2014-15 EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM, ASIAN ART MUSEUM, OLYMPIC SCULPTURE PARK
The following exhibition information is subject to change. Prior to publication, please confirm dates,
titles and other information with the Seattle Art Museum Public Relations office at
[email protected].
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon
Seattle Art Museum
October 17, 2013 – January 5, 2014
SAM is honored to host a major exhibition of Peruvian art that includes rarely
seen sculpture, metalwork, painting and textiles spanning 3,000 years. The
exhibition showcases the rich heritage of ancient Peru, including superb works
of the Mochica, Chimu and Inca cultures. Important paintings and sculptures
from the Colonial and Vice-royal eras demonstrate the initial influence of
Christianity, seen in radiant paintings of saints and liturgical processions.
Artworks created after independence from Spain show the creative syncretism
between indigenous and Spanish traditions, followed by examples of the rich
aesthetic of 20th-century paintings and folk art. Taking a novel approach to
Peruvian art, the thematic organization reveals cross currents of ideas and
artistry through time and the symbolic role that art plays in the construction of
cultural identity.
Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon and accompanying catalogue brings together new research by
well-known scholars in many fields. Select examples from SAM’s collection are also on view. The exhibition
is organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and assisted locally by SAM curator, Barbara Brotherton.
SAM is the only U.S venue for this exhibition.
Leo Berk: 2013 Betty Bowen Award Winner
Seattle Art Museum
November 7, 2013–February 23, 2014
Leo Berk (born 1973) considers the effects of the built environment on our senses, psychology and
development. In his most recent body of work, the artist returned to the landmark building in which he grew
up and which influenced his artistic trajectory: Bruce Goff’s Ford Residence, in Aurora, Illinois. Self-taught
and visionary, Bruce Goff created an organic and site-specific contemporary architecture that defied
convention and tradition. Beautiful to look at, the house could be challenging to live in as lack of insulation
allowed for extreme temperatures inside the structure. Berk’s memories of these physical challenges led to
an exploration of the many ways in which aspects of this home prompted a sensory response, which is
reflected in the works in this gallery. Although the pieces seem abstract at first glance, each is connected to
a structural part of the house.
The namesake of this distinguished award, Betty Bowen (1918–1977), was a Washington native and
enthusiastic supporter of Northwest artists whose friends established the annual award as a celebration of
her life and to honor and continue her efforts to provide financial support to the artists of the region. Since
1977, the Seattle Art Museum has hosted the yearly grant application process by which the selection
committee chooses one Northwest visual artist—from Washington, Oregon, or Idaho—to receive an
unrestricted cash award.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
Robert Davidson: Abstract Impulse
Seattle Art Museum
November 16, 2013 – February 16, 2014
In partnership with the National Museum of the American Indian, NY, SAM is
proud to organize the first major U.S. exhibition of the Haida artist, Robert
Davidson. Robert Davidson has been a pivotal figure in the Northwest Coast
Native art renaissance since 1969, when he erected the first totem pole in his
ancestral Massett village since the 1880s. The exhibition will feature 45
paintings, sculptures and prints created since 2005, as well as key images from
earlier in his career that show Davidson’s evolution toward an elemental
language of form. The exhibition is organized by SAM curator Barbara
Brotherton.. It will travel to the National Museum of the American Indian’s
George Gustav Heye Center in New York City for a 2014 viewing. A catalogue
will accompany the exhibition.
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Seattle Art Museum
December 13, 2013 – June 22, 2014
Frazier is a photographer and media artist whose practice is informed by
late 19th- and early 20th-century modes of representation. With an
emphasis on postmodern conditions, class, and capitalism, Frazier
investigates issues of propaganda, politics, and the importance of
subjectivity. Frazier is the winner of the 2013 Gwendolyn Knight and
Jacob Lawrence Prize which is awarded bi-annually to an early career
black artist who has been producing work for less than 10 years. The prize was created to provide
inspiration for young black artists. Bi-annually, nominations are requested from an anonymous roster of
distinguished and celebrated artists, curators and cultural producers who have their fingers on the pulse of
contemporary black artistic practice.
Miró: The Experience of Seeing
Seattle Art Museum
February 13, 2014 – May 25, 2104
This exhibition, drawn entirely from the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro
de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, offers a fresh assessment of the late period in
Miró’s work—a body of work that audiences in the United States have not had
the opportunity to fully appreciate. The exhibition brings together 48 paintings,
drawings and sculptures made in the period between 1963 and 1983 that testify
to the artist’s ingenuity and inventiveness to the very end of his life. Bold and
colorful paintings employing his personal visual language alternate with nearabstract compositions. Although Miró had experimented with sculpture in earlier
periods, it is only in the late years that painting and sculpture stand in direct
dialogue with each other—a principal feature of this exhibition. Curated by
Chiyo Ishikawa Manchanda,Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator
of European Painting and Sculpture and Catharina Manchanda, Jon and Mary
Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical
Seattle Art Museum
June 19, 2014 – September 7, 2014
Few regions of the United States produced such a distinctive group of artists with
such a particular view on the modern world as did the Pacific Northwest in the
1930s and 1940s. The Seattle Art Museum is now the major repository of work
by the highly acclaimed, closely connected, but still little understood group of
artists, dominated by painters Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Guy Anderson,
Kenneth Callahan, Leo Kenney, Paul Horiuchi, and George Tsutakawa and by
sculptor Phil McCracken. This exhibition and book will be the museum’s first
comprehensive overview of this important collection and the first museum
publication to elucidate the intertwined histories of the Northwest School and the
Seattle Art Museum.
City Dwellers: Contemporary Art from India
Seattle Art Museum
August 30, 2014 – February 15, 2015
Photography and sculpture has emerged as an especially important tool for artists in India and this
exhibition provides an insider’s view of urban life in India in all its complexity and contradiction. The
photographs linger on the private and public sphere with references to family, history, art and popular
culture. Bollywood movie stars, venerated politicians, religious festivals, and legendary musicians and artists
all contribute to the contemporary pantheon of “stars” in Indian culture. The roughly 15 artists in this
exhibition pay tribute to this multitude but also introduce elements of irony, introspection and critique. They
frame the stark economic discrepancies through the cityscape and its dwellers, investigate stereotypical role
models perpetuated by film and print industries, and fashion their own contemporary pop icons such as a
“gilded” scooter to pop-colored renditions of Mahatma Gandhi, the visionary activist who led India to
independence.
Pop Departures
Seattle Art Museum
October 9, 2014 – January 11, 2015
This exhibition brings together key works by the central figures who defined
American Pop art in the 1960s such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Claes
Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselmann. Pop art was a radical
artistic departure at the time and brought consumer and media culture to the
heart of artistic discussions. Although members of the European avant-garde had
borrowed and integrated subjects and materials from popular culture since the
early 20th century, it is with American Pop that everyday life, notably the image
worlds of advertisement and consumer society, becomes the main artistic focus.
As a radical artistic and intellectual challenge to the establishment at the time, the
ripple effects of Pop art, and the discussions it inspired, had an impact far beyond the 1960s. To show the
continued engagement with some of the themes arising from Pop art—such as the staging of objects of
consumption, the allure of celebrity culture, and the pivotal role of media imagery—this exhibition will chart
connections to the 1980s and the 2000s, with work by major contemporary artists for whom Pop art was an
inspiration, a central point of departure, or a vehicle for critique.
Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection
Seattle Art Museum
February 12, 2015 – May 17, 2015
Drawn from the celebrated Native American art collection of Charles and Valerie
Diker, this exhibition will feature about 110 masterworks representing tribes across
the North American continent. Shaped by the Dikers’ passion for American Indian
art and culture, coupled with an aesthetic sensibility honed by their long
engagement with modern and contemporary art, this superb collection is renowned
as one of the largest, most comprehensive, and most exquisite collections of Native
American art in private hands. This exhibition showcases a number of recent
acquisitions never seen before by the public, and will be the first traveling exhibition
culled from this collection. The exhibition is organized by the American Federation
of Arts. Guest curator is David Penney, Associate Director of Scholarship at the Smithsonian’s National
Museum of the American Indian, and local curator is Barbara Brotherton, Curator of Native American Art at
Seattle Art Museum.
Diguise and Contemporary African Art
Seattle Art Museum
June 18, 2015 – September 6, 2015
This groundbreaking exhibition will consider the past, present
and future of disguise, a visual act and psychological state that
can be a mask, a costume, or just a smile. The exhibition will
include 50 masks and 10 costumes from SAM’s African art
collection and about 100 objects on loan. Masks from SAM’s
African art collection will stimulate visitors’ imaginations as they
consider disguise as animal avatars, authority figures, altered
portraits, and minimalist expressions. Disguise will take an indepth look at 10 contemporary artists whose work has a
distinctive way of addressing the subject. All will offer a variety of ways of embodying disguise—in drawings,
photographs, videos, masks, sculptures, performances and installations. Many combine media in innovative
ways, enabling disguise to evolve with a mixture of
documentary and personally created imagery. Select artists will participate in site-specific installations and
performances. The exhibition is being organized by the Seattle Art Museum, and is being curated by
Pamela McClusky, Curator of African and Oceanic Art, and Erika Dalya Massaquoi, Consultant Curator.
Intimate Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art
Seattle Art Museum
October 1, 2015 – January 3, 2016
The Seattle Art Museum is proud to present Intimate Impressionism from
the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The collection is
comprised of extraordinary paintings considered to be the jewels of one
of the finest collections of French Impressionism in the world. The
exhibition will feature 71 intimately scaled paintings by Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist masters, including Édouard Manet, Auguste Renoir,
Claude Monet, Eugène Boudin, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Camille
Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent
van Gogh, among others. These works, which are prominently presented in the East Wing of the National
Gallery, have long been treasured by the museum’s visitors and prized by art historians. This will be the first
time the beloved collection has gone on tour and only because the East Wing will be closed for renovation.
The majority of works come from the celebrated Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, given to the National Gallery
of Art in 1970. This core group is bolstered by works from the Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon Collection and gifts
of several other important collectors. Organized by the National Gallery of Art and curated locally by Seattle
Art Museum Curator Chiyo Ishikawa, Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European
Painting and Sculpture.
S.F.B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre
Seattle Art Museum
October 1, 2015 – January 10, 2016
Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872) is better known today for his invention of
the electromagnetic telegraph—and for “Morse” code—but he began his
career as a painter and rose to the Presidency of the august National
Academy of Design in New York. The monumental Gallery of the Louvre is
his masterwork. Now in the collection of the Terra Foundation for American
Art in Chicago, the canvas is making a national tour to major museums. Its showing at the Seattle Art
Museum, from [add dates here], affords visitors the direct experience of this famous painting, which many
know only from their American history books. At the Seattle Art Museum, the painting will be shown by itself
in an expansive gallery as the kind of grand picture public display that Morse himself would have created in
1833.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
ASIAN ART MUSEUM
A Fuller View of China, Japan, and Korea
Asian Art Museum
Through April 13, 2014
‘
Marking the 80th anniversary of SAM s founding by Dr. Richard Fuller, the
museum hasorganized an exhibition of Chinese, Japanese and Korean
masterpiecesas a celebration and chronicle of the growth of the collections over
the past eight decades. A Fuller View of China, Japan, and Korea is curated by
Xiaojin Wu, Associate Curator for Japanese and Korean Art at the Asian Art
Museum.
Hometown Boy: Liu Xiaodong
Asian Art Museum
Through June 29, 2014
One of China's most renowned contemporary artists, Liu Xiaodong grew up in a
small industrial town in China before moving to Beijing at age 17 to study art.
Three decades passed before he decided to head home to paint this celebrated
series Hometown Boy. His canvases feature rich colors, strong brushstrokes and
a journalistic sensibility. While many of his portraits show ordinary people
engaging in ordinary activities, such as eating or playing games, the paintings are
particularly revealing about the subject's soc ial class, void of any pictorial rhetoric that dramatizes paintings
made during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Xiaodong lives in Beijing, where he is a professor at
Central Academy of Fine Arts. Curated by Josh Yiu, SAM’s Former Foster Foundation Associate Curator of
Chinese Art at the Asian Art Museum. Curated by Josh Yiu, SAM’s Former Foster Foundation Associate
Curator of Chinese Art at the Asian Art Museum.
Inked: Wan Qingli
Asian Art Museum
Through June 29, 2014
Wan Qingli was born in Beijing in 1945. Having studied with some of the
most celebrated and innovative Chinese ink painters of the past century, his
art is grounded in his own experiences. The exhibition features biting pictorial
commentaries on contemporary life and society. Since 1989, Qingli has been
a professor of Chinese Art at Hong Kong University. Curated by Josh Yiu,
Former Foster Foundation Associate Curator of Chinese Art at the Asian Art
Museum.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
ASIAN ART MUSEUM
DECO JAPAN: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945
Asian Art Museum
May 10, 2014 – October 19, 2014
Art Deco, a 20th-century style that came to worldwide prominence in the interwar
period, left its mark on almost every medium of visual arts. Japanese artists,
designers, and consumers cultivated their own version of Art Deco, which was
perceived as modern and Western. This is the first exhibition outside Japan to focus
on Japanese Art Deco from 1920 to 1945. Presenting about 200 works from the
collection of Robert and Mary Levenson of Florida—including sculpture, painting,
prints, ceramics, lacquerware, jewelry, textiles, furniture, and graphic ephemera—
viewers are introduced to the spectacular craftsmanship and sophisticated designs
that define Japan’s contribution to the Art Deco movement. Through these objects,
the exhibition also demonstrates the social and cultural complexities particular to the interwar time period in
Japan.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
OLYMPIC SCULPTURE PARK
Encontro das Águas (Encounter of Waters)
Sandra Cinto
Through February 17, 2014
Olympic Sculpture Park, PACCARR Pavilion
São Paulo-based artist Sandra Cinto (b. 1968) has taken humble materials,
including blue paint and silver paint pen, and transformed a drawn line, repeated
at different angles, lengths, and patterns, into a monumental image of water that
expresses renewal and respite. Drawing directly on the walls, with the help of
two assistants (Alice de Faria Ricci and Jérôme Cornet) and a few local
volunteers, Cinto utilized the architecture of the PACCAR Pavilion as her canvas
to create an expansive image that hovers between dream and reality.
The ambitious site-specific installation features a mesmerizing view of an expansive waterscape: a
tempestuous sea. Although water imagery has been represented in Cinto’s earlier work, the artist made two
prior visits to Seattle to get a better sense of the location and the city. In turn, Cinto’s waterscape seems
apropos within the setting of Elliot Bay and Puget Sound.
A recurring form in the artist’s work is the boat, an image she incorporates for its poetic associations with
ideas of a journey. For her installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park, Cinto has incorporated a wooden
boat, purchased locally from the Center for Wooden Boats, Seattle. In the interior of the boat’s structure, she
has placed a drawing of an abstracted raft, which is loosely based on Théodore Géricault’s “The Raft of the
Medusa” (1819), a painting that has appeared in different ways in Cinto’s earlier works, such as the difficult
th
journey (after Géricault) (2007). Cinto finds expressions of hope, survival and human endurance in this 19
century history painting in which Géricault conveyed in his dramatic re-envisioning of the events.Curated by
Marisa C. Sanchez, Former Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum.
This exhibition is organized by the Seattle Art Museum. A lead grant is provided by The Paul G. Allen Family
Foundation.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
OLYMPIC SCULPTURE PARK
Jaume Plensa: Echo
Olympic Sculpture Park
2014
Echo (2011), a dramatic 44 foot tall figurative sculpture by Spanish
artist Jaume Plensa, will be installed next year on the shoreline of
the Olympic Sculpture Park. Made of marble, plastic, and fiberglass,
Echo takes its name from Greek mythology but is modeled after a
young girl known to the artist. Rising from the center of the park with
her eyes closed, and luminous in both day and night It is the artist’s
hope that viewers will see the sculpture as a mirror into their own
thoughts and soul. Plensa was born in 1955 and currently lives in
Barcelona. Plensa is also active in developing site-specific public works—his most celebrated include Crown
Fountain in Chicago; Breathing at the BBC Headquarters, London; Bridge of Light, Jerusalem; and World
Voices at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Sol LeWitt
Olympic Sculpture Park
March 15, 2014 – March 15, 2015
In his description of the tenets of conceptual art, Sol LeWitt
famously wrote in 1967 that “the idea is the machine that makes the work of art.” His wall drawings
particularly adhere to this concept as ephemeral works that exist only as a set of instructions for others to
carry out, privileging the artist’s original idea over the act of creation. LeWitt often likened himself to a
composer, and his wall drawings to musical scores: they are realized by others without the author’s
presence or hand, are dependent upon and contextualized by the place in which they are made, and can be
‘performed’ any number of times.
In his wall drawing conceived for the Seattle Art Museum, Seven Cubes with Color Ink Washes
Superimposed (1997), LeWitt explores the cube and grid structures which were of interest to him throughout
his career. Here, the cubes are rendered in isometric projections, rejecting the three-dimensionality of a
linear perspective and instead emphasizing the flatness of the wall itself. The effect makes the cubes seem
to tilt towards the viewer while simultaneously remaining rooted to the wall, drawing attention to the
connection between the viewer’s space, the drawing, and the architecture.
GENERAL INFORMATION
For detailed information about current and upcoming exhibitions, as well as recent museum news, visit the pressroom
at seattleartmuseum.org.
For general information about any of the museum’s three sites, call (206) 654-3100. Box Office (206) 654-3121
(Tuesday-Friday, 10:30 am-4 pm). Visit our Web site: seattleartmuseum.org.
Seattle Art Museum (SAM)
1300 First Avenue, Downtown Seattle
HOURS:
Wednesday–Sunday, 10 am–5 pm; Thursday and Friday until 9 pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
ADMISSION:
Suggested admission to the permanent collection is $17 for adults; $14 for seniors (62 and over) and
military (with ID); and $11 for students (with ID) and youth 13-17. Admission is free for SAM members and
children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. A ticket to SAM is valid for entry at the Seattle Asian Art
Museum if used within one week.
Special exhibitions may incur an additional, mandatory charge. Visit seattleartmuseum.org for up-to-date information.
FREE DAYS:
First Thursdays are free for all visitors. First Fridays are free to seniors. Second Fridays, 5-9 pm, are free to
teens (with ID).
Asian Art Museum
1400 East Prospect Street, Volunteer Park, Capitol Hill
HOURS:
Wednesday–Sunday 10 am–5 pm, Thursday until 9 pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
ADMISSION:
Suggested admission is $7 for adults; $5 for seniors (62 and over), military (with ID), students (with ID) and
youth 13-17; free to SAM members and children 12 and under. Parking is free. A ticket to SAAM may be
applied toward a ticket to SAM Downtown if used within one week.
FREE DAYS:
First Thursdays are free for all visitors. First Fridays are free to seniors. First Saturdays are free for families.
Second Thursdays, 5-9 pm, are free for all.
Olympic Sculpture Park
2901 Western Avenue (on the Waterfront)
HOURS:
Open daily 30 minutes prior to sunrise until 30 minutes after sunset, PACCAR Pavilion is open Tuesday–
Sunday: 10 am–4 pm (from the day after Labor Day through April 30) and Tuesday–Sunday: 10 am–5 pm
(from May 1 through Labor Day). Closed Monday.
ADMISSION:
Free.
The wide variety or programming provided by the museum is made possible through ongoing support from the following area
agencies: ArtsFund, City of Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, PONCHO (Patrons of Northwest Civic, Cultural and
Charitable Organizations); 4Culture King County Lodging Tax; Washington State Arts Commission with assistance from the
National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding is provided by the Seattle Art Museum Supporters (SAMS) and
contributors to the Annual Fund.
IMAGE CAPTIONS:
Set of Ornaments, Chimú culture, North coast, AD 1000-1476, Gold, silver and copper alloy, 46.6 x 21.9 cm (approx.), Museo
Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera, Lima.
Green Tri Neg, 2009, Robert Davidson, Haida, Masset, ts'aa7ahl'laanaas Eagle clan, born 1946, Acrylic on canvas, 40 × 30in. (101.6
× 76.2cm), Private Collection
Grandma Ruby and Me 2005, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Gelatin Silver Print 20x24 inches
Woman, Bird and Star (Homage to Picasso), February 15, 1966 / April 3-8, 1973, Joan Miro, Spanish, 1893-1983, Oil on canvas, 96
7/16 x 66 15/16in. (245 x 170cm), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
Millennium Light, Morris Graves, American, born Fox Valley, Oregon, 1910; died Loleta, California, 2001, 1933-34, Oil on canvas, 39
x 40 in. Gift of the Marshall and Helen Hatch Collection, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum
Kiss V, 1964, Roy Lichtenstein, American, 1923 – 1997, Magna on canvas, 37 5/16" x 37 5/16", Private Collection
Maskette, Tsimshian, Northwest Coast, ca. 1780-1830, Wood, copper, shell (opercula), pigment, 7 1/10 x 5 15/16 x 3 9/16 in., (681)
Country Ball 1989 – 2012, 2012, Jacolby Satterwhite, American, born 1986, HD digital video with color 3D animation and sound,
Running time 12:39 mins, Seattle Art Museum, Modern Art Acquisition Fund, 2013.3 © Jacolby Satterwhite
Madame Monet and Her Son ,1874, Renoir, Auguste, French, 1841 – 1919, oil on canvas, overall: 50.4 x 68 cm (19 13/16 x 26 3/4
in.), framed: 77.4 x 95.5 x 11.4 cm (30 1/2 x 37 5/8 x 4 1/2 in.), Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection.
Gallery of the Louvre, 1831-33, Samuel F. B. Morse, American, 1791-1872, oil on canvas, 70 3/4 x 108 in., Terra Foundation for
American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.51.
Wheel-shaped stone, Japanese, 4th century, Jasper, 4 3/4 x 4 7/16 x 7/16in. (12.1 x 11.3 x 1.1cm), Gift of Mrs. John C. Atwood, Jr.
Self Portrait, 2010, Liu Xiaodong, Chinese, Oil on canvas, 15 x 13 in (38 x 33 cm)
Rights Infringement (detail), 2006, Wan Qingli.
Songbook for “Song of the Milky Way” from the film Milky Way, 1931, Robert and Mary Levenson Collection.
Encontro das Águas (Encounter of Waters), 2012, detail of the installation, Sandra Cinto, Photo © Robert Wade.
Echo 2011, Jaume Plensa, Spanish, born 1955, Polyester resin, marble dust, steel framework
height 45 ft. 11 in., footprint at base 10 ft. 8 in. x 7 ft. 1 in. Seattle Art Museum, Barney A. Ebsworth Collection© Jaume Plensa Photo:
James Erwin
Seven Cubes with Color Ink Washes Super-Imposed, Sol LeWitt, 1997, India ink washes, installation with concept drawing, 130 x
670 in.