Seattle Art Museum
Encyclopedia
The Seattle Art Museum is an art museum located in Seattle
, Washington, USA. It maintains three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum
(SAAM) in Volunteer Park
on Capitol Hill
, and the Olympic Sculpture Park
on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened on January 20, 2007. Admission to the sculpture park is always free. Admission to the other facilities is free on the first Thursday of each month; SAAM also offers free admission the first Saturday of the month. And even the normal admission is suggested, meaning that the museum would like you to pay the complete admission but if you can not pay fully you can still enjoy the museum.
The SAM collection has grown from 1,926 pieces in 1933 to nearly 25,000 as of 2008. Its original museum provided an area of 25000 square feet (2,322.6 m²); the present facilities provide 312000 square feet (28,985.7 m²) plus a 9 acres (3.6 ha) park. Paid staff have increased from 7 to 303, and the museum library has grown from approximately 1,400 books to 33,252. While the number of visitors has grown, the pattern is more complicated: 346,287 people visited the museum in its first year; in 1978 the traveling exhibit Treasures of Tutankhamun (shown in the facility at Seattle Center
) drew 1.3 million visitors in a mere four months; 2007 attendance was 797,127.
SAM traces its origins to the Seattle Fine Arts Society (organized 1905) and the Washington Arts Association (organized 1906), which merged in 1917, keeping the Fine Arts Society name. In 1931 the group renamed itself as the Art Institute of Seattle. The Art Institute housed its collection in Henry House, the former home, on Capitol Hill, of the collector and founder of the Henry Art Gallery
, Horace C. Henry (1844–1928).
Richard E. Fuller, president of the Seattle Fine Arts Society, was the animating figure of SAM in its early years. During the Great Depression
, he and his mother, Margaret MacTavish Fuller, donated $250,000 to build an art museum in Volunteer Park on Seattle's Capitol Hill. The city provided the land and received ownership of the building. Carl F. Gould of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould
designed an Art Deco
/ Art Moderne building for the museum, which opened June 23, 1933. The Art Institute collection formed the core of the original SAM collection; the Fullers soon donated additional pieces. The Art Institute was responsible for managing art activities when the museum first opened. Fuller served as museum director into the 1970s, never taking a salary.
Among the museum's notable exhibitions (besides the aforementioned Treasures of Tutankhamun) were a 1954 exhibition of 25 European paintings and sculptures from the Samuel H. Kress
Foundation; these pieces were donated to SAM in 1961. A 1959 Van Gogh
exhibit drew 126,100 visitors. That same year, SAM organized a retrospective of the work of Northwest School
painter Mark Tobey
that traveled to four other U.S. museums. Tobey's works and highlights of SAM's Asian collection were featured under the museum's aegis at the Century 21 Exposition
(the 1962 Seattle World's Fair
). A Jacob Lawrence
retrospective in 1974 honored a giant of African American
art who had settled in Seattle four years earlier. Leonardo Lives (1997) featured the Codex Leicester
, the last manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci
in private hands, which had then been recently purchased by Bill Gates
.
SAM joined with the National Council on the Arts (later NEA
), Richard Fuller, and the Seattle Foundation (in part, another Fuller family endeavor) to acquire and install Isamu Noguchi
's sculpture Black Sun in front of the museum in Volunteer Park. It was the NEA's first commission in Seattle.
In 1983–1984, the museum received a donation of half of a downtown city block, the former J. C. Penney
department store on the west side of Second Avenue between Union and Pike Streets. They eventually decided that this particular block was not a suitable site: that land was sold for private development as the Newmark Building, and the museum acquired land in the next block south. On December 5, 1991, SAM reopened in a downtown facility designed by Robert Venturi
. The next year, Jonathan Borofsky
's Hammering Man
(one of several such pieces by Borofsky) was installed outside the museum as part of Seattle City Light
's One Percent for Art program. Hammering Man would have been installed in time for the museum's opening, but on September 28, 1991, as workers attempted to erect the piece, it fell, was damaged, and had to be returned to the foundry for repairs. In 1994 the Volunteer Park facility reopened as the Seattle Asian Art Museum. In 2007 the Olympic Sculpture Park opened to the public, culminating an 8-year process.
's Eagle (1971) and Richard Serra
's Wake (2004), both at the Olympic Sculpture Park; the aforementioned Hammering Man; Cai Guo-Qiang
's Inopportune: Stage One (2004), a sculpture constructed from cars and sequenced multi-channel light tubes on display in the lobby of the SAM Downtown; The Judgment of Paris (c. 1516-18) by Lucas Cranach the Elder
; Mark Tobey's Electric Night (1944); Yéil X'eenh (Raven Screen) (c. 1810), attributed to the Tlingit artist Kadyisdu.axch'; Do-Ho Suh
's Some/One (2001); and a coffin in the shape of a Mercedes Benz (1991) by Kane Quaye of Ghana
. While SAM's collections of modern and ethnic art are notable, its collection of more-traditional European painting and sculpture is quite thin, and the Museum relies on traveling exhibitions rather than its own collection to fill that notable gap. Nevertheless, there are early Italian paintings by Dalmasio Scannabecchi, Puccio di Simone, Giovanni di Paolo, Luca Di Tomme, Bartolomeo Vivarini, and Paolo Uccello. There are paintings by V. Sellaer, Jan Molenaer, Emanuel De Witte, Luca Giordano, Luca Carlevaris, Armand Guillaumin, and Camille Pissarro. This museum also has a large collection of Twentieth Century American paintings by Jacob Lawrence and Mark Tobey. There is an appreciable collection of Aboriginal Australian Art.
in 1994. The building at University Street and First Avenue was completed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates
at 150000 square feet (13,935.5 m²) with a $28,100,000 budget.
In 2006, the Seattle Art Museum began expanding its 1991 location in a joint effort with Washington Mutual
(WaMu); the enlarged building was originally known as the WaMu Center. In addition to reworking the Venturi building, SAM now takes up the first four floors of a 16-floor building designed by Portland, Oregon
architect Brad Cloepfil
. SAM also owns the next eight floors, which WaMu originally rented; Washington Mutual owned the top four floors. As SAM expands in the future, it can take over one or more of the rented floors.
Because of the construction, the museum's downtown location was closed from January 5, 2006 to May 5, 2007. The expanded building offers 70 percent more gallery space, an expanded museum store, and a new restaurant. In anticipation of the expansion, over a thousand new pieces, with a total value over a billion dollars, were donated to the collection.
Washington Mutual's 2008 failure and subsequent acquisition by JPMorganChase resulted in Northwestern Mutual purchasing WaMu's share of the building September 9, 2009, and renaming it the Russell Investments Center
. As of 2009, Russell Investments, a Northwestern Mutual subsidiary, is in the process of moving its headquarters there from Tacoma, Washington
.
Pavilion became the Modern Art Pavilion of the museum. It remained in use until 1987.
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, Washington, USA. It maintains three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum
Seattle Asian Art Museum
The Seattle Asian Art Museum is a museum of Asian art located inside Volunteer Park on Seattle, Washington USA's Capitol Hill. Part of the Seattle Art Museum, SAAM occupies the 1933 Art Moderne building which was originally home to the Seattle Art Museum's main collection...
(SAAM) in Volunteer Park
Volunteer Park (Seattle)
Volunteer Park is a 48.3 acre park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, USA.-History:Volunteer Park was acquired by the city of Seattle for $2,000 in 1876 from J.M. Colman...
on Capitol Hill
Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington
Capitol Hill is the most densely populated residential district in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the center of the city's gay and counterculture communities, and is one of the city's most prominent nightlife and entertainment districts....
, and the Olympic Sculpture Park
Olympic Sculpture Park
The Olympic Sculpture Park is a public park in Seattle, Washington that opened on January 20, 2007.The park consists of a outdoor sculpture museum and beach. The park was designed by Weiss/Manfredi Architects, along with Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture and other consultants. It is...
on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened on January 20, 2007. Admission to the sculpture park is always free. Admission to the other facilities is free on the first Thursday of each month; SAAM also offers free admission the first Saturday of the month. And even the normal admission is suggested, meaning that the museum would like you to pay the complete admission but if you can not pay fully you can still enjoy the museum.
History
Seattle Center
Seattle Center is a park and arts and entertainment center in Seattle, Washington. The campus is the site used in 1962 by the Century 21 Exposition. It is located just north of Belltown in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood.-Attractions:...
) drew 1.3 million visitors in a mere four months; 2007 attendance was 797,127.
SAM traces its origins to the Seattle Fine Arts Society (organized 1905) and the Washington Arts Association (organized 1906), which merged in 1917, keeping the Fine Arts Society name. In 1931 the group renamed itself as the Art Institute of Seattle. The Art Institute housed its collection in Henry House, the former home, on Capitol Hill, of the collector and founder of the Henry Art Gallery
Henry Art Gallery
The Henry Art Gallery is the art museum of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it was founded in 1927 and was the first public art museum in the state of Washington. The...
, Horace C. Henry (1844–1928).
Richard E. Fuller, president of the Seattle Fine Arts Society, was the animating figure of SAM in its early years. During the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, he and his mother, Margaret MacTavish Fuller, donated $250,000 to build an art museum in Volunteer Park on Seattle's Capitol Hill. The city provided the land and received ownership of the building. Carl F. Gould of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould
Bebb and Gould
The architectural partnership of Bebb and Gould was active in Seattle from 1914 to 1939. Partners Carl Freylinghausen Gould and Charles Herbert Bebb were jointly responsible for many buildings on the University of Washington's Seattle campus, as well as the Seattle Times Square Building , Everett...
designed an Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
/ Art Moderne building for the museum, which opened June 23, 1933. The Art Institute collection formed the core of the original SAM collection; the Fullers soon donated additional pieces. The Art Institute was responsible for managing art activities when the museum first opened. Fuller served as museum director into the 1970s, never taking a salary.
Among the museum's notable exhibitions (besides the aforementioned Treasures of Tutankhamun) were a 1954 exhibition of 25 European paintings and sculptures from the Samuel H. Kress
Samuel H. Kress
Samuel Henry Kress was a businessman and philanthropist, founder of the S. H. Kress & Co. five and ten cent store chain. With his fortune, Kress amassed one of the most significant collections of Italian Renaissance and European artwork assembled in the 20th century...
Foundation; these pieces were donated to SAM in 1961. A 1959 Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
exhibit drew 126,100 visitors. That same year, SAM organized a retrospective of the work of Northwest School
Northwest School (art)
The Northwest School was an art movement based in small-town Skagit County, Washington, and was at its peak in the 1930s and 1940s.-The big four:...
painter Mark Tobey
Mark Tobey
Mark George Tobey was an American abstract expressionist painter, born in Centerville, Wisconsin. Widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe, Tobey is the most noted among the "mystical painters of the Northwest." Senior in age and experience, Tobey had a strong influence on the...
that traveled to four other U.S. museums. Tobey's works and highlights of SAM's Asian collection were featured under the museum's aegis at the Century 21 Exposition
Century 21 Exposition
The Century 21 Exposition was a World's Fair held April 21, 1962, to October 21, 1962 in Seattle, Washington.Nearly 10 million people attended the fair...
(the 1962 Seattle World's Fair
World's Fair
World's fair, World fair, Universal Exposition, and World Expo are various large public exhibitions held in different parts of the world. The first Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom, in 1851, under the title "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All...
). A Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence was an American painter; he was married to fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem.Lawrence is among the best-known twentieth...
retrospective in 1974 honored a giant of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
art who had settled in Seattle four years earlier. Leonardo Lives (1997) featured the Codex Leicester
Codex Leicester
The Codex Leicester is a collection of largely scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci. The codex is named after Thomas Coke, later created Earl of Leicester, who purchased it in 1717...
, the last manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
in private hands, which had then been recently purchased by Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
.
SAM joined with the National Council on the Arts (later NEA
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
), Richard Fuller, and the Seattle Foundation (in part, another Fuller family endeavor) to acquire and install Isamu Noguchi
Isamu Noguchi
was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces,...
's sculpture Black Sun in front of the museum in Volunteer Park. It was the NEA's first commission in Seattle.
In 1983–1984, the museum received a donation of half of a downtown city block, the former J. C. Penney
J. C. Penney
-External links:*...
department store on the west side of Second Avenue between Union and Pike Streets. They eventually decided that this particular block was not a suitable site: that land was sold for private development as the Newmark Building, and the museum acquired land in the next block south. On December 5, 1991, SAM reopened in a downtown facility designed by Robert Venturi
Robert Venturi
Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major figures in the architecture of the twentieth century...
. The next year, Jonathan Borofsky
Jonathan Borofsky
Jonathan Borofsky is an American sculptor and printmaker who lives and works in Maine.Borofsky was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in 1964, after which he continued his studies at France's Ecole de Fontainebleau and received his...
's Hammering Man
Hammering Man
Hammering Man is a series of monumental kinetic sculptures designed by Jonathan Borofsky which have been installed in various cities around the world.-Frankfurt:...
(one of several such pieces by Borofsky) was installed outside the museum as part of Seattle City Light
Seattle City Light
Seattle City Light is the public utility providing electrical power to Seattle, Washington and parts of its metropolitan area, including all of Shoreline and Lake Forest Park and parts of unincorporated King County, Burien, Normandy Park, Seatac, Renton, and Tukwila...
's One Percent for Art program. Hammering Man would have been installed in time for the museum's opening, but on September 28, 1991, as workers attempted to erect the piece, it fell, was damaged, and had to be returned to the foundry for repairs. In 1994 the Volunteer Park facility reopened as the Seattle Asian Art Museum. In 2007 the Olympic Sculpture Park opened to the public, culminating an 8-year process.
Collection
As of June 2008, the SAM collection includes nearly 25,000 pieces. Among them are Alexander CalderAlexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
's Eagle (1971) and Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
's Wake (2004), both at the Olympic Sculpture Park; the aforementioned Hammering Man; Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese contemporary artist and curator.-Biography:Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China. He was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theater Academy from 1981 to 1985. Cai's work is scholarly and often politically charged...
's Inopportune: Stage One (2004), a sculpture constructed from cars and sequenced multi-channel light tubes on display in the lobby of the SAM Downtown; The Judgment of Paris (c. 1516-18) by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...
; Mark Tobey's Electric Night (1944); Yéil X'eenh (Raven Screen) (c. 1810), attributed to the Tlingit artist Kadyisdu.axch'; Do-Ho Suh
Do-Ho Suh
-Early life and career:He was born in Seoul, Korea in 1962. After earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University, and fulfilling his term of mandatory service in the South Korean military, Suh relocated to the United States to continue...
's Some/One (2001); and a coffin in the shape of a Mercedes Benz (1991) by Kane Quaye of Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
. While SAM's collections of modern and ethnic art are notable, its collection of more-traditional European painting and sculpture is quite thin, and the Museum relies on traveling exhibitions rather than its own collection to fill that notable gap. Nevertheless, there are early Italian paintings by Dalmasio Scannabecchi, Puccio di Simone, Giovanni di Paolo, Luca Di Tomme, Bartolomeo Vivarini, and Paolo Uccello. There are paintings by V. Sellaer, Jan Molenaer, Emanuel De Witte, Luca Giordano, Luca Carlevaris, Armand Guillaumin, and Camille Pissarro. This museum also has a large collection of Twentieth Century American paintings by Jacob Lawrence and Mark Tobey. There is an appreciable collection of Aboriginal Australian Art.
Libraries
The Seattle Art Museum contains the Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library and the McCaw Foundation Library of Art.Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library
The Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library was founded in 1991. As of 2011 it contained 20,000 books and subscribed to 100 periodicals. It specializes in African art, contemporary art, decorative ars, European art, Modern art, and photography.McCaw Foundation Library of Asian Art
The McCaw Foundation Library of Asian Art was founded in 1933. As of 2011 it contained 15000 book volumes and subscribed to 100 periodicals. It specializes in Asian art.Present downtown facility
The museum's main collection moved to its present location on First Avenue in December 1991; the museum's original building became the Seattle Asian Art MuseumSeattle Asian Art Museum
The Seattle Asian Art Museum is a museum of Asian art located inside Volunteer Park on Seattle, Washington USA's Capitol Hill. Part of the Seattle Art Museum, SAAM occupies the 1933 Art Moderne building which was originally home to the Seattle Art Museum's main collection...
in 1994. The building at University Street and First Avenue was completed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates
Robert Venturi
Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major figures in the architecture of the twentieth century...
at 150000 square feet (13,935.5 m²) with a $28,100,000 budget.
Washington Mutual
Washington Mutual, Inc. , abbreviated to WaMu, was a savings bank holding company and the former owner of Washington Mutual Bank, which was the United States' largest savings and loan association until its collapse in 2008....
(WaMu); the enlarged building was originally known as the WaMu Center. In addition to reworking the Venturi building, SAM now takes up the first four floors of a 16-floor building designed by Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
architect Brad Cloepfil
Brad Cloepfil
Brad Cloepfil is an American architect, educator and principal of Allied Works Architecture of Portland, Oregon and New York City. His first major project was an adaptive reuse of a Portland warehouse for the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy...
. SAM also owns the next eight floors, which WaMu originally rented; Washington Mutual owned the top four floors. As SAM expands in the future, it can take over one or more of the rented floors.
Because of the construction, the museum's downtown location was closed from January 5, 2006 to May 5, 2007. The expanded building offers 70 percent more gallery space, an expanded museum store, and a new restaurant. In anticipation of the expansion, over a thousand new pieces, with a total value over a billion dollars, were donated to the collection.
Washington Mutual's 2008 failure and subsequent acquisition by JPMorganChase resulted in Northwestern Mutual purchasing WaMu's share of the building September 9, 2009, and renaming it the Russell Investments Center
Russell Investments Center
Russell Investments Center is a skyscraper in Seattle, Washington. On its completion, it was the largest skyscraper to mark the downtown Seattle skyline in nearly 15 years, and is the city's sixth tallest building, at, with 42 floors. It was originally named WaMu Center because it was built to...
. As of 2009, Russell Investments, a Northwestern Mutual subsidiary, is in the process of moving its headquarters there from Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
.
Modern Art Pavilion
After the Century 21 Exposition, the fairgrounds became Seattle Center, and the UKUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Pavilion became the Modern Art Pavilion of the museum. It remained in use until 1987.
Seattle Asian Art Museum
The Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM)) has been located since 1994 in the original 1933 Deco/Moderne SAM facility in Volunteer Park on Seattle's Capitol Hill.Olympic Sculpture Park
The Olympic Sculpture Park is a 9 acres (3.6 ha) public park on the Seattle waterfront just north of downtown. It opened on January 20, 2007.External links
- Olympic Sculpture Park Construction An unofficial journal