SAM Art: Honoring Veterans

Seattle Art Museum on Nov 11 2014

Relief fragment with warrior and horse, 668-627 B.C., Neo-Assyrian (ca. 1045-610 B.C.; modern Iraq), Nineveh, Southwest Palace, Room XXXIII, stone, overall 17 1/4 x 22 1/4 in., Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 57.54. Currently on view in the Ancient Mediterranean and Islamic art galleries, Seattle Art Museum.

Relief fragment with warrior and horse, 668-627 B.C., Neo-Assyrian (ca. 1045-610 B.C.; modern Iraq), Nineveh, Southwest Palace, Room XXXIII, stone, overall 17 1/4 x 22 1/4 in., Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 57.54. Currently on view in the Ancient Mediterranean and Islamic art galleries, Seattle Art Museum.

WHEREAS it has long been our custom to commemorate November 11, the anniversary of the ending of World War I, by paying tribute to the heroes of that tragic struggle and by redirecting ourselves to the cause of peace; and

WHEREAS in the intervening years the United States has been involved in… other military conflicts, which have added millions of veterans living and dead to the honor rolls of this Nation…

NOW, THEREFORE I, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, President of the United States of America, do hereby call upon all of our citizens to observe… November 11… as Veterans Day.

 

-Presidential proclamation on the first Veteran’s Day, 1954

 

 

The Seattle Art Museum and Asian Art Museum are closed on Veteran’s Day. The Olympic Sculpture Park is open today until 30 minutes after sunset.

SAM Art: An uncommon history

Seattle Art Museum on Aug 29 2013

SAM Art: An uncommon history

While we often have a general understanding, rarely does a museum know specifically where works of art were originally used or seen. We do not know what home most Egyptian vases or Peruvian textiles graced; we do not know what parlor or library was home to German prints or American drawings; so many works in the SAM collection have an equal air of mystery.

A rare exception to this rule, we know the entire history of one Assyrian relief in the SAM collection. This fragment adorned a wall in the Palace of Assurbanipal II at Nineveh starting in the 7th century BC, from where it was excavated by a British team in August, 1854. After being given as a gift to a friend of the archaeologist’s, it remained in that man’s family until just before the museum acquired the work in 1946. The fragment, with its unique history, is now featured in the exhibition Breath of Heaven, Breath of Earth, at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Willamette University, Salem, Oregon), opening this Saturday.

Bas-Relief Fragment, Neo-Assyrian, ca. 670 B.C., stone, 10 x 8 1/2 x 7/8 in., Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection and Hagop Kevorkian, 46.49. On view at Hallie Ford Museum, Salem, Oregon, starting Saturday, 31 August.
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