Current Exhibitions at Seattle Art Museum
Installation view of Following Space: Thaddeus Mosley & Alexander Calder, Seattle Art Museum, 2024, © 2024 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society(ARS), New York, photo: Natali Wiseman.
Following Space: Thaddeus Mosley & Alexander Calder
November 20, 2024 – June 1, 2025
Seattle Art Museum
Following Space: Thaddeus Mosley & Alexander Calder features the works of two sculptural visions of American artists, contemporary sculptor Thaddeus Mosley and Alexander Calder, the radical inventor of the mobile. This exhibition examines these two innovative artists in dialogue for the first time, focusing on their distinct approaches to movement, weight, and time. Curated by Catharina Manchanda, Seattle Art Museum’s Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, the exhibition features 17 large-scale wood sculptures by Mosley alongside five iconic works by Calder.
To learn more, click here.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio, photo: Gao Yuan
Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei
March 12 – September 7, 2025
Seattle Art Museum
Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei is the first US retrospective in over a decade of globally renowned Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei. With over 130 works created over the course of four decades, this exhibition is the largest-ever exhibition in the US and offers visitors the opportunity to engage in the conceptual artist’s wide-ranging and thought-provoking body of work. Through performance, photography, sculpture, and immersive installations, Ai critically examines themes of history, power, human rights, and cultural identity.
Organized by the Seattle Art Museum and curated by Foong Ping, SAM’s Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art, this career-spanning exhibition highlights Ai as a provocateur and identifies his key strategies for disrupting artistic canons and challenging political authoritarianism.
To learn more about this upcoming exhibit and related programs, click here.
Current Exhibitions at Seattle Asian Art Museum
Youngsook Park (South Korean, b. 1947), Moon Jar, 2007, porcelain with clear glaze, 20 x 19 1/2 in. (50.8 x 49.5 cm), Gift of Frank S. Bayley III, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2007.86© Young Sook Park. Photo: Susan Cole
Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection
August 28, 2024 – March 9, 2025
Seattle Asian Art Museum
The essence of the Korean term meot encompasses charm, style, elegance, beauty, and creativity, along with highly refined aesthetic sensibilities. Frank Bayley (1939–2022), a generous art patron and distinguished collector of East Asian art along with Western prints and drawings, embodied the philosophy of meot as he appreciated and promoted Korean art and culture. The term describes not only his art collection but also his friendships, particularly with Korean artists. During his lifetime, he gifted 86 works to the Seattle Art Museum, and a significant bequest upon his passing contributed over 280 additional artworks to the museum.
In tribute to Frank Bayley’s generosity and legacy, this exhibition highlights Korean artworks created by seven of his close artist friends, alongside traditional works that he cherished for nearly half a century. Featuring over 60 artworks, including ceramics, calligraphy, paintings, and wooden works, the Meot exhibition illustrates Bayley’s collecting vision: he admired both the continuity and innovation within traditional artworks and contemporary artistic expressions of Korean art. Similarly, the contemporary artists featured in the exhibition explore creativity while delving into Korean identities in their works and practices.
To learn more, click here.
Boundless: Stories of Asian Art
February 8, 2020 – ongoing
Seattle Asian Art Museum
Asia can be defined in many ways, geographically, culturally, and historically. As the world’s largest and most populated continent, Asia is not uniform or fixed: its boundaries shift, its people and cultures are diverse, and its histories are complex. After a transformative renovation, the Seattle Asian Art Museum—one of only a few Asian art museums in the United States—reopens with a presentation that embraces this complexity. You will not find galleries labeled by geography. Instead, works from different cultures and from ancient to contemporary times come together to tell stories about Asia in a non-linear narrative.
The galleries are organized around 12 themes central to Asia’s arts and societies such as worship and celebration, visual arts and literature, and clothing and identity. The south galleries feature art inspired by spiritual life and the north galleries show art inspired by material life. Some objects relate to both the spiritual and material realms and are a testament to art’s layered meanings.
Each artwork tells its own story of when, where, how, and why it was made. But when seemingly disparate artworks are displayed together, meaningful connections and questions emerge. Explore our renowned collection and discover ideas across time and across Asia.
To learn more, click here.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Ai Weiwei: Water Lilies
March 19, 2025 – March 15, 2026
Seattle Asian Art Museum
At nearly 50 feet in length and made from 650,000 LEGO blocks, Ai Weiwei’s Water Lilies (2022) is the artist’s largest and most ambitious LEGO work to date. This reinterpretation of Claude Monet’s iconic triptych from the Museum of Modern Art in New York offers an equally immersive experience, merging the lush beauty of Monet’s water lilies with Ai’s personal history.
Visitors can experience this work—displayed in one long panel on a single wall—up close in the immersive space of an intimate gallery at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. This is the first time this work has been shown in the US; it debuted in 2023 in Berlin at the Neugerriemschneider Gallery.
We look forward to welcoming you to this exhibition soon.
