Tag Archives: museums

In search of inspiration and connection? Check out your neighborhood museums with a Capitol Hill poet

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Wyeth’s Winter 1946 — North Carolina Museum of Art

Baugher

A neighborhood poet wants you to know about the halls of creativity available to you around Capitol Hill.

Capitol Hill resident and poet JanĂ©e Baugher has received the Dorset Prize awarded to an author that “exemplifies innovation, depth, and a unique perspective on the human experience.” Baugher says she gains that perspective from visiting area museums. Fortunately, the area around Capitol Hill has halls rich with beauty and creativity in spaces like the Frye and the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park.

Fellow artists’ works serve as inspiration for her craft, and she describes visual arts as a creative outlet of self expression without having to focus on herself. Baugher’s winning collection, The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles, is inspired by the work of Andrew Wyeth. She feels his art embodies the concept of the shared  human emotional experience. Launching her to the blank page, Baugher has built this collection as a way to answer why and how she’s felt so moved by Wyeth’s work.

A visit to the Philadelphia Art Museum in 2006 introduced Baugher to Wyeth. His works stand out to her for their profound ability to evoke emotion through his use of realism. Wyeth focused on the ordinary people of Pennsylvania and Maine, finding beauty and significance in the everyday.

“I turned to the visual arts as a way of extinguishing the personality,” says Baugher. Viewing Wyeth’s art allowed her to step away and into the greater realm of human emotion. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s Seattle Asian Art Museum expanding hours with Thursday openings

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(Image: SAAM)

Now, we just need Wednesdays. Capitol Hill’s Seattle Asian Art Museum has announced it is adding Thursday openings to its schedule making the Volunteer Park culture and art facility available for public visits four days a week.

The new schedule will begin Thursday, October 5th, SAAM says with the museum open Thursdays through Sundays for visitors. Continue reading →

Faced with the return of Seattle rains and a crumbling sewer, the Museum of Museums is closing its doors on First Hill

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It overcame the pandemic and the city’s red tape but the Museum of Museums will not survive another rainy season in Seattle.

First Hill’s MoM announced it will close on September 1st.

“From the very beginning, when we set out to restore and re-imagine this mid-century medical building as an art center, we knew that our operations would be tied to the building’s capacity to house us,” founder Greg Lundgren said in a letter announcing the closure Thursday. “Over the past 4 years, it has become increasingly apparent that maintaining a 77-year-old building comes with significant challenges.”

According to Lundgren, the old building on Boylston just above Broadway needs expensive repairs.

“Late last winter our plumbing issues came to a head with unfortunate closures of our first floor while our team dealt with days of pumping and hauling gallons and buckets of water out of the building,” Lundgren writes. “After significant investments from both the museum and our partnership with Swedish Hospital, the plumbing issues have only worsened, demanding an investment that neither MoM nor Swedish can undertake.”

No amount of creativity can help when roof drains are connected to the main sewer line and that main line has also collapsed. With the inevitable return of Seattle weather, MoM is shutting down. Continue reading →

‘A medical use’ — First Hill’s Museum of Museums arts venue hits city permitting snag

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(Image: MoM Seattle)

As a classic Capitol Hill arts venue returns to service this weekend, a new venue being shaped out the medical office-filled landscape of First Hill won’t make its planned February debut.

The Museum of Museums project set to repurpose an unused Swedish Health Services office building on First Hill at Boylston and Broadway has hit a permitting snag with the city, the project’s backer Greg Lundgren announced earlier this week:

Due to some late in the game zoning issues on our top floor, we have no choice but to postpone our planned February opening. We are working with the city to find a path forward, and expect to resolve this issue soon. We sincerely apologize to the artists of our first exhibits and supporters of MoM, but please know we are doing everything we can to make MoM awesome and open.

Continue reading →