Muse/News: Impressive SAM, Not Static, and Baltimore Queen

SAM News

“Art-loving families should visit the Seattle Art Museum” this summer, says Mark Sissons for Vancouver’s VITA Magazine, thanks to our “impressive” collection galleries and our summer exhibition Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture, which opens this week on Thursday, June 20!

Nick Hilden for The Observer comes to town to discover “Where to See the Best Art in Seattle” and while at SAM finds that “the museum boasts an impressively eclectic range of works.” 

Via Nura Ahmed for South Seattle Emerald: “Tacoma Artist Anida Yoeu Ali Demands to Be Seen.”

Local News

Have you been keeping up with this season of Cascade PBS’s Black Arts Legacies? They’ve rolled out eight incredible profiles; earlier we shared the one of Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, but you won’t want to miss the ones of DJ Riz Rollins, painter Moses Sun, glass artist Debra Moore, and more.

Sara Jean Green of The Seattle Times reports on the “long-promised Super Block” coming to the Central District that will feature a public art installation on the neighborhood’s history.

Via Rachel Gallaher for Seattle Magazine: “Tacoma Art Museum’s latest show reconsiders the meaning of Western American art.”

“The four curators are giving space to 17 contemporary artists whose work is often excluded in the context of collections like the Haub. ‘The art of the American West is not static,’ [curator Faith] Brower says. ‘There are many artists creating work that will further our understanding and deepen our connections to this iconic region.’”

Inter/National News

“I can act a fool, I can be delirious, I can give into anger, I can give into joy, into love”: Anthony Hudson AKA Carla Rossi interviews Jeffrey Gibson for BOMB Magazine. While you’re at it, rewatch this video of Carla’s visit to Like a Hammer (it’s our…52nd rewatch? But who’s counting?). 

Arun Kakar for Artsy with “The 10 Best Booths at Art Basel 2024,” including works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith at Garth Greenan Gallery’s booth.

“How an Artist Became the Queen of Baltimore”: Aruna D’Souza of The New York Times spends the day in Baltimore with Joyce J. Scott on the occasion of her career retrospective, which is co-organized by BAM and SAM and travels to Seattle this fall.

“She sees her life as an artist as modeling for others another way of being and living,” said Catharina Manchanda, a curator at the Seattle Art Museum. “She has an incredibly strong conviction that every artwork has a role in bringing people together and offering people an opportunity to learn together, but she also models a whole new way of being an artist within a community. It’s not as much a career for her as a way of life.”

And Finally

“A Photographer Wins a Top Prize in an A.I. Competition for His Non-A.I. Image.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Muse/News: Kusama Memories, Glass in Tacoma, and Giacometti’s Secrets

SAM News

Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water ripples at SAM! Seattle Met includes the exhibition on their list of things to do in Seattle right now.

Seattle Met’s Zoe Sayler rounds up “10 Mother’s Day Gifts for Your Mom Friends,” including the SAM Shop exclusive “NO” tote by artist Tariqa Waters. 

Via Eater Seattle: Shubert Ho’s restaurants—including MARKET Seattle at SAM—are donating 10% of sales on select days to World Central Kitchen, an organization “that’s helping provide hot meals to Ukrainians suffering from the Russian invasion of their country.”

And here’s Artnet’s Eileen Kinsella on the many complexities of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms; Catharina Manchanda, SAM’s Jon & Mary Shirley Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, was among the art world voices sharing their experiences showing these works–including before the blockbuster editions. 

“Like some great works of art, the Infinity Rooms were not immediately and universally appreciated. Manchanda recalled visiting one at the Whitney Museum (which also owns one) as part of a biennial more than two decades ago, while she was a student in New York. ‘The biennials were always crowded, but I was the only person in line wanting to see it. There was no interest whatsoever.’”

Local News

Via Crosscut’s Brangien Davis: “Remembering Seattle print artist and muralist Kristen Ramirez.”

The Stranger’s Charles Mudede on the “world-class” Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley.

“Ever seen Cheetos made of glass?” The Seattle Times’ Jerald Pierce asking the tough questions–this one about Tacoma Art Museum’s show of glass art by the youth of Hilltop Artists.

“Those who have been through the Hilltop program have seen its ability to teach students invaluable teamwork and leadership skills, with one person taking the lead as a gaffer (who will lift the molten glass) and one or two assistants helping to shape that glass into whatever the gaffer is working on. Keith equated it to a sort of dance, where everyone needs to learn their part and anticipate the moves and needs of others.”

Inter/National News

Art & Object pours out a slideshow of “10 Wineries that Every Art Lover Should Visit.”

Angelica Villa for ARTnews reports: “$30 M. Phillip Guston Painting Could Set Auction Record Amid Long-Awaited Retrospective.”  Hot tip: You can see two Guston paintings, made more than 20 years apart, in Frisson: The Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis Collection in SAM’s galleries.  

“America may finally be ready for Alberto Giacometti’s uncompromising art”: The Washington Post’s Sebastian Smee on the Giacometti traveling retrospective that just debuted at the Cleveland Museum of Art–and heads to SAM this summer!

“But it’s only when you stand in front of them, or in some way stand with them (from the side or directly behind can be just as effective) and focus in on them that they give up their devastating secret (which is also your secret and mine): that we’re alone, that no one else knows what’s in our heads and that we will cease to exist.”

And Finally

Capturing murmurations.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Natali Wiseman.

Muse/News: Asian Intersections, Kinsey’s Stories, and Mickalene’s Freedom

SAM News

KING’s New Day NW visits the Seattle Asian Art Museum, which is open Friday through Sunday. Curator Xiaojin Wu walks host Amity Addrisi through the thematic galleries and talks about a few of the incredible objects on view.

“4 easy art projects inspired by a visit to the Seattle Art Museum.” JiaYing Grygiel for Seattle’s Child sharing her ideas and her kids’ creations.

“[SAM] is a surprisingly kid-friendly excursion, especially on weekday mornings, when you pretty much get the galleries to yourself. Two hours is the perfect amount of time for a museum walk-through and a snack. After that, you can head home for a nap—and art projects.”

“13 Fall Restaurant Openings in Seattle to Get Excited About.” Naomi Tomky for Thrillist includes MARKET SEATTLE at Seattle Art Museum on her list! The lobster roll fav from Edmonds arrives at SAM soon—stay tuned for an opening date.

Local News

OK, SAM’s new restaurant is making us hungry. Here’s Seattle Met with “Seattle’s 100 Best Restaurants.”

Crosscut’s Brangien Davis with her weekly ArtSEA dispatch; in this edition she highlights a floating circus.

In a recent Muse/News, we shared Crosscut’s coverage of the Kinsey Collection at Tacoma Art Museum. Now, here’s Crystal Paul for the Seattle Times on her visit to the extraordinary collection of Black art and history.

“‘There are the stories that made America and there are the stories that America made up,’ said [curator] Bernard Kinsey. ‘Everything we learned in school was made up, because [Black Americans] weren’t in it … We’re here, we’re just not part of the narrative and we should be.’”

Inter/National News

Artnet’s Eileen Kinsella on that whole “new Basquiat + Tiffany’s + Bey + Jay” thing.

If you really don’t know clouds at all: Art & Object on a new exhibition at UNC Chapel Hill’s Ackland Art Museum that focuses on clouds in East Asian art.

Dodie Kazanjian on Mickalene Thomas for Vogue! Thomas has work on view everywhere this fall and a forthcoming monograph from Phaidon. She has continued to create her Resist series, the first example of which debuted as part of Figuring History at the Seattle Art Museum.

“‘This is my first social-political body of work,’ she says. The first Resist appeared in a 2018 three-artist show at the Seattle Art Museum, alongside Robert Colescott and Kerry James Marshall. ‘I was so honored to be chosen for that show,’ she tells me. ‘These artists created a platform for artists like me to freely make whatever the f*ck I want to make.’”

And Finally

Dorothy Parker finally gets a tombstone.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Adam Hunter/LMNArchitects

Muse/News: Artist Mini-Golf, Untold Histories, and Kerry Can Do

SAM News

Patti Payne of Puget Sound Business Journal devotes her latest column to “two uplifting programs to celebrate,” including SAM’s upcoming Par-Tee in the Park series at the Olympic Sculpture Park. This year, our annual fundraiser in support of SAM programs features an artist-designed, nine-hole mini-golf course! Tickets are still available for the cocktail night on August 21.

Lobster roll with it: Seattle PI and Eater Seattle both reported on the new chef and caterer, Shubert Ho of The MARKET, headed to the café space at Seattle Art Museum. Stay tuned for an opening date, and prepare yourself for seafood, noodles, and frosé.

Local News

“After a lapse of two years, the Seattle Art Fair will resume next summer under new management,” reports Megan Burbank of the Seattle Times. Art Market Productions (AMP) Events is taking over for the event, so save the date for July 21–24, 2022.

Also in the Seattle Times: Crystal Paul on the “new generation of Asian American artists… expanding Bruce Lee’s legacy.”

Taha Ebrahimi for Crosscut on a “stunning survey of Black arts and culture” at the Tacoma Art Museum, featuring works from the Kinsey Collection.

“The [Kinsey] family began researching and seeking out objects, original art, artifacts, and historical documents that gave voice and expression to obscured and often untold stories of African American achievement and contribution. Fiercely committed to sharing the full narrative of our nation’s history, the collection is not restricted by medium, and pieces are both by and about Black Americans.”

Inter/National News

Dushko Petrovich Córdova for Art in America on the state of art book publishing.

The latest episode of Artnet’s “Art Angle” podcast explores Martin Johnson Heade, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Church, “three of the greatest visionary artists America has ever known”; Church’s A Country Home is in SAM’s American art collection and on view now.

A lovely long read on Kerry James Marshall, who can do anything, by Calvin Tomkins in the New Yorker.

“He also wanted to be a painter of social and political history, and the question he asked himself was: ‘How do you address history with a painting that doesn’t look like Giotto or Géricault or Ingres, but without abandoning the knowledge that painters had accumulated over the centuries?’”

And Finally

“This is the house that Whitney built.”

– Rachel Eggers, Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Kimisha Turner

Muse/News: A legacy on view, Springfield in Tacoma, and blind spots

SAM News

 A Cultural Legacy: A Series of Paintings from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection is now on view at SAM. This iterative single-painting exhibition celebrates the legacy of Paul Allen. Artdaily, Artnet, Geekwire and Patch all shared the news.

The Seattle Times includes SAM show Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness on their “Look Ahead” list of recommendations for the month of August, calling their portraits “a soul-shaking experience.”

And Seattle Met recommends Remix, our “bona fide fete,” on their list of “13 Seattle Events to Catch This August.” Get your tickets now for another radical edition of our art-filled, body-moving, late-night out.

Local News

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig devotes the recent “Currently Hanging” post to Birmingham by Toyin Ojih Odutola, now on view at the Frye Art Museum.

The most recent edition of Crosscut’s arts newsletter by Brangien Davis includes a shout-out to the Seattle Arts Voter Guide, created by Seattle University students in a Public Policy and the Arts class.

Crosscut’s Agueda Pacheco Flores on the Tacoma Art Museum’s new exhibition, Bart at TAM, featuring over 150 cels of hand-drawn art from The Simpsons.

“The cels in the exhibit come from Heeter’s personal collection of more than 900 Simpsons animations, which he started collecting in the early ’90s. ‘I had a full head of hair when I started collecting and now it’s all gone,’ he says.”

Inter/National News

Read about 2017 Knight Lawrence Prize-winner Sondra Perry’s new show A Terrible Thing, “an institutional critique of MoCA Cleveland.”

Great news reported by Artnet’s Sarah Cascone: “A consortium of foundations … has bought the historic archives of Johnson Publishing, the Chicago-based company behind Ebony and Jet magazines.”

Don’t miss this conversation-starting New York Times piece by Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang that calls for more critics of color.

“…the spaces in media where national mythologies are articulated, debated and affirmed are still largely segregated. The conversation about our collective imagination has the same blind spots as our political discourse.”

And Finally

Keep an eye out for an 8-foot-tall yellow bird.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

SAM Field Trips: Native Art You Need to See Now

During Double Exposure: Edward S. Curtis, Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, Will Wilson, the SAM social team took a few Friday afternoon field trips to visit other museums in Washington that are currently exhibiting work by Native artists. If you missed our Instagram stories, here’s a quick round up of a few exhibitions currently on view around the state that are not to be missed.

Museum of Northwest Art

In Red Ink
Through September 23, 2018

Curated by RYAN! Feddersen and featuring art by Asia Tail and Fox Spears, we just had to stop by for more creative output from these artists who have also been involved with SAM during Double Exposure. The collection of art on view offers a range of styles from contemporary Native artists in a variety of mediums by artists hailing from tribes across the extended Pacific Northwest and beyond. Feddersen is the mastermind behind the Post Human Archive, the social media activity that was installed at SAM.

Asia Tail, also a curator (we can’t wait to see yəhaw̓ at the King Street Station opening in January 2019) is the hand behind the words on the Double Exposure website but we hadn’t seen her art previously! Fox Spears is one of the teaching artists offering free Drop-In Studio workshops at SAM (there’s one more workshop on Sunday led by Sondra Segundo before the exhibition closes) and it was so nice to see this work after learning so much about his process!

Tacoma Art Museum

Native Portraiture: Power and Perception
Through February 10, 2019

 

The lens we look through changes everything. In Native Portraiture, Tacoma Art Museum asks the question: What is communicated when an outsider portrays someone from another culture?

In the galleries you will have the chance to see contemporary Native artists representing Indigenous cultures for themselves. These works are interspersed by a few examples of depictions by non-Native artists that romanticize, stereotype, or appropriate Native people and cultures. We recommend spending at least an hour or two in this gallery to fully absorb the impact of this contrast.

Suquamish Museum

Ancient Shore, Changing Tides
Ongoing

Do yourself a favor and enjoy the ferry and short drive that it takes to get to Suquamish Museum. Well designed and chock-full of information, the permanent installation tells a detailed and important story through movement, textures, the forest environment and the symbolic movement of the tide. The objects on view, many never before exhibited, are a combination of works owned by the Suquamish Museum and on loan from Suquamish families and other museums. The way these objects are arranged creates an environment where you will want to spend some time. The museum describes their goal  as an attempt to “displace the modern way of historical contextual understanding. Culture is more than historical events strung together.  The passing of knowledge and values, generation to generation, is the core of Suquamish culture.” Based on our visit, the Suquamish achieves their goal, and then some!

Where your day trips take you, SAM recommends you make the time to visit the wealth of museums in Washington featuring work by Native artists!

Muse/News: Arts News from SAM, Seattle, and Beyond

SAM News

Artnet interviewed Catharina Manchanda, SAM’s Jon & Mary Shirley Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, for this piece on the different paths to success as a curator of contemporary art.

KOMO’s Seattle Refined also interviewed Catharina for this story about the Jean-Michel Basquiat painting now on view at SAM.

AFAR Magazine highlighted Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas on their list of “10 Art Exhibitions in the U.S. Worth Traveling for This Spring.”

Blaxploitation films, Carrie Mae Weems, and the female gaze: Dazed profiles Figuring History artist Mickalene Thomas.

Local News

“I’ve seen orcas. Twice!” City Arts’ Margo Vansynghel reports that the next arts hub might be just across the water—in Bremerton.

Brangien Davis of Crosscut talks with Victoria Haven about Banner Year, an installation in the windows of her South Lake Union studio that beams out messages to passing motorists like “MONEY BALL” and “CULT CLASSIC.”

Lisa Edge of Real Change on the Tacoma Art Museum’s current exhibition, Native Portraiture: Power and Perception, which addresses issues of identity by juxtaposing older and contemporary works alongside each other.

“’We can say, let’s look at this artwork and appreciate the work that the artist has done to create this, but let’s use a contemporary lens to unpack where these artists were coming from and why they painted the work in this manner,’ said curator Faith Brower. ‘Thankfully our views have now changed over time so we can see this work and critique it in a way that they weren’t capable of critiquing it in the time it was made.’”

Inter/National News

Still “seat of the Muses”? Mitchell Kuga of Hyperallergic explores the trend of adopting the name “museum” to describe commercial enterprises.

Sara Cascone of Artnet interviews author Joy McCullough about her novel on the incredible life of Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi; notably, McCullough used the 400-year-old court records of the trial of the artist’s rapist.

Jason Farago of the New York Times on Beyond the Fall, the current show at New York’s Neue Galerie that explores connections between art and German political history.

“Such was the reality of German and Austrian art, and German and Austrian society, in the initial years of Nazi rule: the awkward coexistence of fascists, democrats and Communists, who heard the rhetoric, who witnessed the hatred, but who still could not see how much horror lay ahead.”

And Finally

“How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose?”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Installation view Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Stephanie Fink.

Muse/News: Arts News from SAM, Seattle, and Beyond

SAM News

Last week, we announced the hiring of SAM’s first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Manish Engineer, who will oversee technology and digital efforts across the institution. Artdaily and Geekwire shared the news.

Figuring History artist Kerry James Marshall is this month’s cover story in Juxtapoz. Don’t miss their wide-ranging interview with him—plus their online story on SAM’s exhibition.

Local News

The Stranger’s Charles Mudede reviews Everyday Black at the Northwest African American Museum, which features a portrait that he calls “the masterpiece of the show” of SAM’s Public Programs Coordinator David Rue.

Capitol Hill Times reports on the efforts of The Friends of the Benson Trolleys, who hope to retrofit the abandoned vintage trolleys to run on Seattle’s streetcar line.

City Arts’ Margo Vansynghel sits down with Zhi Lin, whose incredible solo show about the 1885 forced expulsion of Chinese inhabitants from Tacoma is on view until February 18 at the Tacoma Art Museum.

“Originally, I wanted to create an old history painting with old buildings, tailors, saloons and so on. I decided not to. Instead, I re-staged the scene in a contemporary setting, with the light rail track, skyscrapers, traffic signage nearby. To say, we are repeating history. Literally.”

Inter/National News

I know we’re all ready for spring, but let’s just enjoy Hyperallergic’s collection of dreamy Instagrams taken during the recent snowstorm in Paris. Scroll and le sigh.

Artnet’s Javier Pes reports on the happenings at art fairs Salon Acme and Material in Mexico City; Everyday Poetics artist Fritzia Irízar is named one of seven memorable artists from Material.

Artnet’s Ben Davis focuses in on the merits of Basquiat’s Untitled, which is now on view at the Brooklyn Museum.

“Untitled (1982) is built to be what it has become, a high-energy icon that can spread easily as a media image. But at the same time it also whispers that it doesn’t want to be reduced to just that; it doesn’t just want to be looked at, it wants to be seen.”

And Finally

Meet Banda Didá, the all-female Brazilian drum group.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: Souvenir I, 1997, Kerry James Marshall, acrylic, collage, and glitter on unstretched canvas, 108 x 157 in., Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bernice and Kenneth Newberger Fund, 1997.73, © MCA Chicago, photo: Joe Ziolkowski.

Object of the Week: War God

Perched in a gallery of Northwest modern art, Philip McCracken’s War God sculpture, a carved figure in cedar wood with a leather strap and saw blades as accessories, has a dark, significant presence. Here at the Seattle Art Museum, he’s surrounded by the work of Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson, and Morris Graves, and it seems the perfect place for us to consider McCracken’s art.

McCracken’s work finds its form and substance in the beauty and power of nature. For many years he has chosen to live close to nature, working from a Guemes Island studio near to the animals that inspire much of his sculpture. McCracken has frequently returned to the bird, and other animal forms, as a visualization of the artist’s inner psychology. Much more than wildlife art, McCracken’s work aims to chart new emotional and spiritual depths, recording what is for the artist a process of open-ended exploration. McCracken has spoken about his work as a mode of discovery; rather than dictating what he knows, his sculptures offer reflections of his meanderings into the mysterious and the unknown.

McCracken’s primary subject—the bird—and his mystical understanding of art-making have encouraged comparisons to Morris Graves, one of a handful of figures often cited as standard-bearers for modernism here in the Pacific Northwest. How suitable is the comparison between Graves and McCracken, and how well McCracken does in contributing to the symbolism Graves established, depends on one’s perspective. Writing in 1980 and reviewing a catalogue produced in conjunction with a McCracken retrospective at the Tacoma Art Museum, longtime Seattle art critic Matthew Kangas gave us this resounding barb: “McCracken’s solidifying of Morris Graves’ wispy spirit birds into chunky, polished wood carvings goes down as one of the great jokes in American art.”1 Kangas went on to write that War God was, for him, representative of a troubling current in McCracken’s art that seemed to exalt violence rather than undermine it, and he culminated his criticism by suggesting that McCracken’s sculptures were best suited to Northwest patios—not art museums. You can’t win ‘em all, as they say.

Without a doubt, War God is a harsh piece, one that deals head-on with forces McCracken has called “anti-life.” Many have seen the redemptive value in this piece and in McCracken’s body of work.

War God notably represented the artist at the Fine Arts Exhibition of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, a watershed moment for the arts in this area. In the 55 years since, McCracken has received countless shows and accolades—but I’ll share just one gem from the SAM annals. In March of 1976 McCracken served as the guest of honor at an event hosted by SAM’s Pacific Northwest Arts Council, a classy affair that paired his visual art with lyrical accompaniment by poet Eve Triem. Moon: Philip McCracken is one of the poems Triem read there:

Is a tree
budded
with many names.

My fingers trace the wood
nonlunar color
To a birdshaken twig.

Remembering the poet Li Po
who sang the sliding into cloud
and the emerging
of blossoms into light
attended by
owl          wolf        mountain             cat

and the child’s first sentence:
What do you know—the moon.

The carved verticals
quivering the circle
illuminate
the birth-death cycle
as plumage for freedom.

I don’t think McCracken’s goal has been to win critical acclaim or to inspire poetry. He seems most interested in learning by exploring with his materials, come what may. In the same year he produced War God, McCracken reminded us that “Everyone wants you to fit his conceptions. But to do so is dangerous if it comes before being true to yourself and to your personal vision.”2

– Jeffrey Carlson, SAM Collections Coordinator

1 Matthew Kangas, “Birdman of Guemes Island,” ARTWEEK Nov. 15, 1980.
2 Philip McCracken, quoted in Gene Johnston, “Guemes Sculptor Phil McCracken Has One-man N.Y. Show,” Anacortes American LXX, Mar. 24, 1960.
Image: War God, 1960, Philip McCracken (American, b. 1928), cedar, leather, brass, steel, 41 ¾ x 14 5/8 x 12 ¾ in. Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Seattle Art Museum Guild, 63.89, photo: Natali Wiseman, © Philip McCracken.
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