Calendar

Chief Seattle Club is proud to present the fall exhibition in ʔálʔal Café featuring artwork by Naomi Parker. Naomi comes from the Makah, Yakama, and Chippewa/Cree people. Drawing on her intertribal ancestry, she uses oil paint on canvas to create scenes of far flung Native relations coming together at pow wow grounds and campsites. Through images of friendly faces and joyfully clasped hands, Naomi shows the power we have to create community wherever we gather.

The inNATE Show features 30 indigenous artists and will be displayed at the Middle Way Cafe from October 7th through December 2nd, 2023.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Each new generation of artists responds to and builds on the art of earlier periods. Bringing together artworks that bridge decades, Reverberations seeks to spark a hum between historical works and those by artists working today. Organized in thematic groups, Reverberations introduces a different topic in each gallery, ranging from landscape and lyrical abstraction to the use of the body in addressing psychological, social, and political concerns. As you move through the modern and contemporary galleries, you will encounter harmonies and dissonance as younger artists stake their claim. In turn, works from earlier decades will acquire new meaning and new layers of relevance.

This installation draws from SAM’s growing collection and incorporates many works acquired in recent years, by artists including Margarita Cabrera, Dana Claxton, Senga Nengudi, Rashid Johnson, Woody De Othello, Jenny Saville, Sarah Sze, and Naama Tsabar. Many works are on view for the first time. Among the modern classics, viewers will find works by Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Smith on view. The museum’s ongoing commitment to building a collection with equity and diverse points of view can be seen when perusing the galleries.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This exhibition, which can only be seen in Seattle, uncovers the shared renegade spirit that characterized the graphic arts and social cultures of these two dynamic cities. On view are over 90 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings from SAM’s Japanese collection alongside private loans of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).

In addition to the intriguing formal and thematic parallels between these two collections of graphic arts, the exhibition reveals the social impulses behind their burgeoning art production. As both cities faced challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes, subversive impulses gave rise to vibrant cultures of theatregoing, pleasure seeking, and new forms of visual art.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Mark your calendar! Tlingit & Haida will be hosting a free Holiday Market over Thanksgiving weekend in Juneau, Alaska to support Indigenous artists and vendors who are selling handmade products!

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

—
Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

I paint from historical photographs of people; the majority of them had no name, no bio, no story left. Nothing. I feel they are kind of lost souls, spirit-ghosts. My painting is a memorial site for them.
—Hung Liu

Groundbreaking Chinese American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) made highly narrative images that foregrounded workers, immigrants, refugees, women, children, and soldiers in haunting, incandescent portraits that mingle Chinese and Western artistic traditions. Liu was born in Changchun, China, and her childhood and youth coincided with one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. After her arrival in San Diego, California, in 1984, Liu became one of the first Chinese artists to establish a career in the United States. Decades later, she would be justly celebrated for establishing novel frameworks for understanding visual art’s relationship to history by focusing on communities misrepresented and marginalized by official narratives.

Liu experienced political revolution, exile, and displacement before immigrating to the United States. She came of age during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and was consequently forced to labor in the fields in her early twenties. After studying art in Beijing, she left China to attend graduate school at the University of California, San Diego. There, the experimental tendencies of the students and faculty, most notably those of performance artist Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and art historian Moira Roth (1933–2021), helped cultivate her conceptual approach to portraiture.

Featuring highly experimental painting, printing, and weaving techniques, Liu’s challenging yet accessible oeuvre has been aptly characterized by her husband, the art critic Jeff Kelley, as a species of “weeping realism.” Titled A Question of Hu, after China scholar Jonathan Spence’s 1988 book The Question of Hu, the exhibition reintroduces Liu’s remarkable art to the Pacific Northwest, while demonstrating—as few artistic oeuvres can—an expanded view of citizenship in an era of seismic change that is also fundamentally marked by evolving ideas of artistic solidarity and collaboration.

“Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” brings together the artwork of Eugene Landry (1937-1988) with contemporary Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe artists and writers as they explore their cultural roots, tribal identity, and connection to ancestral land. Landry’s artwork offers a look at the political, economic, and cultural challenges the tribe faced during his lifetime—from near termination to federal recognition. Paralyzed by illness as a young man, Landry created his art from a wheelchair, using his non- dominant hand. Conversations with his former portrait models (now tribal elders), reveal his creative resilience and the positive impact he had in their young lives. Now, 35 years after Landry’s passing, a rediscovered collection of Landry’s art inspires a new generation of Shoalwater Bay artists. “Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” will be on view at Astoria Visual Arts November 11 through December 2.

Nov 11, 5:00pm at AVA:
Artist talk/reading with curator Judith Altruda

Dec 2, 1:00pm at AVA:
Contemporary Shoalwater Bay Artists’ Panel Discussion

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

An anchor event for Converge 45’s citywide 2023 biennial, Social Forms: Art As Global Citizenship, the exhibition WE ARE THE REVOLUTION plumbs the depth of commitment of Jordan Schnitzer to the art of his time, while tapping into a living history of social expression through art in diverse media—from monumental paintings to free-standing sculpture to works on paper. Designed in part to explore ways in which the art of the past meets and affects the art of the present, the exhibition gives voice to art as both aesthetic experimentation and social commentary from the 1960s to today. Driven by the conviction that history is constructed through both continuity and discontinuity, the exhibition strives to establish unexpected juxtapositions and revealing connections among historical and contemporary artists and artworks.

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

Wednesday, September 27 at 7:30, the XVII Portland Latin American Film Festival will kick off at the @hollywoodtheatr

Chief Seattle Club is proud to present the fall exhibition in ʔálʔal Café featuring artwork by Naomi Parker. Naomi comes from the Makah, Yakama, and Chippewa/Cree people. Drawing on her intertribal ancestry, she uses oil paint on canvas to create scenes of far flung Native relations coming together at pow wow grounds and campsites. Through images of friendly faces and joyfully clasped hands, Naomi shows the power we have to create community wherever we gather.

The inNATE Show features 30 indigenous artists and will be displayed at the Middle Way Cafe from October 7th through December 2nd, 2023.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Each new generation of artists responds to and builds on the art of earlier periods. Bringing together artworks that bridge decades, Reverberations seeks to spark a hum between historical works and those by artists working today. Organized in thematic groups, Reverberations introduces a different topic in each gallery, ranging from landscape and lyrical abstraction to the use of the body in addressing psychological, social, and political concerns. As you move through the modern and contemporary galleries, you will encounter harmonies and dissonance as younger artists stake their claim. In turn, works from earlier decades will acquire new meaning and new layers of relevance.

This installation draws from SAM’s growing collection and incorporates many works acquired in recent years, by artists including Margarita Cabrera, Dana Claxton, Senga Nengudi, Rashid Johnson, Woody De Othello, Jenny Saville, Sarah Sze, and Naama Tsabar. Many works are on view for the first time. Among the modern classics, viewers will find works by Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Smith on view. The museum’s ongoing commitment to building a collection with equity and diverse points of view can be seen when perusing the galleries.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This exhibition, which can only be seen in Seattle, uncovers the shared renegade spirit that characterized the graphic arts and social cultures of these two dynamic cities. On view are over 90 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings from SAM’s Japanese collection alongside private loans of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).

In addition to the intriguing formal and thematic parallels between these two collections of graphic arts, the exhibition reveals the social impulses behind their burgeoning art production. As both cities faced challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes, subversive impulses gave rise to vibrant cultures of theatregoing, pleasure seeking, and new forms of visual art.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

—
Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

I paint from historical photographs of people; the majority of them had no name, no bio, no story left. Nothing. I feel they are kind of lost souls, spirit-ghosts. My painting is a memorial site for them.
—Hung Liu

Groundbreaking Chinese American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) made highly narrative images that foregrounded workers, immigrants, refugees, women, children, and soldiers in haunting, incandescent portraits that mingle Chinese and Western artistic traditions. Liu was born in Changchun, China, and her childhood and youth coincided with one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. After her arrival in San Diego, California, in 1984, Liu became one of the first Chinese artists to establish a career in the United States. Decades later, she would be justly celebrated for establishing novel frameworks for understanding visual art’s relationship to history by focusing on communities misrepresented and marginalized by official narratives.

Liu experienced political revolution, exile, and displacement before immigrating to the United States. She came of age during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and was consequently forced to labor in the fields in her early twenties. After studying art in Beijing, she left China to attend graduate school at the University of California, San Diego. There, the experimental tendencies of the students and faculty, most notably those of performance artist Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and art historian Moira Roth (1933–2021), helped cultivate her conceptual approach to portraiture.

Featuring highly experimental painting, printing, and weaving techniques, Liu’s challenging yet accessible oeuvre has been aptly characterized by her husband, the art critic Jeff Kelley, as a species of “weeping realism.” Titled A Question of Hu, after China scholar Jonathan Spence’s 1988 book The Question of Hu, the exhibition reintroduces Liu’s remarkable art to the Pacific Northwest, while demonstrating—as few artistic oeuvres can—an expanded view of citizenship in an era of seismic change that is also fundamentally marked by evolving ideas of artistic solidarity and collaboration.

“Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” brings together the artwork of Eugene Landry (1937-1988) with contemporary Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe artists and writers as they explore their cultural roots, tribal identity, and connection to ancestral land. Landry’s artwork offers a look at the political, economic, and cultural challenges the tribe faced during his lifetime—from near termination to federal recognition. Paralyzed by illness as a young man, Landry created his art from a wheelchair, using his non- dominant hand. Conversations with his former portrait models (now tribal elders), reveal his creative resilience and the positive impact he had in their young lives. Now, 35 years after Landry’s passing, a rediscovered collection of Landry’s art inspires a new generation of Shoalwater Bay artists. “Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” will be on view at Astoria Visual Arts November 11 through December 2.

Nov 11, 5:00pm at AVA:
Artist talk/reading with curator Judith Altruda

Dec 2, 1:00pm at AVA:
Contemporary Shoalwater Bay Artists’ Panel Discussion

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

An anchor event for Converge 45’s citywide 2023 biennial, Social Forms: Art As Global Citizenship, the exhibition WE ARE THE REVOLUTION plumbs the depth of commitment of Jordan Schnitzer to the art of his time, while tapping into a living history of social expression through art in diverse media—from monumental paintings to free-standing sculpture to works on paper. Designed in part to explore ways in which the art of the past meets and affects the art of the present, the exhibition gives voice to art as both aesthetic experimentation and social commentary from the 1960s to today. Driven by the conviction that history is constructed through both continuity and discontinuity, the exhibition strives to establish unexpected juxtapositions and revealing connections among historical and contemporary artists and artworks.

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

Wednesday, September 27 at 7:30, the XVII Portland Latin American Film Festival will kick off at the @hollywoodtheatr

Chief Seattle Club is proud to present the fall exhibition in ʔálʔal Café featuring artwork by Naomi Parker. Naomi comes from the Makah, Yakama, and Chippewa/Cree people. Drawing on her intertribal ancestry, she uses oil paint on canvas to create scenes of far flung Native relations coming together at pow wow grounds and campsites. Through images of friendly faces and joyfully clasped hands, Naomi shows the power we have to create community wherever we gather.

The inNATE Show features 30 indigenous artists and will be displayed at the Middle Way Cafe from October 7th through December 2nd, 2023.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Each new generation of artists responds to and builds on the art of earlier periods. Bringing together artworks that bridge decades, Reverberations seeks to spark a hum between historical works and those by artists working today. Organized in thematic groups, Reverberations introduces a different topic in each gallery, ranging from landscape and lyrical abstraction to the use of the body in addressing psychological, social, and political concerns. As you move through the modern and contemporary galleries, you will encounter harmonies and dissonance as younger artists stake their claim. In turn, works from earlier decades will acquire new meaning and new layers of relevance.

This installation draws from SAM’s growing collection and incorporates many works acquired in recent years, by artists including Margarita Cabrera, Dana Claxton, Senga Nengudi, Rashid Johnson, Woody De Othello, Jenny Saville, Sarah Sze, and Naama Tsabar. Many works are on view for the first time. Among the modern classics, viewers will find works by Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Smith on view. The museum’s ongoing commitment to building a collection with equity and diverse points of view can be seen when perusing the galleries.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This exhibition, which can only be seen in Seattle, uncovers the shared renegade spirit that characterized the graphic arts and social cultures of these two dynamic cities. On view are over 90 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings from SAM’s Japanese collection alongside private loans of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).

In addition to the intriguing formal and thematic parallels between these two collections of graphic arts, the exhibition reveals the social impulses behind their burgeoning art production. As both cities faced challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes, subversive impulses gave rise to vibrant cultures of theatregoing, pleasure seeking, and new forms of visual art.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

—
Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

I paint from historical photographs of people; the majority of them had no name, no bio, no story left. Nothing. I feel they are kind of lost souls, spirit-ghosts. My painting is a memorial site for them.
—Hung Liu

Groundbreaking Chinese American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) made highly narrative images that foregrounded workers, immigrants, refugees, women, children, and soldiers in haunting, incandescent portraits that mingle Chinese and Western artistic traditions. Liu was born in Changchun, China, and her childhood and youth coincided with one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. After her arrival in San Diego, California, in 1984, Liu became one of the first Chinese artists to establish a career in the United States. Decades later, she would be justly celebrated for establishing novel frameworks for understanding visual art’s relationship to history by focusing on communities misrepresented and marginalized by official narratives.

Liu experienced political revolution, exile, and displacement before immigrating to the United States. She came of age during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and was consequently forced to labor in the fields in her early twenties. After studying art in Beijing, she left China to attend graduate school at the University of California, San Diego. There, the experimental tendencies of the students and faculty, most notably those of performance artist Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and art historian Moira Roth (1933–2021), helped cultivate her conceptual approach to portraiture.

Featuring highly experimental painting, printing, and weaving techniques, Liu’s challenging yet accessible oeuvre has been aptly characterized by her husband, the art critic Jeff Kelley, as a species of “weeping realism.” Titled A Question of Hu, after China scholar Jonathan Spence’s 1988 book The Question of Hu, the exhibition reintroduces Liu’s remarkable art to the Pacific Northwest, while demonstrating—as few artistic oeuvres can—an expanded view of citizenship in an era of seismic change that is also fundamentally marked by evolving ideas of artistic solidarity and collaboration.

“Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” brings together the artwork of Eugene Landry (1937-1988) with contemporary Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe artists and writers as they explore their cultural roots, tribal identity, and connection to ancestral land. Landry’s artwork offers a look at the political, economic, and cultural challenges the tribe faced during his lifetime—from near termination to federal recognition. Paralyzed by illness as a young man, Landry created his art from a wheelchair, using his non- dominant hand. Conversations with his former portrait models (now tribal elders), reveal his creative resilience and the positive impact he had in their young lives. Now, 35 years after Landry’s passing, a rediscovered collection of Landry’s art inspires a new generation of Shoalwater Bay artists. “Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” will be on view at Astoria Visual Arts November 11 through December 2.

Nov 11, 5:00pm at AVA:
Artist talk/reading with curator Judith Altruda

Dec 2, 1:00pm at AVA:
Contemporary Shoalwater Bay Artists’ Panel Discussion

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

An anchor event for Converge 45’s citywide 2023 biennial, Social Forms: Art As Global Citizenship, the exhibition WE ARE THE REVOLUTION plumbs the depth of commitment of Jordan Schnitzer to the art of his time, while tapping into a living history of social expression through art in diverse media—from monumental paintings to free-standing sculpture to works on paper. Designed in part to explore ways in which the art of the past meets and affects the art of the present, the exhibition gives voice to art as both aesthetic experimentation and social commentary from the 1960s to today. Driven by the conviction that history is constructed through both continuity and discontinuity, the exhibition strives to establish unexpected juxtapositions and revealing connections among historical and contemporary artists and artworks.

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

Wednesday, September 27 at 7:30, the XVII Portland Latin American Film Festival will kick off at the @hollywoodtheatr

Chief Seattle Club is proud to present the fall exhibition in ʔálʔal Café featuring artwork by Naomi Parker. Naomi comes from the Makah, Yakama, and Chippewa/Cree people. Drawing on her intertribal ancestry, she uses oil paint on canvas to create scenes of far flung Native relations coming together at pow wow grounds and campsites. Through images of friendly faces and joyfully clasped hands, Naomi shows the power we have to create community wherever we gather.

The inNATE Show features 30 indigenous artists and will be displayed at the Middle Way Cafe from October 7th through December 2nd, 2023.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Each new generation of artists responds to and builds on the art of earlier periods. Bringing together artworks that bridge decades, Reverberations seeks to spark a hum between historical works and those by artists working today. Organized in thematic groups, Reverberations introduces a different topic in each gallery, ranging from landscape and lyrical abstraction to the use of the body in addressing psychological, social, and political concerns. As you move through the modern and contemporary galleries, you will encounter harmonies and dissonance as younger artists stake their claim. In turn, works from earlier decades will acquire new meaning and new layers of relevance.

This installation draws from SAM’s growing collection and incorporates many works acquired in recent years, by artists including Margarita Cabrera, Dana Claxton, Senga Nengudi, Rashid Johnson, Woody De Othello, Jenny Saville, Sarah Sze, and Naama Tsabar. Many works are on view for the first time. Among the modern classics, viewers will find works by Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Smith on view. The museum’s ongoing commitment to building a collection with equity and diverse points of view can be seen when perusing the galleries.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This exhibition, which can only be seen in Seattle, uncovers the shared renegade spirit that characterized the graphic arts and social cultures of these two dynamic cities. On view are over 90 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings from SAM’s Japanese collection alongside private loans of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).

In addition to the intriguing formal and thematic parallels between these two collections of graphic arts, the exhibition reveals the social impulses behind their burgeoning art production. As both cities faced challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes, subversive impulses gave rise to vibrant cultures of theatregoing, pleasure seeking, and new forms of visual art.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

—
Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

I paint from historical photographs of people; the majority of them had no name, no bio, no story left. Nothing. I feel they are kind of lost souls, spirit-ghosts. My painting is a memorial site for them.
—Hung Liu

Groundbreaking Chinese American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) made highly narrative images that foregrounded workers, immigrants, refugees, women, children, and soldiers in haunting, incandescent portraits that mingle Chinese and Western artistic traditions. Liu was born in Changchun, China, and her childhood and youth coincided with one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. After her arrival in San Diego, California, in 1984, Liu became one of the first Chinese artists to establish a career in the United States. Decades later, she would be justly celebrated for establishing novel frameworks for understanding visual art’s relationship to history by focusing on communities misrepresented and marginalized by official narratives.

Liu experienced political revolution, exile, and displacement before immigrating to the United States. She came of age during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and was consequently forced to labor in the fields in her early twenties. After studying art in Beijing, she left China to attend graduate school at the University of California, San Diego. There, the experimental tendencies of the students and faculty, most notably those of performance artist Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and art historian Moira Roth (1933–2021), helped cultivate her conceptual approach to portraiture.

Featuring highly experimental painting, printing, and weaving techniques, Liu’s challenging yet accessible oeuvre has been aptly characterized by her husband, the art critic Jeff Kelley, as a species of “weeping realism.” Titled A Question of Hu, after China scholar Jonathan Spence’s 1988 book The Question of Hu, the exhibition reintroduces Liu’s remarkable art to the Pacific Northwest, while demonstrating—as few artistic oeuvres can—an expanded view of citizenship in an era of seismic change that is also fundamentally marked by evolving ideas of artistic solidarity and collaboration.

“Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” brings together the artwork of Eugene Landry (1937-1988) with contemporary Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe artists and writers as they explore their cultural roots, tribal identity, and connection to ancestral land. Landry’s artwork offers a look at the political, economic, and cultural challenges the tribe faced during his lifetime—from near termination to federal recognition. Paralyzed by illness as a young man, Landry created his art from a wheelchair, using his non- dominant hand. Conversations with his former portrait models (now tribal elders), reveal his creative resilience and the positive impact he had in their young lives. Now, 35 years after Landry’s passing, a rediscovered collection of Landry’s art inspires a new generation of Shoalwater Bay artists. “Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” will be on view at Astoria Visual Arts November 11 through December 2.

Nov 11, 5:00pm at AVA:
Artist talk/reading with curator Judith Altruda

Dec 2, 1:00pm at AVA:
Contemporary Shoalwater Bay Artists’ Panel Discussion

Learn from a panel of experts elected industry on the progress and work of broadband and digital equity for WA Native Indigenous Communities.

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

An anchor event for Converge 45’s citywide 2023 biennial, Social Forms: Art As Global Citizenship, the exhibition WE ARE THE REVOLUTION plumbs the depth of commitment of Jordan Schnitzer to the art of his time, while tapping into a living history of social expression through art in diverse media—from monumental paintings to free-standing sculpture to works on paper. Designed in part to explore ways in which the art of the past meets and affects the art of the present, the exhibition gives voice to art as both aesthetic experimentation and social commentary from the 1960s to today. Driven by the conviction that history is constructed through both continuity and discontinuity, the exhibition strives to establish unexpected juxtapositions and revealing connections among historical and contemporary artists and artworks.

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Immerse yourself in the vibrant tapestry of Iranian women’s artistic expressions as they courageously unveil their stories and perspectives through the power of art. From breathtaking paintings to thought-provoking photos, this exhibition is a celebration of resilience and the depth of creative expression.

Don’t miss the chance to witness the diverse talents and narratives of Iranian and Afghan women, beautifully woven into each masterpiece. Join Peyvand in honoring their stories, celebrating their strength, and embracing the richness of Iranian culture through art.

Spread the word and mark your calendars! Let’s come together to appreciate the extraordinary artistry and resilience of Iranian women

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

Wednesday, September 27 at 7:30, the XVII Portland Latin American Film Festival will kick off at the @hollywoodtheatr

Chief Seattle Club is proud to present the fall exhibition in ʔálʔal Café featuring artwork by Naomi Parker. Naomi comes from the Makah, Yakama, and Chippewa/Cree people. Drawing on her intertribal ancestry, she uses oil paint on canvas to create scenes of far flung Native relations coming together at pow wow grounds and campsites. Through images of friendly faces and joyfully clasped hands, Naomi shows the power we have to create community wherever we gather.

The inNATE Show features 30 indigenous artists and will be displayed at the Middle Way Cafe from October 7th through December 2nd, 2023.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Each new generation of artists responds to and builds on the art of earlier periods. Bringing together artworks that bridge decades, Reverberations seeks to spark a hum between historical works and those by artists working today. Organized in thematic groups, Reverberations introduces a different topic in each gallery, ranging from landscape and lyrical abstraction to the use of the body in addressing psychological, social, and political concerns. As you move through the modern and contemporary galleries, you will encounter harmonies and dissonance as younger artists stake their claim. In turn, works from earlier decades will acquire new meaning and new layers of relevance.

This installation draws from SAM’s growing collection and incorporates many works acquired in recent years, by artists including Margarita Cabrera, Dana Claxton, Senga Nengudi, Rashid Johnson, Woody De Othello, Jenny Saville, Sarah Sze, and Naama Tsabar. Many works are on view for the first time. Among the modern classics, viewers will find works by Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Smith on view. The museum’s ongoing commitment to building a collection with equity and diverse points of view can be seen when perusing the galleries.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This exhibition, which can only be seen in Seattle, uncovers the shared renegade spirit that characterized the graphic arts and social cultures of these two dynamic cities. On view are over 90 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings from SAM’s Japanese collection alongside private loans of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).

In addition to the intriguing formal and thematic parallels between these two collections of graphic arts, the exhibition reveals the social impulses behind their burgeoning art production. As both cities faced challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes, subversive impulses gave rise to vibrant cultures of theatregoing, pleasure seeking, and new forms of visual art.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

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Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

I paint from historical photographs of people; the majority of them had no name, no bio, no story left. Nothing. I feel they are kind of lost souls, spirit-ghosts. My painting is a memorial site for them.
—Hung Liu

Groundbreaking Chinese American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) made highly narrative images that foregrounded workers, immigrants, refugees, women, children, and soldiers in haunting, incandescent portraits that mingle Chinese and Western artistic traditions. Liu was born in Changchun, China, and her childhood and youth coincided with one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. After her arrival in San Diego, California, in 1984, Liu became one of the first Chinese artists to establish a career in the United States. Decades later, she would be justly celebrated for establishing novel frameworks for understanding visual art’s relationship to history by focusing on communities misrepresented and marginalized by official narratives.

Liu experienced political revolution, exile, and displacement before immigrating to the United States. She came of age during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and was consequently forced to labor in the fields in her early twenties. After studying art in Beijing, she left China to attend graduate school at the University of California, San Diego. There, the experimental tendencies of the students and faculty, most notably those of performance artist Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and art historian Moira Roth (1933–2021), helped cultivate her conceptual approach to portraiture.

Featuring highly experimental painting, printing, and weaving techniques, Liu’s challenging yet accessible oeuvre has been aptly characterized by her husband, the art critic Jeff Kelley, as a species of “weeping realism.” Titled A Question of Hu, after China scholar Jonathan Spence’s 1988 book The Question of Hu, the exhibition reintroduces Liu’s remarkable art to the Pacific Northwest, while demonstrating—as few artistic oeuvres can—an expanded view of citizenship in an era of seismic change that is also fundamentally marked by evolving ideas of artistic solidarity and collaboration.

“Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” brings together the artwork of Eugene Landry (1937-1988) with contemporary Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe artists and writers as they explore their cultural roots, tribal identity, and connection to ancestral land. Landry’s artwork offers a look at the political, economic, and cultural challenges the tribe faced during his lifetime—from near termination to federal recognition. Paralyzed by illness as a young man, Landry created his art from a wheelchair, using his non- dominant hand. Conversations with his former portrait models (now tribal elders), reveal his creative resilience and the positive impact he had in their young lives. Now, 35 years after Landry’s passing, a rediscovered collection of Landry’s art inspires a new generation of Shoalwater Bay artists. “Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” will be on view at Astoria Visual Arts November 11 through December 2.

Nov 11, 5:00pm at AVA:
Artist talk/reading with curator Judith Altruda

Dec 2, 1:00pm at AVA:
Contemporary Shoalwater Bay Artists’ Panel Discussion

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

An anchor event for Converge 45’s citywide 2023 biennial, Social Forms: Art As Global Citizenship, the exhibition WE ARE THE REVOLUTION plumbs the depth of commitment of Jordan Schnitzer to the art of his time, while tapping into a living history of social expression through art in diverse media—from monumental paintings to free-standing sculpture to works on paper. Designed in part to explore ways in which the art of the past meets and affects the art of the present, the exhibition gives voice to art as both aesthetic experimentation and social commentary from the 1960s to today. Driven by the conviction that history is constructed through both continuity and discontinuity, the exhibition strives to establish unexpected juxtapositions and revealing connections among historical and contemporary artists and artworks.

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Immerse yourself in the vibrant tapestry of Iranian women’s artistic expressions as they courageously unveil their stories and perspectives through the power of art. From breathtaking paintings to thought-provoking photos, this exhibition is a celebration of resilience and the depth of creative expression.

Don’t miss the chance to witness the diverse talents and narratives of Iranian and Afghan women, beautifully woven into each masterpiece. Join Peyvand in honoring their stories, celebrating their strength, and embracing the richness of Iranian culture through art.

Spread the word and mark your calendars! Let’s come together to appreciate the extraordinary artistry and resilience of Iranian women

Únete a Edúcate Ya en la celebración de la bebida amada de Argentina, el mate. Descubre el significado cultural y los beneficios para la salud de esta deliciosa bebida en nuestro festival Día del Mate. Gracias a nuestro patrocinador Guayakí, habrá mucho mate y deliciosos bocadillos argentinos, mientras los presentadores invitados nos ayudarán a adentrarnos más en la rica cultura de Argentina.

El evento es bilingüe y da la bienvenida a todas las nacionalidades. Disfruta del mate y socializa con tus vecinos después de las presentaciones. ¡Espacio limitado, asegura tu lugar ahora!

Join Edúcate Ya in celebrating Argentina’s beloved drink, Mate! Discover the cultural significance and health benefits of this bitter beverage at our Día del Mate festival. Thanks to our sponsor Guayakí, there will be plenty of mate and sweet Argentinian treats, while guest presenters will help us dive deeper into the rich culture of Argentina.

The event is bilingual, welcoming all nationalities. Enjoy mate and socialize with neighbors after the presentations. Limited space – secure your spot now!

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

To close out Indigenize Productions first gallery installation in style they are coing at you with some bodacious burlesque, live erotica readings, some lovely crowd participation, and of course, chase it all down with a INDIGEQUEER after party!

Come dressed to impress, in whatever makes you feel sexy and fun, they cant wait to see yall soon! Oh, and dont forget to bring ur $$$ to share with the performersssss!

Wednesday, September 27 at 7:30, the XVII Portland Latin American Film Festival will kick off at the @hollywoodtheatr

ArtsWest has sent four incredible artists on a cozy retreat to write the most perfect holiday show the world has ever seen. But when a blizzard hits and tensions rise, the crumpled up notebook pages start to pile up even faster than the snow. Will they finish the show in time? Or will they have to rely on a sprinkle of holiday magic to pull the whole thing off?

Inspired by classic holiday TV specials and musicals about putting on a musical, witness the birth of a new Seattle theater tradition as four of the city’s most beloved musical theater stars take you on a journey of song, dance, friendship, family, and the true meaning of the holidays.

Snowed In features original music along side songs you know and love. It’s a blizzard of fun for all-ages. 90 minutes. No intermission.

Chief Seattle Club is proud to present the fall exhibition in ʔálʔal Café featuring artwork by Naomi Parker. Naomi comes from the Makah, Yakama, and Chippewa/Cree people. Drawing on her intertribal ancestry, she uses oil paint on canvas to create scenes of far flung Native relations coming together at pow wow grounds and campsites. Through images of friendly faces and joyfully clasped hands, Naomi shows the power we have to create community wherever we gather.

The inNATE Show features 30 indigenous artists and will be displayed at the Middle Way Cafe from October 7th through December 2nd, 2023.

By popular demand, TCC is doing a second Holiday Bazaar this year! Get your Holiday shopping done early and support local artists and business owners at our 2023 Christmas Bazaar! This year’s bazaar will be located at the Chief David Samon Tribal Hall on December 1st, from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm. Interested in booking a table? Contact Felicia Alexie at 907-452-8251 ext. 3145 or at felicia.alexie@tananachiefs.org

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Each new generation of artists responds to and builds on the art of earlier periods. Bringing together artworks that bridge decades, Reverberations seeks to spark a hum between historical works and those by artists working today. Organized in thematic groups, Reverberations introduces a different topic in each gallery, ranging from landscape and lyrical abstraction to the use of the body in addressing psychological, social, and political concerns. As you move through the modern and contemporary galleries, you will encounter harmonies and dissonance as younger artists stake their claim. In turn, works from earlier decades will acquire new meaning and new layers of relevance.

This installation draws from SAM’s growing collection and incorporates many works acquired in recent years, by artists including Margarita Cabrera, Dana Claxton, Senga Nengudi, Rashid Johnson, Woody De Othello, Jenny Saville, Sarah Sze, and Naama Tsabar. Many works are on view for the first time. Among the modern classics, viewers will find works by Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Smith on view. The museum’s ongoing commitment to building a collection with equity and diverse points of view can be seen when perusing the galleries.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This exhibition, which can only be seen in Seattle, uncovers the shared renegade spirit that characterized the graphic arts and social cultures of these two dynamic cities. On view are over 90 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings from SAM’s Japanese collection alongside private loans of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).

In addition to the intriguing formal and thematic parallels between these two collections of graphic arts, the exhibition reveals the social impulses behind their burgeoning art production. As both cities faced challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes, subversive impulses gave rise to vibrant cultures of theatregoing, pleasure seeking, and new forms of visual art.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

—
Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

I paint from historical photographs of people; the majority of them had no name, no bio, no story left. Nothing. I feel they are kind of lost souls, spirit-ghosts. My painting is a memorial site for them.
—Hung Liu

Groundbreaking Chinese American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) made highly narrative images that foregrounded workers, immigrants, refugees, women, children, and soldiers in haunting, incandescent portraits that mingle Chinese and Western artistic traditions. Liu was born in Changchun, China, and her childhood and youth coincided with one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. After her arrival in San Diego, California, in 1984, Liu became one of the first Chinese artists to establish a career in the United States. Decades later, she would be justly celebrated for establishing novel frameworks for understanding visual art’s relationship to history by focusing on communities misrepresented and marginalized by official narratives.

Liu experienced political revolution, exile, and displacement before immigrating to the United States. She came of age during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and was consequently forced to labor in the fields in her early twenties. After studying art in Beijing, she left China to attend graduate school at the University of California, San Diego. There, the experimental tendencies of the students and faculty, most notably those of performance artist Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and art historian Moira Roth (1933–2021), helped cultivate her conceptual approach to portraiture.

Featuring highly experimental painting, printing, and weaving techniques, Liu’s challenging yet accessible oeuvre has been aptly characterized by her husband, the art critic Jeff Kelley, as a species of “weeping realism.” Titled A Question of Hu, after China scholar Jonathan Spence’s 1988 book The Question of Hu, the exhibition reintroduces Liu’s remarkable art to the Pacific Northwest, while demonstrating—as few artistic oeuvres can—an expanded view of citizenship in an era of seismic change that is also fundamentally marked by evolving ideas of artistic solidarity and collaboration.

“Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” brings together the artwork of Eugene Landry (1937-1988) with contemporary Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe artists and writers as they explore their cultural roots, tribal identity, and connection to ancestral land. Landry’s artwork offers a look at the political, economic, and cultural challenges the tribe faced during his lifetime—from near termination to federal recognition. Paralyzed by illness as a young man, Landry created his art from a wheelchair, using his non- dominant hand. Conversations with his former portrait models (now tribal elders), reveal his creative resilience and the positive impact he had in their young lives. Now, 35 years after Landry’s passing, a rediscovered collection of Landry’s art inspires a new generation of Shoalwater Bay artists. “Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” will be on view at Astoria Visual Arts November 11 through December 2.

Nov 11, 5:00pm at AVA:
Artist talk/reading with curator Judith Altruda

Dec 2, 1:00pm at AVA:
Contemporary Shoalwater Bay Artists’ Panel Discussion

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

An anchor event for Converge 45’s citywide 2023 biennial, Social Forms: Art As Global Citizenship, the exhibition WE ARE THE REVOLUTION plumbs the depth of commitment of Jordan Schnitzer to the art of his time, while tapping into a living history of social expression through art in diverse media—from monumental paintings to free-standing sculpture to works on paper. Designed in part to explore ways in which the art of the past meets and affects the art of the present, the exhibition gives voice to art as both aesthetic experimentation and social commentary from the 1960s to today. Driven by the conviction that history is constructed through both continuity and discontinuity, the exhibition strives to establish unexpected juxtapositions and revealing connections among historical and contemporary artists and artworks.

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Immerse yourself in the vibrant tapestry of Iranian women’s artistic expressions as they courageously unveil their stories and perspectives through the power of art. From breathtaking paintings to thought-provoking photos, this exhibition is a celebration of resilience and the depth of creative expression.

Don’t miss the chance to witness the diverse talents and narratives of Iranian and Afghan women, beautifully woven into each masterpiece. Join Peyvand in honoring their stories, celebrating their strength, and embracing the richness of Iranian culture through art.

Spread the word and mark your calendars! Let’s come together to appreciate the extraordinary artistry and resilience of Iranian women

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

ArtsWest has sent four incredible artists on a cozy retreat to write the most perfect holiday show the world has ever seen. But when a blizzard hits and tensions rise, the crumpled up notebook pages start to pile up even faster than the snow. Will they finish the show in time? Or will they have to rely on a sprinkle of holiday magic to pull the whole thing off?

Inspired by classic holiday TV specials and musicals about putting on a musical, witness the birth of a new Seattle theater tradition as four of the city’s most beloved musical theater stars take you on a journey of song, dance, friendship, family, and the true meaning of the holidays.

Snowed In features original music along side songs you know and love. It’s a blizzard of fun for all-ages. 90 minutes. No intermission.

Chief Seattle Club is proud to present the fall exhibition in ʔálʔal Café featuring artwork by Naomi Parker. Naomi comes from the Makah, Yakama, and Chippewa/Cree people. Drawing on her intertribal ancestry, she uses oil paint on canvas to create scenes of far flung Native relations coming together at pow wow grounds and campsites. Through images of friendly faces and joyfully clasped hands, Naomi shows the power we have to create community wherever we gather.

The inNATE Show features 30 indigenous artists and will be displayed at the Middle Way Cafe from October 7th through December 2nd, 2023.

The Nooksack Tribe is hosting a Christmas Bazaar on Saturday, December 2nd, from 9am to 4pm. Shop Local with us!

Arts & Crafts vendors must donate one item for their entry fee. Contact Anna Brewer to sign up at abrewer@nooksack-nsn.gov. Nooksack Tribal Members and Elders will receive preference for entry.

We’ll have free coffee, hot cocoa, and pastries for attendees. Plan to join us!

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This exhibition, which can only be seen in Seattle, uncovers the shared renegade spirit that characterized the graphic arts and social cultures of these two dynamic cities. On view are over 90 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings from SAM’s Japanese collection alongside private loans of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).

In addition to the intriguing formal and thematic parallels between these two collections of graphic arts, the exhibition reveals the social impulses behind their burgeoning art production. As both cities faced challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes, subversive impulses gave rise to vibrant cultures of theatregoing, pleasure seeking, and new forms of visual art.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

—
Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

​In celebration of the Association on American Indian Affairs’ ​100th anniversary (1922-2022), the Association is honored to announce the second annual Tribal Museums Day to be held on Saturday, December 2, 2023. We are engaging Tribal Museums and Cultural Centers across Indian Country to share our collective wisdom, values and diverse cultures!

The Association’s vision is to create a world where diverse Native cultures and values are lived, protected and respected. Tribal Museums Day will bring attention to our diverse Nations and cultures, stimulate tourism, and grow Tribal economies. Tribal Museums Day will also support the vision and mission of each Tribal Museum by re-educating the public that our Nations are the primary experts of Indigenous histories, knowledge, cultures, lifeways and values.

Celebrate the season with our very own Weihnachtmarkt! We’ll have vendors selling handmade items and Christmas items in the Haus. Head outside and enjoy a warm cup of glühwein next to a warm fire. And don’t forget to get your photo taken with Father Christmas!

Celebrate the holiday season with us and experience a shimmering world of gifts, music, food, and fun. This season the market is hosting more than 160 small businesses and dining options that showcase the best of Portland. Bring the whole family! Learn more and RSVP at MyPeoplesMarket.com

I paint from historical photographs of people; the majority of them had no name, no bio, no story left. Nothing. I feel they are kind of lost souls, spirit-ghosts. My painting is a memorial site for them.
—Hung Liu

Groundbreaking Chinese American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) made highly narrative images that foregrounded workers, immigrants, refugees, women, children, and soldiers in haunting, incandescent portraits that mingle Chinese and Western artistic traditions. Liu was born in Changchun, China, and her childhood and youth coincided with one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. After her arrival in San Diego, California, in 1984, Liu became one of the first Chinese artists to establish a career in the United States. Decades later, she would be justly celebrated for establishing novel frameworks for understanding visual art’s relationship to history by focusing on communities misrepresented and marginalized by official narratives.

Liu experienced political revolution, exile, and displacement before immigrating to the United States. She came of age during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and was consequently forced to labor in the fields in her early twenties. After studying art in Beijing, she left China to attend graduate school at the University of California, San Diego. There, the experimental tendencies of the students and faculty, most notably those of performance artist Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and art historian Moira Roth (1933–2021), helped cultivate her conceptual approach to portraiture.

Featuring highly experimental painting, printing, and weaving techniques, Liu’s challenging yet accessible oeuvre has been aptly characterized by her husband, the art critic Jeff Kelley, as a species of “weeping realism.” Titled A Question of Hu, after China scholar Jonathan Spence’s 1988 book The Question of Hu, the exhibition reintroduces Liu’s remarkable art to the Pacific Northwest, while demonstrating—as few artistic oeuvres can—an expanded view of citizenship in an era of seismic change that is also fundamentally marked by evolving ideas of artistic solidarity and collaboration.

“Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” brings together the artwork of Eugene Landry (1937-1988) with contemporary Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe artists and writers as they explore their cultural roots, tribal identity, and connection to ancestral land. Landry’s artwork offers a look at the political, economic, and cultural challenges the tribe faced during his lifetime—from near termination to federal recognition. Paralyzed by illness as a young man, Landry created his art from a wheelchair, using his non- dominant hand. Conversations with his former portrait models (now tribal elders), reveal his creative resilience and the positive impact he had in their young lives. Now, 35 years after Landry’s passing, a rediscovered collection of Landry’s art inspires a new generation of Shoalwater Bay artists. “Portrait of Eugene Landry—an Artist, a Time and a Tribe” will be on view at Astoria Visual Arts November 11 through December 2.

Nov 11, 5:00pm at AVA:
Artist talk/reading with curator Judith Altruda

Dec 2, 1:00pm at AVA:
Contemporary Shoalwater Bay Artists’ Panel Discussion

Join us for another event happening December 2, at the Hibulb Cultural Center!! We will be making Deer Toe Rattles and listening to Winter stories – make sure to RSVP by scanning the QR code or following the link!

Shoka Stonelake will demonstrate the techniques for creating e-tegami. Then you can use that knowledge to make a beautiful holiday card.

There will be two sessions. Session 1 is 11:00 am – 12:00 pm and Session 2 is 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm. All materials are included.

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Make sure to grab your free tickets 🎫 to the DYVAS Zine Release Party on Saturday December 2 at Washington Hall! We’ll be out there with food, exclusive zine prints, and more from 4pm – 7pm! RSVP at bit.ly/dvyas-party 🌟 The dress code is black & white so be sure to have your fit ready 📷

Immerse yourself in the vibrant tapestry of Iranian women’s artistic expressions as they courageously unveil their stories and perspectives through the power of art. From breathtaking paintings to thought-provoking photos, this exhibition is a celebration of resilience and the depth of creative expression.

Don’t miss the chance to witness the diverse talents and narratives of Iranian and Afghan women, beautifully woven into each masterpiece. Join Peyvand in honoring their stories, celebrating their strength, and embracing the richness of Iranian culture through art.

Spread the word and mark your calendars! Let’s come together to appreciate the extraordinary artistry and resilience of Iranian women

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

ArtsWest has sent four incredible artists on a cozy retreat to write the most perfect holiday show the world has ever seen. But when a blizzard hits and tensions rise, the crumpled up notebook pages start to pile up even faster than the snow. Will they finish the show in time? Or will they have to rely on a sprinkle of holiday magic to pull the whole thing off?

Inspired by classic holiday TV specials and musicals about putting on a musical, witness the birth of a new Seattle theater tradition as four of the city’s most beloved musical theater stars take you on a journey of song, dance, friendship, family, and the true meaning of the holidays.

Snowed In features original music along side songs you know and love. It’s a blizzard of fun for all-ages. 90 minutes. No intermission.

Chief Seattle Club is proud to present the fall exhibition in ʔálʔal Café featuring artwork by Naomi Parker. Naomi comes from the Makah, Yakama, and Chippewa/Cree people. Drawing on her intertribal ancestry, she uses oil paint on canvas to create scenes of far flung Native relations coming together at pow wow grounds and campsites. Through images of friendly faces and joyfully clasped hands, Naomi shows the power we have to create community wherever we gather.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This exhibition, which can only be seen in Seattle, uncovers the shared renegade spirit that characterized the graphic arts and social cultures of these two dynamic cities. On view are over 90 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings from SAM’s Japanese collection alongside private loans of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901).

In addition to the intriguing formal and thematic parallels between these two collections of graphic arts, the exhibition reveals the social impulses behind their burgeoning art production. As both cities faced challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes, subversive impulses gave rise to vibrant cultures of theatregoing, pleasure seeking, and new forms of visual art.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

—
Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

Celebrate the holiday season with us and experience a shimmering world of gifts, music, food, and fun. This season the market is hosting more than 160 small businesses and dining options that showcase the best of Portland. Bring the whole family! Learn more and RSVP at MyPeoplesMarket.com

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Immerse yourself in the vibrant tapestry of Iranian women’s artistic expressions as they courageously unveil their stories and perspectives through the power of art. From breathtaking paintings to thought-provoking photos, this exhibition is a celebration of resilience and the depth of creative expression.

Don’t miss the chance to witness the diverse talents and narratives of Iranian and Afghan women, beautifully woven into each masterpiece. Join Peyvand in honoring their stories, celebrating their strength, and embracing the richness of Iranian culture through art.

Spread the word and mark your calendars! Let’s come together to appreciate the extraordinary artistry and resilience of Iranian women

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

ArtsWest has sent four incredible artists on a cozy retreat to write the most perfect holiday show the world has ever seen. But when a blizzard hits and tensions rise, the crumpled up notebook pages start to pile up even faster than the snow. Will they finish the show in time? Or will they have to rely on a sprinkle of holiday magic to pull the whole thing off?

Inspired by classic holiday TV specials and musicals about putting on a musical, witness the birth of a new Seattle theater tradition as four of the city’s most beloved musical theater stars take you on a journey of song, dance, friendship, family, and the true meaning of the holidays.

Snowed In features original music along side songs you know and love. It’s a blizzard of fun for all-ages. 90 minutes. No intermission.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

—
Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Immerse yourself in the vibrant tapestry of Iranian women’s artistic expressions as they courageously unveil their stories and perspectives through the power of art. From breathtaking paintings to thought-provoking photos, this exhibition is a celebration of resilience and the depth of creative expression.

Don’t miss the chance to witness the diverse talents and narratives of Iranian and Afghan women, beautifully woven into each masterpiece. Join Peyvand in honoring their stories, celebrating their strength, and embracing the richness of Iranian culture through art.

Spread the word and mark your calendars! Let’s come together to appreciate the extraordinary artistry and resilience of Iranian women

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

ArtsWest has sent four incredible artists on a cozy retreat to write the most perfect holiday show the world has ever seen. But when a blizzard hits and tensions rise, the crumpled up notebook pages start to pile up even faster than the snow. Will they finish the show in time? Or will they have to rely on a sprinkle of holiday magic to pull the whole thing off?

Inspired by classic holiday TV specials and musicals about putting on a musical, witness the birth of a new Seattle theater tradition as four of the city’s most beloved musical theater stars take you on a journey of song, dance, friendship, family, and the true meaning of the holidays.

Snowed In features original music along side songs you know and love. It’s a blizzard of fun for all-ages. 90 minutes. No intermission.

Join us at the Hiring & Sustaining Black Teacher Workshop hosted by the Black Teacher Project, a program of the National Equity Project, on Tuesday, December 5, 2023, from 9 AM to 12 PM. This engaging virtual workshop, spanning three hours, is tailored to empower administrators with effective strategies for recruiting, hiring, and retaining Black teachers. If you can’t make it in December, we will offer again January 31, 2024.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Check one, two, three 🎤 “Sound Check! The Music We Make”, is a new exhibit at Wing Luke Museum on view from Sunday October 15, 2023 until September 14, 2024 🎧🎶💿🎹

Sound Check! celebrates the role of music in the lives of AANHPI communities. Dive into community-based stories as well as the experiences of AANHPI professionals in the music industry. Audiophiles and historians will be able to browse archival materials, photos, and artworks while also indulging in interactive audio-visual installations.

Featured artists include Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto of Soundgarden; singer-songwriter Carly Ann Calbero; jazz drummer Akira Tana; musician Roger Rigor; hip hop artist Geo Quibuyen of Blue Scholars and many more.

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Don’t forget about the perks of becoming a Museum Member like unlimited free general admission and opportunities to see exhibits first at special Museum Member Receptions!

Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”

Curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), this exhibition brings together works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States. Their powerful expressions reflect the diversity of Native American individual, regional, and cultural identities. At the same time, these works share a worldview informed by thousands of years of reverence, study, and concern for the land.

Through a variety of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—these artists visualize Indigenous knowledge of land/ landbase/ landscape. Together, the works in The Land Carries Our Ancestors underscore the self-determination, survivance, and right to self-representation of Indigenous peoples.

On view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024
Art of the North Galleries, Third Floor, East Wing

Good Medicine brings together Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community. Unfolding over the course of a year with the work of different Alaska Native healers, this multi-disciplinary exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange.

Colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years. This exhibition addresses harmful legacies and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet.

Curated by Tlingit traditional healer Meda DeWitt, Good Medicine emphasizes spiritual renewal, cultural renascence, and the importance of co-creating futures where nature can thrive.

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the City of Shoreline and the Spartan Recreation Center to host the Arte de la Raza exhibition running Nov.2nd-Jan. 24th and featuring:
Che Lopez
Iris Sanchez
Jake Prendez
Rolando Avila
Teresa Martinez
Yessica Marquez
The exhibition opens Nov. 2nd which is also the same day as their Dia de los Muertos Festival!!

Join us on December 5th at 12pm Pacific for the official launch of Densho’s newest digital platform!

An evolution of Densho’s popular Sites of Shame project, Manzanar CloseUp applies similar data extraction and visualization tools to offer a close-up view of Manzanar concentration camp. Users will be able to see geographical and population features of the camp with an unprecedented level of detail, including information about camp population down to the individual family and barrack level.

Densho Content Director Brian Niiya and Deputy Director Geoff Froh will walk through all the site’s features, show you how to use it to deepen your knowledge of WWII incarceration history, and discuss future plans for the CloseUp project.

This project was supported, in part, by funding provided by the California Civil Liberties program, administered by the California State Library.

This show is dedicated to Veterans, past and present and will be held at the Evergreen Gallery from October 16 – December 30, 2023. There will be a Grand Opening on Thursday, October 19 from 3 – 6 pm.

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity tells the story of the Nativity from an African-American perspective through a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration

Join the Unbroken Circle​! Students in this program will have the opportunity to explore heritage through the personal, local, and cultural history of the people in the group. Students will showcase what they’ve learned at the Rhapsody Showcase during the NW Folklife Festival.

Who: ​For ages 11 and up

When: October 4 – December 6, 2023, Wednesdays at 4 pm

How much: sliding scale $0-$300

Immerse yourself in the vibrant tapestry of Iranian women’s artistic expressions as they courageously unveil their stories and perspectives through the power of art. From breathtaking paintings to thought-provoking photos, this exhibition is a celebration of resilience and the depth of creative expression.

Don’t miss the chance to witness the diverse talents and narratives of Iranian and Afghan women, beautifully woven into each masterpiece. Join Peyvand in honoring their stories, celebrating their strength, and embracing the richness of Iranian culture through art.

Spread the word and mark your calendars! Let’s come together to appreciate the extraordinary artistry and resilience of Iranian women

Native Action Network is proud to present the exhibition One With the Waters featuring artwork by Sarah Folden. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe, Sarah creates contemporary Coast Salish art inspired by her connection to place. Her work celebrates the vitality of Cowlitz people, their bold and colorful spirits, ancestral waters, animal relatives and all connected in nature. Cowlitz people are water-going people who refused to sign treaties with the federal government. This has created a diverse population. Over time many have traveled from their ancestral waters, some even across oceans, but much like our salmon relatives, there is an instinctive drive that calls Native people home. Sarah Folden’s artwork is created in honor of those still here, those who have made that voyage and those who are awakening to their internal calling to return.

We are very excited to announce that the first graduating cohort of our Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute is ready to share their work with the world. They have spent the last year creating art from the oral histories they recorded, and the upcoming exhibit at Wa Na Wari is the culmination of that work. We invite you to join us for the opening of this exhibit:
“Honored to Tell”: An exhibit of art and oral histories created by the first cohort to graduate from the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute
Featured artists: Brenetta Ward, Akoiya Harris, Ariel Paine, Sierra Parsons, Ricky Reyes, Nia Amina Minor, Brea Wilson, Eboni Wyatt
Art Opening & Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 6-8pm
6:30pm Hear from the artists
7:00pm Dance performance by Akoiya Harris and Nia Amina Minor
At Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Ave. in Seattle’s historic Central District
Refreshments provided
Listen to the stories of Black waterfront workers, Black educators, Black barbers and beauticians, and Black dancers; stories that the artists have incorporated into textile art, dance, film, zines, listening stations, and more.
The exhibit will be on view until January 20, 2024.
More info at https://www.wanawari.org/sbshi_show

ArtsWest has sent four incredible artists on a cozy retreat to write the most perfect holiday show the world has ever seen. But when a blizzard hits and tensions rise, the crumpled up notebook pages start to pile up even faster than the snow. Will they finish the show in time? Or will they have to rely on a sprinkle of holiday magic to pull the whole thing off?

Inspired by classic holiday TV specials and musicals about putting on a musical, witness the birth of a new Seattle theater tradition as four of the city’s most beloved musical theater stars take you on a journey of song, dance, friendship, family, and the true meaning of the holidays.

Snowed In features original music along side songs you know and love. It’s a blizzard of fun for all-ages. 90 minutes. No intermission.

Dive deep into the stories and science that surround the magnificent orca, apex predator of all oceans.
Follow the currents of ecological activism, popular culture, and Indigenous beliefs to gain a new appreciation of these sophisticated animals, long feared in Western cultures as “Killer Whales.”
Orcas: Our Shared Future includes more than 100 original artifacts and specimens, featuring life-size Orca replicas, fossils, films, objects from popular culture, and original artwork from the Indigenous peoples of the North American west coast.
Discover the complex social structure of orca society and reflect on the surprising consequences of captivity. Learn which orca populations are thriving and which are at risk, and resurface with a new understanding of how orcas and humans are inextricably connected.

Featuring the work of the Guma’ Gela’, a queer CHamoru art collective made up of members from the Marianas and in the diaspora. The exhibit explores their motto “part land, part sea, all ancestry” through a broad spectrum of media, including sculpture, soundscape, writing, printmaking, weaving, costume design, adornments, and more, to build a connection with CHamoru life, history, and traditions.

Do you ever wonder how Bruce Lee developed the philosophy behind his most iconic quote?

This incredible interactive exhibit invites viewers to step into the mind, body, and spirit of Bruce Lee to see how his unquenchable pursuit of knowledge informed his philosophy and life.

Follow Bruce’s path beginning with his revelations on water, through the wealth of knowledge found in his 2,800-book personal library, to his philosophy on self-understanding and self-expression.

The exhibition’s interactive technology interweaves beautiful imagery with Bruce’s personal objects and books to bring his journey to life.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition will include Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming will also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors will experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition will also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon exhibition curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition will continue Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Textile-based art and artwork responsive to social change are gaining prominence across the region and the country. To reflect this confluence, Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present the work of 21 artists in Soft Power, featuring more than 40 textile-based works on view from October 14, 2023, through September 1, 2024.

Soft Power draws its name and inspiration from Joseph Nye’s theory of cultural heritage as a form of non-coercive power. Using traditional processes to create contemporary declarations of resistance, resilience, love, and rebuke, this work explores the dynamic contrast between soft materials and so-called “hard” ideas. This engaging and provocative exhibition explores cultural stereotypes, humanity’s impact on the environment, and healthcare access.

The artists on view express themselves in forms as varied as their ideas: A quilted call to action, meticulously knit abstraction, woven cenotaphs, a stuffed and stitched creature, a scattered gathering of embroidered ephemera.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji— Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers. Join us to explore Hokusai’s impact through the centuries and around the globe, on artists including Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, and Helen Frankenthaler.