Art in Seattle

Among other things, we had a grand old time looking at art in Seattle. The Olympic Sculpture Park was out-of-this-world good--reminiscent of your typical little museum sculpture garden, but on a much larger scale that allowed you to wander at length through interestingly designed landscapes and artworks on a monumental scale (above: tree by Roxy Paine, below huge pieces by Richard Serra and Alexander Calder). 

I also really enjoyed the Seattle Art Museum which was large enough, and had a varied enough collection, to feel really substantial and serious, but at the same time had an intimacy of scale that allowed it to feel manageable for a single morning's visit with a toddler (the car installation below, by Cai Guo-Qiang, was Mabel's favorite thing in the museum, by far).

I particularly admired how old and new were curated there side by side in a way that felt eclectic yet somehow not hodgepodgey (see for instance, below, a painting by Mark Rothko and a room of nineteenth century porcelain).

And the special exhibition up currently, "Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art," was utterly fantastic (below, one of the many stunning paintings in the show--this one by Abie Loy Kamerre).

I really hope it travels and sees a wider reception, though I can find no info one way or the other at the moment as to whether it's meant to do so.

We also stopped by the EMP Museum to check out a show a pal and author of mine curated there of Jim Marshall's photos of the Rolling Stones. The same body of work that's featured in the brand new book (insert shameless self-promotion disclaimer here).