Tacoma Art Museum

Tacoma Art Museum
Established 1963 [1]
Location 1701 Pacific Avenue
Tacoma, WA 98402 (United States)
Type Art museum [1]
Director Stephanie A. Stebich[2]
Curator Rock Hushka
Website Tacoma Art Museum

The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is a museum in Tacoma, Washington emphasizing art and artists from the Northwest and broader western region.

Named by USA Today as one of the “Top 10 Great Places to See Art in Smaller Cities,” the museum has developed a reputation for presenting art in a thought-provoking yet accessible manner with a strong commitment to Northwest art through its acquisition and exhibition programs. Founded in 1935, the museum has strong roots in the community and anchors Tacoma’s lively downtown university and museum district.

History

The museum was founded by a group of volunteers in 1985 and has since grown to become a world model for regional, small-sized museums. The museum is dedicated to exhibiting and storring Northwest art, with the mission of bringing people together through art. The museum’s permanent collection includes the premier collection of Dale Chihuly’s glass artwork on permanent public display.

The museum opened at its current location on May 3, 2003, when it moved from a former bank building that was built in 1920. Nearly twice the size of its previous location, Tacoma Art Museum’s $22-million Antoine Predock-designed structure provides the space to exhibit more of the permanent collection. In designing the building, Predock drew inspiration from the region’s light, its relationship to the water, the neighborhood’s industrial history and character, Mount Rainier, the Thea Foss Waterway, and the surrounding structures in what is now known as the Museum District.

Completed in November 2014, an additional $15.5-million building project has added approximately 16,000 square feet (1500 m²), and houses the new Haub Family Collection of Western American Art. This collection establishes Tacoma Art Museum as the only major museum of Western American art of this caliber in the Northwest. It also enables the museum to fully explore the art history of the West while integrating its Western and Northwest collections.

Curatorial information

The museum exhibits more than 3,000 pieces in its collection, two-thirds of which are classified as Northwest art. Since 1935, Tacoma Art Museum has built a permanent collection that includes work from artists such as Mary Cassatt, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Edgar Degas, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Robert Rauschenberg, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, John Singer Sargent, and Andrew Wyeth.

Nearly seventy percent of the collection consists of works from Northwest artists such as Guy Anderson, Morris Graves, Jacob Lawrence, Jared Pappas-Kelley, Akio Takamori, Mark Tobey, and Patti Warashina.[1][3][4]

Untitled - Stone Wave, a major work by sculptor Richard Rhodes, occupies the central court of the museum.

The museum has gained some note for being more open to overtly gay or queer art than most American museums. In 2012, it will present the Hide/Seek show that was censored at the National Portrait Gallery; TAM will present the show uncensored, and will follow it two years later with another show curated by Jonathan Katz, Art, AIDS, America.[5]

References

Coordinates: 47°14′51″N 122°26′12″W / 47.2475°N 122.4368°W / 47.2475; -122.4368

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