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.

Muse/News: Boafo Summer, Book Machine, and Real Van Gogh

SAM News

Art in America shares “The Art World’s Summer Happenings to Add to Your Calendar.” On the list: Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks, opening July 13 at the Seattle Art Museum. This is your chance to experience the rising art world star’s larger-than-life portraits!

Gemma Alexander for ParentMap on “10 ways to create and enjoy art outside as a family this summer.” She mentions the free and family-friendly Summer at SAM series at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Stay tuned for the full program announcement.

“Helps families gain access to the arts”: Ellie White for Seattle’s Child on the Seattle Public Library’s Museum Pass program, which includes 11 cultural institutions, including SAM. 

Local News

Dip your toe into The Seattle Times’ comprehensive “Guide to a Great Seattle Summer.” 

And then immerse yourself in Crosscut’s second year of the Black Arts Legacies project, with written features, videos, and podcast episodes featuring local celebrated Black artists. 

The “Sistah Scifi Book Vending Machine” lands at Black Coffee Northwest and soon, at the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM); Jas Keimig has all the details for South Seattle Emerald. 

“‘I’m excited to get other people excited about science fiction and science fiction writers and these themes of fantasy and Afrofuturism, centering Blackness and Black stories and Black people,’ said [NAAM operations director Ashanti] Davis.”

Inter/National News

What do you think about the Supreme Court’s decision against the Andy Warhol Foundation in Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith? Artnet discussed the outcome from many perspectives and also shared this opinion in favor of the decision by Ben Davis. 

ARTnews’ Maximilíano Durón reports on the 15 artists just announced as the winners of the annual Latinx Artist Fellowship given by the US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF). The list includes Mexican artist Margarita Cabrera, whose soft sculptures are now on view at SAM as part of Reverberations: Contemporary Art and Modern Classics.

Sebastian Smee for the Washington Post: “Forget ‘Immersive Van Gogh.’ These exhibitions are the real thing.”

In the end, there was only one thing—art. The point is, he made it so—by sheer striving. By the time van Gogh hit his stride, only 2½ years before he died, you couldn’t tell if he was sweating perspiration or paint.

And Finally

Don’t miss this New York Times package on the life and legacy of Tina Turner (1939–2023), especially the essay by Wesley Morris.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Object of the Week: Untitled Anxious Bruise Drawing

In honor of Black History Month, Object of the Week will feature artworks from SAM’s collection that explore Black art and artists. Black lives matter every day of the year, but this month is a particular opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments and legacies of Black leaders in civic and cultural life. Exploring and reflecting on the past and present of Black lives is one important way to continue to imagine better futures. Here’s the second of four reflections from four different SAM voices on one artwork and what it means to them.

There are images that have become synonymous with the pandemic years: boarded shop windows, deserted streets, protests, and tear gas, to name a few. Seattle was a center for it all, and there remain some remnants of that turbulent first year of the pandemic around the city. Still, we possess a collective anxiety. We have bruises on our hearts and souls from the images of violence and injustice; The feeling of powerlessness that came from being trapped inside and glued to our screens. It wasn’t safe to go out, but inside was a cycle of mania. 

These feelings are aggressively and powerfully rendered in Untitled Anxious Bruise Drawing (2021) by Chicago-based artist Rashid Johnson (b. 1977). He portrays the anguish, frantic energy, and damage of the upheavals of 2020 with sustained, forceful brush strokes until the paint thins to a faint wisp. A series of boxes with confused, startled eyes. Mouths blurred in motion. Oscillating from dense to light, black and blue. The unraveling chaos is contained by rough edges, where strokes of paint find their way out of bounds. With the same curatorial intent of modern media, we’re viewing a selection of the multitude of blue cells. All wavering, unnerved, and anxious. There’s more beyond what we see; truths we have yet to acknowledge. 

The unjust experiences of Black people in America continues to be a bruise on the national consciousness. It’s often difficult to talk about or relate to, although art can provide a conduit. With Untitled Anxious Bruise Drawing, there’s a possibility of relation, of realization, and even relearning. Johnson boldly carries the torch proclaiming that the arts have a role to play in confronting the past for a better future.

Acquired for the museum’s collection in 2022, Untitled Anxious Bruise Drawing is now on view as part of Reverberations: Contemporary Art and Modern Classics, which explores the idea of artistic exchange across generations.

– Jason Nail, SAM Visitor Experience Lead

Photo: Scott Leen.

Celebrate Black History Month in Seattle with these suggested events and additional resources.

Art Now on View

Events and Resources

Object of the Week: Hair Portrait #20

In honor of Black History Month, Object of the Week will feature artworks from SAM’s collection that explore Black art and artists. Black lives matter every day of the year, but this month is a particular opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments and legacies of Black leaders in civic and cultural life. Exploring and reflecting on the past and present of Black lives is one important way to continue to imagine better futures. Here’s the first of four reflections from four different SAM voices on one artwork and what it means to them.

In January of 2016, I began working at the Seattle Art Museum. It was like going to a new school—I felt ready with an open heart, looking to shake up my norm, help me step out of my comfort zone, and provide me with something that I didn’t know how to express with words quite yet. After 16 years of working at the University of Washington, I left the stability of what had become a predictable world and delved right in. Part of this terrifying new world that I was immediately immersed in included giving a public tour for Free First Thursday, talking about artworks in our collection that I loved and connecting them to my life. My background was in communications and American Ethnic Studies, and so art was something I knew and loved, but not from an academic perspective. It seemed like everyone at SAM knew so much more than me, but I have always tried to lead with authenticity and leaned on that to guide me.  

Priya Frank leading a My Favorite Things tour during Free First Thursday at SAM in 2016.

The artwork I knew I wanted to end the tour with that night was my favorite in our collection: Hair Portrait #20 by Mickalene Thomas. The beautiful Swarovski crystals, the powerful face depicted over and over again, the magnitude of its size… all of those things drew me. I wore a sequined top so I could match. The piece stood out. It was so much different from everything else I saw at SAM and so different from all the neighboring art in that gallery. It felt… like me at that time. I felt so out of place, with such a different perspective and aesthetic from everyone else. But I kept remembering that that was why I was hired: to beat to my own drum and do things the way I do them. Hair Portrait #20 brought me comfort, and it reminded me that it was okay to do things differently, to stand out unapologetically and shine brightly, as a beacon of hope, light, and realness.

Thomas’s work continued to come back to me over the years, reminding me of the valuable lesson that MORE is MORE and not to be less in order to make others more comfortable. In 2018, the museum presented Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, exploring the work of these three pivotal Black artists. By then I was feeling more comfortable at SAM, and it helped that I had my colleague David Rue, who had become my SAM soulmate. He and I started working at SAM the very same day, and we had a similar love for all things bright, extravagant, beautiful, and authentic. David helped me feel so much more comfortable in my skin, and when Figuring History opened, it meant so much to both of us. We brought everyone we knew and created programming and partnerships that are still talked about in our community today. We reveled in the glory of Thomas’s muse, Racquel Chevremont, and dreamed of what it might be like to be someone’s muse (David has since pretty much become EVERYONE’s muse so there’s that!).

Priya Frank and David Rue pose in Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas at SAM (2018). Photo: Natali Wiseman.

After years of working from home, I recently made the commitment to spend more time in SAM’s galleries in order to inspire my own creative practice, which is a big focus for me this year. And lo and behold, I ran into an old friend: Hair Portrait #20, back on view again as part of a reinstallation in the modern and contemporary galleries called Reverberations. Immediately, I broke out into the biggest smile, thinking of all of the times that that piece made David and I feel like we were home. There she was: a continued beacon of hope. These last seven years have been the best of my life, and I continue to live unapologetically, unwilling to take shit, and more willing to shine bright like the Swarovski crystals that Thomas interweaves into this room-filling artwork. Getting to see a whole new generation of folx also experience the piece for the first time is the greatest joy. A few weeks ago, the UW Sisterhood Initiative came for a visit, and there was a gorgeous impromptu photoshoot in front of that pivotal piece. The mission of SAM is to connect art to life, and this piece provides exactly that: an opportunity to feel seen, and not just tolerated but acknowledged, celebrated, and seen. Unapologetically.

Same top, different era: Priya in 2023 with the same sequined tank from the 2016 My Favorite Things tour, displaying her own body art creation.

– Priya Frank, SAM Director of Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion

Photo: Jen Au.

Celebrate Black History Month in Seattle with these suggested events and additional resources.

Art Now on View

Events and Resources

Hello, 2023! A Sneak Peek at SAM’s Exciting Year Ahead

The new year brings new art… and lots of it! We’re so looking forward to an entire calendar’s worth of must-see exhibitions across all three of our dynamic locations and can’t keep it to ourselves any longer. Read below for a sneak preview of what’s to come at SAM over the next twelve months!

“There will be something for everyone at SAM in 2023,” says José Carlos Diaz, SAM Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art. “The exhibition schedule includes rich displays from the museum’s collection as well as a global array of dynamic art and programming from places such as Indonesia, Ghana, Japan, and right here in the Pacific Northwest region. 2023 welcomes not only a new year but also the 90th anniversary of SAM, which first opened to the public in June 1933.”

Kicking off the year, SAM’s modern and contemporary galleries now play host to Reverberations: Contemporary Art and Modern Classics. This array of art spotlights recent acquisitions and includes many works going on view for the first time. With works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and Ruth Asawa, contemporary artists Senga Nengudi, Laura Aguilar, and Mickalene Thomas, and emerging artists Dana Claxton, Woody de Othello, Naama Tsabar, and Rashid Johnson, this collection installation explores the idea of ongoing artistic exchange. Many of the works on view are by artists of color and many are by women artists, reflecting the museum’s ongoing commitment to diversifying the collection and the perspectives we present.

On March 9, SAM will open Ikat: A World of Compelling Cloth, presenting an immersive exploration of the complex textile created in regions around the globe. The exhibition will feature over 100 textiles made from the 12th century to the present including kimonos, furnishings, robes, and other cloths from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. A large-scale installation by contemporary artists Roland and Chinami Ricketts that offers the experience of walking into an ikat will also be on view.

Summer brings Soul of Black Folks, an exciting touring exhibition and the Seattle debut of Ghanian artist Amoako Boafo (b. 1984). One of the most influential artistic voices of his generation, Boafo is known for vibrant portraits that center on Black subjectivity, Black joy, the Black gaze, and radical care. Co-organized by the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Soul of Black Folks will present over 30 works created between 2016 and 2022.

Later in July, the Seattle Asian Art Museum will debut Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec, exploring the cities’ early 20th century artistic and social transformations. Through nearly 90 prints drawn from SAM’s Japanese prints collection as well as private holdings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s artwork, this exhibition offers a critical look at the renegade spirit in the graphic arts in both Edo and Paris, highlighting the social impulses—pleasure seeking and theatergoing—behind the burgeoning art production.

Finally, the fall will see SAM celebrate the works of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) with Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence, from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opening October 19 at SAM’s downtown location. Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji—Hokusai has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This touring exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers.

Other 2023 highlights at SAM include the solo exhibition of 2022 Betty Bowen Award winner Elizabeth Malaska; the SAM debut of artist, director, and writer Howard L. Mitchell—also known as GATO—whose 2019 film, Forgive Us Our Debts, tells the fictional story of Trey, a terrified 13-year-old Black boy who lives with his family in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood; large-scale sculptural works at the Olympic Sculpture Park 365 days a year; and so much more.

With so much in store for 2023, we can’t wait to welcome you back to SAM soon!

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations & Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator

Photo Credits: Headdress–Shadae, 2019, Dana Claxton (Hunkpapa Lakota (Sioux), born 1959), LED firebox with transmounted chromogenic transparency. 60 1/2 x 40 1/2 x 7 in. (153.7 x 102.9 x 17.8 cm.), Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis Acquisition Fund for Global and Contemporary Art, 2022.2, © Dana Claxton. Image courtesy of the artist. Pardah hanging, late 19th century, Silk Road (Uzbekistan), silk, warp ikat, cotton weft, 90 x 65 in., Collection of David and Marita Paly. Black and White, 2018, Amoako Boafo, oil on paper, 39 3/8 x 27 1/2 in., Image and work courtesy private collection and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California, photo: Robert Wedemeyer. Tagasode of the Tamayo House, 1800-02, Kitagawa Utamaro, Japanese, 1754-1806, woodblock print: ink and color on paper, 15 1/2 x 10 1/2 in., Gift of Mary and Allan Kollar, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2017.23.13. Photo: Colleen Kollar Zorn. Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa-oki nami-ura), also known as the Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjûrokkei), Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849) about 1830–31 (Tenpô 1–2), woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. We Will Remain Separate, 2019, Elizabeth Malaska, oil, Flashe, pencil on canvas wrapped panel, 72 x 120 x 2 in., Courtesy of the artist, © Elizabeth Malaska.

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