About SAM

The Seattle Fine Art Society, the parent institution of the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), is founded.

The Fine Art Society is renamed the Art Institute of Seattle under the presidency of Carl F. Gould, an architecture professor at the University of Washington. The Institute continues searching for a permanent facility while staging exhibitions at various venues.

The president of the Art Institute of Seattle, Dr. Richard E. Fuller, and his mother, Mrs. Margaret E. MacTavish Fuller, offer the City of Seattle $250,000 for a museum building. The city agrees to service and maintain the building if the Fullers and the museum accept responsibility for its construction, operation, and collection. Construction begins on an Art Deco structure, designed by Carl F. Gould of Bebb and Gould in Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park.

The Seattle Art Museum (formerly the Art Institute of Seattle) opens its doors to the public on June 29, and attendance during the first day of operations surpasses 33,000. In its first year the museum hosts 346,287 visitors; the city’s entire population is around 365,000. The art on display includes the Fullers’ collection of Asian art, highlighted by Chinese jades and ceramics, complemented by examples of Japanese, Korean, and Indian art, as well as changing exhibitions of living Northwest artists.

Asian art scholar Sherman E. Lee arrives to serve as assistant director, bringing treasured works of Japanese art to SAM and helping ​acquire the Samuel H. Kress Collection of European paintings for the museum during his tenure.

The Seattle World’s Fair, held at Seattle Center, brings a heightened artistic awareness to Seattle and a greater appetite for modern art, paving the way for more diverse displays of art at SAM.

On June 6, the museum officially opens the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion at the Seattle Center as an active venue for modern art and other changing exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition is The Responsive Eye, an Op Art exhibition assembled by William Seitz of the Museum of Modern Art and sponsored by SAM’s Contemporary Art Council.

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

Exhibition activity at the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion ramps up after the founding of the modern art curatorial department in 1975.

Treasures of Tutankhamun, shown at the Flag Pavilion at Seattle Center, forever alters the museum’s profile, increasing staff and placing new emphases on exhibitions and publications. The six-month show attracts nearly 1.3 million visitors. The exhibition’s popularity and financial success fuel the plans and preparations for a permanent downtown facility.

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

Jonathan Borofsky’s 48-foot-tall Hammering Man is commissioned by the City of Seattle with the support of the Seattle Art Commission’s 1% for Art program, the Virginia Wright Fund, and the Seattle-based group PONCHO—Patrons of Northwest Civic, Cultural, and Charitable Organizations. Though officially part of the City of Seattle’s art collection, Borofsky’s large-scale sculpture is positioned at the entryway to the new Seattle Art Museum and quickly becomes a symbol of the museum.

The new building downtown, designed by Robert Venturi, opens its doors on December 5 and hosts over 10,000 visitors on the first day. John H. Hauberg donates his celebrated collection of Northwest Native art, forming the foundation of the museum’s holdings in Native American art. The Volunteer Park building closes for renovations.

The rededicated Seattle Asian Art Museum opens on August 13 with a day of festivities that includes tours, folk art workshops, and performances by local dance and music groups, bringing more than 6,000 visitors to the museum. The new space allotted for Asian art allows for many more of the approximately 6,000 Asian art objects to go on display.

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 c​ampaign that will eventually raise $22​0 million with more than 10,000 gifts—the largest cultural fundraising campaign in the history of the city of Seattle.

Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi of Weiss/Manfredi Architects are selected as lead designers for the Olympic Sculpture Park. Jon and Mary Shirley donate Alexander Calder’s The Eagle (1971), a landmark 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.

The Olympic Sculpture Park opens in January as downtown Seattle’s largest green space, highlighted by stunning works of modern and contemporary art. The opening of the new Seattle Art Museum in 2007 unveils a striking expansion designed by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture, doubling the museum’s public and exhibition space. The reopening in May welcomes more than 32,000 people during a 35-hour marathon opening weekend.

SAM celebrates its 75th anniversary with an ambitious art acquisition initiative. The results: over 1,000 gifts (full, partial, or pledged) from more than seventy donors bring the​ collection to nearly 24,000 objects.

SAM acquires 85 works from the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection that together raise the profile of the museum’s modern and contemporary art collection to an unprecedented level. Echo, a dramatic 46-foot-tall sculpture by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa donated by Barney A. Ebsworth, transforms the shoreline of the Olympic Sculpture Park.

SAM celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Olympic Sculpture Park and the downtown expansion. The Seattle Asian Art Museum closes for renovation and expansion.

SAM breaks ground on the renovation and expansion of the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s historic building.

The newly renovated and expanded Seattle Asian Art Museum opens to the public on February 8.