Muse/News: Museum Futures, Sea to City, and Everyday Excellence

SAM News

“Can you really compare these selfie stations to Seattle’s best cultural institutions?” Seattle Met’s Allison Williams takes a look at the new Museum of Illusions and compares their “edutainment” value to mission-driven institutions, speaking with José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, who isn’t mad at Insta moments. 

“‘I think in the future, we’re probably going to see more and more acceptance, or even embracing of, new ways of presenting art,’ Diaz says. ‘Real works, but then also something very immersive and very emotional.’”

Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection is charming visitors at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Susan Kunimastu wrote about the exhibition for Preview Magazine, and Madeline Ewing checked out the galleries for SEAtoday. And don’t miss The Ticket’s look at the “very demure, very mindful” artwork on view.

Seattle Refined’s “Artist of the Week” is Troy Gua! Don’t miss their interview with this beloved SAM Gallery artist. 

Local News

Jas Keimig of South Seattle Emerald is back with another roundup of “Arts in the South End”; one of their picks is the Mouthwater Festival: A Disabled Dance Festival, and SAM is proud to host one of its performances, Grow Green Man, on October 5 and 6 at the Olympic Sculpture Park’s PACCAR Pavilion.

Margo Vansynghel of The Seattle Times selects “top Seattle art shows to see in fall 2024,” including some shows outside of the city that feature local artists.

Go with Rachel Gallaher for Seattle Magazine and “Dive into the Design Behind Seattle Aquarium’s New Ocean Pavilion.”

“‘The extraordinary thing about this site is that one edge of it is the Salish Sea, and the other is the urban center of Seattle,’ says Mark Reddington, a partner at LMN. The new 50,000-square-foot Ocean Pavilion, with its sweeping yellow Alaskan cedar-clad façade and nearly half-million gallon Reef ecosystem, houses 3,500 sustainably sourced tropical fish, invertebrates, and plants, representing more than 150 species.”

Inter/National News

Hurray for arts writers! Tessa Solomon for ARTnews reports on the 2024 winners of grants for visual arts journalists from the Rabkin Foundation: Greg Allen, Holland Cotter, Robin Givhan, Thomas Lawson, Siddhartha Mitter, Cassie Packard, TK Smith, and Emily Watlington.

Sarah Cascone for Artnet: “Tschabalala Self Lands a Colorful Ode to the Bodega at the Armory Show.” 

Via Nancy Princenthal for The New York Times’s Fall Arts Preview: “Amy Sherald, Brazen Optimist.”

“Unlike many members of her generation, she is resistant to depicting personal experience. Her sublimity is of the abstract kind: ‘The idea,’ as she puts it, ‘is of portraying everydayness as excellence.’”

And Finally

Watch “The Best of James Earl Jones.”

Photo: Chloe Collyer

Muse/News: SAM gets “radiantly weird,” street stickers, and active landscapes

SAM News

“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 unwieldy greens of El Greco, the soft, cloudlike skin of a Titian figure, and all around badassery of Artemisia Gentileschi.” —Jasmyne Keimig, The Stranger

“A stroke of paint seems to connect the viewer across time to the artist, dead now for hundreds of years.” —Sierra Stella, UW’s The Daily

The Seattle press corps seems adequately disturbed/enchanted by SAM’s major fall show, Flesh and Blood: Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum, which opened last week. Come see the “radiantly weird” show for yourself.

Local News

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.

The 2019 Washington State Book Award winners were announced last Saturday, including Joy McCullough for “Blood Water Paint,” her YA novel in verse about Artemisia Gentileschi.

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores visits Where Beauty Lies at the Wing Luke, which questions, explores, and celebrates ideas of Asian American beauty.

“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.”

Inter/National News

The New York Times’ Jillian Steinhauer reviews the modest Betye Saar show at the new MoMA—“dismayingly, the first show the institution has ever devoted to Ms. Saar.”

Artnet’s Javier Pes on Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, London’s National Portrait Gallery’s revisionist show that puts the sisterhood of the British art movement in the foreground.

Cultured Magazine talks with Teresita Fernández, whose mid-career survey—co-curated by SAM’s own Amada Cruz!—opens at the Pérez Art Museum Miami today.

“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.’”

And Finally

Remembering Elijah Cummings through his most powerful speeches.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Installation view of Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum at the Seattle Art Museum, 2019, photo: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Still plenty of summer, feeling an opera, and the next generation of curators

SAM News

Our family-friendly Summer at SAM programming at the Olympic Sculpture Park is recommended by ParentMap’s JiaYing Grygiel in this segment on KING’s New Day Northwest.

“But the skull must move on!” Crosscut’s Brangien Davis with a shout-out (ha) for the Basquiat before it leaves SAM. Today’s the last day to see the extraordinary painting.

Some news on the Seattle Asian Art Museum renovation and expansion project: The building “topping out” is complete. Capitol Hill Seattle shares the news.

Local News

Eileen Kinsella of Artnet with a report on the fourth edition of the Seattle Art Fair; interest and sales led one gallerist to note that “patience will pay off—and it has already.”

Stefan Milne of Seattle Met reviews both shows now on view at the Henry, finding explorations of the female gaze in the work of Mickalene Thomas and Martha Friedman.

Gemma Wilson of City Arts speaks with ChrisTiana ObeySumner—Seattle Opera’s social impact consultant—about Porgy and Bess, the six sides to every story, and how not to be scurred.

“I wish for the days when you go to an opera or musical or a symphony or fine arts gallery and go looking for the message. It’s not about watching the movement or seeing the color or hearing the music. But feeling the music, having a connection with the movement.”

Inter/National News

For Vanity Fair, curator Kimberly Drew visited Tina Knowles Lawson’s Hollywood home, which houses her incredible art collection including works by Elizabeth Catlett, Genevieve Gaignard, and Romare Bearden.

Artnet’s Taylor Defoe on the Australian TV show called Everyone’s a Critic; it “invites everyday people to act as art critics,” generating responses ranging from dismissive to funny to profound.

Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times with a feature on how museums are “addressing diversity with new urgency,” highlighting institutions that are cultivating curators of color.

“’When you have people in an institution who have a range of perspectives, you have a much richer program,’ said Eugenie Tsai, citing ‘openness to consider exhibition proposals, to consider programming, to consider hires, to consider things another group might want to dismiss as not what’s important.’”

And Finally

Four excellent words: Will Smith, art critic.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Photo: Robert Wade
SAM Stories