1931

1933

1941–1942

War brings the threat of danger to Seattle: 650 important works from the collection are removed from Seattle and transported to Denver for safekeeping until the end of World War II.

1944

The museum hosts its first large-scale traveling exhibition, India: Its Achievements of the Past and of the Present.

1948

Asian art scholar Sherman E. Lee arrives to serve as assistant director. He will bring treasured works of Japanese art to SAM and will acquire the Kress Foundation collection of European paintings for the museum.

1951

Mrs. Donald Frederickson donates one of SAM's most beloved treasures of Japanese art—the early 17th-century Deer Scroll.

1953

The museum hosts an exhibition of Japanese treasures sent to the United States by the Japanese government as a good will gesture.

1959

Drawn from the private collection of Van Gogh's nephew, the special exhibition Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh sets attendance records with 126,110 visitors. A Mark Tobey retrospective, celebrating the Northwest master, is organized by SAM and features 224 objects. The show tours museums in Portland, Colorado Springs, Pasadena and San Francisco in the following months.

1962

The Seattle World's Fair raises the visibility of the museum and suggests its potential for the future. In 1964 two World's Fair pavilions at Seattle Center are combined to create a SAM branch facility for temporary exhibitions.

1969

The National Council on the Arts (later the NEA), the Seattle Foundation (which Dr. Fuller helped to found), the City of Seattle and Dr. Richard Fuller finance the acquisition and installation of Isamu Noguchi’s Black Sun in front of the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park. It is the NEA’s first commission in Seattle.

1974

The museum hosts its first retrospective of the work of American master Jacob Lawrence. Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, moved to Seattle in 1970; they will live and work here for the next thirty years.

1976

Exhibition activity at the Modern Art Pavilion ramps up after the founding of the modern art curatorial department in 1975. In 1976, Museum Week celebrations include a visit from Andy Warhol concurrent with an exhibition of Warhol portraits.

1978

The exhibition Treasures of Tutankhamun opens. Its extraordinary success—nearly 1.3 million visitors attended the show at Seattle Center—spurs the idea for a new SAM in the city’s downtown.

1981

By an extraordinary combination of private philanthropy and corporate support, the SAM collections expand with an unexpected gift of African art from collector Katherine C. White and through the support of the Boeing Company.

1990

Jonathan Barofsky’s giant Hammering Man is commissioned by the city in anticipation of the opening of the new SAM downtown.

1991

On December 5, the new downtown museum, designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, opens its doors. The collections now include the first works of Northwest Coast Native art, donated in the same year by trustee John Hauberg.

1994

The original art deco building in Volunteer Park reopens to the public as the Seattle Asian Art Museum. More than 6,000 visitors celebrate the opening on August 13, 1994.

Mimi Gardner Neill (Gates) is named director of SAM. She remains the director upon SAM’s 75th Anniversary, having led the institution through the creation of the Olympic Sculpture Park, the downtown expansion, renovations to the Seattle Asian Art Museum, dozens of special exhibitions and thousands of new acquisitions.

1997

More than 236,000 visitors view the special exhibition Leonardo Lives: The Codex Leicester and Leonardo da Vinci's Legacy of Art and Science, which spotlights the last Leonardo manuscript in private hands in the world.

1999

SAM, in partnership with the Trust for Public Land, raises $17 million for the purchase of future sculpture park property on Seattle’s waterfront. Jon and Mary Shirley endow the park with a $20 million gift that will allow the park to be free to the public; they name the park the Olympic Sculpture Park. This is also the beginning of a Capital Campaign that will eventually raise $180 million with more than 10,000 gifts—the largest cultural fundraising campaign in the history of the city of Seattle.

2000

Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi of Weiss/Manfredi Architects are selected as lead designers for the Olympic Sculpture Park. Also, Jon and Mary Shirley donate Alexander Calder’s The Eagle (1971), the first art acquisition for the future Olympic Sculpture Park. Until the sculpture park is finished, The Eagle rests in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

2007

The Olympic Sculpture Park opens in January as downtown Seattle’s largest green space, featuring stunning works of modern and contemporary art.

The new and expanded Seattle Art Museum Downtown reopens in May, welcoming more than 32,000 people during its 35-hour marathon opening weekend. The expansion, designed by Portland-based Allied Works Architecture, gives the museum almost double the amount of space, and a partnership with Washington Mutual Bank allows for future growth. 

2008

The Seattle Art Museum’s 75th Anniversary is celebrated with an ambitious art acquisition initiative. The results: over 1,000 gifts (full, partial, pledged or intended) from more than seventy donors, bringing the permanent collection to close to 25,000 objects.

2009

After 15 remarkable years, director Mimi Gardner Gates retires.

Executive Director at the San Diego Museum of Art, Derrick R. Cartwright, is chosen as the Seattle Art Museum’s new Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director following an international search.

2010

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris breaks SAM’s record for the most popular exhibition in the history of the Seattle Art Museum, attracting more than 400,000 visitors (PDF) and boosting its membership to an all time high of 48,000 during its showing in Seattle, October 8, 2010 through January 17, 2011.

2011

Catharina Manchanda, former Senior Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, joins SAM as the Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

2012

In February, 2012, SAM hosted the only U.S. stop for Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise. This landmark exhibition drew more than 183,638 visitors, during its run from February 9–April 29, 2012.

After an extensive international search, Kimerly Rorschach is chosen as the Seattle Art Museum's new Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director. Since 2004, Ms. Rorschach served as the Mary Duke Biddle Trent and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.