The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an

art museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. Although primarily co ...

located in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, United States. It operates three major facilities: its main museum in

downtown Seattle Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared with other city centers on the U.S. West Coast due to its geographical situation, being hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by ...

; the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) in Volunteer Park on

Capitol Hill Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...

, and Olympic Sculpture Park on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened in January 2007.

History

The SAM collection has grown from 1,926 pieces in 1933 to above 25,000 as of 2022. Its original museum provided an area of ; the present facilities provide plus a park. Paid staff have increased from 7 to 303, and the museum library has grown from approximately 1,400 books to 33,252. 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 The Henry Art Gallery ("The Henry") is a contemporary art museum located on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it wa ...

, Horace C. Henry (1844–1928).Dave Wilma
"Seattle Art Museum opens in Volunteer Park on June 23, 1933"
historylink.org, accessed March 11, 2007"SAM at 75", p. 11. Richard E. Fuller, president of the Seattle Fine Arts Society, was the animating figure of SAM in its early years. During the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, 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 Carl Frelinghuysen Gould (24 November 1873 – 4 January 1939) also spelled Carl Freylinghausen Gould, was an architect in the Pacific Northwest, and founder and first chair of the architecture program at the University of Washington. As the lea ...

of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould designed an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

Art Moderne Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In industrial design ...

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. SAM joined with the National Council on the Arts (later NEA), Richard Fuller, and the

Seattle Foundation Seattle Foundation is the community foundation serving the greater Seattle area. Established in 1946, it is the oldest community foundation serving the Pacific Northwest, with assets of more than $965 million. As of 2017, it was the 21st largest com ...

(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."SAM at 75", p. 12. In 1983–1984, the museum received a donation of half of a downtown city block, the former

J. C. Penney Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Girl ...

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 $62 millionTimothy Egan (December 10, 1991)
Museum By Venturi Opens In Seattle
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. downtown facility designed by

Robert Venturi Robert Charles Venturi Jr. (June 25, 1925 – September 18, 2018) was an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures of the twentieth century. Together with h ...

. The next year, one of Jonathan Borofsky's '' Hammering Man'' sculptures was installed outside the museum as part of

Seattle City Light Seattle City Light is the public utility providing electricity to Seattle, Washington, in the United States, and parts of its metropolitan area, including all of Shoreline and Lake Forest Park and parts of unincorporated King County, Burien, N ...

's One Percent for Art program."SAM at 75", p. 14–15. ''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. ''Hammering Man'' was used in a guerrilla art installation on Labor Day in 1993 when Jason Sprinkle and other local artists attached a ball and chain to the leg of the sculpture. 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. In 2017, the Seattle Asian Art Museum closed for a two-year $54 million renovation and expansion project. The museum reopened February 8, 2020. In September 2021, employees of Seattle Art Museum called for a boycott of the museum for policies they claim unfairly target unhoused people. Soon after, in October 2021, SAM Director and CEO, Amada Cruz, signed onto a letter on behalf of the museum in support of increasing the city's police budget. The letter also advocated for subsidized security for nonprofit institutions, despite the recent termination of SAM's contract with Star Protection Services due to employee misconduct and the continued opposition of staff and community members. On January 7, 2022, the visitor service officers filed to unionize in partnership with IUPAT 116. As of January 17, the museum has not recognized the union, despite majority support within the department.

Exhibitions

Among the museum's notable exhibitions were a 1954 exhibition of 25 European paintings and sculptures from the

Samuel H. Kress Samuel Henry Kress (July 23, 1863 – September 22, 1955) was a businessman, philanthropist, and 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 ...

Foundation; these pieces were donated to SAM in 1961. A 1959

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

exhibit drew 126,100 visitors. That same year, SAM organized a retrospective of the work of Northwest School painter

Mark Tobey Mark George Tobey (December 11, 1890 – April 24, 1976) was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophi ...

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 Century 21 Exposition (also known as the Seattle World's Fair) was a world's fair held April 21, 1962, to October 21, 1962, in Seattle, Washington, United States.World's Fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...

). A

Jacob Lawrence Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own ac ...

retrospective in 1974 honored a giant of

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

art who had settled in Seattle four years earlier. ''Leonardo Lives'' (1997) featured the

Codex Leicester __NOTOC__ The Codex Leicester (also briefly known as the Codex Hammer) is a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci. The Codex is named after Thomas Coke, who purchased it in 1717; he later became the Earl of Leicester. The manu ...

, the last manuscript of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on ...

in private hands, which had then been recently purchased by

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

Collection

As of June 2008, the SAM collection includes nearly 25,000 pieces. Among them are

Alexander Calder Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and hi ...

's ''Eagle'' (1971) and

Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, Urban area, urban, and Architecture, architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material q ...

's ''Wake'' (2004), both at the Olympic Sculpture Park;

Cai Guo-Qiang Cai Guo-Qiang (; born 8 December 1957) is a Chinese artist who currently lives and works in New York City and New Jersey. Biography Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China. His father, Cai Ruiqin, was a calligraphe ...

'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 (german: Lucas Cranach der Ältere ; – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is kno ...

; Mark Tobey's ''Electric Night'' (1944); ''Yéil X'eenh (Raven Screen)'' (c. 1810), attributed to the

Tlingit The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),

artist Kadyisdu.axch';

Do-Ho Suh Do Ho Suh (hangul: 서도호, born 1962) is a Korean sculptor and installation artist. He also works across various media, including paintings and film which explore the concept of space and home. His work is particularly well known in relation ...

's ''Some/One'' (2001); and a coffin in the shape of a

Mercedes Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to as Mercedes and sometimes as Benz, is a German luxury and commercial vehicle automotive brand established in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a Mercedes-Benz Group subsidiary established in 2019) is headquartere ...

(1991) by Kane Quaye of

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Tog ...

. 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 Emanuel de Witte (1617–1692) was a Dutch perspective painter. In contrast to Pieter Jansz Saenredam, who emphasized architectural accuracy, De Witte was more concerned with the atmosphere of his interiors. Though few in number, de Witte al ...

Luca Giordano Luca Giordano (18 October 1634 – 3 January 1705) was an Italian late-Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Fluent and decorative, he worked successfully in Naples and Rome, Florence, and Venice, before spending a decade in Spain. Earl ...

Luca Carlevaris Luca Carlevarijs or Carlevaris (20 January 1663 – 12 February 1730) was an Italian painter and engraver working mainly in Venice. He pioneered the genre of the cityscapes (''vedute'') of Venice, a genre that was later widely followed by artis ...

Armand Guillaumin Armand Guillaumin (; February 16, 1841 – June 26, 1927) was a French impressionist painter and lithographer. Biography Early years Born Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin in Paris, he worked at his uncle's lingerie shop while attending even ...

, and

Camille Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). ...

. This museum also has a large collection of twentieth-century American paintings by

and

. There is an appreciable collection of Aboriginal Australian art.

Return of looted art

The museum returned to the heirs of 1930s French-Jewish impressionist and post-impressionist art dealer Paul Rosenberg a painting by

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prim ...

which had been looted by Nazis in World War II, after having requested that the family sue in order to reach a legal settlement that included another art dealer. So in October 1997, Rosenberg's family filed suit in District Court, to recover the painting ''Odalisque'' (1927 or 1928). It was the first lawsuit against an American museum concerning ownership of Nazi plunder during World War II. Then museum director Mimi Gardner Gates brokered an 11th hour settlement that returned the artwork, after which the museum sued the gallery which had sold it the painting in the 1950s. Author

Héctor Feliciano Hector Feliciano (born 1952) is a Puerto Rican journalist and author whose book "''The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art''" has shed light on an estimated 20,000 works of art plundered by the Nazis; eac ...

said it was only the second instance in the US of a museum returning looted 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 15,000 book volumes and subscribed to 100 periodicals. It specializes in Asian art.

Facilities

Main 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 Museum in 1994. The building, a limestone-covered rectangle with a streak of tile and terra cotta around its outside, is located at University Street and First Avenue, and was completed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates at with a $28.1 million budget. In 2006, the Seattle Art Museum began expanding its 1991 location in a joint effort with

Washington Mutual Washington Mutual (often abbreviated to WaMu) was the United States' largest savings and loan association until its collapse in 2008. A savings bank holding company is defined in United States Code: Title 12: Banks and Banking; Section 1842: Def ...

(WaMu); the enlarged building was originally known as the WaMu Center. The expansion actually began in July 2004. Several pieces had to be temporarily moved to prevent them from being damaged due to vibrations during construction. This would have been the initial foundation phase of 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 (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous ...

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

JPMorgan Chase JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. As of 2022, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, t ...

resulted in

Northwestern Mutual Northwestern Mutual is an American financial services mutual organization based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The financial security company provides consultation on wealth and asset income protection, education planning, retirement planning, investm ...

purchasing WaMu's share of the building September 9, 2009, and renaming it the

Russell Investments Center Russell Investments Center is a 42-floor skyscraper in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the ninth tallest building in Seattle at , and on completion was the largest skyscraper to mark the downtown skyline in nearly 15 years. The sk ...

. Currently,

Russell Investments Russell Investments is an investment firm headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Corporate overview According to ''American Banker'', Russell Investments has approximately $300 billion of assets under management, as of September 2019. The firm r ...

, a Northwestern Mutual subsidiary, is headquartered there, having relocated from

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Pa ...

. Admission to the SAM's indoor facilities is free on the first Thursday of each month; SAM also offers free admission the first Saturday of the month. And even the normal admission is suggested, meaning that the museum would like visitors to pay the complete admission but if they can not pay fully they can still enjoy the museum.

Modern Art Pavilion

After the Century 21 Exposition, the fairgrounds became Seattle Center, and the UK Pavilion became the Modern Art Pavilion of the museum. It remained in use until 1987.

Asian Art Museum

The Asian Art Museum 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 free and open public park on the Seattle waterfront just north of downtown. It opened on January 20, 2007.

Management

Governance

Amada Cruz was named director and CEO of the Seattle Art Museum in 2019. She succeeded Kimberly Rorschach who served as director from 2012 to 2019.

Funding

The Seattle Art Museum only receives 4% of its funding from the government; the rest of its operating costs are covered by ticket fees and its membership base. As of 2014, the museum has a $23 million budget. As a result of the banking crisis, the museum in 2009 lost $5.8 million in annual rental and related income from its tenant

. It faced an accumulated debt of $56 million dating back from when the museum and Washington Mutual partnered on a new downtown building they intended to share. After the bank was sold to

in 2008, it left the museum with eight floors of office space, at a cost of about $5.8 million a year. Help came in the form of grants from the JPMorgan Chase and the Gates Foundation. The museum's endowment for art purchases is currently at less than $7.8 million. In 2016, the Seattle Art Museum was the Seattle Art Fair's Beneficiary Partner where it received $100,000 from the Opening Night Preview.

Attendance

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 Seattle Center is an arts, educational, tourism and entertainment center in Seattle, Washington, United States. Spanning an area of 74 acres (30 ha), it was originally built for the 1962 World's Fair. Its landmark feature is the tall Space Needle ...

) drew 1.3 million visitors in a mere four months; 2007 attendance was 797,127. In 2010, the exhibition "Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris" drew more than 405,000 people and was the museum's most-attended exhibition since it moved to its downtown location from Volunteer Park in 1991. In SAM's history, only the 1978 King Tut exhibition, held at Seattle Center, ranked higher in attendance.Janet I. Tu (May 10, 2011)
Seattle Art Museum director Derrick Cartwright is resigning
''

Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington st ...

''.

Notes

References

* "SAM at 75", in the unnamed newsletter of the Seattle Art Museum, June 2008, 10–15.

External links

*
Olympic Sculpture Park Construction
An unofficial journal {{Authority control Art museums established in 1933 Museums in Seattle Art museums and galleries in Washington (state) Museums in King County, Washington Museums of American art Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Robert Venturi buildings Libraries in Seattle 1933 establishments in Washington (state) Downtown Seattle African art museums in the United States