exhibition presenting a significant selection of this contemporary artist’s exuberant artwork created since 2011. Gibson’s complex work reflects varied influences, including fashion and design, abstract painting, queer identity, popular music, and the materials and aesthetics of Native American cultures. The more than 65 works on view include beaded punching bags, figures and wall hangings, abstract geometric paintings on rawhide and canvas, performance video, and a new multimedia installation.

See more of Gibson’s club kids on view through May 12!

SAM on TV, Seattle’s new arts hub, and pink collar jobs

Rachel Eggers on Mar 25 2019

SAM on TV, Seattle’s new arts hub, and pink collar jobs

SAM News

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer was featured in a spring arts preview on KING 5’s Evening Magazine’s March 14 episode, and the writers of Teen Tix highlighted the show in their email newsletter.

Because we could all use some laughs: Classic British Comedy Films is now playing weekly at SAM; the series was included on the Stranger’s list of “Movies Worth Watching in Seattle.”

Local News

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig takes a life-changing coffee break, encountering a “brave and stirring painting of a dignified small-toothed whale.”

Watch Jen Dev’s video story for Crosscut on the Black Trans Prayer Book, an interfaith, interdisciplinary project created by J Mase III and Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi.

The Seattle Times’ Brendan Kiley explores the new and shiny ARTS at King Street Station, along with its inaugural exhibition, yəhaw̓—go see it this weekend!

The King Street project, from rumor to reality, was a team effort between the city and its arts community. “I’ve been using a coral-reef metaphor,” Engstrom said. “We all put this thing here, like a reef. Now we’ll see what will come and go, what will make a home here and how it will change.”

Inter/National News

Martin Bailey of the Art Newspaper reports that London’s National Portrait Gallery will not accept a €1 million grant from the Sackler Trust; the Sackler family is under fire for their role in the opioid epidemic.

Hey, it’s Women’s History Month. Let’s explore the perils of the pink collar with this just-released report from the Gender Equity in Museums Movement (GEMM).

The Guardian’s Hamilton Nolan on New York City’s Hudson Yards, the biggest private real estate development in US history (spoiler alert: he HATES it).

But let it not be said that Hudson Yards does not promote the arts. It will be centered around “The Vessel”, a 15-story high answer to the question: “How much money could a rich man waste building a climbable version of an MC Escher drawing?” (The answer is $200m.)

And Finally

“Thank you my life long afternoon/late in this spring that has no age”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Stephanie Fink

Muse/News: Art springs eternal, dancing in bronze, and a 13/10 museum

Rachel Eggers on Mar 18 2019

Muse/News: Art springs eternal, dancing in bronze, and a 13/10 museum

SAM News

Spring arts previews blossom! The annual New York Times special Museums section is out; Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer is featured in the recommended exhibitions listings.

The show is also highlighted in the visual arts listings—along with six other SAM shows—of The Stranger’s Arts & Performance Quarterly; head to the last page for their recurring feature, “Anatomy Of,” this time offering “A Guided Tour of a Punching Bag That an Indigenous Sculptor Turned into Art.”

And be sure to grab a copy of this week’s Real Change, with American History (JB) in all its glory on the cover and Lisa Edge’s review inside, in which she calls the show “mesmeric from start to finish.”

Watch Tasia Endo, SAM’s Manager of Interpretive Technology, take part in the recent conversation, “Tech Has Changed Seattle. Now What?”

Local News

KUOW’s Marcie Sillman answers the question: What’s the story behind those bronze dance steps on Capitol Hill?

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis on Degenerate Art Ensemble’s “most personal performance yet,” which played last week at Erickson Theatre.

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig previews Regeneración | Rebirth at Vermillion Art Gallery, the first in a series of three shows done in conjunction with yəhaw̓.

“A tribute to spring—flowers in bloom, longer days, warmth—and all that it represents: regeneration, rebirth and renewal.”

Inter/National News

Also of note in the New York Times Museums section: Alex V. Cipolle’s look at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts (C.S.I.A), the only professional print house on an Indian reservation in the United States. Rick Bartow, Marie Watt, Jeffrey Gibson, and Wendy Red Star have all been residents of its program, and 2018 Betty Bowen Award-winner Natalie Ball is a resident this year.

And here’s Robin Pogrebin on different ways that institutions are handling overcrowded collections; take the quiz to see if you can make tough choices on artworks, as did the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Artnet’s Naomi Rea on how “experience” as a marketing buzzword has infiltrated the museum world.

If “legacy cultural organizations” want to grow their audiences, they need to adapt and transform to meet their needs. “If arts organizations can leverage that new understanding in a way authentic to them and on-mission and without abandoning their core purpose,” she says, “all audiences benefit.”

And Finally

It’s a good museum, Brent.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman

Muse/News: Jeffrey Gibson’s iconic forms, Tschabalala Self’s avatars, and a maybe-Caravaggio

Rachel Eggers on Mar 11 2019

Muse/News: Jeffrey Gibson’s iconic forms, Tschabalala Self’s avatars, and a maybe-Caravaggio

SAM News

Reviews for Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer continue to hit! The Seattle Times, GRAY Magazine, KEXP’s Sound and Vision, UW Daily, The Spectator, and family blog An Emerald City Life all wrote up the exhibition. What they’re saying:

“Rather than offering an evolutionary tour of style, the exhibition exudes a feeling: a bold, fluid simultaneity, grounded in striking pattern, color and craftsmanship and provocative references to music, personal stories and indigenous practices.” – Gayle Clemans

“Personal, brilliantly hybridized, and seriously eye-catching.” – Blake Peterson

“It’s the type of honest, colorful, modern and inclusive art that speaks to your heart and I really want my kids to see it.” – Terumi Pong

In honor of his 50th anniversary at SAM, UW grad and SAM Films curator Greg Olson is the cover story of the alumni magazine Columns, with a profile by Sheila Farr and a photospread worthy of the big screen.

Artist Jacolby Satterwhite created an animation sequence for Solange’s film that accompanies her new album; Complex speaks with the artist, whose Country Ball 1989-2012 is now on view at SAM.

Local News

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores spoke with students who learned yesterday that their school, The Art Institute of Seattle, would be permanently shut down—today.

The Stranger has a round-up of 15 Pioneer Square gallery shows to see this month, including Mary Coss at METHOD and Ryna Frankel at 4Culture.

Hyperallergic’s Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud spoke with artist Tschabalala Self about her Frye Art Museum show and her avatars of Black womanhood.

“You can choose your identity through an avatar. This freedom is power. This freedom subverts subjectivity and allows an individual to escape the cultural attitudes they are subject to.”

Inter/National News

Artsy shares the news that the arts and cultural sector contributed over $763.6 billion to the American economy in 2015, making the case for the economic impact of the arts.

Hyperallergic shares the 43 extraordinary nominees for the 2019 World Press Photo Contest, including Finbarr O’Reilly’s “Dakar Fashion” and John Moore’s “Crying Girl on the Border.”

Unveiled in London this week: a 17th-century canvas of Judith and Holofernes that may be a Caravaggio—but there is no consensus among experts. The New York Times’ Scott Reyburn zooms in on the details.

“It’s perhaps not what an auctioneer—or a billionaire collector—wants to hear about a painting valued at more than €100 million. The market demands that geniuses like Caravaggio work alone.”

And Finally

Nothing made me happier last week than Alston’s singing mice.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Get to Know SAM’s New American Art Curator, Theresa!

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Mar 5 2019

Get to Know SAM’s New American Art Curator, Theresa!

Give a warm SAM welcome to Dr. Theresa Papanikolas who joined SAM’s staff last month as our new Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art. Theresa is an expert in 20th-century American art who will oversee the development, research, presentation, and care of SAM’s collection of American art and connect it to the contemporary moment. “We’re thrilled that Theresa has joined us,” says Kimerly Rorschach, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. “She’s an inspired curator who will continue to build on the wonderful American art program started in 2004 by Patricia Junker.”

Theresa comes to SAM from the Honolulu Museum of Art, where she served as Deputy Director of Art and Programs and Curator of European and American Art. She previously held positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art; Rice University; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. We asked her a few questions so you can learn a little more about what she has planned for SAM’s American art collection in the near future!

SAM: What are your first impressions of Seattle?

Theresa: Well, I got here in December, late at night, although it might have been at about 5 pm. The thing that struck me the most is how early it got dark in the middle of December. I thought I would really struggle with that, but it was no problem. I find Seattle to be such a warm and welcoming city and I’m just so happy to be here.

What has your experience of the art community been so far?

I’ve just started to explore it. I’ve found the immediate community around the museum to be highly professional and very engaged in what’s going on in the world, the art world, and Seattle. Everyone, from the curators to the support staff, is here because they love the museum and they support art. That, to me, has been very energizing. The larger art scene—I’m just starting to get a handle on it.

What do you have planned coming up at SAM?

Right now, I am working on an exhibition that will focus on and celebrate the recent acquisition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Music – Pink and Blue No. 1, a gift from Barney Ebsworth. One of my long-range plans is to reinstall the gallery of American art to tell the story of American art in a way that seems relevant to a contemporary audience and reflects a diverse and multifaceted America.

Tell us about the Georgia O’Keeffe installation!

It’s scheduled for spring 2020. It will be a small show, about 20 works that will look at a moment in O’Keeffe’s early career where she was practicing abstraction rather than flower and desert scenes. I think visitors will find it interesting that she practiced abstraction. This installation will include pretty significant loans.

You’ve focused on O’Keeffe in the past, can you talk a little more about that?

I have done two O’Keeffe exhibitions that reflect time she spent in Hawaii. The Honolulu Museum of Art, where I previously worked, has five O’Keeffe paintings that were all painted in Hawaii. She went there on commission from an advertising firm to do pictures for Dole pineapple juice ads. I was told that she hated Hawaii and was there for only a short period and couldn’t wait to go back to New York. But looking at the pictures, I could not believe that she did not like Hawaii. In the short time she was there she made a connection with the landscape and the things she saw and discovered there. So, I decided to do an exhibition of her work in Hawaii. I was also looking for major artists to show in Honolulu to drive audiences for the museum, and I found out that Ansel Adams had also gone to Hawaii, 20 years after O’Keeffe. He and O’Keeffe were friends. So, I  organized a show of these two artists, both of whom relate to specific places in their work—O’Keeffe with New Mexico and Adams with California and the Southwest—to see what happens when they find themselves in an environment with which they are not familiar, to explore how they developed a sense of place with their work. The show was called Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawaii Pictures. It opened at the museum in 2013 and it traveled to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. A few years later, I was guest curator for Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawaii for the New York Botanical Garden. In the installation at SAM, I’m excited to focus on an earlier moment in O’Keeffe’s life.

Let’s talk about the collection a little bit.

I’m really looking forward to looking more deeply into the American art collection. I was familiar with SAM’s collection from afar in Honolulu and it has a lot of gems and potential for growth. There are several collectors in town that are dedicated to American art. That’s part of what the reinstall of the collection is—find what is out there, in term of SAM’s collection and local collections, and put together something that speaks to Seattle, American art, and the museum.

Walking around the the American art galleries, is there anything that has jumped out at you?

Certainly Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast. It’s just so romantic and big and dramatic. It sucks you in and is obviously a popular piece. I want to build a show around it. It is particularly interesting that the piece tries to evoke a sense of place even though the artist did not visit the location. So, I’ve been thinking about a 19th-century landscape exhibition. One thing that really strikes me about the gallery is the disconnect, the clear separation between the 19th century and the modernist galleries. I have been trying to think about ways to bridge that connection and create more continuity in the chronology of American art.

As an art lover, what else are you excited for at SAM?

I am thrilled about Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. The way Jeffrey’s work treads on all these different areas: identities, communities, is very interesting to me.

Is there anything else that you want to share? Your new favorite restaurant or…?

Well, I will say that I have been having fun building a wardrobe from scratch. It’s a very different mode of dress in Hawaii—we don’t even wear coats. I live in First Hill so I’m so close to everything and walkability is great. I haven’t had to drive my car once in the two months that I’ve been here!

Photo: Natali Wiseman

Muse/News: Manyness at SAM, nuclear paintings, and the Whitney list

Rachel Eggers on Mar 4 2019

Muse/News: Manyness at SAM, nuclear paintings, and the Whitney list

SAM News

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer is now on view! The Seattle Times featured photos from opening events in their print edition, and Seattle Met, The Stranger, Crosscut, Seattle Gay Scene, and new-to-Seattle art blog The Eye all wrote up the exhibition. What they’re saying:

“Like a Hammer has a manyness, a simultaneous quality that instead of diffusing into some fractured postmodern identity coheres into something singular.” –Stefan Milne

“His practice is largely informed by the ‘in-betweenness’ of the fixed points of identity. And there it blossoms.” –Jasmyne Keimig

“The artist has created a kind of gumbo of new associations, igniting things as disparate as old song lyrics and ab-ex white-boy modernism and indigenous craft with the most vital and urgent of sensations.” –Casey Arguelles Gregory

Seattle Met has their eye on another SAM show, highlighting the upcoming Gentleman Warrior: Art of the Samurai as one of “14 Seattle Events to Catch This Spring”.

Carrie Dedon, SAM’s Assistant Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, contributed her thoughts on painter Sam Gilliam to this Artsy editorial in honor of Black History Month looking at “The Most Influential Living African-American Artists.”

Local News

Crosscut’s David Kroman and Dorothy Edwards follow Doug Latta during his last delivery of the Seattle Weekly; the paper announced this week that after 40 years, it will cease publication.

Special to the Seattle Times, Becs Richards sits down with Jody Kuehner, AKA Cherdonna Shinatra, to discuss her show DITCH, now on view—with daily performances!—at the Frye Art Museum.

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig reviews Nikita Ares’ solo show of “so-bright-they’re-nuclear” paintings in Sugar Babies Only, now on view at Specialist Gallery.

“Bright, vivid, frenetic hues take precedence above all in her paintings, the oiliness of the pastels are rich, creamy, and dirty. They give off their own heat, resembling the energy she puts into it. There’s no tedium to it nor perfection, just like her.”

Inter/National News

Here’s one more celebration for Black History Month: Hyperallergic’s Jasmine Weber asks seven notable arts figures to name Black artists overlooked by the canon who they cherish.

This year’s Venice Biennale will host Ghana’s first national pavilion. It’s designed by celebrated architect David Adjaye and will feature work by John Akomfrah, El Anatsui, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

The 75 participating artists in this year’s Whitney Biennial were announced this week; the list includes Jeffrey Gibson and Disguise artist Brendan Fernandes.

“To its curators, the 2019 biennial feels very much like a product of its time, with artists ‘grappling with questions about race, gender, financial inequality, gentrification, the vulnerability of the body,’ said Ms. Panetta. But she added that the work in the show mostly strikes a tone that’s less ‘agitprop-like or angry’ than one might expect in 2019. ‘It’s really work that feels more productive, forward looking, with a kind of optimistic and hopeful tenor to it.’”

And Finally

Alert: The Prince Estate has released a library of Prince GIFs. You’re welcome.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: The hammer hits, post-analog art, and fun at Frieze Los Angeles

Rachel Eggers on Feb 25 2019

Muse/News: The hammer hits, post-analog art, and fun at Frieze Los Angeles

Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer opens this Thursday! Seattle Magazine features the exhibition as part of their spring arts preview; the story also appears in the March print edition.

“The resulting collection is a riot of color and texture that playfully draws the viewer into a world—the experience of another human being—impossible to ever fully know, but commanding one’s full consideration anyhow.”

Nancy Guppy included Like a Hammer and the community celebration on Thursday in this New Day NW segment highlighting local arts happenings.

Fashion: Turn to the left! SAM’s own Priya Frank and David Rue are both one of “7 Seattleites in outfits that say something” in this KUOW piece by Marcie Sillman and Megan Farmer.

Local News

How’d your Oscar ballot turn out? Add to your Oscar trivia with Brangien Davis of Crosscut’s story on Margaret Herrick, a former librarian in Yakima who ended up becoming the first female executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Special to the Seattle Times, here’s Gayle Clemans on the importance of artist residencies in an inequitable Seattle; she visits Mount Analogue and the Jacob Lawrence Gallery.

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig also explored the residency project Ultra Light Beams at Mount Analogue, noting that the work in the show “falls loosely within the genre of post-analog art.”

“Each artist presented here grapples with this meeting of the human hand and technology as we understand it today.”

Inter/National News

Allison Meier for Hyperallergic on Tamiko Thiel’s Unexpected Growth, now on view at the Whitney; in it, the artist continues her groundbreaking AR work, an example of which appeared at the Olympic Sculpture Park in 2016.

Artnet shares the findings of a report on fundraising in the arts that included some encouraging news: average individual contributions rose each year from 2014 to 2017.

The New York Times’ Jori Finkel visits the inaugural edition of Frieze Los Angeles, as well as the new Felix LA art fair; for those who missed it, Graham Walzer took lots of great photos, too.

“’I don’t ever remember Frieze New York actually being fun — and this was,’ he said. ‘My sense is this will be the first of many Frieze fairs out here.’”

And Finally

This one goes out to all my fellow southpaws.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: CAN’T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU, 2015, Jeffrey Gibson, Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee, b. 1972, high fire glazed ceramic, repurposed tipi poles, wool, acrylic paint, wool blanket, glass beads, artificial sinew, copper jingles, and nylon fringe, 72 × 29 × 38 in., Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan, image courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California, photo: Peter Mauney.

SAM Connects Jeffrey Gibson to Community for Free

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Feb 22 2019

SAM Connects Jeffrey Gibson to Community for Free

We are excited about Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer opening in just a few short days and want to make sure you know all the free and discounted ways to see this new, colorful, and exuberant exhibition!

Artist Jeffrey Gibson is of Cherokee heritage and a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. He grew up in urban settings in Germany, South Korea, the United States, and England, and his work draws on his experiences in different cultural environments. In his artwork, Gibson creates a new visual language from familiar items associated with Native powwow, such as glass beads, drums, trade blankets, and metal jingles, which are overlaid with markers of queer club culture as well as the legacies of abstract painting. The inspiration and community of dance clubs and pop music reverberate throughout his work.

Mark your calendars with these opportunities to see this visionary contemporary exhibition where powwow meets pop culture meets punching bags.

We are kicking things off on February 28 with a free Community Opening Celebration from 5–9 pm. The museum will be open late for free so that you can spend plenty of time looking at Gibson’s art in the galleries and still take in the many activities of the evening such as dance performances by Marco Farroni, music and storytelling with The G’ma Project artists Nijuana Jones and Che Sehyun, art making with local artist Philippe Hyojung Kim, and tours led by Jaimée Marsh, and Iisaaksiichaa Ross Braine—all for free!

Also on opening day, Jeffrey Gibson will be in attendance and offering a free talk and screening of new video works. Don’t risk it, reserve a free ticket for Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer and Next Steps at 7 pm on Feb 28!

SAM also offers free and discounted passes to visit our special exhibitions for community organizations or colleges and universities. Find out more and fill out our form to get yours today!

First Thursdays, tickets are to see Like a Hammer are half off and the museum is open late. Swing through on March 7, April 4, or May 2.

First Fridays, seniors get half-off entry to Like a Hammer. If you’re 65+, mark your calendar for March 1, April 5, or May 3.

We’ve also go special deals for teens to pay $5 for a ticket to Like a Hammer through our partner organization TeenTix. Oh, and kids 12 and under are always free!

We also offer free entry to caregivers accompanying a visitor, employees of other museums, gold or flash card holders, and members of the press with ID. Check out our FAQ for more information and other ways to get discounts!

While we’re at it, did you know that it’s always suggested admission to visit SAM’s collection galleries? These are just a few ways SAM connects art to life!

Muse/News: Porcelain secrets, lost speech, and an art-world skewering

Rachel Eggers on Feb 12 2019

Muse/News: Porcelain secrets, lost speech, and an art-world skewering

SAM News

Sammy the Camel headed out on a sunny Tuesday to sell copies of Real Change as part of the paper’s #VendorWeek celebrations.

Sammy got tips from vendor Darrell Wrenn, an autograph from Stone Gossard, hugs from a friend, and some civic conversation with Governor Jay Inslee (that was totally random! We just ran into him!).

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig takes on Taking Tea and “porcelain’s deadly secrets” in the current edition’s feature story.

“Porcelain ‘is way more robust than you initially think it is,’ the artist said the other day at the museum. ‘You can drop it and it bounces.’ That elicited nervous laughter from the staff. But Partington’s genuine appreciation for the material is clear. Taking Tea activates the space in a way never done before.”

Our upcoming exhibition, Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer, is highlighted in arts previews from Seattle Met, The Stranger, and ParentMap.

Local News

Newsletters are the new podcasts: Crosscut launches their arts & culture newsletter, highlighting Cherdonna Shinatra at the Frye, Aaron Dixon at NAAM, and more.

But videos are still going strong: Crosscut also shares their complete 4-part series featuring Susie Lee and four elements of art: clay, water, glass, and light.

And sometimes videos play on a thing called “broadcast TV.” Here’s the latest episode of Seattle Channel’s ArtZone, featuring Quenton Baker, Tres Leches, and a remembrance of Robert C. Jones.

“The aim of this project was to locate a kind of lost speech.”

Inter/National News

First The Square, now Velvet Buzzsaw: The art world is once again skewered on film. (Mostly this is an excuse to share this video of the film’s director hilariously skewering a word.)

A painting by Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun sold at Sotheby’s for $7.18 million, making it “the most expensive painting by a pre-modern era female artist ever sold at auction.”

One of my favorite recent pieces of cultural writing: The New York Times’ Wesley Morris on “racial reconciliation fantasies” such as Driving Miss Daisy and Green Book.

“Not knowing what these movies were ‘about’ didn’t mean it wasn’t clear what they were about. They symbolize a style of American storytelling in which the wheels of interracial friendship are greased by employment, in which prolonged exposure to the black half of the duo enhances the humanity of his white, frequently racist counterpart.”

 And Finally

The polar vortex comes for Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Rachel Eggers.
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