 Childe Hassam | 'Masterworks' at Seattle Art Museum: a look at the future? - Published in Seattle Times, November 14, 2014. Make that two shows that SAM has mounted in the past year in the category of “Preview of Coming Attractions…. We Hope!” Both exhibitions (“European Masters: Treasures of Seattle” in 2013, and “American Art Masterworks”, now on view) spotlight heretofore-unsuspected works by A-List artists that turn out to be quietly biding their time in Unnamed Local Collections, the type of show that is typically one of the steps in the complicated mating dance that museums employ towards being gifted art they could never afford to acquire on their own. (To put things in perspective, there are 26 privately-owned older American paintings in the current show; in past few decades, SAM has purchased perhaps a half-dozen similar pieces.) |
