The Importance of Visual Information:
A Tour of Local Art Museums

The Seattle Art Museum is now showing some interesting exhibits in addition to its ongoing shows. International Abstraction: Making Painting Real (through February 29th) features the work of Weimar-era abstractionists and the mid-century American artists they influenced. The View from Here: The Pacific Northwest 1800-1930 (through February 29th) showcases 19th and early 20th Century Northwest artifacts and art by both native and non-native artists.

 Remember, your SAM ticket gets you into the Seattle Asian Art Museum free (within one week). Take advantage of the offer and go to Li Jin: The Feast (through April 11th). Jin, a contemporary Chinese artist, includes his unique calligraphy in his beautiful paintings of people and food. Come to the show to see the massive title piece, a 59 feet long scroll depicting—what else—a feast.

One of Seattle’s arts treasures is the Frye Museum, which features free admission and well-curated exhibits. Now on display is WaterMarks: Tony Foster’s Watercolour Diaries (through February 8th), which the artist painted on location in remote wilderness locations. Foster’s watercolors are fantastically detailed and depict the plants and animals as well as the landscapes he encounters on his treks. Also showing at the Frye is Zhi Lin: Crossing History/Crossing Cultures (through January 25th). In “Five Capitol Executions in China,” the artist portrays the five kinds of executions in a massive scale, depicting each taking place in front of large crowds of people.

If you want to get out of town, drive down to Tacoma to visit the Tacoma Art Museum. Dale Chihuli’s Mille Fiori, a glass garden that fills an enormous space, is closing January 18th. You still have plenty of time to see A Transatlantic Avant-Garde: American Artists in Paris, 1918 - 1939 (through March 28th) before it moves on to Chicago. This impressive exhibit of American Modernism, including works by Man Ray, Alexander Calder, and Isamu Naguchi, features paintings, sculpture, and photography.

When you are done at TAM, cross Chihuly’s Bridge of Glass to the Museum of Glass. The museum doesn’t limit its shows to glass arts. The current exhibits include Moving Through Nature, which is made up of three thematically linked parts, each by a different artist. Michael Kenna: Japan (through March 21st) is a collection of black-and-white photographs. The Visual Poetry of Mayme Kratz and Stacey Neff: Becoming (both through March 7th) each highlight works of sculpture, cast resin and blown glass/mixed media, respectively. Also showing is The Bottom of Heaven: Artwork and Poetry of the Remann Hall Women's Project (through March 14th), which showcases work by young women incarcerated in a Pierce County juvenile facility.

If you are in the mood for a longer road trip, you still have a few weeks left to catch Chagall: Storyteller, on exhibit until February 8, 2004 at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Vancouver, BC. The show focuses on the prints Chagall made to illustrate books. Seeing all 42 color lithographs for Daphnis and Chloe in person is worth the wait at the border.

Finally, if you have any excuse to travel to the Bay Area, several exciting shows are now on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. While most current exhibits are closing in the next few weeks, two will be around for a while. Pirkle Jones and the Changing California Landscape (until April 18th) includes Jones’ and Dorthea Lange’s series of photographs documenting a small California town. Supernova (until May 23rd), a selection of eighty works from the Logan collection, showcases art from the 1990s. Since 1997, Vicki and Kent Logan gifted SFMoMA with more than 300 works of contemporary photography, sculpture, and painting, including works byTakashi Murakami and Damien Hurst, one of the artists shown in the controversial exhibit Sensation at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2000.