SAM at 75: Building a Collection for Seattle

Seattle Art Museum
Seattle WA – May 5-Sep 9, 2007

Cai Guo-Qiang, Inopportune: Stage One (2004), cars and sequenced multi-channel light tubes [Seattle Art Museum, WA, May 5-Sept 9]

The Seattle Art Museum reopens this spring after a major expansion of the downtown building. Exciting programming for 2007/08 includes an exhibition of 16th - 19th Century Japanese Art from the Kobe City Museum, a Gaylen Hansen retrospective, Roman Art from the Louvre and a major exhibit of Coast Salish Art.

The inaugural exhibit, SAM at 75: Building a Collection for Seattle, features new acquisitions and gifts in honour of the Museum’s upcoming 75th anniversary. Approximately 200 pieces will be featured in the galleries and also integrated within the new presentation of the permanent collections. 

When entering the block-long public space of the new SAM building, impressive installations by Cai Guo-Qiang can be viewed on the first and second floors. On the ground level is Inopportune: Stage One, a nine-car piece meant to re-enact a Ford Taurus somersaulting through the air. Each suspended vehicle represents a moment in time, like stills from a video. Colourful flashing LED lights give the piece a theatrical tone that adds to the experiential element of the work. In an adjacent gallery, a video work by Guo-Qiang entitled Illusion depicts a car exploding in Times Square, New York. The actual burned car used in the creation of the piece accompanies the video for a heightened sense of reality. Both of these works are part of SAM’s recent acquisitions and can be viewed in the free public spaces of the new expansion.

Five Masterpieces of Asian Art: The Story of their Conservation, is also on view as part of SAM at 75. The display features new conservation techniques used on recently conserved Japanese and Korean works.

www.seattleartmuseum.org

Allyn Cantor