Tacoma Art Museum

Post-its, artists, ideas

I've been amazed by the level of response we've had from visitors to the museum and to this website to the request to help us build a list of Northwest artists. I've been keeping track of the number of Post-Its added to the "What About...?" wall in the gallery and we're up over 650 at this point--astounding! There's about another month to go for the exhibition (it closes on May 23). Think we'll break 1000?  Thanks also to those of you who have provided names through blog comments.

I just added a whole new group of Northwest artist names to the "What About...?" page on this site but had a few suggestions and names that weren't specifically Northwest that I wanted to capture here. They include:

--an exhibition about cats

--Lynda Barry (amazing cartoonist, lived Seattle for a little while but really a Midwest girl)

--Peter Max

--Vance Tahmahkera

--Fikret Mualla (Turkish artist)

--Steve Hanks

--Gil Elvgren

--Bob Ross (the "happy trees" painter from PBS)

--Koji Suzaki (Japan)

--art about penguins

--an exhibition about mythology in art (greek gods, goddesses, heroes, and monsters)

A cascade of Northwest artists

We had a wonderful crowd for our most recent Third Thursday and they enthusiastically snowed us under in Post-It notes with suggestions of Northwest artists to include on our running list.--193 of them to be exact! There are too many to run as a  blog entry but I will add them to our What About...? page here on the website over the next week.

 

Thanks to all who contributed names! It's an amazing and ever-expanding list and proves how rich this region is in art and artists.

New artwork in the galleries

Just a note to let you know we have changed out some of the work in the Concise History exhibition. Light exposure is hard on works on paper (prints, watercolors, photographs), particularly the older ones, and so we try to limit the amount of time they are on view. We just changed out a number of the older photographs and some of the prints--mostly new work by the same artists but a few new additions. We've also changed the work on the "What About...?" wall to a beautiful charcoal drawing by Native American artist, Julius Twohy (Tuohy). This drawing was recently purchased for the collection and is a significant addition to our sparse holdings in Northwest art of the 1930s.

In our Events Space I've put up a rotation of prints by another important Northwest artist whose work couldn't be squeezed into Concise History. The artworks are by Glen Alps, the innovative printmaker and influential teacher.

From the What About...? wall

Northwest artists

Charles Mulvey

Phillip McCracken

Tammy Nicks (photographer)

Marlene Alt

Nancy Kienholz

Jeffree Stewart (landscapes especially)

Albert and Arthur Runquist (Oregon artists, WPA era)

Frederick Zinn (Tacoma artist, 1940s-1950s)

Others

Eric Carle

Themes

Pacific Northwest art quilts

Metalwork (not jewelry), especially pieces that move

cityscapes