Everyone’s favorite museum party is back, as SAM Remix once again fills the Seattle Art Museum with art-loving revelers for after-hours fun. Tonight’s edition of the quarterly event celebrates (and includes admission to) the new show Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London,, which opened just last month. Continue reading A SAM Remix for European Masters and Downton Abbey Fans Alike
The paintings hearken back to a time in the 17th and 18th centuries when the great lords and ladies of England paid hard-working and ambitious society painters to portray them in their best light, in clothes that are as fancy as all get out. It’s not unusual to see subjects dressed as Greek gods or characters from Shakespeare. Much later, in the 1800s, collectors like Guinness bought these paintings to decorate their stately homes. Watching Downton Abbey, which is largely filmed at Highclere Castle an hour north of London, you can see many paintings very similar to the ones on display at SAM. Continue reading With Kenwood House Exhibit, SAM Goes Downtown Downton
This past weekend, you had your choice, in Seattle, of how you’d like your visual art. You could stay up late with it, at SAM’s Remix, or convene with it, at the Affordable Art Fair, making its debut appearance in Seattle. You could only walk home with it from the latter, which offered pieces ranging from $100 to $10,000, and a free wrapping service. Continue reading The Fine Art of Getting People in to See Fine Art
“Now we’ll move over into surrealism,” said my guide, during our preview, in a portentous phrasing. You could spend entire fall afternoons with Dorothy Tanning’s A Very Happy Picture (1947), but it’s not easy to tell when you’ve left the surrealists, really. Continue reading “Elles,” from the Pompidou, Opens in Seattle in its Only U.S. Stop
In this episode of “Classical Music on the Cheap”, we explore concerts that fit right into your weekday lunch hour. For those who work in downtown Seattle, there’s a wealth of midday events happening just steps away from your office. The best part? All of these performances are completely free. Continue reading Classical Music on the Cheap: Lunchtime Concerts
“Kimerly Rorschach, new SAM director, is a museum-builder,” runs the headline in the Seattle Times the morning after Rorschach’s appointment was announced. It’s an odd lede because Seattle Art Museum–and the Seattle Asian Art Museum and Olympic Sculpture Park–are, well…built. Continue reading Cash-Strapped and Debt-Burdened, Seattle’s Major Arts Institutions Face Leadership Transitions, Too
No artist before or since, not even the enigmatic author Kurt Vonnegut, has ever had such a profound case of wanderlust. Now, a wonderful Gauguin exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, “Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise,” puts Gauguin’s travels and travails into wonderful focus, played out against the art of the people he painted. “Gauguin and Polynesia” is on view from February 9 through April 29, 2012. Continue reading SAM’s New Exhibit Reveals Gauguin’s Unrequited Wanderlust
