Marie Watt Studio

Ideas about the American West, both in the popular imagination and in commonly accepted historical narratives, are often based on a past that never was, and fail to take into account important events that actually occurred. “The West” can conjure images of rugged colonial settlers, gun-toting-cowboys, or vacant expanses of natural beauty. Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea offers multiple views of “The West” through the perspectives of forty-eight modern and contemporary artists. Their artworks question old and racist clichés, examine tragic and marginalized histories, and illuminate the many communities and events that continue to form this region of the United States. The exhibition explores the specific ways artists actively shape our understanding of the life, history and myths of the American West.

This exhibition highlights objects created with the utmost consideration for sound as a material in its own regard. Visual mediums of painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and installation are presented to either mirror or complement recorded, imagined, or live sounds. A “stereo” image artwork ensues.

“How We Live: Part II” is a rolling exhibition offering new surprises and unexpected connections at this moment in history, on-line access to an expanded “How We Live” exhibition that takes stock of how the narratives incorporated into artists’ works bespeak universal fears, concerns, and celebrations of who we are as human beings, as Americans, as part of a global community.

The cultivation of kinship with the living world is the foundation for Sharing the Same Breath. The exhibition brings together nine artists who consider the world’s complex web of relations through artworks that emphasize human, nonhuman, and interspecies forms of kinship and connectivity. These relationships are explored through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, photography, drawing, video, film, and installation. Together the works form a kincentric viewpoint that challenges narratives of human exceptionalism and encourages us to regard our symbiotic relationship and shared fate with our more-than-human family with greater attention and care.

For the first time in 15 years, the Seattle Art Museum presents a new installation of its American art galleries, reinterpreting its historical collection to meet the present moment. The result of an extensive collaboration among SAM curators, staff, artists, and community advisors, American Art: The Stories We Carry brings SAM’s historical American art collection into conversation with its Native art collection, its modern and contemporary art collection, a gallery curated by artist Inye Wokoma, and new commissions by artists Wendy Red Star and Nicholas Galanin.