Stay Home
with SAM
continues to inspire. We’re getting bewitched with Korean artist Jung Yeondoo,
looking to the helpers with a 19th century Japanese fireman’s coat, and walking
towards the light with Seattle artist Barbara Earl Thomas. Scroll, listen, and
make to your heart’s content.
“There is a
special delight in discovering that what seems to be a premodern piece was in
fact created in the 2000s, and what looks to be a contemporary work was in fact
created centuries prior. Asia is pulled from the shadows of essentializing
stereotypes and refashioned as a multidimensional entity that is in dialogue
with the past instead of being confined to tradition.”
“What is it — artist
project, kunsthalle, community hub, pop-up museum?” Mr. [Glenn] Ligon said. “It
has a spirit and energy unlike other art spaces I’ve ever been to and once I
was there I wanted to be part of it, even though I wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was.”
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
Image: Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene, ca. 1638-39, Georges de La Tour and Studio, oil on canvas, 42 x 55 7/8 in., Gift of Richard and Elizabeth Hedreen in honor of Mimi Gardner Gates, 2008.67
SAM’s temporary closure has been extended until further notice, in our effort to do all we can to safeguard the health and
safety of the community.
We hope you are enjoying Stay Home with SAM, which connects you with art through videos, interviews, art-making activities, and art spotlights. Don’t miss the latest post, featuring digital and analog art-making experiences for Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstract Variations.
“What do you create or do in life that brings you
happiness? The question we asked locals — just before Washington state’s
stay-at-home order — takes on new meaning now that individuals and communities
are coping with the coronavirus crisis.”
Inter/National News
Last week, Congress
passed a $2 trillion aid package in response to the coronavirus. Cultural
organizations had requested $4 billion; Artnet’s Eileen Kinsella reports on how “they
got, well, less.”
“A fridge full of seafood, a cabinet full of beans, and
regular trips to the coffee shop while we still can. Prepping for the worst,
but can’t leave this city! So far, pizza is still delivering, so totally OK.”
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
Artwork: Georgia O’Keeffe, American, 1887–1986, Music, Pink and Blue, No. 1, 1918, oil on canvas, 35 x 29 in., Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Barney A. Ebsworth, 2000.161, photo: Paul Macapia
SAM is temporarily
closed
through the end of March, to help limit the spread of COVID-19 and protect the
community. To keep connecting you to art, we have launched Stay Home with SAM, with regular
emails sharing videos, interviews, and art news from SAM Blog. Join us!
“’This is 9/11
meets The Great Recession meets the snowstorm,’ Randy Engstrom, director of the
city’s Office of Arts and Culture (OAC), said during an online public meeting
Tuesday afternoon. ‘We know we’re going to get through this together — and this
is our time.’”
How Can We Think of
Art at a Time Like This? asks a just-launched online exhibition from writer-curators Barbara Pollack and Anne
Verhallen, recruiting artists and building a website over 48 hours.
“‘It’s always been
an intriguing contradiction between how important art is and how trivial it can
be at the same time,’ said Pollack. ‘When crises come up, I think it’s a
question we all ask ourselves…There is always something going on in the world
that seems to overshadow creative effort, and yet it’s so important for
creative effort to continue.’”
Following a series of progressive steps taken in recent weeks, SAM
announced last Thursday that it has
temporarily closed through the end of March, to help limit the spread of COVID-19 and
protect the community.
While the museum is closed, we hope you’ll enjoy Gayle Clemans’ lovely review of John Akomfrah: Future History, which notes that
even with the closure, “the artist and his work, nonetheless, is well worth
knowing about.”
“For Akomfrah, that
cinematic approach is like philosophy, a way of comprehending the world. ‘As
opposites have conversations, or as they are persuaded to at least potentially
sit at the table in preparation for conversation, something miraculous
happens,’ he says. ‘Life itself happens.’”
“The push to
do these performances is all stemming from the musicians,” Shafii said.
“They’re motivated to do whatever they can to provide music for the
community.”
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
Image: Alfred Stieglitz, American, 1864–1946, Georgia O’Keeffe (in a chemise), 1918, gelatin silver print, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in., Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.6.1432, photo: Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe / Art Resource, NY
“It’s obviously a
really exciting thing,” said Barbara Brotherton, a curator of Native American
art at the Seattle Art Museum, of the recent exposure. The museum has a long
track record of showing Native American art ranging from historical to
contemporary periods. “We’re just in this modern moment where it’s gaining
cachet from venues like art fairs, contemporary galleries, and biennials.”
Local News
Seattle Magazine
announced this week that it
is under new ownership, having been acquired by startup entrepreneur
and Geekwire chairman Jonathan Sposato.
“An errant tornado,
or even a carelessly tossed cigarette butt, in the wrong place and the Seattle
Symphony would be playing a very different program.”
Ariella Azoulay for
Hyperallergic on the “Free Renty” case,
in which Tamara Lanier, a descendant of Renty Taylor, is suing Harvard
University for restitution of a daguerreotype of Taylor.
“Why Watch Video in a Museum?” asks Jason Farago of the New York Times; his answer is in his review of filmmaker Steve McQueen’s new exhibition at the Tate Modern.
“Video art, once
dumbly condemned by traditionalists as a mass-media takeover of the fine art
gallery, now offers more of
an escape from the hellscape of our digital feeds than other artistic media.”
Last week, we
announced that Chiyo Ishikawa, SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director
for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, will retire this summer
after 30 years with the museum. The
Seattle Times, KUOW,
Artforum,
Artnet,
ARTnews,
Artdaily,
and Hyperallergic
all shared the news. In Crosscut’s Arts & Culture
newsletter, Brangien Davis spoke for everyone when she wrote, “Beloved
in the Seattle arts community for her insight, approachability and très chic
personal style, Ishikawa will be missed.”
“A Place for Meaningful Cultural Conversations” declared the headline
for art critic Lee Lawrence’s thoughtful
review of the reimagined Asian Art Museum,
which appeared in the February 25 print edition of the Wall Street Journal.
“These 19th-century
bululs, or rice deities, from the Philippines once watched over terraced
paddies, and they’re among the museum’s most modest yet most powerful works.
Given the nature and small size of its Philippine holdings, the Seattle Asian
Art Museum probably would have kept them in storage had it opted for a
traditional installation. But in another benefit of thematic groupings,
they—and other long-warehoused treasures in the museum’s collection—now have a
role, enriching the new installation not just with their stories but with their
spirit.”
Local News
Seattle-based artist
Susie J. Lee is making a short video about what makes a museum “interesting and
cool.” The Seattle Times’ Alan Berner captured
photos of the recent shoot at the Asian Art Museum.
“As a trained
anthropologist, Hurston traveled down the East Coast and sat on stoops and
corners, the storytelling stages and communal gathering spaces of Black
communities, where, with academic rigor and a loving gaze, she listened,
studied and collected the stories Black folk tell.”
Holland Cotter of the
New York Times on
MoMA’s Donald Judd survey that opens on Sunday, noting that his work
“can now be seen to offer pleasures, visual and conceptual, that any audience
with open eyes, can relate to.”
“It is not often a
new category of art historical research is proposed as a solution to these
persistent problems, but The
Allure of Matter: Material Art from China makes a compelling case for the
usefulness of a new analytical structure around Chinese art.”
Virginia “Jinny” Wright, a pillar of the SAM family, passed away last week at the age of 91. The Seattle Times obituary of the collector and philanthropist noted that she “lived for art—and dedicated herself to sharing it with others.” KUOW and ARTnews also shared remembrances of her legacy. She will be greatly missed.
KEXP’s Hans Anderson interviewed SAM curators Foong Ping and Xiaojin Wu about the reimagined Seattle Asian Art Museum for their Sound & Vision show; head to their archive for Saturday, February 15 for the story, which started at 7:49 am.
“So the piece, like
Parker’s music, is full of extremes, pushing the voice’s boundaries,” [tenor
Joshua] Stewart says. “When you have a piece this difficult, you have to bring
to it everything you have to offer. You have to go on the full journey.”
Inter/National News
OK, this is definitely
a thing: Museum Walk gives you back
pain. Hyperallergic has tips to alleviate it from posture expert
Mark Josefsberg.
“This is coming at
a time when museums and other cultural institutions are really trying to make a
case for their existence,” says the OMCA’s associate director of evaluation and
visitor insight, Johanna Jones, who led the project. “We know we make a
difference in people’s lives, now we need to really demonstrate it through
measurable metrics.”
With a heavy heart, we share the news of the passing of Virginia Wright, a pillar of the SAM family. Virginia and her late husband Bagley played pivotal roles in the development, vibrancy, and accomplishments of the Seattle Art Museum for more than half a century. Beyond being generous contributors, the Wrights’ greatest impact on SAM is seen in the art of the collection and in the art shown. Virginia was among a very small group of people who, in the 1960s, pushed SAM to create its first modern and contemporary art program. Virginia and Bagley also contributed to the purchase of many important acquisitions over the years. Above all else, the Wrights amassed one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary art in the world (over 200 works), all purchased with SAM in mind as the collection’s eventual home. When the bulk of it came to SAM in 2014, forming the backbone of its modern and contemporary collection, SAM was transformed from a great institution into a truly remarkable one.
Earlier this month,
Virginia said, “When I think about the future of the Wright Collection at SAM, I
put my trust in the artists. I trust that future generations will value their
work, that SAM will continue to provide meaningful access to it, and that the
conversations that their work has inspired will continue.” We are honored by
her faith in Seattle’s museum and, because of her support over the last 60
years, we are confident that we can live up to the legacy she established.
Born in Seattle and raised
in British Columbia, Virginia went East for college and majored in art history.
Out of college, she worked for Sidney Janis Gallery in Manhattan and began
collecting art. Mark Rothko’s abstract painting Number 10 (1952) was one
of her early, daring purchases and it is now part of SAM’s collection.
Virginia has been a SAM
member since 1951. She began docent training in 1957 and led her first public
tour in 1959. In 1959, the Wrights made their first-ever gift to SAM’s
collection: Room with White Table (1953) by William Ward Corley. That
year they also provided funding for SAM to acquire Winter’s Leaves of the
Winter of 1944 (at the time titled Leaves Before Autumn Wind) by
Morris Graves.
In 1964, she and a group of friends persuaded then-director Richard Fuller to let her start the Contemporary Art Council (CAC), a group of collectors at the museum. For the next decade, it functioned as the museum’s first modern art department. The CAC sponsored lectures and supported the first exhibitions of Op art and conceptual art in Seattle. It also brought the popular Andy Warhol Portraits exhibition to Seattle in 1976, among many other important exhibitions. Her role in bringing great art to the Seattle Art Museum also involved the curation of two solo exhibitions for Morris Louis (in 1967) and William Ivey (in 1975).
Virginia joined SAM’s board in 1960, making 2020 her 60th anniversary with the Seattle Art Museum. She temporarily stepped away in 1972 when her husband Bagley joined the Board and rejoined in 1982. She served as President of the Board from 1987–90. Virginia was President of SAM’s Board of Trustees from 1986–1992, years that coincided with the construction and opening of the downtown Robert Venturi building in 1991—the museum’s first major transformation since its opening in 1933 and a major shift in Seattle’s cultural life to downtown First Avenue (with the Symphony soon following).
In 1999, SAM mounted an
exhibition of the Wright Collection (The Virginia and Bagley Wright
Collection of Modern Art, March 4–May 9, 1999). The Wrights’ entire art
collection—the largest single collection of modern and contemporary art in the
region—has been gradually donated (and the balance of the collection promised)
to the Seattle Art Museum. A significant portion of the collection came to the
museum in 2014 when the Wrights’ private exhibition space closed.
When the Seattle Art Museum opened the Olympic Sculpture Park in 2007, many works from the Wrights’ collection were installed there, including Mark di Suvero’s Bunyon’s Chess (1965) and Schubert Sonata (1992), as well as works by Ellsworth Kelly, Tony Smith, Anthony Caro, and Roxy Paine.
SAM’s ongoing exhibition Big Picture: Art After 1945draws from the Wrights’ transformative gift of over 100 works and is a reminder of their incredible generosity.
Virginia was an active board member up to the end of her life, regularly attending meetings and advising the museum in many important endeavors. About SAM Virginia said, “It’s always been the main arena. I never wanted to break off and start a museum. I wanted to push the museum we already had into being more responsive to contemporary art.” And SAM would like to acknowledge that she did just that, leaving an undeniable mark on the cultural landscape of the entire Pacific Northwest.
As Amada Cruz, SAM’s
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, says, “Even having only been in
Seattle for a short time, it’s clear that Virginia Wright’s impact on the city
and on SAM is beyond measure. Her legacy, and that of her late husband Bagley,
is seen in both the very walls and on the walls of the downtown museum, and it
fills the Olympic Sculpture Park’s landscapes. I’m honored to have been able to
know her and of her hopes for SAM’s continued future.”
“[The curators]
orchestrated moments of kismet, discovery, and wonder, with space for visitors’
personal revelations as they interacted with the reinstallation.”
“And given Seattle’s complicated history of changing attitudes
toward immigrants and visitors from the rest of the Pacific Rim, Foong [Ping,
curator of Asian art] notes, ‘It’s very meaningful to have an Asian art museum
in this city.’”
This week’s edition of Real Change features the Asian Art Museum, with this story
from Kelly Knickerbocker.
“With the renovated
building came an opportunity to start completely from scratch,” Foong said.
“People kept asking, ‘Did you just go on holiday when the museum closed?’ It’s
quite the opposite.”
The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig often takes a look at what’s “Currently
Hanging”; here
she is on Faig Ahmed’s Oiling, which is now on view in Be/longing:
Contemporary Asian Art.
Katie Kurtz interviews
artist Dan Webb about his
massive foray into stonework; his granite hands will soon grace
Sound Transit’s Redmond Technology Station. Very cool visuals by Matt M.
McKnight, too!
“They are my hands
for a reason. Moving your boulder is a very personal subject and everybody’s
got a boulder to move. It’s very literal,” Webb says.
Inter/National News
A look back for the
#BongHive: Here’s Gary Indiana for Artforum in 2007, reflecting on the
“Gogol in Seoul” sensibilities of director Bong Joon-ho.
The New York Times’
Elizabeth A. Harris reports on repercussions from the coronavirus hitting
the art world.
Artnet’s Katie White from
the frontlines of “bro-ramics”; apparently, Hollywood dudes are
really into making ceramics? Of course, it’s a medium that has been dominated
by women for centuries.
“The popularity may
wax and wane, but I don’t think we’ll return to anything like the material biases
that existed in the late 20th century…and Seth Rogen will turn to underwater
basket-weaving, eventually.”
The
Seattle Asian Art Museum is officially reopen! Thank you to the thousands
of people who streamed through the reimagined galleries at the free
housewarming event last weekend. The museum starts regular hours on Wednesday,
February 12.
“I felt freed, well, just to look”: Stefan Milne examines Boundless at the Asian Art Museum and The American War at ARTS at King Street Station, which both “explore how we see Asia.”
Seattle Refined shot a recent episode from the museum, including a fantastic segment
with SAM curators Foong Ping and Xiaojin Wu (starts at :40).
The Stranger’s Charles
Mudede on the
work of Marisa Williamson, who has two shows on view in Seattle at
SOIL Gallery and Jacob Lawrence Gallery.
Crosscut’s Margo
Vansynghel on the
new local documentary, Keepers of the Dream: Seattle Women Black
Panthers, which premiered last Friday at Northwest Film Forum and will
screen again on February 20.
“Women were
critical to the survival of the organization,” [Robyn] Spencer says. “They were
the movers, the shakers, the theorists, the thinkers, the organizers — they
were keeping the party going.”
Inter/National News
Artist Beverly Pepper
died this week at 97. Two of her works grace the Olympic Sculpture Park. Here’s
Artnet’s obituary
for the legendary sculptor.
“Your eyes and mind
enter them easily and roam through the different layers of brushwork and narrative
suggestion. There’s an unexpected optimism to all this. The paintings also
dwell in silence, slow us down and hypnotize.”
And Finally
Did you know that the Asian Art Museum will screen this film on February 26? Well, we will!
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
The Seattle Asian
Art Museum reopens to the public this weekend with a free two-day celebration.
10,000 free tickets for the housewarming event have been claimed, but the
museum reopens with regular hours on Wednesday, February 12.
“The larger
questions we’re asking for this reopening are, ‘Where is Asia? What is Asia?’”
says Xiaojin Wu, the curator of Japanese and Korean art at the museum. “We’re
showing how the borders are fluid throughout history.” –From The Art Newspaper
“When the Asian Art
Museum opens on Saturday, the architects hope that previous visitors will see
their museum in a new light. Says Amada Cruz, CEO and director of the Seattle
Art Museum, ‘We could not be more excited to open the doors of the museum and
welcome everyone back.’” –Elizabeth Fazzare, Architectural Digest
“With so much to
see and contemplate in the Seattle Asian Art Museum, there needed to be space
to let the mind wander into a void for a bit. The experience would not be
complete without it. The curators and architects all should be commended for
seeing through a new vision that will expand audience’s awareness of Asia, but
also remind them that the human pursuit of beauty and the sublime is, indeed,
timeless and boundless.” –T.s. Flock, Vanguard
Local News
Crosscut shares a
story—and impressive footage—of Seattle Symphony’s new conductor, Thomas
Dausgaard, who “feels the music in his hair.”
For Seattle Met,
Charlie Lahud-Zahner visits the Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture,
and finds catharsis.
“As a Latinx
Seattleite often feeling like the last brown unicorn in the Ballard Trader
Joe’s, and on the lookout for authentic representation, this south side museum
is a godsend.”
“With works that
emphasized the immaterial, or the breakdown of matter, the exhibition begged
the question: how applicable is the term Material Art? It seems that at this
early stage, the label may conjure more questions than answers.”
Check out this week’s edition of the International Examiner, with a special section on the Asian Art Museum that reopens on February 8. It includes articles on Be/longing, the building itself, the Gardner Center, a know-you-before-you-go for the opening weekend events, and a special thank-you from SAM. Articles on Boundless and the conservation center should hit online tomorrow—see everything in print now.
“Preacher of the
arts”: Crosscut’s Margo Vansynghel interviews Raymond Tymas-Jones, president of
Cornish College of the Arts, who has a
bold plan for the institution’s future.
“The concept of
their endeavor . . . is simple: Put together one show a year with a kickass
lineup, pay the performers royally, preach the gospel that working artists
deserve a fair wage, have a damn good time and repeat.”
“After a long pause
a nine-year-old said: ‘Objects have rights.’ The phrase has stuck. It captures
both the need to conserve objects and to consider them as active participants
in the museum experience.”
In February, SAM
reopens the doors of the Asian Art Museum. Galerie includes the opening on their list of “11 Major Art Museums Opening in
2020.” And The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig shares “four things you should know” about the reimagined museum.
“What does it mean
to dig beyond that, to tell different stories in a different way — by whom and
for whom? All of that is very present in the work that I do.”
Jason Farago of the
New York Times on Trump’s threatening of Iranian cultural sites—“unambiguously, a war crime”—and the response
from many in the museum field.
“Murdering one
person, or a hundred people, is not enough for some; murdering history delivers
another kind of damage.”
SAM’s Community Gallery has been displaying work from artists of all ages located throughout Washington State for over a decade. Shows featuring photography, mixed media, sewing and textile arts, ceramics, and 2-D and 3-D mixed media have filled this space over the years. Youth, SAM staff and volunteers, community organizations, nonprofits supporting arts programming, and schools and classes have had their art displayed on the ground floor of SAM’s downtown location, serving as a colorful reminder of creativity and community building.
Before I worked at SAM, I installed a show in the Community Gallery representing a multitude of different artists who connected with the Yesler Terrace community and beyond. It brought many community members to SAM for the first time and the artists involved in the show expressed the feeling of importance that came with having their work displayed in the museum.
With the beginning of a new decade, SAM is taking a new approach to the Community Gallery. We are working to show art from communities and artists who are underrepresented in the museum world due to systematic oppression. We are looking for artwork by and for artists of color, queer artists, disabled artists, youth and elderly artists, immigrant and refugee communities, and low-income artists.
We now have a simple application that outlines our equity goals for the space and how the Community Gallery can be used. Take a look at our call for art to learn more and apply to hang your community’s artwork downtown at SAM.
We are also adding more Community Gallery space in a city where art spaces are becoming more and more tenuous. The renovation and expansion of the Seattle Asian Art Museum created a new, additional Community Gallery space. Once it opens in February, the Asian Art Museum Community Gallery will feature works by and for the Asian Pacific Islander community in Seattle throughout its inaugural year.
We’ll also be curating our first youth-focused gallery space downtown, featuring a Teen Arts Group-curated exhibition of youth artists for its premiere show. SAM is always working to extend and expand the accessibility and connections within our community and the updated Community Gallery guidelines are one way we can’t wait to share with you!
“The wrinkles on
his face, his palms and his right heel are visible, as are the toenails on his
forward foot. His setting may be remote, but this Jerome is a real human
being.”
In case you missed it:
The Seattle Times’ December 21 print edition featured photojournalist Alan
Berner’s behind-the-scenes look at the Do Ho Suh
installation in progress with Liz Brown
David Carrier for
Hyperallergic on the
“endlessly inventive” Jörg Immendorff, whose solo show is now on
view in Madrid; his Café Deutschland 38. Parteitag, just added to SAM’s
collection in honor of Kim Rorschach, is now on view.
“The most
compelling aspect of the show is its focus on faces. Radiant faces loom out
from images on the walls. At a time when immigrants are being described as
dangerous, faceless people, these faces ask visitors to pause and look.”
The New York Times’
Will Heinrich reviews the Brooklyn Museum’s reinstallation of its Chinese and
Japanese collections, calling it “5,000 Years of Asian Art in 1 Single,
Thrilling Conversation.”
“Redesigning an
American museum’s Asian wing is no mean feat. How to convey the very real
throughlines that make terms as broad as ‘Chinese art’ and ‘Japanese art’
meaningful, while also doing justice to the staggering variety of these
ancient, and hugely populous, cultures?”
The Seattle Review of
Books is asking local luminaries, “if you could give everyone in Seattle one
book as a gift this holiday season, what book would you choose and why?” Here
are selections from Amada Cruz, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom
Director and CEO.
“While remembering
people like Pratt or Mississippi activist Medgar Evers by erecting a bronze statue
or naming a park after them is also meaningful and important, there’s something
about the domesticity and “everyday-ness” of a face on a stamp that’s
just as appealing. It carries emotional power.”
The “inside-out” trend
continues: Nina Siegal for the New York Times on Rotterdam’s Boijmans van
Beuningen Museum and its forthcoming “Depot,” which will house completely
open-to-the-public collection storage.
In September 2019,
Kimerly Rorschach, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, retired after
seven years of leading the institution and an illustrious 25-year career in the
arts. When Rorschach joined SAM in November 2012, she set her sights on
creating a schedule of exhibitions and programs for the museum’s three
locations that was compelling and timely and that would resonate with a rapidly
growing and diversifying Seattle community.
During her tenure, equity and inclusion also became top priorities. As part of a commitment to building racial equity, addressing institutional racism, and bringing forth real change, she led the museum’s participation in Turning Commitment into Action, a cohort led and funded by the Office of Arts & Culture in partnership with Office for Civil Rights in 2015. After taking part in this important cohort, SAM established a staff leadership team dedicated to these efforts, and hired Priya Frank as Associate Director for Community Programs in the museum’s Education department and also appointed her the founding chair of the newly established Equity Team.
Beginning in 2016, SAM established racial equity training for the staff, volunteers, docent corps, and Board of Trustees. The museum also created special exhibition advisory committees to ensure that diverse community voices are part of the exhibition, programming, and marketing planning processes. Equity was added to the museum’s official values statement and integrated into the institution’s strategic plan, which guides all departments’ goals. The Emerging Arts Leader internship was also established, a paid internship aimed at candidates who are underrepresented in the museum field. These are just some of the ongoing efforts that Rorschach led the museum in pursuing.
In honor of Rorschach’s extraordinary vision in guiding the museum’s dedication to equity work, the SAM Board of Trustees, along with friends of Rorschach, have created an endowment that establishes permanent funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at SAM. The Kimerly Rorschach Fund for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion helps ensure that these efforts will continue at the museum and paves the way for SAM to be a leader in this crucial area of the arts.
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
Amada Cruz, SAM’s Illsley
Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, was interviewed
by Puget Sound Business Journal. She shared her vision for museums,
her morning routine of café con leche and public radio, and other fun facts.
“We should think of
museums as civic spaces where all kinds of people can meet, convene, have a
shared experience and celebrate our shared humanities. That’s more important
now than ever.”
“She speaks five
languages — ‘three of them badly.’”
How’s your holiday
shopping going? The Seattle Times recently shared their Holiday
Gift Guide; among their recommendations for gifts for men is a SAM
Shop-exclusive, a Seattle edition of the chic reusable water bottle,
Phil the Bottle.
“It was community,
and a bunch of women sharing space and time, and doing something together,”
Giller said. “It was different every time, but it was always a good feeling.”
“Scrambling up a
fig tree vine, he found his way into a small grotto. Its far wall bore a panel,
painted with a red ocher pigment. When Aubert saw it, he was astounded. ‘I
thought, wow, it’s like a whole scene,’ he says. ‘You’ve got humans, or maybe
half-human half-animals, hunting or capturing these animals … it was just
amazing.’”
Aaron
Fowler: Into Existence
“gleefully disrupts standard boundaries between painting and sculpture,” says
Seattle Met, recommending the solo show of the 2019 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob
Lawrence Prize-winner as one of the “Top
Things to Do This December.” The show opens on Friday.
Local News
Seattle Met’s cover
story for December is “The
30 Women Who Shaped Seattle,” including women with connections to
SAM such as Guendolen Carkeek Plestcheeff and Zoë Dusanne.
“Honestly, I wanted
to avenge them,” Martin said. “At Cascadia, you will never see wall text that
says ‘Morris Graves and his close friend’ like a lot of museums do — even in
New York and Los Angeles, even in Seattle. No. Here you will always see ‘Morris
Graves and his boyfriend’ or ‘and his partner.’
Artsy gives us a look
at Mickalene
Thomas’ celebratory new show, Better Nights, at The Bass in
Miami Beach, replete with her signature installations and the work of her
fellow artists.
“Despite the
proliferation of dance in museums over the past decade, exhibitions focused on
the work of a single living choreographer remain rare. The America That Is to Be presents an
in-depth portrait of a bold, enigmatic artist.”
Last week, Gina
Siciliano—the author I Know What I Am:
The True Story of Artemisia Gentileschi—gave a My Favorite Things tour at
SAM, and Crosscut’s Brangien Davis recommended it in last week’s
“Things to Do”. If you missed it, don’t despair: there’s still
plenty of time to experience Gentileschi’s masterpiece, now on view in Flesh and Blood:
Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum.
Local News
The Seattle Times’
Paul de Barros on Seattle
jazz club The Penthouse, which presented A-list performers in the
’60s. Now, archival recordings from the club will be released on November 29.
Real Change’s Lisa Edge on the mixed-media work of Jite Agbro; her work Deserving is on view at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (BIMA).
“Within the piece,
I was more mindful of my steps because of the way the mesh was ever so slippery
beneath my boot. I became aware of a slight unease at being so close to a
skylight I’d admired from the concrete floor below.”
Inter/National News
Paul Laster writes about Do Ho Suh’s work for White Hot magazine, including past presentations at SAM and his theme of displacement. The artist’s Some/One will be a centerpiece of Be/longing at the Asian Art Museum.
Here’s Max Duron of
ARTnews on the
hiring of Denise Murrell as associate curator at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art; Murrell’s work will overlap the modern & contemporary and
European painting departments.
“From our
conversation, Gates seems to envision a city-sanctioned and -funded memorial.
‘I want to believe that the city is open to it,” he said. “I believe Samaria
has the right to ask the city to receive this sacred space.’”
“And there’s
something else about being close to it, the actual object, which Gentileschi
made with her own hands, just as Judith carried out Holofernes’s death with her
hands. A Google image search doesn’t cut it. The power of the painting—and the
perspective given through it—must be experienced in the flesh.”
“There’s a lot that
the visitor can’t see that is just as important: all the infrastructure that
makes this historic jewel a thoroughly modern museum, equipped to safely
display delicate artworks,” [SAM Director and CEO Amada] Cruz said. “The reimagined
building will allow us to better fulfill our mission to connect visitors to the
art and cultures of Asia.”
Margo Vansynghel
debuts as an official Crosscut writer covering arts and culture with this look
at the
pushback from some in the film community to Seattle City Hall’s new
“creative economy” strategy.
The Stranger’s Rich
Smith reviews
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Locally Sourced, which closed this past
weekend. He mostly loved it.
“It was all a
liiiiittle on the corny side, I must admit, but it was hard not to get swept up
in this impressive celebration of our green-gothic corner of the world.”
ARTnews announced
that Ashley
James has been hired as associate curator of contemporary art at the
Guggenheim Museum. She is the first Black curator hired to the museum’s staff.
“[An earlier show]
also unveiled an important new body of research revealing an unknown
relationship between the two artists, who first met in the early 1930s and,
despite having a 20-year age difference, formed a strong bond, writing to each
other often about their artistic creations and arguing over the return of realism
after World War II.”
“Throughout the
exhibition, we are reminded of how art — much like a pitcher of wine or a human
body within the paintings — is a vessel for meaning and message. Gender, race,
class, age, ability and size play roles in communicating these meanings, in
ways that feel historically remote, intimately resonant or disappointingly
familiar.”
Seattle Magazine’s Gavin
Borchert writes up an
exciting new SAM commission; Carpe
Fin, a “Haida manga” mural by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, is now
on view downtown.
“The mural conveys
a vitally timely moral—a warning about the dangers of human disconnection from
the natural world.”
“Conservators
approach art from a unique vantage point, intimately located between science,
art, and museum politics. ‘We’re kind of in an ivory tower, but we’re looking
at the front line.’ Nicholas Dorman explains.”
Local News
Lisa Edge of Real
Change reviewsIconic Black Women: Ain’t I a Woman, now on view at the Northwest
African American Museum.
And Crosscut’s Agueda
Pacheco Flores visits
the Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture, which is now open.
“The new museum
draws attention to an often overlooked slice of Washington state history, which
includes major Mexican American contributions to agriculture, railroad
transportation and civil rights. It also breaks ground as the first museum in
the Pacific Northwest to highlight the Mexican American experience in this
region.”
Also
in California: Fires.
Artnet traces the threats to the Getty Museum and Charles M. Schulz Museum.
The New York Times’
Robin Pogrebin on a
new Bill Traylor show at David Zwirner, with proceeds mostly going
toward the Harlem Children’s Zone.
“’There is
something terribly natural, terribly right, about having the Bill Traylor
collection turn into money for his progeny,’ he added, referring to the Zone’s
students. ‘I think he would have been — or he is — delighted about that. And I
am, too.’”
The Stranger’s Jasmyne
Keimig reviews
Robert William’s The Father of Exponential Imagination, now on view at
the Bellevue Arts Museum.
“A technically
skilled draftsman, Williams’s works are often psychedelic, depicting an
alternate, surreal reality. Jaws unhinge so that the tongue can become a sort
of beast to ride, Tarzan-like men wrestle with aliens, and hungry spirits reach
toward burgers covered in demons.”
“As difficult as it
can be to trace the stories and power plays behind objects, presenting a
permanent collection involves the even more daunting task balancing what
curators want to say with what they can, given the strengths and weaknesses of
their museums’ holdings. One current trend is to structure displays
thematically. When the Seattle Asian Art Museum reopens in February 2020, for
example, its installation will use works from different times and places to
explore such common concerns as identity and worship.”
“The show feels
like it’s tilted toward some uncanny vision of classical art. In doing so it serves as fine reminder of how
much our memories and connotations of periods can get distilled down to a few
images.” –Stefan Milne, Seattle Met
“For all their
intense realism, the works also show some seriously freaky scenes, both mythological and biblical.” —Brangien Davis,
Crosscut
The Stranger’s Jasmyne
Keimig adds another beat to her watch: stickers. This time, she finds the Dalí-inspired, the
public-transportation-celebrating, and more.
“Visitors are
encouraged to be reflective, and not just by looking in mirrors. People can
write down an insecurity on a triangular strip of paper and throw it into a
faux fire pit that has a dim orange light at the center. The papers don’t burn,
but together resemble flames.”
“Her idea of
landscape is, in fact, ‘not passive at all. It’s very deliberate and
strategized. Even our ideas about what places are—place names, borders and what’s
visible—they’re such powerful tools to control how we think of ourselves in
relation to land and to place.’”
Recently, SAM
announced that the Asian Art Museum will reopen to the public on February 8,
2020. Curbed
Seattle and NW
Asian Weekly both wrote about the building project, which “gives the
historic building both a home of its own and a stronger connection to the park
around it.”
Local News
Last week, city
council candidates appeared at Town Hall to
talk arts policy. The Stranger’s Rich Smith—and candidate Alex
Pedersen’s “art tie”—were there.
And the Seattle Times
has wrap-around coverage on the new Burke, including a
story from Brendan Kiley, photos, video, and graphics
to get you ready to explore.
“This Burke,
director Julie K. Stein says, isn’t just a new museum. It’s a new breed of
museum, imagined and designed with the incantation ‘inside-out.’”
Here’s the New York
Times’ Roberta
Smith on the new Roy DeCarava retrospective at David Zwirner; his
photographs, she says, “constantly flip between visual fact and a metaphor for
difference of all kinds.”
“Murrell achieved
something more profound, and more challenging, than archival ‘discovery.’ Her
exhibition placed the past blindnesses of art history on very public view,
making devastatingly clear the remedial nature of the lesson in seeing required
by this discipline—a lesson that could be encapsulated in a question as
elementary as: Tell me, class, how many figures are in this picture?”
Last week, SAM announced that the Asian Art Museum will reopen to the public on February 8 and 9 with two free 12-hour days of programming, reflecting the 12 themes of the dramatically reimagined collection. The Seattle Times broke the news.
“Ball’s creations
are freighted with symbolic messages, composed in a language that conjures both
ancestral tradition and contemporary identity.”
“While audiences
may not understand all the references she’s included, she wants them to connect
with it emotionally. ‘I want them to feel it,’ Ball said. ‘I want it to pull or
tug.’”
Building bridges! Centering joy! Priya Frank, SAM’s Associate Director
for Community Programs, is one of Puget Sound Business Journal’s annual
“40 Under 40” leaders.
Local News
Last week, we shared
coverage of an internal battle at Intiman Theatre. This week, the organization
has agreed
on a plan for its future.
The Stranger’s Jasmyne
Keimig gets
reflective in Carrie Yamaoka’s recto/verso at the Henry Art
Gallery.
“It’s
representation in the purest of senses, in that you can literally see yourself
in her work—not an abstracted label of your body, say, or your identity, but
your body and your identity.”
Inter/National News
The new MoMA opens on
October 21, and press have had their sneak peek. Here’s thoughts from the New
York Times and Vulture;
CBS
Sunday Morning will visit this week.
“Cuban music is
often described as a tree, with various primary roots that supply life for many
branches. But separating the island’s music into distinct genres is an
inherently flawed task — they intertwine and cross.”
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.
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?”
“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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
Real
Change’s Lisa Edge talks with Osa Elaiho, whose work is included in a group show at
Columbia City Gallery. Music and family are what inspire the artist’s
mixed-media paintings.
What
a dump: Crosscut’s Brangien
Davis visits the Recology CleanScapes recycling facility and meets its two
current artists-in-residence.
“Just as WALL-E
surfs the garbage heaps for treasures to take home — a bobblehead dog toy, a
golden trophy, a hinged ring box — artists in residence roam the space with an
eye out for intriguing items — a toy gun, a set of new knives, the detritus
from an entire bachelorette party.”
Last week, SAM announced the finalists for this year’s Betty Bowen Award: Andrea Joyce
Heimer, Anthony Hudson, Adair Rutledge, Lynne Siefert, and Anthony White.
“Let’s have
positive images of ourselves that are done with love,” said Muholi. “Let us
consume this self-love because our forefathers, our foremothers that came
before us never had the opportunity to speak for themselves.”
“Swift’s video, no
more than 10 minutes long, grapples with the concept of home, being home,
having a home, feeling at home in one’s body and community. In that
way, it fits well at Wa Na Wari. Where
do we belong?”
Inter/National News
Artforum reports that Werner Kramarsky passed away this week at the age of 93; a formidable
collector, he donated 25 drawings to SAM over the years.