Valentine's Day Archives

Valentine’s Day 2023: Love at SAM Through the Decades

Lily Hansen on Feb 14 2023

Happy Valentine’s Day! For the last seven days, we’ve been highlighting expressions of familial, romantic, and platonic love at SAM during our #SAMWeekOfLove on our Instagram. As part of the series, we shared photos and stories from four couples for whom SAM has played a significant role in their relationship. To give you an extra dose of love this holiday, we’ve rounded up all four of the love stories we previously shared on our social media below. Scroll below to learn how SAM played Cupid in all of these relationships!

Diane & David
July 22, 2022
Olympic Sculpture Park

“We were searching for a venue that had both an indoor and outdoor space and was both modern and simple. The sculpture park fit that search perfectly! I am a wedding calligrapher and event designer by trade, so working with the different areas of the venue was so much fun. The spaciousness of the park was also great—from our wedding album it looks like we went to several locations, but they’re all taken from different areas of the park!” – Diane

Tiffany & Aaron
October 3, 2003
Seattle Asian Art Museum

“I had my wedding at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. From childhood to adulthood, the museum and its camels will forever hold a special place in my heart. Pictured are me and my bridesmaids: my two sisters, and my two best friends.” – Tiffany

This photo and story was shared to us by SAM’s very own Director of Membership and Annual Giving Tiffany Tessada. Tiffany has been a part of the SAM family for over 24 years and our membership program wouldn’t be what it is today without her tireless work and dedication. Considering everything she’s done for SAM, we’re honored to have been a part of her love story!

Ciera & John
August 7, 2021
Olympic Sculpture Park

With most of their guests coming from out of state, Ciera and John wanted a venue that celebrates Seattle and the life they’ve built together in the city. With views of their home in West Seattle, the Olympic Mountain Range where they ski and backpack, and the iconic Space Needle, the park served as the perfect location to host their nuptials. Their most cherished wedding memory? Read it in their own words below:

“Our favorite memory was having the opportunity to sneak away to take quiet sunset photos around the park while our guests enjoyed cocktail hour overlooking the Puget Sound.” – Ciera

Tina & Greg
October 14, 1989
Seattle Asian Art Museum

A few weeks before their wedding, Tina and Greg dressed in their most glamorous and practical attire—her, red Converse hightops and him, green bowling shoes and a Puyallup Fair hat—and visited several Seattle locations that had a special meaning to them. With their photographer Shel Izen in tow, they captured fun and scenic moments across the city, including at the Seattle Asian Art Museum (then just called the Seattle Art Museum) where they had spent one of their first dates as a couple.

– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator

Photos: Sam and Sola Lee. Courtesy Tiffany Tessada. Joe Tobiason. Courtesy Tina Koyama.

Muse/News: Museum Love, Mural Stories, and Future Energy

Rachel Eggers on Feb 13 2023

SAM News

Bonus points for the When Harry Met Sally reference: Secret Seattle rounded up “30 Ideas For Fun And Romance This Valentine’s Day In Seattle,” including, yes, a museum date at SAM.

Local News

News from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture: Shin Yu Pai will be the Civic Poet for 2023–24. Here’s her interview with KUOW about what she’s hoping to do during her tenure.

The Stranger’s Jas Keimig catches up with the arts mailbag, catching you up on Regal Meridian news, yəhaw̓’s new space, and more.

Rachel Gallaher for Seattle Magazine profiles muralist Stevie Shao as part of its #MostInfuential coverage.

“Shao’s illustrations are rooted in her personal experience. They combine her Chinese American heritage with her life in the Pacific Northwest. Her patterned, brightly colored, illustrative work taps into the Chinese culture and history she learned from her family — and now proudly shares with the community.”

Inter/National News

“An artist beyond categorization”: CBS Sunday Morning heads to MoMA to visit their Meret Oppenheim exhibition.

Fellow diggers, pay attention! Via The Guardian: “Rare Giacometti chandelier bought for £250 in London set to sell for millions.”

Via Rámon Baretto for Vogue: “Mariane Ibrahim Takes Mexico City By Storm With a New Gallery Space.” We miss Ibrahim’s groundbreaking Seattle gallery, but we cheer her ongoing expansion around the world (Chicago, Paris, and now Mexico City)!

“I think Mexico City has an energy of the future—in music, in art, with architecture, design, and fashion. It is a vital place in the world we are in, and it also has a focus on craftsmanship. Our artists are aware of this.”

And Finally

“The bops ranneth over.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Muse/News: Year of the Rabbit, Untold Voices, and Art’s Questions

Rachel Eggers on Jan 23 2023

SAM News

Happy Lunar New Year! The Seattle Times, EverOut, and ParentMap all have round-ups of all the ways to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit and all of them include the Lunar New Year Family Celebration at the Seattle Asian Art Museum on February 4! Join us for a live Lion Dance, drop-in art activities, and a storytime inspired by the holiday.

In other holiday news: Forbes finds the “most romantic museum shop gifts” for Valentine’s Day shoppers, including the SAM Shop-exclusive “Love” sweatshirt designed by Jeffrey Gibson.

Local News

Jerald Pierce of the Seattle Times interviews Jamilee Lacy, the Frye Art Museum’s just-announced new director and CEO.

Travel writer and novelist Jonathan Raban has died at the age of 80. The Stranger’s Megan Seling offered this remembrance with many links to his writing in their pages.

Rachel Gallaher for Seattle Magazine on actor-playwright Reginald André Jackson’s play, History of Theatre: About, By, For and Near, which will play at ACT January 28 through February 12.

“When [Jackson] started doing workshops for his upcoming play, History of Theatre: About, By, For and Near, which looks at the untold stories of African American thespianism, he kept getting the same reactions over and over again. Comments of ‘I didn’t know about that’ and ‘Why wasn’t I taught this?’ were common refrains at the reading circles.”

Inter/National News

(When will it be me, though?) Via Artnet: “An Oil Sketch Found Covered With Bird Droppings in a Farm Shed Is Actually an Early Van Dyck.”

The Guardian’s Wilfred Chan speaks with those who do and do not embrace the recently unveiled sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King.

The New York Times’ Holland Cotter visits the Met’s new exhibition of Maya art and asks the question, “can art ever be innocent?”

“As an expression and reflection of culture, art too is the opposite of innocent, and the idea of beauty attached to it is always complicated for that reason, a generator of questions as much as a giver of answers.”

And Finally

The physics of swing.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Jen Au.

Object of the Week: Jacob

Rachel Eggers on Feb 15 2019

Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence were married for 59 years, in a harmonious partnership of two prolific and engaged creators that was both romantic and artistic. Though it was Jacob whose star would rise over the years, becoming celebrated around the world for his dynamic pictorial style of historical narratives, Gwendolyn continued her studies—in painting, drawing, design, and dance—and served vital roles in the cultural community of their adopted city of Seattle.

With this intimate portrait of her husband (Jacob, 1986), Gwendolyn explores her own artistic project, distinct from her husband’s grand themes of history and social justice. Instead, she pursues an expressive and personal idiom, reflecting the emotional truths of the immediate world around her.

Gwendolyn—or Gwen, as she was affectionately known—began the portrait in 1960, when the couple was still living in New York City. But she kept returning to it, with final retouches in 1986, when they would firmly be ensconced in their lives in Seattle. She found it a compelling challenge to create a portrait of the person she saw every day, in all of the moods and changes that an individual necessarily undergoes over the years. Instead of a frozen moment in time, we instead see the process of a person becoming.

Jacob’s face fills nearly the entire frame, even going out of the bounds of the canvas in one corner. His skin is rendered in broad and unusual strokes of brown, green, and yellow, reflecting against the hint of a red shirt at the neck and glimpses of orange in the background. He wears a calm smile and a somewhat inquisitive brow, exuding kindness.

In the catalogue for Never Late for Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight, a 2003 solo show held at the Tacoma Art Museum, curator Sheryl Conkleton noted, “As her work developed, Knight became more committed to the interpretation and communication of visual delight in the world around her. It superseded the need to tell a story or to explore the larger meaning of what it meant to be a modern painter.”

When artist Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence died on February 18, 2005—almost exactly 14 years ago—she’d lived in Seattle for 34 years. The city was lucky to have her.

– Rachel Eggers, Manager of Public Relations

Image: Jacob, 1986, Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, oil on canvas, 14 1/4 x 10 1/4 in., Gift of the Marshall and Helen Hatch Collection, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2009.52.59 © Estate of Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

“I’ve never seen anything in my life as beautiful as you are.”

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Feb 14 2016

Desire was never more perfectly pictured. Photographer George Hurrell captured a magic moment between the lovely Greta Garbo and debonair John Barrymore on the set of the 1932 film Grand Hotel. Here’s hoping your Valentine’s Day is just as dreamy!

—Jeffrey Carlson, SAM Collections Coordinator

Image: Greta Garbo and John Barrymore, ca. 1932, printed 1980, George Hurrell (American, 1904-1992), gelatin silver photograph, 16 1/6 x 18 7/8 in. Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Farel Rosenberg, 84.220.9.

SAM Art: SAM <3 YOU!

Seattle Art Museum on Feb 12 2015

Elizabeth, Paris, 1931, Andre Kertesz, American, born Hungary, 1894–1985, gelatin silver photograph, 9 11/16 x 7 1/2 in. (24.6 x 19.1 cm), Gift of Jerome D. Whalen, 86.232, © Estate of Andre Kertesz. Not currently on view.

Happy Valentine’s Day

from your friends at SAM

Celebrate the people you love at SAM this weekend, with great art and activities. You can even extend your celebration, and stop by the downtown Seattle Art Museum on Monday—we are open downtown on Presidents Day!

For the Love of Art

Seattle Art Museum on Feb 14 2012

Valentine’s Day 2012

Like many couples looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day date, Gary and Dannie Bollinger-Smith came to the Seattle Art Museum this morning to see the Gauguin & Polynesia exhibition. However, what makes these two unique is that it’s their 26^thValentine’s Day together.

SAM Art: Happy Valentine’s Day

Seattle Art Museum on Feb 14 2012

The corkscrew form of this robust figure invites the viewer to walk around it and see it from all angles. This serpentine construction embodied the thinking of Michelangelo and other sixteenth-century theorists who believed that “a figure has its highest grace and eloquence when it is seen in movement.”

In 1998 this Cupid underwent surgery to remove his wings, appendages which had been considerably retouched over time.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Cupid (left: prior to 1998; right: after 1998), ca. 1580, Giambologna (Flemish, active Italy, 1529-1608), or Pietro Francavilla (Flemish, 1548-1615), marble, 29 x 12 x 11 in., Samuel H. Kress Collection, 61.177. Currently on view in the European art galleries, fourth floor, SAM downtown.