Scenes from My Seattle Shuffle

Here are some aperçus from my visit to the expanded Seattle Art Museum that didn't make it into yesterday's Wall Street Journal article (probably for good reason):

Seattle's venerable peep-show palace (above) took credit for what had been erected directly across the street. SAM's environs are---how shall we put it?---a "neighborhood in transition." Vagrants and bankers pace shoulder to shoulder. Pawnshops and cut-rate discount joints are in close proximity to this:

The new Four Seasons luxury hotel and condominium complex, rising (above) on the corner of Lusty Lady's side of the street, will occupy land that had been owned by the museum. Collector/donors Bagley Wright, honorary chair of the museum's capital campaign, and his wife Virginia, a SAM trustee since 1959, will be taking up residence there.

Taking up residence in the cozy nooks of SAM's façade were some pesky pigeons (including the one nestled in the rectangular niche, above). "We'll have to call the pigeon consultant again," sighed architect Brad Cloepfil, when I mentioned my avian sighting.

Here (above) is the the first view visitors get of the galleries, as they step off the escalator. As I described it in my WSJ article: You find yourself somewhere in the middle of the contemporary installation, at the Pop stop. Straight ahead, you are literally confronted by what appears to be a stop sign, except that it says "Go" ---a work by Iain Baxter. Your eyes are immediately drawn past that sign to the spotlit presence, through a doorway at the far end of the gallery, of one of SAM's star acquisitions---John Singleton Copley's "Dr. Silvester Gardiner."

If, when ascending to the galleries, you look to your right instead of straight ahead, you see the component of the new building that most causes architect Cloepfil to cringe---the white translucent railings that fence in the overlooks to lower floors throughout the museum. Cloepfil wanted these transparent, to enhance the feeling of continuity and flow, and to allow dramatic views, such as the sight of Cai Guo-Qiang's careening cars. (You can barely glimpse the nose of a Ford in this photo.) For SAM, it was a housekeeping issue: The translucent railings are easier to keep clean than fingerprint-smudged clear glass.

Photo by Eduardo Calderón

Above is the improbable "wow" space of the museum: a porcelain room, of all things. In seismically challenged Seattle (watch out below those cars!), every bit of crockery had to be fitted into an earthquake-resistant mount. The pieces are arranged by color and theme, not by period or geography, but a catalogue in the room provides visitors with details about each object.

I hope to revisit Seattle in future posts: Maybe I should provide more substantive reactions!