Asian Art Museum takes on bigger role

A work of art is frozen in time, but an art museum is a living entity that can grow and change.

So it is with the Seattle Art Museum, which closed its downtown location at the end of last year for an extensive remodeling project that will nearly double the current museum space. The work will last until late spring of 2007.

Last week the museum shifted its base of operations to one of Seattle’s landmark buildings: the Seattle Asian Art Museum, located in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill.

The Art Deco masterpiece was designed by famed Seattle architect Carl Gould and served as the first Seattle Art Museum. Gould designed many significant buildings, among them the University of Washington’s famed quadrangle of buildings – “The Quad” – in the Collegiate Gothic style, and the Everett Public Library.

The Volunteer Park museum – known as SAAM – opened in 1933 as a repository of Asian art, reflecting the interest of museum founder Richard E. Fuller. It remains the Seattle Art Museum’s showcase for its world-class collection of Asian art, but for the next year and a half, it will be, in the words of museum director Mimi Gates, “the vital center of all SAM’s activities.”

Prior to its temporary starring role as the main museum, SAAM got a new roof with modern skylights that will enhance the visual appeal of the galleries.

These galleries “have a wonderful intimacy and warmth,” Gates said on a recent tour to show off the opening exhibits.

The museum is showing Chinese painting from the 14th to early 20th centuries and an exhibit of Chinese calligraphy including ancient and contemporary work. Also on exhibit is a large display of Asian Buddhist art, including sculptures, paintings, ritual implements and textiles from India, China, Tibet, Korea, Thailand and Japan. The age of the pieces spans more than 2,000 years.

Future shows will include paintings by Northwest masters such as Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, and a display of contemporary art glass.

These shows won’t have the crowd appeal of the museum’s downtown blockbuster exhibits, such as the recent Louis Comfort Tiffany show and 2004’s “Spain in the Age in the Age of Exploration.”

But the opening exhibits represent the best Asian art in the world, and part of the pleasure in visiting SAAM is the building itself, an architectural masterpiece that sits like a jewel amid the sweeping lawns of Volunteer Park.

The elegant building is designed in the art moderne style. Visitors enter the space through a foyer of curving walls trimmed in gilt, with beautifully proportioned display galleries to the left and right and a spacious garden court up the stairs.

The interior was refurbished in the 1990s, and upgrades to the building’s mechanical systems are planned in the near future, preserving SAAM for future generations to discover.

Patrick Young photo

“Autumn Moon at Lake Tung-t’ing,” hanging scroll, ink and light color on paper, Wu Ch’ing-yun, China, d. 1916, Ch’ing Dynasty (1644-1911), part of the University of Michigan Museum of Art collection.

Patrick Young photo

“Red Trees on a Blue Lofty Peak,” hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, P’u Ju, China, 1896-1963, Republic (1212 -), part of the University of Michigan Museum of Art collection.

Sean Kernan photo

Photograph of the Artist, c. 1997, in the “Fragrance of the Past: Chinese Calligraphy and Painting by Ch’ung-ho Chang Frankel and Friends” exhibit.

Paul Macapia photo

The garden court at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Thousand-armed, eleven-headed guanyin from16th century China, bronze with gilt from the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, in the Buddhism exhibition culled from the museum’s permanent collection.