On a recent trip we ventured across town to take in the latest incarnation of SAM, the Seattle Art Museum, in its original, Volunteer Park Home.
The Seattle Asian Art Museum is located inside Volunteer Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Part of the Seattle Art Museum, the SAAM occupies the 1933 Art Deco building (designed by Carl F. Gould of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould and listed on the National Register of Historic Places) which was originally home to the Seattle Art Museum’s main collection.
The Seattle Art Museum was founded in 1933 by Richard E. Fuller, a collector of Asian art. Local history sources describe Dr. Fuller’s evolution: “A man who sought to use his skills and resources to serve his community, Dr. Richard E. Fuller (1897–1976) acted as Director of the Seattle Art Museum from its founding in 1933 until 1973. His passion for Asian art, at a time when its importance was not yet fully acknowledged in this country, was ignited in childhood by his mother’s “cabinet of curiosities,” full of the treasures she collected in her own youthful travels in Asia. Together with his mother, Mrs. Eugene (Margaret Elizabeth MacTavish) Fuller, Dr. Fuller built for Seattle one of the premier collections of Asian art in the United States”.
In recent decades, public appreciation and understanding of Asian art has increased greatly. On the occasion of the museum’s 80th anniversary this year, 2020, the exhibition, A Fuller View of China, Japan, and Korea is both a tribute and a celebration of Dr. Fuller’s legacy and special recognition of SAM’s sustained efforts in collecting and researching Asian art. It was this exhibit that we went to see and experience.
The museum occupies a dramatic site in Volunteer Park at the top of Capitol Hill.
A walk around the exterior reveals the ways in which the formal Art Deco building has been expanded to serve its more contemporary mission.
Formal and decorative, the original museum presents both a simple and complex expression towards its site. The bulk of the building, clad in sandstone, stands as a fortress in the lush wooded Volunteer Park site; but the entrance clearly signals that something rich and complex can be found on the inside. At the same time, though, a pair of camels poke a bit of whimsy into all of this seriousness.
From the rear of the museum, which projects out into a more landscaped setting, the more modern and contemporary expression of the building becomes clear.
Whereas the original museum provided an almost exclusively interior experience, the latest incarnation reaches out and draws light in – and this approach also reflects the way in which the collection is experienced. The museum adopted the idea of showing its artworks as a series of thematic groupings rather than historic periods; and Seattle architects, LMN, carried this idea into the design of the addition to the building. Below, for example, is the way in which the new glass box above looks from the inside, drawing some of the park visually into the display areas and allowing the light quality to change all day long.
This drama presents its own display challenges of course, in that the constantly changing natural light qualities may, or may not, effectively show off the art.
I personally really enjoyed the interplay between these forms, their decorative surfaces and the complex tree forms in the background; but I can understand that others might find all of that texture distracting. The benefit of the space, though, is that it’s open to experiment in finding various ways for the artworks to tell their stories.
But to begin again at the beginning, the decorative doors bring you in.
Momentarily, the grand scale of the entrance gives way to the smaller scale activities of ticketing and gift shop in a space that seems too small to be a museum introduction.
As originally configured, in the 1930’s, this small lobby needed only to provide space for circulation, with ticketing and a coat room off to the side. In today’s museum world, the many ‘public’ needs have to compete for space.
In a somewhat abrupt but very dramatic way the lobby gives way, up a short flight of stairs, to the dramatic center courtyard and its electronic sky art.
The severe formal quality of the space has been here from the beginning so the somewhat severe electronic sky art fits right in. On either side, formal doorways and gates give access to the interior gallery spaces to each side.
The gates, painted black act almost as a language against the sandstone.
At the far end of the space from the lobby, a small pool and sculpture offer some focus and a welcome to the brightly day-lighted circulation spaces beyond.
Up close, the small scale draws you in; but I think that this particular piece struggles to “hold its own” against the drama of the large court.
Leaving the courtyard and moving along the new glass hallway leads to the major, new, stunning contemporary gallery and its current show, BE / LONGING, dominated by a piece called “SomeOne” by Do Ho Suh, a Korean-born artist.
He describes the work as, “an assignment at the Rhode Island School of Design – to express identity through clothing – made him think about ‘my identity as a Korean in the United States’.” SAAM Notes – I thought the number of overlaying images and symbols of this piece, including its enigmatic name, really drew to enjoy it at multiple scales.
“Recalling his two-year mandatory service in the Korean military, Suh built a garment out of thousands of dog tags, soldiers’ IDs that reduce individual lives to a handful of letters and numbers. The sculpture, taking the shape of an Asian armor, embodies a recurring theme for Suh: the relationship of the individual to the larger society.” SAAM Notes
The overall theme of this exhibit was explained nearby:
The variety of work in this gallery was impressive. Here are a few examples.
Miwa Yanagi’s staged photographs offer a collision of East and West, present and future. for this series, the artist interviewed Japanese girls aged fourteen to twenty and asked them to imagine themselves in fifty years’ time. This photograph of a spirited couple speeding across the Golden Gate Bridge was based on the vision of a girl named Yuka, who saw herself as a carefree “grandma” living “somewhere far, far away” with her playboy lover. SAAM notes – I really liked the way this piece expressed a desire with which I have no experience.
Growing up in postwar Japan, Akio Takamori was exposed to a wide range of people through his father’s medical clinic, which was located near a red-light district. Years later, as a mature artist working in Seattle, Takamori recalled his childhood experiences by creating communities of individuals with carefully crafted identities, such as this group of villagers. SAAM Notes – I liked the folk quality of this work; but in this gallery full of big, provocative pieces it felt a bit overwhelmed and hard to get close to.
When he lived in New York City from 1998 to 2006, the Chinese artist Zhang Huan staged many provocative performances. In one, documented in these nine photographs, his face was progressively inscribed with words from ancient Chinese divination, which predicts the future based on one’s facial features. The text gradually obscures Zhang’s features until the words are lost and his face is completely covered with black ink. Instead of revealing his fate, the words conceal his identity . . .SAAM Notes – It would be interesting to hear how someone of Chinese culture would interpret this.
Who I am is not always who I want to be. A young girl working at Baskin Robbins in Seoul dreams of going to the Arctic. The artist helped her realize her dream in the photographs. He photographed her twice; once in her daily job at the ice cream shop, wearing a pink apron and sweeping the floor, and again transported to an Arctic-like snowy place, dressed in a fur coat and fur pants. SAAM Notes
In this two-channel video installation, Shirin Neshat stages a symbolic tale of tension and transcendence set in a world blending memory and imagination. She explores her identity as Iranian, as female, and as emigree. Inspired by the novel Women without Men by Iranian writer Shahrnoush Parsipour, Tooba (meaning “tree of paradise”) revolves around a feminine tree described in the Qur’an. Especially for Sufis, this tree symbolizes peace, nourishment, and hope. SAAM Notes.
It’s difficult to convey in one photo, the eerie quality of this portrayal of people moving through the desert to a tree surrounded by a wall with no sound or music and shown on two opposing screens at the same time, but intentionally not in sync. Experiential !
The Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei is know for provocative art that challenges the status quo. In this work, one from his iconoclastic oeuvre, he gathered a group of supposedly ancient earthenware vases and coated them with modern industrial paint. Covered with new paint, what is underneath – like history itself – is “no longer visible, but is still there.” SAAM Notes. – Hard to say if this was more provocative or spoofing, compared to other work of his that I’ve seen.
I really like the presence of this large gallery as a key part of the museum, and the way, with this inaugural exhibition, the museum has signaled its intention to use it to convey thematic ideas from Asian artists. I don’t know if future shows will be all contemporary like this one or not; but I don’t think that’s the point. The point is to explore ideas about Asian art and may very well go off in a variety of directions – something I would look forward to.
In the meantime, we also wandered through some of the older galleries and looked at the ways in which many of their works had been gathered into thematic groupings. A few of these will give you the idea.
These were four of a larger group of Buddhas of different cultures. It was not possible to tell if they had originally been part of full statues, though it appears that way. It’s remarkable how distinctive they are and yet at the same time they all convey a similar expression.
SAAM has a number of wonderful screens in its collection.
This one is called Kinkishoga – the four accomplishments being, playing the zither (kin) and the game go (ki), practicing calligraphy (sho) and appreciating painting (ga), seen to be the activities of a cultivated Chinese scholar-gentleman. After having been appropriated in Japan, this subject was popular for door panels and folding screens during the 15th and 16th centuries. It saw some variations, such as in the rightmost panel here, where a Daoist immortal story was added – SAAM Notes
I looked at each panel individually.
Pretty fascinating to see each of these activities up close and so beautifully rendered. Of course, they represent key aspects of life for cultured gentleMEN and do not pretend to present what life was like for people in general.
In this pair of screens, seasonal outings and festivals in the old capital, Kyoto, are depicted at famous landmarks or scenic spots.
In the center of this (righthand) screen, the city’s most important festival, Gion Matsuri, is shown. It started as an event to appease the god of good health and end a plague in the 9th century. Today, thousands of people participate in this annual festival to pray for good health. SAAM Notes
Given the ferocious quality of our current coronavirus, we may need an annual festival ourselves – or perhaps a thousand-armed bodhisattva to intercede for us.
Guanyin, or “one who hears the prayers of the world,” is the embodiment of compassion. He is the most popular of the many celestial bodhisattvas, or compassionate guides, of Buddhism. With multiple arms and heads, this work signifies Guanyin’s infinite powers and immeasurable reach. The teachings and ritual formulas of esoteric or tantric branches of Buddhism were secret; they held hidden meanings that could be unlocked only with initiation and a teacher’s guidance. Yet theses traditions spread widely from India to Tibet, Mongolia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the East Asian countries of China, Korea, and Japan. SAAM Notes
And for those of you who want to check on the number of arms, here’s a close-up to get you started.
I didn’t see a ‘collection’ of clothing per se, but there were definitely a few exquisite pieces; and I know that the museum has a striking kimono collection.
As with many pieces in the museum’s collection, this one was donated, by Henry and Mary Ann James, on the 75th Anniversary of the museum.
And, in the spirit of some of the earlier part of Dr. Fuller’s collection, here’s a terra cotta gentleman wishing you a good day and hoping you come for another visit.
Or, visit the Seattle Asian Art Museum on line at: http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/
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