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65-689: The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM ) is an art museum located in Seattle , Washington , United States. The museum operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle ; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park , Capitol Hill ; and Olympic Sculpture Park on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened in 2007. The SAM collection has grown from 1,926 pieces in 1933 to nearly 25,000 as of 2008. Its original museum provided an area of 25,000 square feet (2,300 m);

130-640: A 700 lb (320 kg) ball and chain to the leg of the sculpture. In 1994, the Volunteer Park facility reopened as the Seattle Asian Art Museum. In 2007, the Olympic Sculpture Park opened to the public, culminating an eight-year process. In 2017, the Seattle Asian Art Museum closed for a two-year $ 54 million renovation and expansion project. The museum reopened February 8, 2020. In September 2021, employees of Seattle Art Museum called for

195-479: A boycott of the museum for policies they claim unfairly target unhoused people. Soon after, in October 2021, SAM Director and CEO, Amada Cruz , signed onto a letter on behalf of the museum in support of increasing the city's police budget. The letter also advocated for subsidized security for nonprofit institutions, despite the recent termination of SAM's contract with Star Protection Services due to employee misconduct and

260-449: A collaboration of museums and galleries that are more interested with the categorization of art. They are interested in the potential use of folksonomy within museums and the requirements for post-processing of terms that have been gathered, both to test their utility and to deploy them in useful ways. The steve.museum is one example of a site that is experimenting with this collaborative philosophy. The participating institutions include

325-433: A major factor in social mobility (for example, getting a higher-paid, higher-status job). The argument states that certain art museums are aimed at perpetuating aristocratic and upper class ideals of taste and excludes segments of society without the social opportunities to develop such interest. The fine arts thus perpetuate social inequality by creating divisions between different social groups. This argument also ties in with

390-402: A number of online art catalogues and galleries that have been developed independently of the support of any individual museum. Many of these, like American Art Gallery, are attempts to develop galleries of artwork that are encyclopedic or historical in focus, while others are commercial efforts to sell the work of contemporary artists. A limited number of such sites have independent importance in

455-626: A painting by Henri Matisse which had been looted by Nazis in World War II, after having requested that the family sue in order to reach a legal settlement that included another art dealer. So in October 1997, Rosenberg's family filed suit in District Court , to recover the painting Odalisque (1927 or 1928). It was the first lawsuit against an American museum concerning ownership of Nazi plunder during World War II. Then museum director Mimi Gardner Gates brokered an 11th hour settlement that returned

520-534: A retrospective of the work of Northwest School painter Mark Tobey that traveled to four other U.S. museums. Tobey's works and highlights of SAM's Asian collection were featured under the museum's aegis at the Century 21 Exposition (the 1962 Seattle World's Fair ). A Jacob Lawrence retrospective in 1974 honored a giant of African American art who had settled in Seattle four years earlier. Leonardo Lives (1997) featured

585-513: A section of the public. In classical times , religious institutions began to function as an early form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects, such as Julius Caesar , often donated their collections to temples. It is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. In Europe, from the Late Medieval period onwards, areas in royal palaces, castles , and large country houses of

650-604: A series of rooms dedicated to specific historic periods (e.g. Ancient Egypt ) or other significant themed groupings of works (e.g. the gypsotheque or collection of plaster casts as in the Ashmolean Museum ) within a museum with a more varied collection are referred to as specific galleries, e.g. Egyptian Gallery or Cast Gallery . Works on paper, such as drawings , pastels , watercolors , prints , and photographs are typically not permanently displayed for reasons of conservation . Instead, public access to these materials

715-418: A venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry, performance arts , music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections. An institution dedicated to the display of art can be called an art museum or an art gallery, and the two terms may be used interchangeably. This

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780-521: Is a 9-acre (3.6 ha) free and open public park on the Seattle waterfront just north of downtown. It opened on January 20, 2007. Amada Cruz was named director and CEO of the Seattle Art Museum in 2019. She succeeded Kimberly Rorschach who served as director from 2012 to 2019. The Seattle Art Museum only receives 4% of its funding from the government; the rest of its operating costs are covered by ticket fees and its membership base. As of 2014,

845-416: Is also sometimes used to describe businesses which display art for sale, but these are not art museums. Throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions or political leaders and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces . Although these collections of art were not open to the general public, they were often made available for viewing for

910-642: Is located at University Street and First Avenue, and was completed by Venturi , Scott Brown and Associates at 150,000 square feet (14,000 m) with a $ 28.1 million budget. In 2006, the Seattle Art Museum began expanding its 1991 location in a joint effort with Washington Mutual (WaMu); the enlarged building was originally known as the WaMu Center. The expansion actually began in July 2004. Several pieces had to be temporarily moved to prevent them from being damaged due to vibrations during construction. This would have been

975-559: Is provided by a dedicated print room located within the museum. Murals or mosaics often remain where they have been created ( in situ ), although many have also been removed to galleries. Various forms of 20th-century art, such as land art and performance art , also usually exist outside a gallery. Photographic records of these kinds of art are often shown in galleries, however. Most museums and large art galleries own more works than they have room to display. The rest are held in reserve collections , on or off-site. A sculpture garden

1040-823: Is reflected in the names of institutions around the world, some of which are considered art galleries, such as the National Gallery in London and Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin , and some of which are considered museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo . The phrase "art gallery"

1105-557: Is similar to an art gallery, presenting sculpture in an outdoor space. Sculpture has grown in popularity with sculptures installed in open spaces on both a permanent and temporary basis. Most larger paintings from about 1530 onwards were designed to be seen either in churches or palaces, and many buildings built as palaces now function successfully as art museums. By the 18th century additions to palaces and country houses were sometimes intended specifically as galleries for viewing art, and designed with that in mind. The architectural form of

1170-661: Is suggested, meaning that the museum would like visitors to pay the complete admission but if they can not pay fully they can still enjoy the museum. After the Century 21 Exposition, the fairgrounds became Seattle Center, and the UK Pavilion became the Modern Art Pavilion of the museum. It remained in use until 1987. The Asian Art Museum has been located since 1994 in the original 1933 Deco/Moderne SAM facility in Volunteer Park on Seattle's Capitol Hill. The Olympic Sculpture Park

1235-502: Is to shape identity and memory, cultural heritage, distilled narratives and treasured stories. Many art museums throughout history have been designed with a cultural purpose or been subject to political intervention. In particular, national art galleries have been thought to incite feelings of nationalism . This has occurred in both democratic and non-democratic countries, although authoritarian regimes have historically exercised more control over administration of art museums. Ludwig Justi

1300-653: The British Museum was established and the Old Royal Library collection of manuscripts was donated to it for public viewing. In 1777, a proposal to the British government was put forward by MP John Wilkes to buy the art collection of the late Sir Robert Walpole , who had amassed one of the greatest such collections in Europe , and house it in a specially built wing of the British Museum for public viewing. After much debate,

1365-535: The Codex Leicester , the last manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci in private hands, which had then been recently purchased by Bill Gates . As of January 2023, the museum's collection includes about 25,000 pieces. Among them are Alexander Calder 's Eagle (1971) and Richard Serra 's Wake (2004), both at the Olympic Sculpture Park; Cai Guo-Qiang 's Inopportune: Stage One (2004), a sculpture constructed from cars and sequenced multi-channel light tubes on display in

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1430-738: The Guggenheim Museum in New York City by Frank Lloyd Wright , the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry , Centre Pompidou-Metz by Shigeru Ban , and the redesign of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art by Mario Botta . Some critics argue these galleries defeat their purposes because their dramatic interior spaces distract the eye from the paintings they are supposed to exhibit. Museums are more than just mere 'fixed structures designed to house collections.' Their purpose

1495-554: The Guggenheim Museum , the Cleveland Museum of Art , the Metropolitan Museum of Art , and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art . There are relatively few local/regional/national organizations dedicated specifically to art museums. Most art museums are associated with local/regional/national organizations for the arts , humanities or museums in general. Many of these organizations are listed as follows: International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Originally called

1560-670: The Musée du Louvre during the French Revolution in 1793 as a public museum for much of the former French royal collection marked an important stage in the development of public access to art by transferring the ownership to a republican state; but it was a continuation of trends already well established. The building now occupied by the Prado in Madrid was built before the French Revolution for

1625-622: The Renwick Gallery , built in 1859. Now a part of the Smithsonian Institution , the Renwick housed William Wilson Corcoran 's collection of American and European art. The building was designed by James Renwick Jr. and finally completed in 1874. It is located at 1661 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Renwick designed it after the Louvre's Tuileries addition. At the time of its construction, it

1690-553: The mystification of fine arts . Research suggests that the context in which an artwork is being presented has significant influence on its reception by the audience, and viewers shown artworks in a museum rated them more highly than when displayed in a "laboratory" setting Most art museums have only limited online collections, but a few museums, as well as some libraries and government agencies, have developed substantial online catalogues. Museums, libraries, and government agencies with substantial online collections include: There are

1755-532: The 17th century onwards, often based around a collection of the cabinet of curiosities type. The first such museum was the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford , opened in 1683 to house and display the artefacts of Elias Ashmole that were given to Oxford University in a bequest. The Kunstmuseum Basel , through its lineage which extends back to the Amerbach Cabinet , which included a collection of works by Hans Holbein

1820-612: The 18th century. In Italy, the art tourism of the Grand Tour became a major industry from the 18th century onwards, and cities made efforts to make their key works accessible. The Capitoline Museums began in 1471 with a donation of classical sculpture to the city of Rome by the Papacy , while the Vatican Museums , whose collections are still owned by the Pope, trace their foundation to 1506, when

1885-401: The 1970s, a number of political theorists and social commentators have pointed to the political implications of art museums and social relations. Pierre Bourdieu , for instance, argued that in spite the apparent freedom of choice in the arts, people's artistic preferences (such as classical music, rock, traditional music) strongly tie in with their social position. So called cultural capital is

1950-633: The 1970s, never taking a salary. SAM joined with the National Council on the Arts (later NEA ), Richard Fuller, and the Seattle Foundation (in part, another Fuller family endeavor) to acquire and install Isamu Noguchi 's sculpture Black Sun in front of the museum in Volunteer Park. It was the NEA's first commission in Seattle. In 1983 to 1984, the museum received a donation of half of a downtown city block,

2015-561: The 1978 King Tut exhibition, held at Seattle Center, ranked higher in attendance. 47°36′26″N 122°20′17″W  /  47.60722°N 122.33806°W  / 47.60722; -122.33806  ( Seattle Art Museum ) Art museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art , usually from the museum 's own collection . It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned with visual art , art museums are often used as

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2080-570: The Brotherhood of Painters and Decorators of America, the union was first formed in 1887. The union changed its name to International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades in January 1970. Local unions belong to district councils. District councils perform most of the services of the union. IUPAT is affiliated with the AFL–CIO in the U.S. The Painters was one of three unions ( SEIU and AFSCME were

2145-653: The Marxist theory of mystification and elite culture . Furthermore, certain art galleries, such as the National Gallery in London and the Louvre in Paris are situated in buildings of considerable emotional impact. The Louvre in Paris is for instance located in the former Royal Castle of the ancient regime , and is thus clearly designed with a political agenda. It has been argued that such buildings create feelings of subjugation and adds to

2210-527: The Younger and purchased by the city of Basel in 1661, is considered to be the first museum of art open to the public in the world. In the second half of the 18th century, many private collections of art were opened to the public, and during and after the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars , many royal collections were nationalized, even where the monarchy remained in place, as in Spain and Bavaria . In 1753,

2275-433: The active lending-out of a museum's collected objects in order to enhance education at schools and to aid in the cultural development of individual members of the community. Finally, Dana saw branch museums throughout a city as a good method of making sure that every citizen has access to its benefits. Dana's view of the ideal museum sought to invest a wider variety of people in it, and was self-consciously not elitist. Since

2340-418: The art world. The large auction houses, such as Sotheby's , Bonhams , and Christie's , maintain large online databases of art which they have auctioned or are auctioning. Bridgeman Art Library serves as a central source of reproductions of artwork, with access limited to museums, art dealers , and other professionals or professional organizations. There are also online galleries that have been developed by

2405-842: The artwork, after which the museum sued the gallery which had sold it the painting in the 1950s. Author Héctor Feliciano said it was only the second instance in the US of a museum returning looted art. The Seattle Art Museum contains the Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library and the McCaw Foundation Library for Asian Art. The Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library was founded in 1991. As of 2011 it contained 20,000 books and subscribed to 100 periodicals. It specializes in African art, contemporary art, decorative ars, European art, Modern art, and photography. The McCaw Foundation Library for Asian Art

2470-513: The building September 9, 2009, and renaming it the Russell Investments Center . Currently, Russell Investments , a Northwestern Mutual subsidiary, is headquartered there, having relocated from Tacoma, Washington . Admission to the SAM's indoor facilities is free on the first Thursday of each month; SAM also offers free admission the first Saturday of the month. And even the normal admission

2535-546: The construction, the museum's downtown location was closed from January 5, 2006, to May 5, 2007. The expanded building offers 70 percent more gallery space, an expanded museum store, and a new restaurant. In anticipation of the expansion, over a thousand new pieces, with a total value over a billion dollars, were donated to the collection. Washington Mutual's 2008 failure and subsequent acquisition by JPMorgan Chase resulted in Northwestern Mutual purchasing WaMu's share of

2600-536: The continued opposition of staff and community members. On January 7, 2022, the visitor service officers filed to unionize in partnership with IUPAT 116. In May 2022, security employees voted to form an independent union, the SAM Visitors Service Officers (VSO) Union. The National Labor Relations Board certified the SAM VSO Union as the security officers' representative on June 8, 2022. Since then,

2665-690: The entire building solely intended to be an art gallery was arguably established by Sir John Soane with his design for the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1817. This established the gallery as a series of interconnected rooms with largely uninterrupted wall spaces for hanging pictures and indirect lighting from skylights or roof lanterns . The late 19th century saw a boom in the building of public art galleries in Europe and America, becoming an essential cultural feature of larger cities. More art galleries rose up alongside museums and public libraries as part of

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2730-537: The former J. C. Penney department store on the west side of Second Avenue between Union and Pike Streets. They eventually decided that this particular block was not a suitable site: that land was sold for private development as the Newmark Building, and the museum acquired land in the next block south. On December 5, 1991, SAM reopened in a $ 62 million downtown facility designed by Robert Venturi . The next year, one of Jonathan Borofsky 's Hammering Man sculptures

2795-484: The founder of the Newark Museum , saw the traditional art museum as a useless public institution, one that focused more on fashion and conformity rather than education and uplift. Indeed, Dana's ideal museum would be one best suited for active and vigorous use by the average citizen, located near the center of their daily movement. In addition, Dana's conception of the perfect museum included a wider variety of objects than

2860-544: The grander English country houses could be toured by the respectable for a tip to the housekeeper, during the long periods when the family were not in residence. Special arrangements were made to allow the public to see many royal or private collections placed in galleries, as with most of the paintings of the Orleans Collection , which were housed in a wing of the Palais-Royal in Paris and could be visited for most of

2925-829: The group renamed itself as the Art Institute of Seattle. The Art Institute housed its collection in Henry House, the former home, on Capitol Hill, of the collector and founder of the Henry Art Gallery , Horace C. Henry (1844–1928). Richard E. Fuller , president of the Seattle Fine Arts Society, was the animating figure of SAM in its early years. During the Great Depression , he and his mother, Margaret MacTavish Fuller, donated $ 250,000 to build an art museum in Volunteer Park on Seattle's Capitol Hill. The city provided

2990-806: The idea was eventually abandoned due to the great expense, and twenty years later, the collection was bought by Tsaritsa Catherine the Great of Russia and housed in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg . The Bavarian royal collection (now in the Alte Pinakothek , Munich) was opened to the public in 1779 and the Medici collection in Florence around 1789 (as the Uffizi Gallery). The opening of

3055-471: The initial foundation phase of the WaMu Center. In addition to reworking the Venturi building, SAM now takes up the first four floors of a 16-floor building designed by Portland, Oregon architect Brad Cloepfil . SAM also owns the next eight floors, which WaMu originally rented; Washington Mutual owned the top four floors. As SAM expands in the future, it can take over one or more of the rented floors. Because of

3120-498: The land and received ownership of the building. Carl F. Gould of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould designed an Art Deco / Art Moderne building for the museum, which opened June 23, 1933. The Art Institute collection formed the core of the original SAM collection; the Fullers soon donated additional pieces. The Art Institute was responsible for managing art activities when the museum first opened. Fuller served as museum director into

3185-461: The largest category of art museums in the country. While the first of these collections can be traced to learning collections developed in art academies in Western Europe, they are now associated with and housed in centers of higher education of all types. The word gallery being originally an architectural term, the display rooms in museums are often called public galleries . Also frequently,

3250-605: The lobby of the SAM Downtown; The Judgment of Paris (c. 1516–18) by Lucas Cranach the Elder ; Mark Tobey's Electric Night (1944); Yéil X'eenh (Raven Screen) (c. 1810), attributed to the Tlingit artist Kadyisdu.axch'; Do-Ho Suh 's Some/One (2001); and a coffin in the shape of a Mercedes-Benz (1991) by Kane Quaye . The museum returned to the heirs of 1930s French-Jewish impressionist and post-impressionist art dealer Paul Rosenberg

3315-513: The municipal drive for literacy and public education. Over the middle and late twentieth century, earlier architectural styles employed for art museums (such as the Beaux-Arts style of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City or the Gothic and Renaissance Revival architecture of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum) succumbed to modern styles , such as Deconstructivism . Examples of this trend include

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3380-402: The museum has a $ 23 million budget. As a result of the banking crisis, the museum in 2009 lost $ 5.8 million in annual rental and related income from its tenant Washington Mutual . It faced an accumulated debt of $ 56 million dating back from when the museum and Washington Mutual partnered on a new downtown building they intended to share. After the bank was sold to JPMorgan Chase in 2008, it left

3445-477: The museum has recognized and bargained with the SAM VSO Union as the security officers’ collective bargaining representative, and is negotiating with the VSO for the first contract to cover the security officers. Among the museum's notable exhibitions were a 1954 exhibition of 25 European paintings and sculptures from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; these pieces were donated to SAM in 1961. A 1959 Van Gogh exhibit drew 126,100 visitors. That same year, SAM organized

3510-430: The museum with eight floors of office space, at a cost of about $ 5.8 million a year. Help came in the form of grants from the JPMorgan Chase and the Gates Foundation . The museum's endowment for art purchases is currently at less than $ 7.8 million. In 2016, the Seattle Art Museum was the Seattle Art Fair's Beneficiary Partner where it received $ 100,000 from the Opening Night Preview. While the number of visitors has grown,

3575-507: The pattern is more complicated: 346,287 people visited the museum in its first year; in 1978 the traveling exhibit Treasures of Tutankhamun (shown in the facility at Seattle Center ) drew 1.3 million visitors in four months; 2007 attendance was 797,127. In 2010, the exhibition "Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris" drew more than 405,000 and was the museum's most-attended exhibition since it moved to its downtown location from Volunteer Park in 1991. In SAM's history, only

3640-411: The present facilities provide 312,000 square feet (29,000 m) plus a 9-acre (3.6 ha) park. Paid staff have increased from 7 to 303, and the museum library has grown from approximately 1,400 books to 33,252. SAM traces its origins to the Seattle Fine Arts Society (organized 1905) and the Washington Arts Association (organized 1906), which merged in 1917, keeping the Fine Arts Society name. In 1931

3705-410: The public a decade later in 1824. Similarly, the National Gallery in Prague was not formed by opening an existing royal or princely art collection to the public, but was created from scratch as a joint project of some Czech aristocrats in 1796. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is generally considered to have been the first art museum in the United States. It was originally housed in

3770-410: The public display of parts of the royal art collection, and similar royal galleries were opened to the public in Vienna , Munich and other capitals. In Great Britain, however, the corresponding Royal Collection remained in the private hands of the monarch, and the first purpose-built national art galleries were the Dulwich Picture Gallery , founded in 1814 and the National Gallery, London opened to

3835-413: The recently discovered Laocoön and His Sons was put on public display. A series of museums on different subjects were opened over subsequent centuries, and many of the buildings of the Vatican were purpose-built as galleries. An early royal treasury opened to the public was the Green Vault of the Kingdom of Saxony in the 1720s. Privately funded museums open to the public began to be established from

3900-511: The social elite were often made partially accessible to sections of the public, where art collections could be viewed. At the Palace of Versailles , entrance was restricted to people of certain social classes who were required to wear the proper apparel, which typically included the appropriate accessories, silver shoe buckles and a sword , could be hired from shops outside. The treasuries of cathedrals and large churches, or parts of them, were often set out for public display and veneration. Many of

3965-399: The traditional art museum, including industrial tools and handicrafts that encourage imagination in areas traditionally considered mundane. This view of the art museum envisions it as one well-suited to an industrial world, indeed enhancing it. Dana viewed paintings and sculptures as much less useful than industrial products, comparing the museum to a department store. In addition, he encouraged

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4030-492: Was for example dismissed as director of the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) in Berlin in 1933 by the new Nazi authorities for not being politically suitable. The question of the place of the art museum in its community has long been under debate. Some see art museums as fundamentally elitist institutions, while others see them as institutions with the potential for societal education and uplift. John Cotton Dana , an American librarian and museum director, as well as

4095-403: Was founded in 1933. As of 2011 it contained 15,000 book volumes and subscribed to 100 periodicals. It specializes in Asian art. The museum's main collection moved to its present location on First Avenue in December 1991; the museum's original building became the Seattle Asian Art Museum in 1994. The building, a limestone-covered rectangle with a streak of tile and terra cotta around its outside,

4160-447: Was installed outside the museum as part of Seattle City Light 's One Percent for Art program. Hammering Man would have been installed in time for the museum's opening, but on September 28, 1991, as workers attempted to erect the piece, it fell, was damaged, and had to be returned to the foundry for repairs. Hammering Man was used in a guerrilla art installation on Labor Day in 1993 when Jason Sprinkle and other local artists attached

4225-465: Was known as "the American Louvre". University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in the West and East, making it a global practice. Although easily overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in the US alone. This number, compared to other kinds of art museums, makes university art museums perhaps

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