An Evening With SAM

Depending on the piece, I must admit I'm not the biggest art fan. If I can apply it to history, that's when my juices start flowing. When Eileen Lambert invited me to Seattle Art Museum's montly First Thursday though, my curiosity peaked. Virtually everyone I knew had been to First Thursday and I realized my attendance was long overdue. I'm certainly glad I went.

The whole point of heading to SAM was to check out the Australian Aboriginal Art exhibit. As it turned out, that exhibit was the last one we viewed!
I was blown away by the influence of the American Art exhibit. Looking at portraits of influential figures like Dr. Silvester Gardiner (1772) by John Singleton Copley and amazingly well-preserved 18th century furniture, the detail in these pieces were astounding. Viewing a chest of drawers from 1752 made me absolutely gasp. George Washington was still relatively young in 1752! The United States wasn't even a NATION. The description said the chest had only been re-painted once. You can faintly see the original red peering through the more recent baby blue. It's hard to believe these furniture pieces still existed. I'd like to include some photos of the art I'm talking about but I'm pretty sure copyright laws aren't too kind about that.


The Beauty and Bounty: American Art In An Age Of Exploration exhibit was a complete wonder. I fully admit to being immensely naive in the ways of canvas art, but the level of beauty and detail involved in Albert Bierstadt's "Puget Sound On the Pacific Coast" (1870) and Frederic Edwin Church's "A Country Home" (1854) is unbelievable. Not only was I surprised by the quality of these works, but their sheer size was almost too much to comprehend. If you took the largest flat-screen TV on the market and compared the size and width to a couple of these masterpieces, the TVs fail to compare.

The coup de grace was laying my eyes on clay pieces from the Ancient Mediterranean & Islamic Art exhibit, dating back to 1 A.D. and further. Do you understand what 1 A.D. means? Jesus was a year old.

Thanks to Eileen, a great time was had at SAM and I encourage all readers to take a weeknight and check out the history and beauty of SAM's exhibits. Consider your horizons broadened.