Seattle Art Museum facts for kids
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Earlier entrance to the Seattle Art Museum (prior to its 2007 expansion)
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| Established | 1933 |
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| Location | 1300 First Avenue, Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Type | Art Museum |
| Collection size | 25,000 |
| Visitors | 750,000+ annually (all locations) |
| Public transit access |  University Street station |
The Seattle Art Museum (often called SAM) is a cool place in Seattle, Washington, where you can see amazing art. It's one of the biggest art museums in the area!
SAM has three main locations:
- Its main building is in downtown Seattle.
- The Seattle Asian Art Museum is in Volunteer Park.
- The Olympic Sculpture Park is a big outdoor park right on the waterfront. It opened in 2007.
Contents
A Look at SAM's History
The Seattle Art Museum started small in 1933 with about 1,900 art pieces. Today, it has nearly 25,000! The museum has also grown a lot in size. It started with a building about the size of 25,000 square feet (2,322 square meters). Now, its buildings cover over 312,000 square feet (29,000 square meters), plus a 9-acre (3.6-hectare) outdoor park.
SAM began as the Seattle Fine Arts Society in 1905. Later, in 1931, it became the Art Institute of Seattle.
How SAM Got Started
A very important person in SAM's early days was Richard E. Fuller. In the 1930s, during a tough time called the Great Depression, he and his mother gave $250,000 to build an art museum. The city of Seattle provided the land.
The first museum building opened on June 23, 1933. It was designed in a cool style called Art Deco/Art Moderne. Richard Fuller was the museum's director for many years and never even took a salary!
In 1983, the museum got a big piece of land downtown. They decided to build a new, larger museum there. On December 5, 1991, the new downtown SAM building opened.
Famous Sculptures at SAM
Outside the downtown museum, you can see a giant sculpture called Hammering Man by Jonathan Borofsky. It's a huge figure that looks like it's hammering. It was supposed to be installed earlier, but it fell and got damaged! It was fixed and put up later. In 1993, some local artists even added a big ball and chain to its leg as a joke.
In 1994, the original museum building in Volunteer Park became the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Then, in 2007, the amazing Olympic Sculpture Park opened. The Seattle Asian Art Museum closed for a big update in 2017 and reopened in 2020.
Working at the Museum
In 2022, the museum's security employees decided to form a group called the SAM Visitors Service Officers (VSO) Union. This group helps them talk with the museum about their work conditions.
Cool Art Exhibitions
SAM has hosted many exciting art shows over the years.
- In 1954, they showed 25 European paintings and sculptures from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. These pieces were later given to SAM.
- A Van Gogh exhibit in 1959 brought in over 126,000 visitors!
- SAM also showed the work of Northwest School painter Mark Tobey.
- In 1974, there was a special show for Jacob Lawrence, a famous African American artist who lived in Seattle.
- Leonardo Lives in 1997 featured the Codex Leicester, a rare notebook by Leonardo da Vinci that Bill Gates had recently bought.
SAM's Art Collection
As of 2023, SAM has about 25,000 pieces of art! Some famous artworks you can see include:
- Eagle by Alexander Calder and Wake by Richard Serra at the Olympic Sculpture Park.
- Inopportune: Stage One by Cai Guo-Qiang, which is a sculpture made from cars and lights in the downtown lobby.
- The Judgment of Paris by Lucas Cranach the Elder, painted around 1516-18.
- Electric Night by Mark Tobey from 1944.
- Yéil X'eenh (Raven Screen) from around 1810, made by a Tlingit artist.
- Some/One by Do-Ho Suh from 2001.
- A unique coffin shaped like a Mercedes-Benz car, made in 1991 by Kane Quaye of Ghana.
Returning Art to Its Owners
SAM has worked to return art that was taken unfairly during World War II. For example, the museum returned a painting by Henri Matisse called Odalisque to the family of Paul Rosenberg. This painting had been stolen by Nazis during the war. It was one of the first times an American museum returned art taken during that time.
Museum Libraries
The Seattle Art Museum has two special libraries: the Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library and the McCaw Foundation Library of Art. These libraries have many books and magazines about art.
Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library
This library opened in 1991. It has about 20,000 books. It focuses on art from Africa, modern art, European art, and photography.
McCaw Foundation Library of Asian Art
This library started in 1933. It has about 15,000 books. It specializes in art from Asia.
SAM's Facilities
Main Downtown Building
The main museum moved to its current downtown spot in 1991. The building is covered in light-colored stone with a colorful streak of tile. It was designed by famous architects Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates.
In 2006, SAM started making its downtown building even bigger. The museum now takes up the first four floors of a 16-floor building. This expansion gave SAM 70 percent more space for art! Many new artworks were given to the museum before the expansion.
The downtown museum is often closed for a short time for construction or updates. It was closed from January 2006 to May 2007 for a big expansion.
You can visit SAM's indoor museums for free on the first Thursday of every month. They also offer free admission on the first Saturday of the month. Even on other days, the normal admission is "suggested," which means you can pay what you can afford.
Modern Art Pavilion
After the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, one of the fair buildings became the museum's Modern Art Pavilion. It was used until 1987.
Asian Art Museum
The Seattle Asian Art Museum has been in the original 1933 SAM building since 1994. It's located in Volunteer Park.
Olympic Sculpture Park
The Olympic Sculpture Park is a large, 9-acre (3.6-hectare) outdoor park right on the Seattle waterfront. It's free and open to everyone! It opened on January 20, 2007.
How SAM is Managed
Leadership
Amada Cruz became the director and CEO of the Seattle Art Museum in 2019.
Funding the Museum
The Seattle Art Museum gets most of its money from ticket sales and memberships, not from the government. In 2009, the museum faced some money problems when a company that rented space in its building had to leave. But other groups, like the Gates Foundation, helped out.
How Many People Visit?
Lots of people visit SAM!
- In its first year (1933), over 346,000 people visited.
- A very popular show in 1978, "Treasures of Tutankhamun" (King Tut), brought in 1.3 million visitors in just four months!
- In 2007, almost 800,000 people visited.
- In 2010, an exhibition called "Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris" had over 405,000 visitors. This was the most-attended show at the downtown location since it opened in 1991.
