calendario eventi  :: 

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4/5/2007

Two exhibitions

Seattle Art Museum Downtown - SAM, Seattle

SAM at 75: Building a Collection for Seattle
The Future Now

The generosity of passionate collectors, beginning with founder and first director Richard E. Fuller and followed by a host of donors, has continually enhanced and ultimately shaped the Seattle Art Museum collection over the last 7 decades. As the new century began, the museum’s collection numbered 20,000 objects from 140 cultures, and SAM embarked on 2 major expansion projects—the Olympic Sculpture Park and the expansion of the downtown building. These ambitious undertakings express the profound effect that collecting has had on the institution, reinforcing a shared commitment to the future of our city. The greatly expanded Seattle Art Museum was inspired by the need to add more space for art—in large part so that the great private collections in our region could be accessible to all and a treasured public resource for generations to come.

The culmination of our expansion is based in the overwhelming outpouring of generosity from collectors and donors who have gifted over 1000 works to SAM’s permanent holdings in honor of the museum’s 75th Anniversary in 2008. Some artworks have already entered the collection, while others will come in the future. Eight collectors have magnanimously pledged their entire collections to SAM, while other donors have made stellar individual gifts. Today, the museum’s collections comprise over 23,000 works of art that can be displayed in any of our 3 sites around the city.

Over 200 of these newly acquired works are exhibited throughout our new downtown galleries. One hundred twenty-five works are integrated within the permanent collection and another 100 are displayed here in our special exhibition galleries (look for the logo by each gift). At SAM, the future is now.

Finally, we celebrate the opening of SAM’s new galleries with Five Masterpieces of Asian Art: The Story of Their Conservation, an exquisite exhibition featuring beloved rare masterworks from our collection which have recently been conserved. The conservation of these treasures demonstrates both the museum’s ongoing dedication to works of art in our care and recognition of their importance as invaluable educational resources for posterity.

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Five Masterpieces of Asian Art
The Story of their Conservation

Five Masterpieces of Asian Art tells a remarkable story of conservation efforts on two continents over the past five years. The masterworks, four from Japan and one from Korea, were acquired between the museum’s earliest and most recent years. Each of them, including the iconic Deer Scroll and Crow Screens, had sustained damage, aging of materials, and deterioration of old, sometimes ill-conceived restoration. Beyond recent conservation, the paintings yielded a wealth of new scholarship, described along with brief notes on the treatments.

An important aspect of this research is displayed on the interactive computer kiosk, where the Deer Scroll — now owned by several institutions since its division into separate sections after 1935 — has been digitally reconstructed; for the first time SAM audiences can view the entire scroll, learn about the conservation process and read the poems in English.

Preaching Buddha, a magnificent seventeenth-century Korean painting, finally awakened from a long slumber after extensive repairs in Seoul. A Buddhist painting, White Path between Two Rivers, was formerly mounted behind glass in a Western frame; now, a hanging-scroll format allows fine details to be examined and the work’s subtle beauty to truly be appreciated. A rare example of a sixteenth-century screen, Bamboo Grove in Spring and Autumn, debuts at this exhibition.

Opening may 5, 2007

Seattle Art Museum
Downtown 100 University Street - Seattle

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