Culture Fiend

Free Museum Admission on May 18

It’s in honor of International Museum Day.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on May 10, 2012 at 03:00PM 0 Comments

Photo by Gary McKinnis; courtesy the artist / Henry Art Gallery.

Gary Hill, Withershins (installation view at Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 1996), 1995.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Photo by Gary McKinnis; courtesy the artist / Henry Art Gallery.

Gary Hill, Withershins (installation view at Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 1996), 1995.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Image courtesy SAM.

See Arshile Gorky’s 1944 masterpiece How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron 
Unfolds in My Life at Seattle Art Museum Downtown.

Museums across North America will offer free admission next Friday, May 18, in honor of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ (AAMD) Art Museum Day and International Museum Day. Since the dates coincide, I will now refer to the holiday as AAMDAMDIMD. To make things easier.

A full list of participating museums will be available soon on the AAMD website, but I was able to confirm today that both the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, and Seattle Asian Art Museum will offer free entry that day. Any other museums in the Seattle-Tacoma area that plan to participate? Let us know in the comments section below.

Exhibits on display:

The Brink: Andrew Dadson (Henry Art Gallery)

Gary Hill: Glossodelic Attractors (Henry Art Gallery)

Morning Serial: Webcomics Come to the Table (Henry Art Gallery)

Theaster Gates: The Listening Room (SAM downtown)

You can also plot a tour of 10 must-see masterpieces in Seattle, many of which are at SAM and the Henry.

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Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Free Museum

Art News: Frye Closing for Renovations; New Work at Olympic Sculpture Park; ‘Gauguin and Polynesia’ in Its Final Weeks

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Apr 11, 2012 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Prior work by artist Sandra Cinto: Imitação da Água, 2010.

CLOSING TIME The Frye Art Museum will be closed April 16 through July 14 for renovations. Education programs and lectures will continue at the Skyline a block away during the closure, but the museum’s current exhibitions by Susie J. Lee, Li Chen, and a “Beloved” collection cocurated by 90-year-old art patron Frieda Sondland, will wrap up this weekend. Lee will chat with local film critic Robert Horton at 2pm on Sunday; it’s a good time to ask her how she made it rain indoors.

LAST CHANCE Seattle Art Museum’s blockbuster Gauguin and Polynesia exhibit will close on April 29; the downtown branch will stay open late April 23–29, from 10–9, to accommodate the procrastinators. It’s recommended that you buy tickets ahead of time at seattleartmuseum.org/gauguin.

IN THE WORKS São Paulo–based artist Sandra Cinto has been holed up inside the Paccar Pavilion at Olympic Sculpture Park since the beginning of the month, covering its walls with a stormy seascape that invokes the tempest in Hokusai’s Japanese woodblock prints. Armed with some pretty simple materials (blue paint, silver paint pens), Cinto and her team of assistants and local volunteers have crafted a finely detailed Encontro das Águas (Encounter of Waters) that churns inside as the waters of Elliott Bay lap the park’s nearby shoreline. The piece will be on display April 14, 2012–April 14, 2013.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum, Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park

More Free Gauguin Events at Seattle Art Museum

Starting with a lecture by the curator of Paris’s Musée d’Orsay.

Posted by: Laura Dannen and Seth Sommerfeld on Mar 06, 2012 at 04:00PM 0 Comments

Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait Dedicated to Carrière, 1888 or 1889, oil on canvas, 15 15/16 × 12 13/16 in. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Walking through the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, home to dozens of Van Goghs, Cezannes, and Gauguins, is the equivalent of a crash course in post-impressionist painting. So it’s something of a coup to have the museum’s curator, Stéphane Guégan, in town to speak about the new Gauguin and Polynesia exhibit on display at Seattle Art Museum. Guégan has written extensively on the 19th-century French contemporaries—including the aptly named Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay—and can offer a new perspective on the complex connection between Gauguin and his tropical muse.

While tickets to the talk are sold out, a free simulcast of the event will be shown at the Nordstrom Lecture Hall at SAM. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

For those who haven’t seen Gauguin and Polynesia yet, SAM will hand out free tickets (typically $18–$23) to the exhibit this Saturday, March 10; just be one of the first 400 people queued up at the Hammering Man at 10am. Saturday is Community Day, so the museum will host Tahitian drumming acts and Polynesian dance classes all day—see the event list below.

SAM Talks: Stéphane Guégan on Paul Gauguin
Mar 8 at 7, Plestcheeff Auditorium at Seattle Art Museum, sold out

Simulcast of ‘SAM Talks: Stéphane Guégan on Paul Gauguin’
Mar 8 at 7, Nordstrom Lecture Hall at Seattle Art Museum, free

Seattle Art Museum Community Day
March 10, SAM Downtown, free–$23 (Gauguin admission)
10:30, 11, 1:45, 2: Te Fare O Tamatoa (Tahitian dance and drumming)
11 & 1: Family-friendly tour of Gauguin and Polynesia
Noon: Na Hanu ‘O Ku’uleialoha (Polynesian dance lessons)
12:30: Rogue, a French-inspired cabaret band

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Tags: Seattle Art Museum, Free Museum

Easy Street’s Founder Reviews Theaster Gates’s Record Store as Exhibit

His appraisal? “For everything? About $200.”

Posted by: Seth Sommerfeld on Feb 24, 2012 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Theaster Gates, a selection from the “Dr. Wax Archive” at Dorchester Projects, Chicago, 2009.

Matt Vaughan’s first instinct is to get his hands on those records. The Easy Street Records founder makes a beeline for the shelf of worn LPs lining the wall of The Listening Room, a new exhibit by Chicago artist Theaster Gates that opened in December at Seattle Art Museum, and starts flipping through the collection. Sly and the Family Stone. Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits. Tina Turner. The collection—remnants of Chicago’s now defunct Dr. Wax record store—doubles as a history lesson on music in America, all that blues and jazz and soul from the 1960s through the ’80s. Vaughan is in search of gems when a museum guard rushes over to stop him. No touching! Though apparently people touch this exhibit all the time.

“Yeah, they should change that policy,” Vaughan says.

It certainly contradicts the vibe in this corner of the museum, where funk is pumped in through speakers. The rest of the layout is as minimalist as a shack: a few rustic chairs and a couple of wooden crates housing records (that you can actually touch) litter the floor, and old fire hoses line the walls—“civil tapestries” from Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s, when the fire department was asked to restrain civil rights demonstrators. “What is the relationship between music and the political?” asks Gates, a visual artist/activist, in his exhibit introduction. “Where are safe spaces and cultural spaces of Seattle?”

Despite a handslap from a museum guard, this space does feel welcoming; it encourages chatter, and in this case, a chance for a record store owner to appraise the goods. “For everything? About $200,” Vaughan says within four minutes of being in the room. “A lot of these are represses or were budget releases when they came out.”

Then there’s the artistic value in these vinyl relics that goes beyond any sticker price. “This 12-by-12-inch square is almost like a 12-by-12 canvas,” he says. “You’re not going to see someone painting on a 5-by-5 frame, like a CD, very often. It’s clear what the cover art is saying to you at this size, but if it was shrunk down it really wouldn’t hold the same way or speak to you the same way.”

To make his point, Vaughan rummages through the crates and picks out a copy of Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, which features a sepia-toned painting of Wonder against a mountain backdrop. “Here’s a perfect example of a great album art. As an album, it’s telling you to come inside.” He opens the album gatefold. “It’s got the lyrics readily available; it’s right there. It’s not like you’re opening up liner notes or having to get on the Internet to pull up lyrics. It’s all one piece. It’s all one gift.”

With The Listening Room, Gates wants the viewer to explore the social and political history that can be found in a dead record shop. And while Vaughn thinks Seattle might be the wrong city to host such an exhibit because of its abundance of thriving record stores, the exhibit’s irony isn’t lost on him.

“It’s funny because people often say record stores are turning into museums, and here you’ve brought the record store into the museum. I hope Easy Street doesn’t wind up here one day.”

Theaster Gates: The Listening Room
Thru July 1, Seattle Art Museum Downtown

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Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, Easy Street Records

Win Tickets to SAM’s Sold-Out Remix Party on February 24

Because there’s no better way to kick off Lent.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Feb 22, 2012 at 12:00PM 3 Comments

“All the joys—animal and human—of a free life are mine.” —Paul Gauguin

Seattle Art Museum’s late-night art party Remix returns this Friday with longer hours—7:30 to 12:30—and a blockbuster exhibit to check out. To gear up for the event, SAM will stay open until 9 all week and is offering $3 off Gauguin tickets between 5 and 9. Sounds like a good time…for all those ambitious planners who already bought their tickets. Remix is sold out, but we have a pair of passes to give away.

These fine tickets get you:

—Entry into the new Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise exhibit.
—A traditional Polynesian welcome (“Marquesan haka”) at 8.
— DJ Supreme La Rock spinning hip hop, soul, and world tunes, and DJ Riz spinning in The Listening Room.
—Traditional Tahitian dance and drumming performance by Te Fare O Tamatoa at 8, 8:30, 10:15, and 10:30.
—“Highly opinionated tours” of the galleries by SAM curators Pam McClusky and Chiyo Ishikawa, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, artist Allyce Wood, the Rat City Rollergirls, and more.
—Work on a cut paper paradise with artist Celeste Cooning.
—The usual assortment of beer, wine, and cocktails (cash bar); Taste restaurant will also be open late.

To enter to win, email SeattleMetTix@gmail.com with “Remix” as the subject, and a reason why you want to go, by Thursday, February 23, at 5. The winner will be notified by email shortly after the deadline.

SAM Remix
Feb 24, Seattle Art Museum Downtown, 7:30–12:30
First 50 people wearing yellow get in free.

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Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, SAM Remix, Party

Slideshow: Gauguin and Polynesia at Seattle Art Museum

The exhibit opens February 9—here’s a sneak peek.

Posted by: Allison Williams on Feb 08, 2012 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

All images courtesy Seattle Art Museum.

Paul Gauguin, Vahine no te Tiare (Tahitian Woman with a Flower), 1891, oil on canvas, 27 3/4 × 18 5/16 in.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

All images courtesy Seattle Art Museum.

Paul Gauguin, Vahine no te Tiare (Tahitian Woman with a Flower), 1891, oil on canvas, 27 3/4 × 18 5/16 in.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Paul Gauguin, Faaturuma (Melancholic), 1891, oil on canvas, 37 × 26 7.8 in. Courtesy Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.

Though Gauguin is famously known for his seductive portraits of Tahitian women, his early paintings featured them in conservative western dress, looking forlorn. People “can remain hours and days sitting immobile and gazing sadly at the sky,” Gauguin wrote to his wife.

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Gauguin, Te raau rahi (The Large Tree), 1891, oil on fabric, 29 1/8 × 36 9/16 in. Courtesy the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Gauguin left Tahiti’s capital and ventured 45km away to the village of Mataiea, where he sought out authentic daily life.

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Paul Gauguin, Parahi te Marae (The Sacred Mountain), 1892, oil on canvas, 26 × 35 in. Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.

When Gauguin didn’t find the paradise he was looking, he made it up, said Pam McClusky, curator of Art of Africa and Oceania at SAM. The yellow hillside could invoke yellow feathers, which are a sacred element in Polynesian culture.

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Moal Kavakava (Cadaverous Male Figure), Easter Island, early- to mid-19th century; wood, bone, obsidian.

This handsome fellow with obsidian eyes is similar to the artwork Gauguin saw at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889—a collection of pieces that inspired his desire to see both the savagery and beauty of “the Promised Land.”

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Paul Gauguin, Arearea no Varua ino (Words of the Devil, or Reclining Tahitian Women) , 1894, oil on canvas, 23 5/8 × 38 9/16 in. Courtesy Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

Constantly plagued by wanderlust, Gauguin continued to paint Tahiti even when he was back in Paris from 1893–1895. It doesn’t help that he contracted syphilis and only sold nine of 47 works while he was home.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Paul Gauguin, Three Tahitians, 1899, oil on canvas, 28 3/4 × 37 in. Courtesy National Gallery of Scotland.

Gauguin returned to Tahiti from 1895 to 1901, where he was both prolific—abandoning ethnographic portraits for lush, seductive paintings—and frustrated by syphilis, a lack of cash, and run-ins with local authorities.

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Photo: Laura Dannen. Pota (Tiki Figure), late 18th to mid-19th century, stone, Marquesas Islands.

This tiki comes from the island of Hiva Oa, where Gauguin lived at the end of his life in the early 1900s. “It was the Tahiti of former times that I loved,” he once said.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Photo: Laura Dannen.

En route to Tahiti for the second time, Gauguin passed through New Zealand, where he became engrossed with a collection of Maori carvings at the Auckland Museum. This piece (pictured) covered in fine spirals is one of the oldest on display (ca. 1865), but was sadly turned into a collection basket (note the key hole).

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Photo: Laura Dannen.

Don’t forget to say hello to Pou (ca. 1840). This figure typically welcomes visitors to a Maori meeting house, and you’re expected to greet it when you pass by.

Originally published December 2011. Compared to the Impressionists, Paul Gauguin was something of a wild card. His painting career was preceded by stints in the merchant marines and the financial sector. Then, rather than paint flowers in rural France, he trotted off to the South Pacific.

Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise, on display from February 9 through April 29 at Seattle Art Museum downtown, traces the rich relationship between the 19th-century artist and his adopted country. The exhibit’s a near-even split: almost 60 pieces by Gauguin, 60 by Polynesians. Gauguin’s own fascination with ethnographic art started early, so some works in the show make references to Breton folk culture and date back to before his first South Pacific trip in 1891. “He was always looking for something raw and authentic…primordial and basic and real,” says SAM curator Chiyo Ishikawa.

Before he went tropical, the artist toyed with forming a kind of hippie art commune with his painting buddy, Vincent Van Gogh. But, says Ishikawa, Van Gogh’s “ethic of self denial” didn’t mesh with Gauguin, who “wanted to eat everything and take advantage of everything and impregnate everybody.” So the hedonist was off to Tahiti.

The French territory wasn’t exactly the virgin paradise he sought. Gauguin was bummed to see the “bourgeois trappings” of Western dress, says Ishikawa. “His idea of paradise as a free place of flowers, where you can pluck the fruit from the trees? That went out the window quickly.” In his portraits, young women have melancholic expressions, a stark contrast to the bright colors of the lush island.

A century later, his works may have steamrolled local style; Google “Tahitian art” and it’s mostly Gauguins and bare-breasted knockoffs. But in SAM’s show, dozens of elaborate carvings and ornamental jewelry show off the Tahitian, Marquesan, and Maori styles that inspired the troubled artist. In the tour’s only U.S. stop, the museum shows off not merely the dissatisfied Frenchman who craved authenticity, but the paradise lost that was so hard for him to find.

View the slideshow for a preview of the exhibit. Photo captions by Laura Dannen.

Gauguin and Polynesia: A Elusive Paradise
Feb 9–Apr 29, Seattle Art Museum
When the museum opens at 10am on Feb 9, the first 100 people wearing sunshine yellow get in free.

In the Studio with Hotel 1000: A Curator-Led Talk on Gauguin and Polynesia
Feb 15, 5–6:30pm, Hotel 1000

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Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, Slideshow, Preview

Gauguin and Polynesia Tickets On Sale at SAM

A troublesome artist goes tropical in this winter’s biggest exhibit.

Posted by: Allison Williams on Nov 14, 2011 at 11:00AM 3 Comments

Paul Gauguin, Vahine no te Tiare (Tahitian Woman with a Flower), 1891, oil on canvas

Photo courtesy Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen/Seattle Art Museum

When painter Paul Gauguin went to Tahiti, what he found was his new muse. His work might ring a bell—bright colors, Tahitian women, the lush tropics. But what about the art that was already on his adopted island? Seattle Art Museum pairs native South Pacific pieces with the Frenchman’s best in the show Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise, opening February 9. This is gonna be a big one, folks, and tickets are on sale now.

Seattle is the only American stop for the show, which shows how Gauguin was influenced by Tahitian, Marquesan, and Maori works. The museum expects lines to be long; book now for events like In the Studio with Hotel 1000, a curator-led talk about the exhibit on February 15 (with free hors d’oeuvres!).

Gauguin was always a bit of a troublemaker, so no wonder that he supplemented his painting with wood and ceramic sculpture—"things that resist," says SAM curator Chiyo Ishikawa. “He liked materials that push back,” she says. “He wanted to be contrary to pretty much everything. He needed to have conflict.” In Tahiti, Gauguin was charged with libel, fathered children with local mistresses, and died of syphilis—sounds like he got what he was looking for.

Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise is at Seattle Art Museum February 9–April 29.

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Tags: Seattle Art Museum, Ticket Alerts, Art Events, Art Exhibits

Art After-Hours: Where to Go This First Thursday

Museums are free, galleries stay open late. So…many…choices…

Posted by: Seattle Met staff on Sep 01, 2011 at 09:30AM 0 Comments

Image courtesy James Harris Gallery.

Sarah Awad, Fallenheads, 2011, oil on canvas, 24″ x 30″.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Image courtesy James Harris Gallery.

Sarah Awad, Fallenheads, 2011, oil on canvas, 24″ x 30″.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Image courtesy G. Gibson Gallery.

Michael Brophy, Explosion, 2011, oil on canvas, 54 × 66 in.

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Image courtesy kellyvivanco.com

Kelly Vivanco, Unraveled, 12 in x 12 in.

We’ll be heading to see:

Sarah Awad: Instruments of Culture
Museums appear as tombs, empty and forlorn with ancient busts lying abandoned on the floor, in the California artist’s new collection of rich oil paintings in pastels and grays, now on display at James Harris Gallery. Opening reception Sept 1, 6-8pm. Thru Oct 8.

New Work by Michael Brophy
Known for his richly textured Northwest landscapes, the Portland painter brings in a human element—workers in the Field, or men eyeing an Explosion on the horizon—in his latest pieces on display at G. Gibson Gallery. Opening reception Sept 1, 6-8pm. Thru Oct 8.

Kelly Vivanco: Where Colors Grow
Woodland creatures and auburn-haired maidens with big doe eyes populate the SoCal artist’s new paintings—scenes as alternately whimsical and dark as a Lemony Snicket story. Now at Flatcolor Gallery. Opening reception Sept 1, 5-9pm.

Last chance to see… Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration at Seattle Art Museum. It closes September 11.

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Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, First Thursday, James Harris Gallery

Today’s Summer Guide Pick: Picnic in the Park at Olympic Sculpture Park

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Jul 14, 2011 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Enjoy a taco under Alexander Calder’s Eagle at Olympic Sculpture Park.

From the Seattle Summer Events Guide:

Does Anita’s Crepes have a food truck? We hope one turns up in honor of Bastille Day at SAM’s Picnic at the Park in Olympic Sculpture Park tonight. As Chris Werner reported on Nosh Pit, this is a new weekly outdoor fete, hosted by Seattle Art Museum and boasting multiple food trucks, wines from Taste, and live music every Thursday night through mid-September. Fun starts at 5:30 and goes until 8; bring an appetite.

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Tags: Seattle Art Museum, Summer Eating, Sun's Out, Get Out, Seattle Summer Events Guide, Seattle Summer Events Guide, Olympic Sculpture Park

Examine the Beauty and Bounty of America at Seattle Art Museum

Just in time for the Fourth of July, 19th-century landscape paintings that show all our purple mountain majesties.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Jun 30, 2011 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Image courtesy Howard Giske/Seattle Art Museum.

Albert Bierstadt, Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, 1870, oil on canvas, 52.5 × 82 in.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Image courtesy Howard Giske/Seattle Art Museum.

Albert Bierstadt, Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, 1870, oil on canvas, 52.5 × 82 in.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Image courtesy Seattle Art Museum.

Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1878, oil on canvas, 20 × 30in. From a private collection.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Image courtesy Paul Macapia/Seattle Art Museum.

Sanford Robinson Gifford, Mount Rainier, Bay of Tacoma – Puget Sound, 1875, oil on canvas, 21 × 40 1/2 in.

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Photo courtesy Seattle Art Museum.

Carleton E. Watkins, Cape Horn, Columbia River, 1868. Albumen silver print, 19 1/4 × 14 1/2in. On loan from Henry Art Gallery: Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography
Collection.

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Image courtesy Seattle Art Museum.

Strohmeyer and Wyman, Nearly a Mile Straight Down and Only a Step, Yosemite from
Glacier Point, California, 1894 stereograph, albumen silver print. From a private collection.

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Image courtesy Seattle Art Museum.

Whiting Tennis, Bovine, 2006; lumber, found plywood and found objects and CD; 102 × 168 × 90 in. Gift of Greg Kucera Gallery, Inc.

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Image courtesy Seattle Art Museum.

Michael Brophy, Forest Room, 1999, oil on canvas, 79 × 93in. Mark Tobey Estate Fund.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Image courtesy Seattle Art Museum.

Cameron Martin, Untitled, 2001, oil on canvas, 72 × 60 in. Gift of the ContemporaryArtProject, Seattle.

Anyone who’s driven down I-5 on a sunny day and seen Mount Rainier rise above the horizon knows the power of the Pacific Northwest landscape. But a new Seattle Art Museum exhibit examines the continent’s purple mountains majesty through the eyes of awestruck 19th-century artists experiencing the “Great West” for the first time: Sanford Gifford, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran among them. In Beauty and Bounty: American Art in the Age of Exploration, SAM’s American art curator Patricia Junker has gathered more than 120 landscape paintings and photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries—several from private collections that have rarely been seen in public.

Of note is a room dedicated to Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, a permanent piece in SAM’s collection that has been criticized for…well, not looking much like the Sound. Bierstadt never actually made it this far north during his travels, but his “dreamland” is well informed, Junker says, and the exhibit includes texts, photos, and artifacts that inspired the painter in 1870.

These are paintings for the poet as well as the journalist; some were drafted in order to lure settlers to California, while others had preservationist agendas. Gifford in particular was concerned about the destruction of forests—so much so that his close friend, logging millionaire James Pinchot, came to regret the environmental damage he’d done and named his son after the Hudson River School artist. Gifford Pinchot later went on to be the first head of the U.S. Forest Service. Many of the works offer an “Edenic, peaceful” counterpoint to the wartime trauma of the 1860s, said Junker, while John Frederick Kensett’s Lake George (1865)—one of the East Coast pieces—offers a “kind of normalcy: something so simple and ordinary” as a picnic on the beach.

If you’re not a fan of 19th-century landscape paintings, there are some clever stereograph images—the original 3D—and mammoth plate images by pioneers of photography, including Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge, that are equally dynamic as the oil on canvas.

Paired with Beauty and Bounty is contemporary art exhibit Reclaimed: Nature and Place Through Contemporary Eyes, featuring 45 works that show the artist’s relationship with the natural environment. It’s hard to miss Whiting Tennis’s Bovine, a 14-foot-long ox-conestoga wagon hybrid, an allusion to migration West. View the slideshow above for more images from both exhibits.

Beauty and Bounty and Reclaimed are both on display June 30–Sept 11 at Seattle Art Museum.

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Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, Art Exhibits

Derrick Cartwright Resigns as Director of Seattle Art Museum

Posted by: Laura Dannen on May 10, 2011 at 06:00PM 0 Comments

After two years leading the largest art museum in the city, Derrick Cartwright announced today that he’s resigning as director of Seattle Art Museum, effective June 30, to “take a break” and “pursue his own projects.”

“This was a difficult decision for me but with SAM today in a much stronger position than when I arrived, I believe the time is right for a change in leadership,” he wrote in a letter on SAM’s blog.

The news comes shortly after SAM announced its 2010 Picasso exhibit, of 150+ artworks on loan from Paris, had a $66 million impact on Washington state and drew 405,000 visitors—second only to the King Tut exhibit in 1978, which drew 1.3 million. Meanwhile, museum membership is at an all-time high. All the more reason why Cartwright’s resignation is unexpected.

“I am proud that SAM has achieved so much and I am confident that the institution will continue to build on this success,” Cartwright wrote. “I am eager for a break and for the chance to undertake my own projects. First, I aim to spend more time with my family and refresh my professional perspective. My passion for art history has been on hold while I focused on the most urgent administrative and financial challenges here. Now, I want to re-establish my personal connection with the artists, objects, and ideas that got me into museum work in the first place. My family and I have fallen in love with Seattle and we expect to remain here, so I hope to see you often.”

When I first met Cartwright back in early 2009, we were both starting new jobs in a new city. He was—is—kindly and thoughtful, an art historian in a fundraiser’s suit. He spoke candidly for an hour about his goals and fears: of Seattle being in a position “to do something bold that expresses the forward-thinking-ness of this community… to do things of international significance,” but at the same time worrying about the “Seattle Way of decision-making.” How he heard that “there are many, many conversations before any decision gets made.” Kind of tough you want to see new things on the walls every two months.

Still, Cartwright seemed up to the challenge, embracing his new role as Museum Man About Town. He was out every night greeting the art community, though he admitted he’s more of a “sit at home, listen to music, have a glass of wine and watch baseball with my son kind of guy.” And he faced highs and lows, Picassos and furloughs. Though he mentioned returning to scholarly projects for now, he’ll also stay on as a consultant for SAM through September 2012. Will update as I learn more.

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Tags: Seattle Art Museum

There’s a Monster Loose in Seattle

Brace yourselves.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Mar 10, 2011 at 09:30AM 0 Comments

Nick Cave’s soundsuits hit the town. Photo: Courtesy James Prinz

(Originally published February 2011.) He’s a tower of multicolored hair, silky locks from head to toe. No eyes, no ears. Just a Day-Glo Sasquatch with a penchant for shimmying. Rumor has it he has friends, and they could show up outside your office at any moment. Will you be ready for the invasion? Will you be ready to dance? Because they’re coming…the artists are coming.

Beneath the fuzzy full-body armor are Spectrum and Cornish dancers, tapped to frolic around town this spring inside “soundsuits” created by Chicago artist Nick Cave. He builds beautiful, cacophonous costumes-as-sculptures made of found objects, everything from human hair to sequins to sandwich bags. A collection of suits, titled Meet Me At the Center of the Earth, goes on display at Seattle Art Museum today, March 10, through June 5, but SAM plans to take the suits for a walk, too.

We hear that if you happen to be in downtown Seattle shopping this afternoon—say, 4ish—you might encounter one of these invasions. And these aren’t amateurs flailing about in furry costumes: Cave, a former Alvin Ailey dancer, has been working with local choreographer Donald Byrd to prep the Spectrum team for its performances. SAM will drop hints about the invasions on its Facebook and Twitter pages (@iheartSAM), but you can also see a scheduled show at Friday night’s Remix.

For more on Cave and the upcoming spring arts calendar, read our Spring Arts Preview.

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Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, Dance, Preview, Nick Cave, Spectrum Dance , Donald Byrd