Calendar

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

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.

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.

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.

The Higo 10 Cents Store, owned by the Murakami family and a social hub in Seattle’s Japantown, has a long and fascinating community and family history. Meet Me at Higo welcomes younger generations to connect with and explore what it means to be Japanese American. Impressive personal photos, journals and artifacts are included in this traveling exhibition. Today, Higo 10 Cents Store (or Higo Variety Store) is KOBO at Higo and is still located at 604 South Jackson Street in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.

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 28th Seattle Jewish Film Festival is “cinemanna” for film-lovers and our community: a cinematic feast for the eyes and, like manna from heaven, a surprise gift of sustenance for the soul.

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.

We are excited to celebrate our 4 year Anniversary Pachanga Saturday February 4th! Join us for free activities, comida, prizes and the opening of our February Art Exhibition.
This is our way of saying gracias to our beautiful community for their amazing support these past 4 years. Nepantla is a Nahuatl (Aztec language) term which describes being in the middle or the space in the middle. The term was popularized by Chicana writer/scholar Gloria Anzaldua. Most often the term references endangered communities, cultures or gender who due to colonialism/marginalization or historical trauma, that engage in resistance strategies of survival. Nepantla becomes the alternative space in which to live, heal, function and create.
So what does Nepantla mean to you? We can’t wait to see your art! Email submissions to nepantlaculturalarts@gmail.com

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.

The first play by acclaimed intertribal sketch comedy troupe. The 1491s—best known for the hit television series “Reservation Dogs”—takes audiences on a searing and absurdly funny series of vignettes through American history centered on one family’s account of their experiences from the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 to the protests there in 1973.

Approximately Run Time is 2 hours with one 15-minute intermission

We have moved the date and time to accommodate more diverse groups in our community!

Bring Your Own Creation or share your favorite literature piece!

Please RSVP using our form: https://forms.gle/uv7rciwC6CLJkRbS8

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Every 2nd Wednesday Issa, Pussy Willow, and Glenn Coco with featured artists will be paying tribute, reclaiming, and most importantly celebrating black and brown bodies.

Pop-up performances will occur throughout the night including a brand new trio performance by Issa, Willow, and Glenn every week so you do not want to miss this!

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

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.

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.

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.

The Adeline Garcia Community Service Awards is an annual luncheon where we honor leaders whose service has had a significant impact on urban Native well-being in the Seattle area.

On March 30, we’ll gather to honor those who represent the past, present, and future of leadership in our Indigenous community.

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.

Join us March 30 for a conversation on Ukraine and Russia featuring former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch w/veteran Moscow correspondent Carol J. Williams. Starts at 7:30 p.m. (in-person event).

The annual Herbert J. Ellison Memorial Lecture is sponsored by The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington in partnership with the Henry M. Jackson Foundation

This event is free and open to the public. RSVP required.

Register/Join Waitlist: bit.ly/MARCH30EVENT

From Michelle Zauner, the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, Crying in H Mart is an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American. Join us for a special SAL Presents conversation with Michelle Zauner, celebrating the memoir’s paperback publication.

Create Your Own Series subscriptions, as well as Patron and Grand Patron single tickets, come with a copy of Crying in H Mart, shipped to the ticket holder’s door.

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

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.

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.

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.

Bring your drums and songs! Join the UIATF Ina Maka Program in continuing to honor this historical moment for Urban Native Communities. 

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Join us and celebrate together our tradition over 50 years old! Eat delicious, traditional food, and traditional Polish pastries and get gifts, traditional crafts, t-shirts, and much more for yourself or family and friends!

Delicious dinners of pickle soup, white borscht, pierogi, and more were served all day. Whole menu 
Take-home dinners and sweets are available. Frozen menu to go
Delectable pastries like Pączki, poppy seeds cakes, and traditional Polish cheesecakes as well as coffee/tea at the dessert booth.

Upstairs features an excellent selection of amber, books, crafts, Bolesławiec pottery, and more!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Space is limited – reservations are recommended. Program and exhibit are recommended for grade 6 and up.
11:00-12:00pm – Survival and Luck: Holocaust Survivor Peter Metzelaar Shares His Story
Peter will share his remarkable story of hiding in the Netherlands during the Holocaust, his mother’s ingenuity that saved their lives, and the close calls where luck was on their side.
2:00-3:00pm – Shedding Our Stars: Holocaust Survivor Laureen Nussbaum Shares Her Story
Born in Germany, Laureen and her family fled to Amsterdam when the Nazis seized power. Her family lived among many other German Jewish refugees, including Anne Frank and her family. Through a loophole and a supportive German official, Laureen was re-classified as non-Jewish, giving her the ability to help support other Jewish people, including her future husband Rudi. Offered in partnership with the SJCC.
Explore the Holocaust Center’s Museum and the new temporary exhibit, “Memories Unboxed: Rare Photos From Our Archives” which includes photos of Peter Metzelaar and Laureen Nussbaum.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.