Calendar

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Specializing in intricate natural and oil-dyed wooden and paper mosaics, artist Naoko Morisawa invites viewers to experience Happy Room — Mosaic Collage, a collection of over 50 small, mid, and large-scale works that evoke a sense of joy and draw from the Hygge lifestyle. The installation is divided into four rooms, Shoes/Closet, Kitchen/Living Room, Theater Japonism/Living Room, and Heart Room.

Each piece and room transforms everyday objects like a dependable pair of shoes or a pastry from a café into ornate, dynamic mosaics that invite viewers to find beauty in the details. Happy Room — Mosaic Collage features pieces from various bodies of work from the past 15 years including pieces from My Collection Shoes, Mosaic Café, Japanese Opera – Noh Mask, and newer abstract works.

A showcase of transgender and sacred gender indigenous artists working in digital media, transmedia, film, 360 video, glitch art, contemporary interpretations of traditional forms, and future mediums. digital indigiqueer: a showcase of trans transmedia includes 11 individual pieces exploring the diversity of contemporary indigenous creativity and touching their futures and pasts. Work from Raven TwoFeathers, Ty Defoe, Raven Kameʻenui-Becker, Communidad Catrileo+Carrion, Elijah Forbes, and organizer Hexe Fey.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

A night market highlight Black and BIPOC owned businesses.
Shop local and handmade clothes, candles, art, jewelry, massage therapy, healing tools, body care, hair care and more!
—————————————————————————————————————————–
– 100 vendors
– African drummers and dancers
– Fashion show
– Art Installations
– Cash bar
– Live Performers
– Food trucks

FREE ENTRY AND KID FRIENDLY!

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Specializing in intricate natural and oil-dyed wooden and paper mosaics, artist Naoko Morisawa invites viewers to experience Happy Room — Mosaic Collage, a collection of over 50 small, mid, and large-scale works that evoke a sense of joy and draw from the Hygge lifestyle. The installation is divided into four rooms, Shoes/Closet, Kitchen/Living Room, Theater Japonism/Living Room, and Heart Room.

Each piece and room transforms everyday objects like a dependable pair of shoes or a pastry from a café into ornate, dynamic mosaics that invite viewers to find beauty in the details. Happy Room — Mosaic Collage features pieces from various bodies of work from the past 15 years including pieces from My Collection Shoes, Mosaic Café, Japanese Opera – Noh Mask, and newer abstract works.

A showcase of transgender and sacred gender indigenous artists working in digital media, transmedia, film, 360 video, glitch art, contemporary interpretations of traditional forms, and future mediums. digital indigiqueer: a showcase of trans transmedia includes 11 individual pieces exploring the diversity of contemporary indigenous creativity and touching their futures and pasts. Work from Raven TwoFeathers, Ty Defoe, Raven Kameʻenui-Becker, Communidad Catrileo+Carrion, Elijah Forbes, and organizer Hexe Fey.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Specializing in intricate natural and oil-dyed wooden and paper mosaics, artist Naoko Morisawa invites viewers to experience Happy Room — Mosaic Collage, a collection of over 50 small, mid, and large-scale works that evoke a sense of joy and draw from the Hygge lifestyle. The installation is divided into four rooms, Shoes/Closet, Kitchen/Living Room, Theater Japonism/Living Room, and Heart Room.

Each piece and room transforms everyday objects like a dependable pair of shoes or a pastry from a café into ornate, dynamic mosaics that invite viewers to find beauty in the details. Happy Room — Mosaic Collage features pieces from various bodies of work from the past 15 years including pieces from My Collection Shoes, Mosaic Café, Japanese Opera – Noh Mask, and newer abstract works.

A showcase of transgender and sacred gender indigenous artists working in digital media, transmedia, film, 360 video, glitch art, contemporary interpretations of traditional forms, and future mediums. digital indigiqueer: a showcase of trans transmedia includes 11 individual pieces exploring the diversity of contemporary indigenous creativity and touching their futures and pasts. Work from Raven TwoFeathers, Ty Defoe, Raven Kameʻenui-Becker, Communidad Catrileo+Carrion, Elijah Forbes, and organizer Hexe Fey.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Specializing in intricate natural and oil-dyed wooden and paper mosaics, artist Naoko Morisawa invites viewers to experience Happy Room — Mosaic Collage, a collection of over 50 small, mid, and large-scale works that evoke a sense of joy and draw from the Hygge lifestyle. The installation is divided into four rooms, Shoes/Closet, Kitchen/Living Room, Theater Japonism/Living Room, and Heart Room.

Each piece and room transforms everyday objects like a dependable pair of shoes or a pastry from a café into ornate, dynamic mosaics that invite viewers to find beauty in the details. Happy Room — Mosaic Collage features pieces from various bodies of work from the past 15 years including pieces from My Collection Shoes, Mosaic Café, Japanese Opera – Noh Mask, and newer abstract works.

A showcase of transgender and sacred gender indigenous artists working in digital media, transmedia, film, 360 video, glitch art, contemporary interpretations of traditional forms, and future mediums. digital indigiqueer: a showcase of trans transmedia includes 11 individual pieces exploring the diversity of contemporary indigenous creativity and touching their futures and pasts. Work from Raven TwoFeathers, Ty Defoe, Raven Kameʻenui-Becker, Communidad Catrileo+Carrion, Elijah Forbes, and organizer Hexe Fey.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Specializing in intricate natural and oil-dyed wooden and paper mosaics, artist Naoko Morisawa invites viewers to experience Happy Room — Mosaic Collage, a collection of over 50 small, mid, and large-scale works that evoke a sense of joy and draw from the Hygge lifestyle. The installation is divided into four rooms, Shoes/Closet, Kitchen/Living Room, Theater Japonism/Living Room, and Heart Room.

Each piece and room transforms everyday objects like a dependable pair of shoes or a pastry from a café into ornate, dynamic mosaics that invite viewers to find beauty in the details. Happy Room — Mosaic Collage features pieces from various bodies of work from the past 15 years including pieces from My Collection Shoes, Mosaic Café, Japanese Opera – Noh Mask, and newer abstract works.

A showcase of transgender and sacred gender indigenous artists working in digital media, transmedia, film, 360 video, glitch art, contemporary interpretations of traditional forms, and future mediums. digital indigiqueer: a showcase of trans transmedia includes 11 individual pieces exploring the diversity of contemporary indigenous creativity and touching their futures and pasts. Work from Raven TwoFeathers, Ty Defoe, Raven Kameʻenui-Becker, Communidad Catrileo+Carrion, Elijah Forbes, and organizer Hexe Fey.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Specializing in intricate natural and oil-dyed wooden and paper mosaics, artist Naoko Morisawa invites viewers to experience Happy Room — Mosaic Collage, a collection of over 50 small, mid, and large-scale works that evoke a sense of joy and draw from the Hygge lifestyle. The installation is divided into four rooms, Shoes/Closet, Kitchen/Living Room, Theater Japonism/Living Room, and Heart Room.

Each piece and room transforms everyday objects like a dependable pair of shoes or a pastry from a café into ornate, dynamic mosaics that invite viewers to find beauty in the details. Happy Room — Mosaic Collage features pieces from various bodies of work from the past 15 years including pieces from My Collection Shoes, Mosaic Café, Japanese Opera – Noh Mask, and newer abstract works.

A showcase of transgender and sacred gender indigenous artists working in digital media, transmedia, film, 360 video, glitch art, contemporary interpretations of traditional forms, and future mediums. digital indigiqueer: a showcase of trans transmedia includes 11 individual pieces exploring the diversity of contemporary indigenous creativity and touching their futures and pasts. Work from Raven TwoFeathers, Ty Defoe, Raven Kameʻenui-Becker, Communidad Catrileo+Carrion, Elijah Forbes, and organizer Hexe Fey.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Across Mexico, mask-making is a vibrant and playful artform with roots in the celebration of religious holidays. Worn by dancers in rollicking performances known as danzas, the masks depict devils and holy men; celebrities from media and politics, and other known individuals who personify sinners and false idols.

In contextualizing masks and the expressive art forms through the life and work of contemporary Mexican mask artists, the exhibition dispels the common notion that masks and danzas are “archaic” Indigenous customs that are disappearing in the face of encroaching modernity. Instead, they are presented as expressions of contemporary living culture in which symbols and scripts from pop culture and religious narratives are combined to communicate about spiritual matters, political issues, and community life.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.

Black cowboys have long been an integral part of the American West. Thousands of Black cowboys, for instance, rode in the Western cattle drives of the 1860s. Their stories are largely untold in popular narratives, but modern-day Black rodeos keep their traditions alive. A new, original High Desert Museum exhibit celebrates this thriving culture.

In the Arena: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo running from November 19, 2022 – June 25, 2023. Through the lens of San Francisco Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun, this exhibit documents the exhilarating atmosphere of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo—the only touring Black rodeo in the country—and the show stopping style and skill of the Black cowboys and cowgirls who compete in it year after year.

The exhibit features a wide range of stories including the Quinault Nation fighting climate change, water protectors resisting fossil fuel development, Duwamish River stewardship, rising seas threatening Pacific Islands and other coastal communities, Native Hawaiians opposing military installations via traditional ceremony, and local community groups fighting disproportionate airplane noise and pollution on Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Anchorage, AK – NACF LIFT Artist Brian Walker II (King Island and Deg Hit’an Athabascan)
Supernal Enlivened at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Arc Gallery.
Feb 3rd – May 5th, 2023
For more info:
https://alaska.digication.com/kimura-gallery/arc-gallery

Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation.
Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.

This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

For many Native communities throughout the High Desert, what constitutes art spans beyond the walls of a gallery or a museum. Objects are alive, tied to purpose and intrinsic to thriving communities. Art is at once utilitarian and ceremonial, as well as part of the continuation of Native traditions.

Opening on January 28, 2023, Creations of Spirit will immerse High Desert Museum visitors in the Indigenous Plateau worldview, reflecting knowledge systems of tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Six Native artists commissioned for this new, original exhibition are creating artwork that will be used in Native communities before arriving at the Museum. A seventh artist is creating an interactive piece for the center of the gallery. Creations of Spirit will be a one-of-a-kind, celebratory experience featuring the stories of these living works of art. Videos, audio and large projections will immerse visitors in the landscapes and communities in which these objects are used, highlighting the theme of artwork as alive, full of stories and created for specific purposes and people. The original works will be supplemented with nine cultural items on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt and the resulting mass incarceration of Japanese American families living on the West Coast is among the single most traumatic events in the history of Asian America, but many history books present an incomplete view of the full story. The truth is that this event did not happen in a vacuum nor did the people who lived this event do so quietly.
The exhibit leads visitors through a historical narrative beginning with the experience of Japanese American incarcerees in the 1940s and the complicated feelings of shame, anger, fear, and varied faces of resistance from within the community. Through the following decades, the story illustrates the generational trauma and cultural aftershocks of incarceration, while highlighting the lingering sense of injustice and awakening to justice movements at home and abroad. Fast forward to 2001 and beyond, the exhibit draws parallels between the stigmatization of Japanese Americans and modern-day anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant policies. Visitors leave with a final prompt to consider: In the pursuit of justice, how will you show solidarity for movements today and into the future?
Through art, first-person accounts, historical material, and artifacts, this exhibit connects Japanese American resistance movements during the WWII era to modern BIPOC justice movements and activism today.

From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers celebrates the enduring innovation and impact of Black architects across the United States. This traveling exhibit highlights individual architects and designers from the late 1800s to today who have broken barriers formed by racism and have created spaces and places that support communities and culture with projects ranging from public housing, to places of worship, museums and universities. Visitors will recognize iconic landmarks from across the country and experience stories of people who paved the way for future generations.

Visitors will also learn about historic and contemporary Black architects and designers from the Seattle-area who have had a local impact, such as Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr., the first Black architect registered in Washington.

Black architects continue to bring their designs to life as a creative response to ever-changing needs, and as a testimonial to a rich heritage. In this exhibit, learn about past and present influential Black architects, hear from Black leaders in the architecture and design fields in video interviews, and engage with tactile interactives. From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers encourages guests to discover how Black architects and designers respond to the ever-changing needs of humanity and not only make changes to their communities but the world.

The Holocaust Center maintains an archive of over 8400 items, including more than 2700 photographs. These items come from Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, U.S. liberators and army personnel, all with a connection to Washington State. A selection of photographs from the archive is on display, highlighting the humanity of individuals and reshaping our narrative of the Holocaust.

Open every Sunday from March 12th – May 28th

Art and history come together to tell a multidimensional story about humanity. Art is a catalyst for healing cultural pain, both personal and collective. In this exhibition, four artists address stories of immigration where art is a sanctuary, resulting in regeneration and innovation. They speak through their works about histories and heritage, using non-traditional media and configuring materials in new ways. Through their practices, they unearth a life purpose and an empowered self.

When artist Victor Kai Wang arrived in the United States in 1980 from China, he felt alone and adrift, struggling to comprehend his new surroundings. Suchitra Mattai’s ancestors navigated a bewildering and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Balancing between two cultures unsettled Tuan Nguyen and Jean Nagai. In childhood, they felt a need to adapt to survive. Each of these artists turned to creative innovation to change their focus and direction.

We have all felt a sense of disorientation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We have had to adjust and find our way to a new reality. What does it take to reorient yourself to joy? Creating art, of any kind, is an active meditation. Creative innovation leads to joy, and joy brings healing.

China’s rich legacies in art, language, and culture are conceptualized by the artists in Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms as visual, auditory, and kinetic experiences to tackle urgent and complex issues facing our globalized world. They allude to Chinese tradition—from the materials of ink, brush, and paper to the time-honored genre of landscape painting—to depict present-day events, such as street protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. New works by Yang Yongliang and Lam Tung Pang join those by Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan from SAM’s collection in contemplating the societal tolls of modernity and globalization and the challenge that humans create for the natural world. Developed in collaboration with University of Washington students, Beyond the Mountain is the second special exhibition presented in the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Paradice Avenue Souf and the Wing Luke Museum join in collaboration to explore the intersection of Black and Brown communities in Seattle and across the globe, in the present day and through time immemorial.

This exhibition will feature the “Black and Brown Solidarity” mural by Paradice Avenue Souf along with new work and a video short documenting the story of Paradice Avenue Souf and their travels and connections throughout African and Southeast Asia.

Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community. With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

SAM presents American Art: The Stories We Carry, a transformation of its American art galleries, created through a wide-ranging collaboration among SAM curators and staff, artists, and advisors from the Seattle community. Funded primarily by a $1 million grant from The Mellon Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the project features work from SAM’s collection and new works and curation by contemporary artists, and it deepens the museum’s commitment to inclusive exhibition-planning practices with a shared-authorship model that reflects and responds to community knowledge.

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.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” The black fabric on which the Ubuhle women work is reminiscent of the Xhosa headscarves and skirts which many of them grew up wearing. By stretching this textile like a canvas, the artists transform the flat cloth into a contemporary art form colored with Czech glass beads.

Using skills handed down through generations and working in their own unique style “directly from the soul,” according to artist Ntombephi Ntobela, the women create abstract as well as figurative subjects for their ndwangos.

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe introduces new generations to one of the twentieth century’s most innovative Native American painters. Howe (1915–1983) committed his artistic career to the preservation, relevance, and ongoing expression of his Yanktonai Dakota culture. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.Howe challenged the art establishment’s preconceptions and definitions of Native American painting. In doing so, he catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style. This legacy of innovation and advocacy continues to inspire generations of Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.

Dakota Modern traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

Showcasing abstract art featuring the works of Northwest artists: Vincent Keele, Shantell Jackson,Lo Mar Metoyer, and Yeggy Michael.