Major gift to Seattle Art Museum
Very cool! From the
Seattle Post Intellegencer:
SAM announces gifts of nearly 1,000 works
The Seattle Art Museum today announced gifts to its collections of nearly 1,000 works of art, collectively valued at more than $1 billion and including some of the biggest names of the 20th century.
"We are now a major museum," said Mimi Gates, SAM director. "We were important before, but now, unquestionably, we are major."
Two-hundred of the works will be on display when the expanded downtown museum reopens in early May. When it does, it will be as a fundamentally changed institution.
These gifts from more than 40 collections enrich the museum in all fields, yet the most important as well as the most numerous come in modern and contemporary art, particularly American.
Gates called the gifts -- which include works by Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Willem de Kooning, Alexei Jawlensky, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Alexander Calder, Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti -- the "most significant" ever for SAM.
"At no time in the museum's history have we been able to acquire such work in such depth," she said. "Some gifts are promised and some given outright. All will help establish Seattle as a center for visual art. I'm also excited that we have the space to show them. And we plan to share these gifts (by loan) with other museums in the region. Everyone benefits.
"What I've always loved about the museum is its global perspective. Now we can link our collections and exhibit them in a way that illuminates each and connects them in the contemporary realm."
Richard Andrews, director of the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery, said it was a "landmark moment" in the life of the Seattle Art Museum. "These collections are well known for quality and diversity. With them, the museum significantly advances its prominence on the national scene."
SAM has always been a good museum but now, it is a great one.
Posted by DaveH at March 31, 2007 10:25 PM