Muse/News: EDI at SAM, Cultural Space Renaissance, and a Colescott Record

SAM News

Priya Frank, SAM’s Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (DEDI), appeared on Converge’s Morning Update Show as part of their #FeelGoodFriday. She and host Omari Salisbury talk about her work for SAM, what’s on view at the museum, and her custom kicks. Her segment starts at minute 37, but watch the whole episode!

“Celebrate AAPI Heritage Month by Visiting These Art Museums,” says House Beautiful, which includes the Seattle Asian Art Museum on its list. It will be at a very limited capacity; get your tickets for later in June now. Learn more about the dramatic reimagining of the building and its collection, which debuted in February 2020, check out project partner US Bank’s interview of SAM CFO Cindy Bolton.

And on view later this summer at SAM downtown: Monet at Étretat. Art & Object shares the news about this show that will take us to France’s Normandy Coast.

Local News

John Grade, whose monumental tree sculpture Middle Fork graces SAM’s Brotman Forum, has been busy installing his new work at Sea-Tac airport; the Seattle Times has photos and a time lapse.

“Emerging from our caves”: Crosscut’s Brangien Davis has a whirlwind look at the many arts and culture events you can attend (gasp!) IRL

“Is Seattle ready for a cultural space renaissance?” asks Beverly Aarons for South Seattle Emerald, looking at what’s happening with Seattle’s new Cultural Space Agency PDA.

“The Cultural Space Agency will give its BIPOC leadership the power to support cultural space projects in Seattle that directly benefit vulnerable communities most impacted by displacement.”

Inter/National News

Artnet’s Taylor Defoe reports on the changes happening at DC’s National Gallery of Art: it just reopened with a new brand identity and a new chief curator, E. Carmen Ramos. 

Rebecca Mead for the New Yorker on “the mysterious origins of the Cerne Abbas Giant.”

ARTnews and everyone else reported on the major acquisition by the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art: Robert Colescott’s now-legendary George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware, which was included in SAM’s 2018 show Figuring History

“This particular one is both contemporary and historical,” [museum director and CEO Sandra] Jackson-Dumont said, referring to the caricatures depicted in the painting. “It bridges popular culture and history. It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to make sure the Lucas Museum is participating in expanding the canon.”

And Finally

Julia Wald’s Missed Meals

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Priya Frank

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

SAM News

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

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

Local News

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

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

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

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

Inter/National News

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

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

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

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

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

And Finally

Wrap yourself in the radical quilts of Rosie Lee Tompkins.

Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

SAM Stories