Seattle Art Museum

The Seattle Art Museum is a major cultural institution in the North American city of Seattle. It was founded in 1931 by the Seattle Fine Arts Society under the leadership of Richard Fuller. The first building opened in 1933 in an Art Deco-style structure designed by Carl F. Gould and Charles Bebb. The original collection consisted of just under two thousand works of art, which grew through numerous purchases and donations over the decades to around 23,000 objects today. During World War II, parts of the collection were evacuated to Denver as a precaution to protect them from wartime damage. After the war, the museum gained increasing recognition and attendance through major touring exhibitions, including one on Indian art and later the famous show on the treasures of Tutankhamun.

In 1991, the museum moved into a new building in downtown Seattle, designed by architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. The historic Art Deco building has housed the Seattle Asian Art Museum since 1994. Another highlight is the Olympic Sculpture Park, which opened right on the waterfront in 2007 and serves as the museum's outdoor space. The extensive collection spans artistic eras from antiquity to the present and includes works from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Oceania. You can admire paintings, sculptures, ceramics, textiles, and decorative arts objects. Highlights include works by American painters such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Mark Tobey, European classics by Lucas Cranach the Elder, as well as Asian Buddha figures and African ceremonial masks.

The museum is known for its groundbreaking special exhibitions, which regularly draw international attention. The 1959 Van Gogh show set an attendance record, and the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition attracted more than 230,000 visitors in 1997. The collection continues to grow, including through the acquisition of the Kress Foundation's European paintings and donations of Native American art from the Northwest Coast. Today, the Seattle Art Museum combines the presentation of historical art with contemporary perspectives, offering you a diverse look at the history of art around the world.