Kids Rock @ SAM

In case you have any younger siblings or just want to participate in this fun, family-friendly event!

Mark your calendar for Saturday, May 15, when SAM Downtown will be filled with live music, art making, karaoke, photobooths, kids gallery tours, face-painting, dancing and more! Catch theSeattle Public Schools student art show, plus SAM’s new exhibitions on Kurt Cobain and Andy Warhol. Come dressed as a rock star to make the day more FUN! Special Performances 11 am — Caspar Babypants Noon — Harmonica Pocket 12:30 pm — Andy Warhol Organ Karaoke 2 pm — Breakdancing by the Vicious Puppies Crew Family Festivals are FREE and open to the public. Children 12 and under get into the galleries FREE with adult Museum admission by parents and guardians.

Date: 5/15/2010

Time: 10 am–3 pm

Location: SAM Downtown, 1st Ave. & Union St.

Gay Pride Month Films: Gods and Monsters

The Seattle Art Museum salutes Gay Pride Month with three outstanding films on June 13, 20 and 27 that explore the gay image in mainstream cinema. In Gods and Monsters, Ian McKellen portrays the aging James Whale, director of Frankenstein, whose eye for male beauty remains undimmed. Directed by Bill Condon, 1998, with Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave. In color, 105 min.

Watch the trailer:

June 27, 2008
7:30 p.m.
Plestcheeff Auditorium
$7 for everyone, sold day of show at the auditorium, cash only.

Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past

While defining the specific characteristics that, in its time, made Impressionism provocative and new—a focus on everyday subjects, spontaneity, luminosity, loose brushwork—Inspiring Impressionism launches an in-depth exploration of the links between the Impressionists and the major European art historical movements that preceded them.

Beneath the Impressionists’ commitment to capturing contemporary life, there lay a deep exploration of the art of the past, as well as of their more recent early-19th-century predecessors. The Impressionists learned from art historical sources by making painstaking oil copies executed at such museums as the Louvre. These copies, as well as drawings and sketchbook studies by the Impressionists, are shown with the Old Masters works they copied.

The exhibition then unfolds into a series of subject groups—portraits, still lifes, landscapes, interiors and nudes—with specific comparisons drawn between Impressionist works and the art of the past, as well as broader connections related to issues of subject, composition and technique. These thematic groupings are punctuated with small dossier sections on three artists who drew most heavily on art historical sources: Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne.

June 19–September 21, 2008
SAM Downtown