Via 425 Magazine: “Local Creative Pros on the Northwest Places That Make Them Swoon.” Architect Jim Graham admires how the Olympic Sculpture Park’s PACCAR Pavilion “mixes seamlessly and beautifully with the landscape.” And interior designer Kirsten Conner appreciates the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s original Art Deco design and 21st-century update (she even had her wedding reception there!).
Culture Type is among the outlets announcing the news that Baltimore-based artist Joyce J. Scott will be featured in a retrospective of her 50-year career. Walk a Mile in My Dreams opens at the Baltimore Museum of Art in March 2024 and then heads to SAM next fall.
“Butler moved here from Southern California in 1999. She bought a simple but cozy-looking house at the top of a hill and near three things she could not live without: a nearby bus stop, a nearby bookstore, and a nearby supermarket.”
“‘We discovered women artists using boxing as a shorthand for victimization or an idea of empowerment. The fact that the boxer was like a Schroedinger’s Cat… both a winner and a loser,’ is a through line of the show, said [curator Sara] Cochran.”
“I want my characters to pose with this kind of self-confidence, and in this painting, the character’s pose is exactly what I want to achieve. She’s present in the space.”
– Amoako Boafo
Self-confidence is an essential characteristic in all of Amoako Boafo’s portraits. Not only is this accomplished through his subjects’ poses, but also by the artist’s use of vibrant colors, an unflinching gaze, and distinct fashion. In Umber Brown Belt, the subject exudes self-confidence in her decision to directly face the viewer. This confidence is further emphasized by the artist’s choice to give her bright red lips, an intimate stare, and an intricate floral blouse.
On the fourth stop of the free smartphone tour of Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks at SAM, the artist explains the reasons behind his creative hallmarks. Listen to the audio recording now on our SoundCloud to learn more about the artistic choices in Umber Brown Belt or scan the QR code accompanying the work to tune in while exploring SAM’s galleries. The exhibition closes Sunday, September 10—reserve your tickets before it’s too late!
Umber Brown Belt, 2020
NARRATOR: Umber Brown Belt is a portrait of a woman from the artist’s neighborhood. The belt of the title cinches her lavishly patterned floral blouse. For Boafo, his use of pattern is connected to the patterned fabrics common in his home city of Accra, the capital of Ghana.
AMOAKO BOAFO: You cannot go a day without seeing anything with a pattern in Accra, anything colorful in Accra. So, I think, whenever I’m painting and I’m making those outfits with the print, I think of the patterns that I see daily, and the colors that I do come across. That’s what I think of and how I interpret them.
NARRATOR: Dress is important for Boafo in presenting his characters.
AMOAKO BOAFO: The way you appear in certain spaces, people think of you the way you are dressed. I want my characters to pose with this kind of self-confidence, and in this painting, the character’s pose is exactly what I want to achieve. She’s present in the space.
NARRATOR: This idea of presence is significant for Boafo.
AMOAKO BOAFO: Everything is connected to my experience in certain spaces and locations where I find myself and how people look at you and how you feel. I think, you know, most of the spaces that I’ve been before have not been that inviting. Sometimes you are there but not really there. And the thing is that I want to change that kind of ideas with my paintings. I want to be present. I want people to feel my presence.
NARRATOR: There’s one final detail you may have noticed: the woman’s hands are left unpainted.
AMOAKO BOAFO: The energy that I want from the painting, if I’m already getting it, it doesn’t make sense to add more because sometimes adding more: it’s not necessarily good.
– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator
Image: Umber Brown Belt, 2020, Amoako Boafo, paper transfer and oil on canvas, 82 5/8 x 66 7/8 in., Courtesy the Collection of Marilyn & Larry Fields.
Two weeks ago, we shared the news that Amada Cruz is stepping down after serving as SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO for the past four years. Today, we are pleased to announce that former director Kimerly Rorschach has agreed to serve as SAM’s interim director and CEO. Rorschach retired in September 2019 after seven years of leadership at SAM as the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. Rorschach will begin in early September, allowing overlap time with Cruz prior to her departure in early October, to ensure a seamless transition.
“We are delighted to welcome Kim back to SAM, a place she loves and led with great vision and care,” says Constance Rice, Chair of the Board. “The museum flourished under her leadership, and we are grateful that she will bring her deep knowledge of SAM and her many relationships with trustees, donors, staff, and larger arts community to bear in this moment.”
Kim is a highly regarded leader with 25 years of experience as a museum director. During her tenure at SAM, Rorschach planned and oversaw an extensive renovation and expansion of the Seattle Asian Art Museum, a project that brought SAM’s 1933 historic Volunteer Park building up to 21st-century structural and environmental standards and reimagined the presentation of its celebrated Asian art collection. She led a successful $150 million fundraising campaign for SAM, which included $50 million for the Seattle Asian Art Museum project. She also launched DEI initiatives at the museum and diversified the exhibition and acquisition programs. Exhibitions devoted to Kehinde Wiley and Yayoi Kusama, among others, attracted broad new audiences to the museum.
“We’re not just [that which] we’ve been visually assigned, there’s a lot more layers. And I think this exhibition offers that on a multitude of levels.”
– Larry Ossei-Mensah, Curator of “Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks”
Larry Ossei-Mensah first introduced himself to Amoako Boafo in 2018 via a DM on Instagram. A friend of Ossei-Mensah’s, artist Kehinde Wiley, had sent him Boafo’s profile and thought they might hit it off considering their shared Ghanaian heritage. In 2023, Boafo’s debut solo museum exhibition, Soul of Black Folks, is touring throughout the US, with Ossei-Mensah serving as the exhibition curator.
A few days before the exhibition opened its doors at the Seattle Art Museum in July, we sat down with Ossei-Mensah to discuss what drew him to Boafo’s artwork, the collaborative process they shared in developing Soul of Black Folks, and what he hopes viewers take away from encountering Boafo’s powerful finger painted portraits in SAM’s galleries.
Watch our interview with Ossei-Mensah above, then get your tickets to see the exhibition at SAM before it closes on Sunday, September 10!
“It’s very personal, I think, to paint someone’s skin using your fingers. And it also leaves a trace of the artist on the painting itself. And I think that’s something he wants you to feel; he wants you to feel like he’s there in the gallery with you.”
“This was not the stuff of the warrior class. This was the floating world of fleeting and popular pleasures: music, theater, whore houses. Also fleeting was the nightlife of Belle Époque Paris brilliantly and famously captured by the prints of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.”
“‘We’re digging up these histories, but this history is all around us,’ [archaeologist Alicia] Valentino said. “These people didn’t just disappear. They’re in the community today.’”
Inter/National News
In another archaeology story, Hadami Ditmars reports for the Art Newspaper on the discovery of a “1,000-year-old fish trap and the remains of the ancestral village of ȾEL¸IȽĆE (pronounced Tel-eech).”
Melena Ryzik for the New York Times on the new Louis Armstrong Center, which joins the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens for even more ways to celebrate the famed jazz trumpeter, singer, and bandleader.
“It Was Like Pastel Bauhaus”: Artnet speaks with artists Gary Panter and Wayne White about working with the late Pee-wee Herman to bring “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” to life.
“Paul [Reubens], Ric, and Wayne, we’re all painters,’ Panter said. ‘We really brought the sensibility of art and art history to the set. Paul was more of a conceptual artist. He had a lot of input, and we had endless ideas.’”
In the Studio highlights the studios and private workspaces of local artists represented by SAM Gallery. For nearly fifty years, SAM Gallery has supported artists from across the Pacific Northwest and provided private and corporate clients with a wide range of services, from purchasing their first work of art to building extensive collections. To browse a featured artist’s entire catalogue of artwork available for rent or purchase, visit SAM Gallery on the lower level of the Seattle Art Museum.
In the heart of Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood sits artist Elizabeth Gahan’s intimate art studio. There, hyper-saturated paintings of layered natural and built environments line the white walls. With translucent and fluid colors, crisp architectural lines, and dense textures of organic forms, Gahan’s paintings display the delicate relationship between cities and neighborhoods as ecosystems and the balance they need to thrive.
Gahan’s works are a puzzle as she develops the foreground and background separately before mashing them together. In the background, each work begins with recognizable urban imagery. To Gahan, these images serve as “a jumping off point for a creative conversation.” The images are then edited and manipulated through layers of artistic elements that effortlessly illustrate the intricacies of our natural environments. At this stage, the works look fluid and ephemeral, composed of bubbles that she said, “act as the first domino, impacting the rest of the painting.”
From these beautifully imagined atmospheric forms, Gahan adds the foreground: architectural elements drawn from existing environments. In her most recent series, the structural forms are inspired by buildings found in the Bay Area and Seattle. These added elements are familiar with their simplistic building block forms and clear lines that emphasize the geometry found in both nature and human-designed architecture. Plants, trees, and organic forms are layered atop these structures in a variety of media and textures, including acrylic gel and enamel.
When we stopped by her Georgetown studio for a visit in June, Gahan was in the process of experimenting with spray paint, an artistic medium new to the artist. This additional layer, she explained, serves to further blur the distinction between the natural and built environments emphasized across all of her paintings. No matter how many layers Gahan chooses to incorporate in a work, the final result always makes clear the interconnected nature of our urban ecosystems.
View a few of Elizabeth Gahan’s available artworks now on SAM Gallery’s featured sliding wall or online. Stay up to date on the artist’s upcoming projects at SAM Gallery—including an October 2023 exhibition featuring all new works—by following gallery manager Erik Bennion on Instagram at @atSAMGallery.
Reflection I marks Amoako Boafo’s first self-portrait following his move from Accra, Ghana to Vienna, Austria. With his head resting on his hand, Boafo resembles artist Auguste Rodin’s famed sculpture The Thinker, a work that has come to symbolize both the suffering and salvation found in self-reflection.
In addition to Rodin, many consider this self-portrait to allude to W.E.B. Du Bois and his notion of the double-consciousness as outlined in The Souls of Black Folks (1903), for which Boafo’s exhibition is named. This concept interrogates the idea that Black people constantly have to look at themselves through the eyes of ‘others.’ In looking at himself in the mirror, Boafo challenges the ‘othered’ gaze often applied to the Black body—a theme explored by the artist within many of his works.
Tune in to the free smartphone tour of Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folksto learn more about Reflection I and eight more of Boafo’s portraits. It can be accessed on your own time via our SoundCloud or by scanning the QR code accompanying each work in SAM’s galleries. Get your tickets to see the exhibition today!
Reflection I, 2018
NARRATOR: Boafo painted Reflection I in 2018, after leaving Ghana to study in Vienna, Austria. The radiator under the mirror deliberately points out the change to a European setting. The new environment sparked a period of self-evaluation for the artist: it led him—for the first time—to paint himself.
AMOAKO BOAFO: Working with myself helped me understand who I am as an artist and a human being. Making that image also help others look at themselves and think of things differently. It is a way that I wanted to experience my masculinity myself and not what society sees to be normal. I wanted to see how it looks like when you explore more of the flesh.
NARRATOR: As part of this exploration, Boafo has developed a distinctive skin color palette of umber brown and ultramarine blue. He applies the paint directly to the canvas using his fingers.
AMOAKO BOAFO: I wasn’t able to move forward with the brush painting the way I wanted my characters to feel, the way I want to express their feeling, because for me, painting is just more than capturing the perfection of a person. There is character. There is feeling. There is energy. The brush could not give me that kind of feeling. And so I arrived at painting with my finger.
NARRATOR: Here, the artist meets his own gaze in the mirror.
AMOAKO BOAFO: I think sometimes we look away from our experiences, and painting being a tool for me to express myself, I don’t want to shy away from the experiences. I want to look at it. I want people to see me looking at it because for me I feel like that’s the space where I get to be myself.
– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator
Photo: Reflection I (detail), 2018, Amoako Boafo, oil on paper, 51 1/8 x 43 3/8 in., Image and work courtesy Roberts Projects, Los Angeles and Private Collection, photo: Robert Wedemeyer.
“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.
“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.”
“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.
“‘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.’”
With deep gratitude and sincere appreciation, we bid farewell to Amada Cruz, SAM Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, after four years of leadership at the museum.
Amada joined SAM in September 2019 and led the museum through what may be one of the most challenging periods in its 90 year history: the global COVID-19 pandemic and sudden closure of its three sites. Thanks to her tenacious leadership throughout this time the museum prioritized supporting its staff and created online experiences for the communities it serves to continue to engage with the museum. As the pandemic abated, her focus shifted to carefully reopen its sites to the public while maximizing the safety of both staff and visitors. SAM came through it stronger, with steady financial recovery, the return of audiences to its galleries and programs, and a renewed commitment to its mission to connect art to life.
Although the global pandemic was the undercurrent during much of Amada’s time at SAM, it did not define her tenure. During these unprecedented and complicated times, her achievements have been many. Under her leadership the museum ushered in many significant new initiatives and reached milestone moments including:
In July 2020, the museum created a board-staff Equity Task Force to respond to the urgency of the moment and align around support for Black lives. This task force worked to establish a set of priorities across all departments and build a roadmap for the museum to be more equitable, diverse, and inclusive museum. In 2021, that task force became a board committee to shepherd these ongoing efforts.
In August 2020, SAM’s first-ever Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion was identified. This executive role shapes the museum’s priorities, partnerships, communications strategies, and audience-engagement efforts to move SAM towards a more equitable future.
SAM’s acquisitions strategy brought in even more works by Black, Indigenous, and artists of color as well as women into its global collection.
The transformation of SAM’s American art galleries, funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation. An unprecedented collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community, the project deepened the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices and debuted as American Art: The Stories We Carry in October 2022.
Two major collections of modern art and supporting funds came to the museum, transforming its already stellar holdings of modern art:
The Friday Foundation, celebrating the legacy of Seattle philanthropists and collectors Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis, gave 19 iconic works of Abstract Expressionist paintings and sculptures in 2021 as well as a total of $14.5 million to support various museum initiatives over the course of 2020-2021. The works went on view in 2021. The gift included the creation of The Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis Acquisition Fund for Global Contemporary Art.
And in April 2023, a gift of 48 major works by Alexander Calder was made by longtime museum supporters Jon and Kim Shirley. The gift of the Shirley Family Calder Collection is supported by a $10 million endowment and an annual financial commitment from the Shirley’s to support Calder-related exhibitions and research. The works will debut in November 2023 in Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection.
“The Board of Trustees want to express our sincere gratitude to Amada for her leadership at SAM,” says Board Chair Constance Rice. “Amada’s achievements have been many. In addition to steering SAM successfully through a global pandemic, the museum came through even stronger with spectacular exhibitions, landmark gifts of art and funding, and an expanded commitment to equity across the museum. SAM faces a bright future thanks to her leadership during these immensely difficult times.”
This fall, Amada takes the helm at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) as the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Director and CEO where we know she will bring the same dedication and vision to SBMA that she did during her time at SAM.
Amada will continue at SAM in her current role through the first week of October providing museum leadership the time and opportunity to collaborate on a smooth transition plan.
Thank you, Amada, for your steadfast leadership of SAM the past four years. You are leaving SAM well positioned for a bright future. We wish you much success and fulfillment in Santa Barbara and know you will take SBMA to new heights like you did SAM.
Before entering the galleries of Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks at SAM, visitors are greeted by a 2020 portrait of contemporary fashion designer and stylist Jean Jacques Ndjoli. Hanging amidst a wall covered in Boafo’s well-known Monstera plant print, the portrait offers an introduction to the artist’s signature style with its vibrant yellow hues and the apparent use of his distinct finger painting technique.
Learn more about this artwork and eight more of Boafo’s portraits by tuning in to our free smartphone tour of the exhibition on our SoundCloud. Or, if you’re in the galleries, scan the QR code accompanying each work to be directed to the relevant stop on the tour. The exhibition closes Sunday, September 10—get your tickets to see it before it’s gone!
Jean Jacques Ndjoli, 2020
AMOAKO BOAFO: This is a painting I did in LA [where] it’s sunny all the time. You know, you are guaranteed to get your fresh pressed orange juice.
NARRATOR: To capture that mood, the artist focuses on one color.
AMOAKO BOAFO: You have three shades of yellow. So, the overall pullover is the cadmium yellow hue, and then the background, I tinted it with white, and then I added a bit of brown to the yellow hue to have that inner pullover.
NARRATOR: Boafo is a figurative painter. In other words, he paints recognizable figures and objects. But this image goes beyond straightforward representation. The flat, simplified forms of the hooded pullover become abstract areas of color.
They also create a strong visual tension with the thickly finger-painted skin of the face.
AMOAKO BOAFO: I think of colors that, you know, just highlight the face and the figure.
NARRATOR: The important thing for Boafo is to elevate and celebrate his characters.
AMOAKO BOAFO: I consciously think about how to elevate the characters and place element or colors that only elevates them or complement them and not compete and take away from them.
I think the thing with celebration is that we don’t do it that often, and I think it would be good that we celebrate others more often: for people to know that we see what they are doing, and they are appreciated and noticed for what they are doing.
– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator
Image: Jean Jacques Ndjoli, 2020, Amoako Boafo, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in., Collection of Josef Vascovitz and Lisa Goodman, courtesy of Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.
“I like people to be with me through the journey of making [a] painting, even though they’re not in the studio space. I want people to come to the show and feel like they made the paintings with me…”
– Amoako Boafo
Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folksis now on view at SAM! As part of the contemporary Ghanaian artist’s Pacific Northwest solo debut, we developed an audio tour of additional artistic insight. Featuring interviews with Boafo and exhibition curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, the tour highlights eight of the artist’s portraits created between 2016 and 2022 and is exclusive to Seattle audiences.
The tour kicks off with a brief introduction to the exhibition and Boafo’s artistic process. This stop includes a discussion of the exhibition’s title—drawing its inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s seminal 1903 ethnographic study The Souls of Black Folk—and the artist’s distinct finger painting technique used to sculpt the skin of his subjects. The recording concludes with Boafo explaining what he hopes Seattle visitors will take away from experiencing his artwork.
Explore all nine stops of our smartphone tour in SAM’s galleries by scanning the QR code accompanying each of the featured works on view or listen to it on your own time on our SoundCloud. Get your tickets to see the exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum through Sunday, September 10!
Soul of Black Folks: Introduction
NARRATOR: Welcome to the Seattle Art Museum and to Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks. This is the first solo museum exhibition in the United States for Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo. The show brings together over 30 works created between 2016 and 2022. It has been guest curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by the seminal ethnographic study, The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois, dating from 1903. The book was an assessment of Black life at the turn of the 20th century. Boafo’s work offers a visual equivalent for our times: it can be seen as an exploration of Black life in all its breadth of experience and emotion. The exhibition is a celebration of the humanity of Black people in 2023.
Boafo’s paintings combine skillful brushwork with finger-painting: specifically, he uses his fingers to mold and sculpt the bodies of his subjects—subjects that he refers to as ‘characters.’ We’re delighted that Boafo will be joining us throughout the tour, offering insights into his artistic process and inspiration.
AMOAKO BOAFO: I like people to be with me through the journey of making the painting, even though they’re not in the studio space. I want people to come to the show and feel like they made the paintings with me because there is all the choices of colors and movement that you see, and you feel like you are part of the painting, or you are there when the painting was made. I want people to have that feeling when they come.
“Throughout this exhibit, the subjects in Boafo’s portraits, who are all Black, have a vibrancy in their eyes that you can’t miss. As I moved through the gallery, gazing at the subjects in the paintings, it felt like my stare was returned. As if the portraits were gazing at me!”
“These are fearless and fascinating paintings.” Gayle Clemans reviews the exhibition for the Seattle Times, speaking with curator Larry Ossei-Mensah and the artist about his techniques and goals.
“Asked what a solo exhibition means for him, Boafo says, ‘In Ghana, my studies were solid, but many artists don’t have access to opportunities. With time, I learned how important a solo exhibition can be, how it can cement an artist’s place in history.’”
File under: “Something to Look Forward To”: CBS Sunday Morning’s Serena Altschul interviews artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith about her retrospective. It’s now on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art and headed to SAM in February 2024. (The whole episode is interesting; her segment plays 15 minutes into the episode.)
“Vosika still leans into ‘messed-up’ art—with his folk-art-esque paintings of people who don’t exist. His figures often have skin tones in watery blues and reds, their cheeks accented with clown-makeup circles of color. His work emanates a dark sense of humor and sometimes the absurd (see: skeletons hanging out together; legs made of cigarettes).”
“The foundation made a ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PAINTING?’ ad for the work using a faded slide kept in Walinska’s records, and began circulating the flyer at art fairs, with the hope that new leads would lead to its rediscovery.”
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
Earlier this year, volunteers across all the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, and Olympic Sculpture Park came together to celebrate another incredible year of service at SAM. Hosted by the Seattle Art Museum Volunteers Association Advisory Committee (SAMVA-AC), the 2023 Volunteer Soirée honored the landmark accomplishments of some of SAM’s longest-serving volunteers.
Of the many awards handed out that evening, none were as significant and surprise-filled as the Dorothy C. Malone Award. Established by the SAM Board of Trustees in 1989, the award is given to an exceptional volunteer who exemplifies the highest standard of dedication and service to the museum.
Dorothy “Dottie” C. Malone is a significant part of SAM’s history, having invested 63 years in the museum as a staff member and volunteer. She treated the museum as her family, taking a warm and personal interest in the staff, volunteers, and operations of the museum. She cared deeply and held the museum to a high standard of excellence. Her concern for volunteers, which she called “the backbone of the museum,” combined with her own dedication and commitment, inspired the Board of Trustees to establish this award in her name.
This year’s recipient of the Dorothy C. Malone Lifetime Achievement Volunteer Award is Shawna Bliss. A volunteer for over 24 years, Shawna currently volunteers in our docent program and has consistently contributed to the development of gallery learning across all three SAM locations. Born and raised in West Seattle, Shawna is the oldest of five siblings and discovered a passion for education at a young age. She received her bachelor’s degree in education and psychology from the University of Washington and completed her master’s in education at the University of Utah.
The following years saw Shawna traveling with her husband, Don, throughout the United States and Australia before settling into a long term home in Bremerton to raise their family. For many years, Shawna commuted from Bremerton to Seattle to volunteer at SAM, becoming one of the museum’s most prominent supporters. Family gifts often included museum memberships, invitations to view exhibitions and programs, and one-of-a-kind items from SAM Shop. She encouraged her siblings and children to visit SAM and often brought her parents downtown to explore the museum’s galleries.
Following our celebration of Shawna and her continued contributions to SAM, we asked her about her time at SAM and any advice she’d offer prospective volunteers. Read below to see what she had to say!
SAM: How did you learn about the opportunity of becoming a SAM volunteer? What was the process like for you to join?
Shawna Bliss (SB): I learned about the opportunity of becoming a SAM volunteer at an education job fair held in Seattle before the start of the 1999 school year. A SAM representative was promoting SAM’s education programs and volunteer opportunities. I completed a volunteer application, had an interview with SAM’s Manager of Volunteer Programs, and was hired to assist a SAM educator in the Art Studio.
SAM: What is your favorite memory of being a SAM volunteer?
SB: I have so many favorite memories of being a SAM volunteer! What keeps me at SAM year after year are the opportunities to work with, and learn from, other volunteers, SAM staff, and museum visitors.
SAM: Were you surprised to receive the Dorothy C. Malone Award? What was your reaction?
SB: I was totally surprised! 2019 was the last year SAM held its Volunteer Soirée, so I came to this year’s soirée expecting to celebrate “our” return to SAM. I was not expecting any of us to be personally recognized!
SAM: Why should people consider becoming a SAM volunteer?
SB: Do you like making new friends? There are many volunteer opportunities at SAM, all of which give volunteers occasions to meet and engage with like-minded people, including other volunteers, SAM staff, and visitors.
Do you like learning about art, artists, and connecting art to the lives of visitors? If so, there is always much to see, read, and think about at SAM.
Do you like SAM and support its mission, vision, and values? SAM volunteers do! Young or old, just getting started or having volunteered for decades, all of us take pride in representing SAM as we serve in our volunteer roles.
Via Denise Sakaki for 425 Magazine: “The Market Fishmonger & Eatery is a Summertime Catch.” We couldn’t agree more, and we recommend you check out our restaurant partner’s eateries at the Seattle Art Museum and for the summer, the Olympic Sculpture Park.
In her latest ArtSEA post, Crosscut’s Brangien Davis shares a behind-the-scenes of the final preparations for XO23, the forthcoming art space in the old Coliseum Building opening July 13 (hmm, could make a night of it with the Boafo opening…).
The Seattle Times’ Margo Vansynghel also reported the recent news that Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture has named Minneapolis arts administrator Gülgün Kayim its new director.
“Seattle is a city that is known for its world-class artists, creative entrepreneurs, and arts scene,” Kayim continued, “and I look forward to working with them to make the arts more equitable and accessible to all.”
Via Artnet: There’s a new episode of the acclaimed series Art in the Twenty-First Century to check out on PBS. It features contemporary artists including Anicka Yi, Tauba Auerbach, the Guerrilla Girls, and Hank Willis Thomas.
“[…] one of the greatest of all printmakers appears at the nucleus of a worldwide cultural transformation, in which art became more urbane and more fleeting, and the observed world got flattened out into signs and symbols.”
In honor of Pride Month, SAM Blog features reflections by SAM voices on artworks from the collection 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.
In Det lika olika/The Same Different, a 2018–2019 solo exhibition at Sweden’s Moderna Museet Malmö, contemporary German artist Rosemarie Trockel interrogated viewers with a single question written on a small piece of paper: What is it like to be what you are not?
SAM’s collection features Trockel’s Bibliothek Babylon (1997), a photographic screenprint on transparent red Mylar. In it, the subject sits at a library table surrounded by books, wearing only cords of rope that outline where clothing seams would fall on the body. The title, in Trockel-fashion, asks to be picked apart: “Babylon” the Greek, Latinized form for “city of Babel.” In Abrahamic tradition, the Tower of Babel is a bastion for humanity and explanation for the world’s languages. One would have to guess that Trockel means to contrast this with the biblical Babylon (a woman atop a seven-headed beast, meant to personify promiscuity).
“[Trockel] started in Germany in the 80’s. It was a male-dominated art world she lived in and tried to make herself visible, which was not that easy. So she infiltrated the art world with materials that perhaps did not belong to that male art world. Such as wire, wool and knitting instead of painting… Many have said or read her art as feminist. And I think, yes there’s a truth in this, but there is so much more.”
– Iris Müller-Westernmann, Curator, Det lika olika/The Same Different.
The purpose of the title is to conjure religious and historical fears regarding femme people’s pursuit of knowledge and bodily autonomy. The use of rope—a fiber—invites us to consider whether the subject is liberated or restrained in their nakedness. For this image, the total edition consists of 60 screenprints: 25 on red, 20 on yellow, 15 on clear, as well as 25 artist proofs. The tone of each varies in how the subject and the books’ covers are accentuated and made readable.
In other works, Trockel deftly uses medium to talk about women as creators of art subjugated to the realm of the underappreciated “craft” and the household. “Woman,” also, as a narrowly defined and restrictive category. Much of Trockel’s body of work incorporates clothing and textile that’s often unisex in appeal until stretched, conformed, and gendered by the wearer. Reflecting on reunification years, Trockel’s series of masks, Balaclava, are a commentary on gender roles, women’s muteness, and the necessity for radical action. Trockel herself has at times rejected the title of “artist” or referring to her work as “art.”
“In Trockel’s art, the mixing of the idealized feminine with the mundane is a potent means of raising consciousness about the ways women have come to be classified and evaluated…
…Without question, the body and what has been designated as ‘woman’s work’ are powerful signifiers… to blur the division between genders and to suggest the foundering of the traditional ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ connotations associated with dress.”
– Sidra Stich, Art Historian
Another who took inspiration in literary metaphor is Argentine thinker and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). In his 1941 short story The Library of Babel, Borges imagines a theoretical library containing all knowledge. The dimensions of such a place are impossible, but its books would contain letters and punctuation in every possible combination. Meaning, if searched for long enough, you could find a copy of this blog post, a transcript of any conversation, and even the details of your own death.
In 2015, writer and coder Jonathan Basile tried exploring the implications of this by describing the library through algorithm. On his website, enter any text you like: a favorite memory, a bold lie, a list of groceries. You’ll then be pointed to the room and book where, in an ontological sense, it’s already written. Not all things in the library are true and few pages are legible. But is it not helpful (and terrifying) to know your thoughts have already taken form? What, read back, would feel the most validating? What might Trockel, wishing to be “free of the binary system,” write? It’s already there to be found, of course.
Here’s one final resonance: The 2017 German television series Babylon Berlin invokes “Babel” to depict the last days of the Weimar Republic as a time of extravagance, danger, unrepressed art, and sexuality. These are the oft-forgotten “golden twenties” preceding totalitarian rule and the burning of books and libraries. Of things lost: the significant shift away from traditional roles for the Neue Frau (“new woman”), as well as a wealth of research on identity and gender-affirming care.
Celebrate Pride Month in Seattle with these suggested events:
Fri Jun 23 Trans Pride Seattle Produced by Gender Justice League, this event in Volunteer Park will feature music, performances, food trucks, and educators.
Sun Jun 25 Seattle Pride Parade The official 49th annual Pride Parade! Join in the fun or grab a spot in the grandstand. Say hi to SAM’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group who will be marching together.
Aug 17–20 Pacific Northwest Black Pride 2023 in Columbia City Celebrate the 6th year celebrating the Black LGBTQIA+ community with workshops, a health festival, music performances, parties, and more.
– Travis L., SAM Event Security Officer
Travis (they/them) is a mixed-media artist working in the realms of history and romanticism. They were recently featured in The Process Project and currently have work on view in the group exhibition Freedom at Gallery B612 through July 21.
References: Rana, Matthew. “What Is It like to Be What You Are Not? Rosemarie Trockel’s Diverse Practice.” Frieze, 31 Oct. 2018. Issue 200. Drier, Deborah. “Spiderwoman: Rosemarie Trockel.” Artforum, Sept. 1991. Vol. 30, No. 1. Stich, Sidra. The Affirmation of Difference in the Art of Rosemarie Trockel. 1991. Phillips. “Bibliothek Babylon (Trockel).” Artsy, June 2019. Auctions. Edition Schellmann—Fifty Are Better Than One.
Art has always been a passion of mine. I have been drawing and painting since I was a kid, and as I grew up, I knew art needed to be an ever-present aspect of my life, no matter the capacity. I have had some significant figures that helped me come to that conclusion: teachers, mentors, and so many more. With their influence, I came to recognize my path in life: to help people realize their own love of art, just as others did for me. The journey to this point was not without its difficulties, perhaps even a bit tumultuous. Yet, it’s what led me to teaching art classes and, most importantly, my internship here at the Seattle Art Museum.
Being at SAM has been a dream. I truly never expected to be here. During the application and interview process, I admittedly was not the most confident. Had I done enough to deserve to be here? But, I knew if I spoke to my passions, I had a chance. Teaching has always been my way of helping to foster creativity and artistic passion in kids at developmental ages, but being at SAM has allowed me to contribute to something bigger. I have had the opportunity to be a part of an institution dedicated to connecting art with the public and to be a part of a curatorial department that informs, educates, and inspires people through all facets of art—I couldn’t imagine a better place to be!
Seeing all that goes into what makes a museum function successfully has been an education in and of itself. It has been amazing to see the cross-departmental collaboration at work, and to be a part of it. To have conversations with staff across departments and learn more about their contributions to the museum has been one of my favorite parts of this experience thus far. In particular, my conversations with the education, interpretation, and public engagement teams have been so impactful, especially with my mentor. From him, I’ve been able to learn more about what each team is doing in the realms of accessibility and further connecting the public to the work that is displayed in the museum. I have even been given the opportunity to contribute research and content to a few artworks at the Seattle Asian Art Museum and build upon the educational materials already available for them. That kind of experience—to have my contributions be a part of the museum in a permanent capacity—is what I want to continue to do, to leave my mark.
Thankfully, the work that I have done within the curatorial department has given me that chance. I have worked on presentations for exhibition proposals, formatted labels for objects, researched artists for interviews and future exhibitions, imagined my own exhibition, and developed an in-gallery presentation. But, one of the most rewarding parts of this experience has been connecting my conceptual exhibition with the development of my in-gallery presentation because of how personal it became for me.
When I was assigned to curate a potential exhibition featuring ten items from SAM’s collection, I wanted to use this chance to explore my heritage and learn more about the available Filipino art and artifacts. I am incredibly proud of my culture, and it has always been disappointing to see how Filipino art and culture is rarely showcased or discussed in the greater context of Asian culture and history, even though it is incredibly rich and multi-faceted. Even in higher education, where I’ve taken classes dedicated to the history of Asian art and culture, the curriculum usually centers on China, Japan, Korea, and India. And I can imagine most people think of those countries, as well, when they think about Asian culture in general.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much variety or depth in the artworks from the Philippines at SAM, but there was one set of figures that stood out among the rest: the bulul figures from the Ifugao people of Northern Luzon. Researching these objects provided me with a new direction to take my project. I decided to focus on Indigenous cultures and spirituality throughout the islands in the Pacific. After learning more about the history of the bulul and the Ifugao, it was clear that prehistoric and indigenous Filipino cultures and traditions were more akin to other Oceanic and Austronesian Indigenous cultures found in regions like Micronesia, Polynesia, and Melanesia, with their spiritual beliefs centered on honoring the earth and ancestral relationships. That belief system has been appointed the term animism by western cultures and it is the perspective in which all things—animate and inanimate objects, places, and creatures—possess a distinct spiritual essence.
With these findings, my conceptual exhibition focusing on the important bonds between visual traditions and spiritual beliefs in Indigenous cultures across islands in the Pacific took shape. In my gallery presentation, I wanted to spotlight the bulul figures, the Indigenous culture of the Ifugao people, and its similarity to the cultures of other Pacific Islands, all a divergence from the more discussed modern history of the Philippines (i.e., Spanish colonization, American occupation, and Philippine independence). All I wanted was to share with people the ways that Filipino culture is special, and now I can.
I cannot begin to describe how excited I am to share the research I’ve done so far. It has been such a fulfilling experience to be able to learn more about the history of my culture in the context of art, and being here at SAM has given me the opportunity and the resources to do just that. I am extremely grateful for what this internship has provided me in terms of exploring my passions and building upon what I have already learned. I feel as though I have just scratched the surface as to what I can accomplish here at SAM and I am itching to see the contributions I can make at SAM in the near future.
I’d like to thank SAM Intern Programs Coordinator Samuel Howes for helping me adjust and transition into this internship; to SAM Museum Educator for Digital Learning Ramzy Lakos, for being such an amazing mentor and for our stimulating conversations that I always looked forward to; and, of course, to SAM Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art José Carlos Diaz—I couldn’t have asked for a better supervisor and mentor.
– Alexa Smith, SAM Emerging Arts Leader Intern in Curation
My first experience with the connective power of the arts was through music. As a child, melodies and lyrics—both new and passed down through generations—shaped my identity and created ties between myself, my family, and my community. In visiting museums like SAM, I feel the same connection to art that I do to musical compositions. With its own harmonies, dissonances, and rhythms, visual art provides me with meaningful experiences and a sense of belonging.
As I grew up, I became increasingly determined to weave the arts into my future career. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in art history, a minor in music, and building skills through museum volunteering, I was offered the opportunity to join SAM as the Public Engagement Emerging Arts Leader Intern. I was thrilled to start 2023 at my local museum, and I was eager to step into a new area of museum work.
My first day as a SAM intern was surreal. After passing through the staff entrance and finding my place in the fifth-floor offices, I realized my perception of museums was about to change. As part of the public engagement team, I focused on data collection and developing evaluation tools for museum events. I created several post-event surveys intended to collect meaningful feedback that offered a more thorough understanding of SAM’s audience.
Through this research and data collection, I was able to take a deep dive into the goals and values of events and discover the many ways SAM connects with its community. Among them is SAM Remix. SAM Remix is more than a party, it’s an evening dedicated to celebrating art, artists, authentic expression, and community connection. Behind the scenes of the event’s contagious energy are defined goals and aspirations outlined by the public engagement team. I saw a passionate desire to engage with local contemporary artists and strong efforts to reflect the diversity of Seattle’s artistic community through the event’s talented lineup. This experience has inspired me to incorporate community-focused goals into my work’s natural rhythm. I am now driven by questions of how all events can better engage and represent their audience, and ensure every attendee feels welcome, safe, and included. Community events are as vital to the museum as the exhibitions themselves: they truly play a part in connecting art to life. My last day at SAM was filled with heartfelt goodbyes and as a Remix volunteer, the perfect way to witness the result of months of hard work.
Outside of my role on the public engagement team, I was encouraged to connect with staff members across departments and felt the museum valued my voice. As an Emerging Arts Leader Intern, I was able to explore the various facets of the museum by attending and contributing to meetings, shadowing volunteers, witnessing the installation of Ikat: A Compelling World of Cloth, and having the opportunity to write and give a public tour. The tour was one of the most personally impactful parts of my internship. Making room for creative interpretations and passionate research, I was asked to share our perspective on art, leadership, and museum work.
Through this opportunity, I was able to revisit my connection to music, a part of my identity that connects me to many of the works on view, including Mark Rothko’s Untitled (1963) and Naama Tsabar’s Transition (2019). I felt honored to be able to share my own research and perspectives, tell personal stories, discuss the intersection between music and art, and to use my platform to amplify messages I consider important.
Looking back on my time at SAM, I have come to realize that this institution is not static. SAM is alive and possesses a desire for growth and change. Although evident across all departments, I saw this most in the public engagement team’s efforts to put the interests and needs of its community at the forefront of its work. From planning community events like SAM Remix to highlighting the voices and perspectives of emerging arts professionals, SAM has instilled in me an excitement for the future of museums. I am grateful to take with me not only a strengthened skillset, but also ambition, hope, and a passion for public engagement into the next stage of my career.
As my internship (and this blog post) comes to an end, I would like to thank the public engagement team. To Jesse and Jason for their continued guidance and support; to Yaoyao, Erika, and Carrie for offering their perspectives, encouragement, and career advice; and to all of the incredible interns I was able to work alongside, but especially Teagan and Zak.
Finally, thank you to SAM for giving me the opportunity to do what I love and for creating a space that allowed me to form meaningful connections to both art and other museum visitors.
– Emma Johnson, SAM Emerging Arts Leader Intern in Public Engagement
“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.
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.
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.
“I got into filmmaking not only to tell stories and to entertain, but to express myself and bring meaning to moving pictures.”
– Howard L. GATO Mitchell
In his 2018 short film Forgive Us Our Debts, Portland-based artist, director, and writer Howard L. GATO Mitchell depicts moments in life we don’t always see, interweaving the tangible and intangible to reveal “the fire beneath the ice of humanity.” The film tells the fictional story of 13-year-old Trey, who lives with his family in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
While in Seattle in April, we sat down with GATO to talk about artistic filmmaking, the relationship shared between a director and viewer in cinema, and how Trey’s fictional story is a reflection of larger economic and political pressures affecting people across the United States, especially communities of color. Watch our interview with GATO above and experience the artist’s 15-minute film at SAM’s downtown location through August 6.
Family Saturdays at the Seattle Asian Art Museum connect families with artists, authors, and performers, through art-making and other programming that celebrates Asian art and culture. As we celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian Heritage Month in May, SAM would like to thank all of the families and community members who amplified the BEAUTY OF US visual campaign and contributed to the three collaborative murals displayed in the museum’s Community Gallery.
In 2021, anti-Asian hate crimes across 16 major US cities spiked by 342%. This alarming statistic, coupled with the waning media coverage of hate crimes against Asian Americans, inspired artists Erin Shigaki, Juliana Kang Robinson, and Saya Moriyasu to come together to create BEAUTY OF US, a visual campaign aimed at boosting awareness of anti-Asian violence in Seattle and beyond.
The three artists collaborated with four additional Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander women artists in Seattle—Diem Chau, Julie Kim, Raychelle Duazo, and Saiyare Refaei—to create original artworks that were printed on posters and distributed throughout the city. With their bright colors and positive messaging, the artworks raise awareness, beautify streetscapes, and uplift Seattle’s AA+NHPI community.
Browse and download all seven BEAUTY OF US campaign posters for free by clicking on the artists’ name below.
Inspired by the BEAUTY OF US, SAM Educators partnered with featured artists Juliana Kang Robinson, Julie Kim, and Raychelle Duazo to design three unique murals in the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s Community Gallery that invited community collaboration. Over the course of three Family Saturdays at the museum, families learned about and celebrated their cultural heritage by contributing to the murals. Now completed, these murals represent a proud statement of community and healing where children, families, and friends connected and collaborated over collective art-making experiences.
Following their display in the Community Gallery through Sunday, May 21, the murals will be moved and displayed indefinitely in SAM’s Education Studio.
Read on to learn more about each of the three community murals, then participate in an art project with family and friends by clicking on the resources linked below.
Kaleidoscope Stories Community Mural Julie Kim and Families Mixed media on illustration board
Julie Kim is a children’s storybook artist and author who is deeply interested in stories that arise from our personal lived experiences, and in myths and folktales that arise from our collective human experience. This mural is a snapshot of those stories, big and small, as told by our community members in patches of obangsaek tiles—the five directional colors in Korean—that describe wholeness and balance through inherent and necessary diversity. Create your own story tile here with guidance from Julie’s illustrated instructions.
No One Like You Community Mural Raychelle Duazo and Families Mixed media acrylics on paper
Raychelle Duazo is a queer femme Filipina-American illustrator and tattoo artist based in Seattle. She aims to combine dreamy aesthetics, vibrant colors, and cultural significance to her work through themes of identity, queerness, language, symbolism, love, transformative grief, and Filipino culture. This mural of two figures captures the importance of identity and individuality in body art. Contributing families added pops of color while learning the Tagalog words for jasmine, the Philippine national flower (sampaguita), carabao (kalabaw), butterfly (paruparo), shell (kabibi), and crocodile (buwaya).Click the links above to access a coloring sheet of each of the tattoo designs featured on the mural.
Year of the Rabbit Community Mural Juliana Kang Robinson and Families Mixed media on illustration board
Juliana Kang Robinson is an interdisciplinary artist creating work that draws from Korean art traditions and culture. Participating families created pojagi (the Korean word for patchwork) with mixed media prints and drawings that were collaged on mounds in celebration of Lunar New Year. Click here to create your own origami bunny pocket designed by Julie Kim and inspired by the stories that celebrate the year of the rabbit.
“There are so many gorgeous garments and wall hangings here: indigo kimonos from Japan and multipatterned robes from Nigeria; astonishing cloth artworks from India, Uzbekistan and the Americas.”
We were thrilled to host Amity Addrisi and the whole crew at New Day NW recently at SAM. Check out the segment where José Carlos Diaz, Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, takes Amity to some of the museum’s most beloved spots.
Puget Sound Business Journal names Northern Trust a Corporate Citizenship honoree for 2023; the firm; they share quotes from José Carlos Diaz and Amada Cruz, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, about their support of SAM.
Great minds think alike: Curiocity, Seattle’s Child, and Seattle Met all wrote up lists of the city’s best parks and bike trails, including mentions of Volunteer Park (home to the Seattle Asian Art Museum) and the Olympic Sculpture Park.
Local News
“A who’s who of the region’s arts and fashion community”: 425 Magazine’s Andrew Hoge on the Seattle Art Museum Supporters (SAMS) benefit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, which featured a presentation of fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra’s fall collection.
Rachel Gallaher for Seattle Magazine speaks with artist and architect Iole Alessandrini, whose exhibition at SOIL Gallery—which closes this Saturday—iterates on projects held at the Olympic Sculpture Park.
Via Margo Vansynghel of the Seattle Times: “Two longtime and prominent pillars of the local art world, Linda Hodges and James Harris, announced this week they’re closing their namesake Seattle galleries.”
“‘Seattle has tremendous potential,’ Harris said. ‘Even though some of the old established people are retiring, or I’m moving away, I really feel that the visual cultural scene there is still going to flourish.’”
Artforum’s May cover story: Tina Rivers Ryan on Signals: How Video Transformed the World, now on view at the Museum of Modern Art.
“It helps us see ‘video art’ as something that was shaped by television—a technology and medium that was also the site of a novel public sphere—and that, like television itself, is now transitioning into a new form.”
Museums are places of reflection and respite as well as places to learn and work through challenging ideas and painful experiences that are not shared equally in an unjust society. In this video interview, multidisciplinary artist Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangaẋ) speaks about the historical divisions between “contemporary” or “American” art and “Native” art that the reinstallation deconstructs, his goals for audience engagement with his participatory installation, and the layered meanings of the words and symbols he uses in the work.
Explore his latest interactive installation Neon American Anthem (2023) in American Art: The Stories We Carry on view now at the Seattle Art Museum.
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
Patricia Belyea of Okan Arts, a textiles and tours small business, wrote about Ikat: A World of Compelling Cloth at the Seattle Art Museum. You’ve got two weeks left to see this dazzling show, which closes after Monday, May 29.
“There is much to see at SAM—from glances across whole galleries to up-close inspections of the threads and patterns!”
For Alta Journal, multimedia artist Perri Lynch Howard reflects on the many meanings she’s found over the years in Gloria Tamerre Petyarre’s Leaves (2002), a beloved work in SAM’s collection (that’s now on view).
“I remain transfixed by Leaves, a monumental work informed by totemic geography, dreamtime, and ancestral wisdom rooted in the land.”
“The Olympic Sculpture Park is just straight up one of the coolest spots in the city.”
Local News
“Renders new truths from old objects”: Hannelore Sudermann for University of Washington Magazine on Abstract Truth, Preston Wadley’s show now on view at Bellevue Arts Museum.
At the opening night of the 49th Seattle International Film Festival, the organization announced that it has acquired the shuttered Cinerama theater. Crosscut’s Brangien Davis shared the good news.
As for the big question on Cinerama fans’ minds: ‘We will have chocolate popcorn, absolutely,’ SIFF artistic director Beth Barrett said in a phone call on the eve of the festival. ‘That was one of the first questions for all of us, too,’ she added with a laugh. ‘The deal did not hinge on it, but it seemed important emotionally.’”
“Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts gallery will offer these works, two oval murals of damsels engulfed in rainbows of blossoms and foliage, which the German-born artist Winold Reiss painted in 1938 for a Longchamps restaurant at the Empire State Building’s base. (It’s now a Starbucks.)”
A museum board does many things: provide oversight and support for the institution’s financial and operational health, offer guidance and insights based on their professional expertise, and represent the museum within the community and the broader world. SAM’s board trustees are an impressive bunch, serving as leaders across many fields including the arts, education, technology, and the law, but they are also community service allstars, giving their time and resources to support SAM’s mission to connect art to life.
It’s really exciting, then, when our board members are recognized in their respective fields or tapped for their leadership. Recently, two significant appointments to Presidential Committees were announced by the White House. President Biden announced the appointees to his Committee on the Arts and the Humanities; on the star-studded list that includes Lady Gaga, George Clooney, and Shonda Rhimes is Kimberly Richter Shirley, a SAM trustee since 2011. The news was announced around the world, including by the New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter.
Per the White House, this committee “advises the President and the heads of U.S. cultural agencies on policy, philanthropic and private sector engagement, and other efforts to enhance federal support for the arts, humanities, and museum and library services. The PCAH will also engage the nation’s artists, humanities scholars, and cultural heritage practitioners to promote excellence in the arts, humanities, and museum and library services and demonstrate their relevance to the country’s health, economy, equity, and civic life.”
“Being invited to serve on this committee is a tremendous honor, as it recognizes the vital role that creativity and culture play in shaping our society and advancing the human experience,” said Richter Shirley. “I am very grateful and humbled to have been asked.”
Richter Shirley is a retired attorney who serves on several boards and is an active supporter of arts, education, and human services organizations. On SAM’s board, she serves on the Audit, Equity, and Finance Committees. Along with her husband Jon, she also recently made an extraordinary gift to the Seattle Art Museum of 48 works by iconic American sculptor Alexander Calder, along with a $10 million endowment and other financial support to establish SAM as a center for Calder-related exhibitions and research. Congratulations, Kim, on this exciting appointment (and say hi to the rest of the committee for us)!
Also just announced were the appointments to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, which included SAM trustee John E. Frank. The White House notes that this committee “is charged with establishing policies relating to the museum function of the White House, its state rooms, and collections. It also works to make recommendations on acquisitions for the permanent collection of the White House and provides advice on changes to principal rooms on the ground floor, state floor, and the historic guest suites on the residence floor of the White House Executive Residence.” This is Frank’s second time serving on the committee, he last served from 2016–2018.
Frank is the Senior Vice President and Chief Public Affairs Officer of Illumina, Inc. He is also a collector of French decorative arts and an art history hobbyist. In fact, he recently sourced a chair from the original suite of furniture made by Pierre-Antoine Bellangé and purchased by President Monroe in 1817 to refurnish the White House after it was burned down in 1814. Frank purchased the chair in coordination with White House curators and donated it to the collection. The Bellange suite of furniture is now in the Blue Room of the White House. Here’s a fascinating video from the White House Historical Association on the restoration of the Bellangé suite.
The White House is a very special place for our nation,” says Frank. “I am looking forward to how we evolve the White House collection so that every American who walks through the building can see and feel a personal connection to our shared history.”
Frank has served on SAM’s board since 2008, including tenures as Vice President (2010–2013) and Board Chair (2013–2015). He currently serves on the Collections committee, advising on new works to SAM’s collection, a role that aligns with this appointment very well. Thank you for helping keep the People’s House beautiful, John!
Congratulations and thank you again to Kim Richter Shirley and John E. Frank for your service to SAM and the nation.
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
Photos: Photo of Kim Richter Shirley by Spike Mafford, Zocalo Studios, LLC. Photo of John E. Frank courtesy John E. Frank.
While many of us source our coverlets—more commonly referred to today as a bedspread—from big-name companies, in 18th century France these objects were typically handwoven and dyed with meticulous precision by local artisans. They often featured intricate embroidery details that took hours to craft. In the sixth stop of our smartphone tour of Ikat: A World of Compelling Cloth at SAM, we take a close look at a French coverlet from the late 18th century and explore its fabric, known as Chiné à la branche. Browse all seven stops of our free smartphone tour from the exhibition’s galleries before it closes on Monday, May 29 or in your own time here.
How was Chiné à la branche used? European ikat fabrics were incredibly expensive to produce, which is one of the reasons Chiné à la branche is most closely associated with royalty. Marie Antoinette had a particular affinity for the fabric, having her court clothes and palace furnishings made of various Chiné à la branche designs. The more popular designs in court were soft, blurred floral patterns, which were used for everything from dresses to upholstery.
How did industrialization affect ikat? Industrialization led to the French abandoning the slow and costly production of ikat. Rather than hand-dying individual bundles, they were able to print patterns directly onto the warp threads. The dress shown above is stylized to look like ikat, but technically does not follow the traditional ikat process.
Verbal Description of French Coverlet
This coverlet was made in the late 18th century and measures five feet, six inches tall and four feet, nine inches wide. The ikat top layer of this coverlet is made of silk and linen thread and the back is made of silk. The layers are connected by quilted embroidery. This coverlet—or, bedspread—has both the colorful print-like pattern of the weave and a textured pattern created by the quilting process that joins the ikat fabric with other layers of the piece. The backing of this bedspread is a pink silk fabric. Between the silk backing and the ikat top layer, there’s about half an inch of batting—or, filling—that would make the coverlet a more effective warming layer for a bed.
First, we’ll examine the woven pattern of the ikat, which is precise in its execution, but has an intentional blurry quality around the edges. The pattern is a repeat of vertical stripes: a powder-blue stripe about three inches wide sits next to a cream colored stripe about five inches wide. This set of stripes is repeated six times across the coverlet. Within the cream colored stripe, there’s more detail. Thin lines on both edges of the cream stripe in pale yellow, dusty rose, and black frame an abstract design of flowers.
The stems and leaves of the flowers are a soft, mossy green and run down the center of the cream stripe in alternating curved lines that are reminiscent of vines. Splashes of the same dusty rose color form the blossoms of the flowers. Both the blossoms and the stems have irregular edges that artists in France nickname ‘flambé’—or, flaming—an aesthetic that was desirable at the time. On the sides of the coverlet, there are two strips of the fabric that have been cut off and attached perpendicularly to the rest of the bedspread, making the pattern horizontal on the edges.
Now let’s focus on the quilting that joins the layers together. The quilted stitching is done in a clear thread so that the lines themselves are only visible by the indentation and texture they create on the surface of the bedspread. In the center of the piece, there is a circle surrounded by eight symmetrical petal shapes, forming a simple flower shape like a large daisy. The daisy has three rings encircling it and then diamond shapes fill up most of the coverlet until about a foot from the edges where they are boxed in. Around the diamonds, small hearts and daisies alternate in a border to the quilting.
Join SAM and the Seattle Weavers’ Guild (SWG) for a free and public art-making workshop on Thursday, May 4 and Friday, May 6. Members of SWG will offer a hands-on demonstration of the steps involved in the ikat weaving process with participants having the opportunity to try their hand at weaving with magic heddle looms that have been pre-warped with thick fiber “dyed” using markers to simulate the resist dye process used to create an ikat pattern. Then, purchase your tickets to explore SAM’s ongoing exhibition Ikat: A World of Compelling Clothat the museum’s Ticketing Desk and head upstairs to see outstanding examples of ikats from across the globe.
Public programs like this art-making workshop invite visitors to explore art on view at SAM in exciting and hands-on ways. SAM is fortunate to have Amazon’s sponsorship of our exhibition-driven public programs, which create a deeper connection to the museum’s exhibitions and installations. These programs are free for visitors, and typically offered on Free First Thursdays when the museum is free to all, all day, bringing more people into the museum engaging with the art on view.
SAM hosts community programs in conjunction with our exhibitions year round. Regular events include My Favorite Things tours, drop-in art-making workshops, and pop-up performances. Recently, Claudia Webb, an artist and member of the Pacific Northwest African American Quilters (PNWAAQ), hosted a My Favorite Things tour focused on two quilt pieces on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry. At another workshop, participants worked with artist and educator Valencia Carroll to explore drawing techniques and tips for sketching, and later with artist Klara Glosova to practice drawing from a live model. These programs are vital to ensuring that all members of our community have access to interactive and enriching artistic experiences.
Amazon is an important supporter of the arts and cultural sector, and we are grateful to have their partnership. In addition to their support of SAM, Amazon is known for its Artist in Residence program, which awards grants and studio space to seven local artists annually. Their dedication to our region includes giving more than $96 million to over 180 local organizations, and last year they won the Puget Sound Business Journal’s Corporate Citizenship Award for Arts & Culture.
Keep your eyes on our website to see what free programs and events we’ll be hosting next. We can’t wait to see you at an upcoming event!
– Kelly Buck, SAM Institutional Giving Coordinator
“With his distinct blend of Pacific Northwest iconography, and Mexican and Asian influences, Arreguín became a key figure in Pacific Northwest art history and paved the way for a generation of artists of Latin American descent.”
Inter/National News
Ted Loos of The New York Times reports on the gift of art and funds made to museums and causes across the country by Jack Shear, the widower of the artist Ellsworth Kelly. The expansive gift honors the centenary of Kelly’s birth. SAM is among the recipients of $50,000, which will support the museum’s mission.
“Making it happen was no picnic”: Emily Anthes for The New York Times on the American Museum of Natural History’s new exhibit of leafcutter ants (yes, there are pictures).
“Redefines what ‘American’ means”: The New York Times’ Jillian Steinhauer on Memory Map, the overdue retrospective of Jaune Quick-To-See Smith that just opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art and travels to SAM in 2024.
“But if the current wave of attention has opened up new possibilities for Indigenous artists, particularly younger ones, credit is due less to the institutions than to Smith and others of her generation for the tireless work they did to ‘break the buckskin ceiling,’ in her words. The Whitney retrospective makes that clear.”
Brightly colored artworks draw in and engage visitors in Kalina Wińska’s art studios. She works in a sunny room in the Equinox Building in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood and focuses on larger installation projects in a studio in Capitol Hill. In each of these spaces, Kalina’s colorful artworks create imagined worlds that explore our rapidly changing climate.
Kalina begins by pouring brightly colored media and water on yupo paper on the floor of her studio. The free-flowing quality is essential, as the media dries naturally, leaving beautiful patterns. Kalina covers areas with blocks of flat color in gouache, creating a juxtaposition of organic forms and hard edges. Kalina then begins a labor intensive and time-consuming process of layering small handmade marks. Through this meditative process, the marks accumulate to create larger shapes that resemble clouds or imagined landforms.
In creating these imagined worlds, Wińska explores how climate change is impacting our weather and adding unpredictability. She works to make this invisible concept visible for viewers, through her swirls of color and obsessive layering of marks. The tiny marks began as concentric circles of targets and have evolved into the repeated chemical symbols for the greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2). The symbols are repeated thousands of times within a single work, creating larger shapes that resemble clouds, toxicity, or pollution. Each work unfolds into something unpredictable, as Wińska allows the materials to speak for themselves and develop their own layers of meaning.
See artworks by Kalina Wińska in person or online at SAM Gallery. Her work will also be on view at Meta Open Arts and the San Juan Islands Museum of Art later this summer. Learn more about SAM Gallery on Instagram by following gallery manager Erik Bennion at @atSAMGallery.
Ikat: A World of Compelling Clothcloses in one month at SAM! Learn more about the show-stopping ikat that welcomes visitors into the exhibition’s galleries in our interview with the artists who made it, Rowland and Chinami Ricketts. Titled Zurashi/Slipped and commissioned specifically for SAM’s galleries by exhibition curator Pam McClusky, this incredible installation includes a total of 1,008 bundles of yarn—each being composed of 48 threads measuring 25 yards—dyed and woven by the artists themselves over the course of three months. Once you’ve watched the video above and learned about the extensive process it took to weave and dye the artwork, watch our timelapse video below to see how we installed it in our galleries. Then, visit the exhibition at SAM’s downtown location through Monday, May 29 to see the artwork for yourself and discover over 100 more beautiful handwoven textiles from around the world.
