Whitney Museum of American Art Archives

Muse/News: Gazing Back, Messed-Up Art, and a Gorky Resurfaces

Rachel Eggers on Jul 17 2023

SAM News

Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks, the solo exhibition now on view at SAM, is the pick of the week for arts reporter Mike Davis of KUOW.

“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.)

Local News

South Seattle Emerald’s Sarah Goh on Guma’ Gela’: Part Land, Part Sea, All Ancestry, now on view at the Wing Luke Museum, an exhibition featuring artwork across many disciplines from a queer art collective for people from the Mariana Islands and its diaspora.

Via Seattle Times arts and culture staff: “8 PNW road trips for music and arts lovers in summer 2023.”

Crosscut’s Nimra Ahmad interviews artist Brandon Vosika, who has a solo show opening July 27 at Hologram Art Gallery.

“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).”

Inter/National News

Don’t miss this very fun New York Times interactive on “How Manga Was Translated For America.”

Artnet’s Caroline Goldstein tees up the outlet’s latest video collaboration with Art21, this one featuring Hank Willis Thomas.

Via Karen Chernick of ARTnews: “Long-Lost Arshile Gorky Portrait of Artist Anna Walinska Turns Up in Rhode Island.”

“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.”

And Finally

“She Steals Surfboards by the Seashore.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: L. Fried.

Muse/News: Inside SAM, Sondheim’s Tempos, and Halsey’s Monument

Rachel Eggers on Apr 24 2023

SAM News

Seattle’s Child shares “The Definitive Guide to Inside Activities With Kids,” including a visit to the Seattle Art Museum.

Local News

The 20th annual Seattle Black Film Festival (SBFF) is now playing at Langston Hughes Art Center through April 30; South Seattle Emerald has the details on what’s screening.

Are you keeping up with Nancy Guppy of Art Zone? In the latest episode, she visits the Frye Art Museum’s exhibition of Katherine Bradford paintings, on view through May 14.

Misha Berson for Crosscut on how performers manage to “survive” Sondheim’s dizzying tempos in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, now playing at the 5th Avenue Theatre.

“‘If you saw my score, which I always keep close at hand, you’d see I’ve written breathe! Breathe! Breathe! all over it,’ says [Anne] Allgood, who has studied and now teaches singing technique. ‘I use the inhalations as a chance to relax, reset, refuel, even if they are very quick.’”

Inter/National News

Have a listen to The Week in Art, The Art Newspaper’s podcast; this edition, they talk about Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life at the Tate Modern, a reconstructed Roman gateway, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map, which just opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art and heads to SAM in 2024.

“We Need More Nuance When Talking About Repatriation”: Patricia Marroquin Norby pens an opinion piece for Hyperallergic reflecting on her last three years as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first-ever curator of Native American art.

LA-based artist Lauren Halsey has debuted a new monument on the roof garden of the Met. Halsey was the winner of SAM’s 2021 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize and the museum acquired her Untitled (2022), a work of hand-carved gypsum that resembles the new monument.

“Where the ancient Egyptians covered the walls of their tombs and shrines with illustrations from the Book of the Dead, Halsey and her team of artists and artisans have created an immersive Book of Everyday Life, one focused on, but by no means restricted to, contemporary Black urban existence, evoked and preserved in words and images carved into hundreds of concrete panels.”

And Finally

The Seattle Times’ Moira Macdonald guides you through Seattle Independent Bookstore Day on April 29.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Muse/News: SAM Reopens, ID Favorites, and Lawrence Revisited

Rachel Eggers on Aug 31 2020

SAM News

Museums in Seattle can now reopen! With new safety protocols in place, the Seattle Art Museum will reopen to the general public on September 11. Catch up on all the details covered in The Seattle Times, The Stranger, Capitol Hill Seattle, ARTnews, and Artdaily.

Amada Cruz, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, was Marcie Sillman’s guest on KUOW The Record’s Wednesday show, sharing details on what SAM has been working on and how much we’ve missed you.

Also last week, SAM’s Priya Frank appeared on KING5’s New Day NW, talking with guest host Angela Poe Russell about equity at SAM and artists & organizations she loves.

Local News

“All creative people love a good challenge”: Pacific Northwest Ballet artistic director Peter Boal speaks with Seattle Times’ Moira Macdonald about their upcoming, all-digital season.

The Stranger’s Jasmyne Keimig covers the covers of Vogue and Vanity Fair, both of which feature Black artists (Kerry James Marshall, Jordan Casteel, Amy Sherald) creating new paintings of Black women (someone imagined, Aurora James, Breonna Taylor).

JiaYing Grygiel shares restaurant recommendations in the International District from Seattle notables, including SAM’s recently retired Deputy Director of Art, Chiyo Ishikawa. The article is a part of a series, Chinatown USA, which is meant as both a celebration and a call to action amid economic devastation and anti-Asian racism.

“The history of the Asian communities in Seattle isn’t all just barbecue pork buns and egg tarts. The ugly side of Seattle’s past includes anti-Chinese riots, discriminatory laws, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Now here we are, in the middle of a pandemic that has been tinged, including by the president, with anti-Asian overtones, and restaurants in the ID are hurting badly. Yet they’re remaining open.”

Inter/National News

Hyperallergic’s Valentina Di Liscia reports on the newly unveiled monument in Central Park to Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth.

Artnet’s Naomi Rea reports on the recent controversy at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in which they came under fire for acquiring works of activist art from discounted benefits and fundraisers.

In advance of the opening of Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle at the Met (which heads to SAM next year), the New York Times revisits a 1996 interview with Jacob Lawrence. The artist spoke with their then chief art critic Michael Kimmelman during visits to the Met and MoMA, discussing art and technique as they went along.

“The three of us looked at whatever interested him, from Dogon sculptures to Dubuffet. Lawrence was a bearish, humble man, courtly, endearing. ‘I guess there’s nothing wrong with a negative statement,’ he reassured himself out loud at one moment, before screwing up his courage to dis Jackson Pollock.”

And Finally

“The Shooting of John T. Williams, 10 Years Later.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Inside Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstract Variations

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Mar 25 2020

Stay home with SAM and see inside Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstract Variations, zoom in on some early O’Keeffe drawings using our online interactive, and make some art of your own following along with the activity below.

“I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way—things that I had no words for.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe

These words from a 20th-century artist best known for her paintings of flowers and desert landscapes may be surprising. “She had a very particular iconography, so we don’t typically think of her as an abstractionist,” says Theresa Papanikolas, SAM’s Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art. Abstract Variations offers us a chance to broaden our perspective on this celebrated artist through a focused selection of 15 of her paintings and drawings, as well as portraits of her by Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer who eventually became her husband. The accompanying catalogue examines O’Keeffe’s pioneering innovations into abstraction.

You may be familiar with Music, Pink and Blue, No. 1, O’Keeffe’s first major oil painting, now in SAM’s collection. Abstract Variations also includes Music, Pink and Blue, No. 2, a loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art, bringing these two landmark paintings together in Seattle for the first time. Experiencing them alongside other works from this pivotal period in O’Keeffe’s career offers a glimpse into her practice. “There’s a tangible tension between geometry and curvilinearity in these early works,” says Papanikolas. “When you see them in person, they look as if they’re vibrating.”

Zoom in on Georgia O’Keeffe’s Drawings »

Take a good look at all the details in these charcoal drawings from the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Like many of us right now, these precious drawings have to stay home. O’Keeffe’s earliest works on paper are extremely fragile and therefore unable to travel, but we can still enjoy them—just click or tap on the image above!

Art Making Activity

The painting above by Georgia O’Keefe is called Music, Pink and Blue, No. 1. Like many paintings the artist made, its shapes and colors are inspired by music. Can you make a drawing of a song?

Choose a song that makes you feel happy, sad, calm, or excited. Close your eyes and think about what you hear: What lines, shapes, and images appear? What colors do you see? What more can you imagine?

Find a pencil and a piece of paper and listen to the song a second time. This time, take a deep breath and let your hand move around the paper to draw lines and shapes that connect to the music. You can draw fast or slow, whatever feels natural to you. Try not to think too much, just draw and capture the images from your imagination.

When the song is finished, you can add to or change the drawing that you have started. You might choose to press your pencil down to shade some areas darker and leave some areas light. You might choose to erase some sections and add additional shapes and lines. You might use other materials to add color or texture to your drawing.

When you have finished, display your drawing on the floor, a table, or pinned onto the wall or refrigerator. See what it looks like up close and far away. Ask people around you what looking at your drawing makes them think about or feel. Does it bring any music to their mind?

These process images are an example of Lauren Kent, SAM’s Museum Educator for School Programs & Partnerships, drawing to “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush at her kitchen table. We want to see your artwork! Share a photo of your drawing and the song that inspired you with us via email or on social media using #StayHomewithSAM!

If you value the ways SAM connects art to your life, consider making a donation or becoming a member today!

Artwork: Georgia O’Keeffe, American, 1887–1986, Music, Pink and Blue, No. 1, 1918, oil on canvas, 35 x 29 in., Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Barney A. Ebsworth, 2000.161, photo: Paul Macapia