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Seattle Art Museum
The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, United States. The museum operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park, Capitol Hill; and Olympic Sculpture Park on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened in 2007.
The SAM collection has grown from 1,926 pieces in 1933 to nearly 25,000 as of 2008. Its original museum provided an area of 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2); the present facilities provide 312,000 square feet (29,000 m2) plus a 9-acre (3.6 ha) park. Paid staff have increased from 7 to 303, and the museum library has grown from approximately 1,400 books to 33,252.
SAM traces its origins to the Seattle Fine Arts Society (organized 1905) and the Washington Arts Association (organized 1906), which merged in 1917, keeping the Fine Arts Society name. In 1931 the group renamed itself as the Art Institute of Seattle. The Art Institute housed its collection in Henry House, the former home, on Capitol Hill, of the collector and founder of the Henry Art Gallery, Horace C. Henry (1844–1928).
Richard E. Fuller, president of the Seattle Fine Arts Society, was the animating figure of SAM in its early years. During the Great Depression, he and his mother, Margaret MacTavish Fuller, donated $250,000 to build an art museum in Volunteer Park on Seattle's Capitol Hill. The city provided the land and received ownership of the building. Carl F. Gould of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould designed an Art Deco/Art Moderne building for the museum, which opened June 23, 1933. The Art Institute collection formed the core of the original SAM collection; the Fullers soon donated additional pieces. The Art Institute was responsible for managing art activities when the museum first opened. Fuller served as museum director into the 1970s, never taking a salary.
SAM joined with the National Council on the Arts (later NEA), Richard Fuller, and the Seattle Foundation (in part, another Fuller family endeavor) to acquire and install Isamu Noguchi's sculpture Black Sun in front of the museum in Volunteer Park. It was the NEA's first commission in Seattle.
In 1983 to 1984, the museum received a donation of half of a downtown city block, the former J. C. Penney department store on the west side of Second Avenue between Union and Pike Streets. They eventually decided that this particular block was not a suitable site: that land was sold for private development as the Newmark Building, and the museum acquired land in the next block south. On December 5, 1991, SAM reopened in a $62 million downtown facility designed by Robert Venturi. The next year, one of Jonathan Borofsky's Hammering Man sculptures was installed outside the museum as part of Seattle City Light's One Percent for Art program. Hammering Man would have been installed in time for the museum's opening, but on September 28, 1991, as workers attempted to erect the piece, it fell, was damaged, and had to be returned to the foundry for repairs. Hammering Man was used in a guerrilla art installation on Labor Day in 1993 when Jason Sprinkle and other local artists attached a 700 lb (320 kg) ball and chain to the leg of the sculpture. In 1994, the Volunteer Park facility reopened as the Seattle Asian Art Museum. In 2007, the Olympic Sculpture Park opened to the public, culminating an eight-year process. In 2017, the Seattle Asian Art Museum closed for a two-year $54 million renovation and expansion project. The museum reopened February 8, 2020.
In September 2021, employees of Seattle Art Museum called for a boycott of the museum for policies they claim unfairly target unhoused people. Soon after, in October 2021, SAM Director and CEO, Amada Cruz, signed onto a letter on behalf of the museum in support of increasing the city's police budget. The letter also advocated for subsidized security for nonprofit institutions, despite the recent termination of SAM's contract with Star Protection Services due to employee misconduct and the continued opposition of staff and community members.
On January 7, 2022, the visitor service officers filed to unionize in partnership with IUPAT 116. In May 2022, security employees voted to form an independent union, the SAM Visitors Service Officers (VSO) Union. The National Labor Relations Board certified the SAM VSO Union as the security officers' representative on June 8, 2022. Since then, the museum has recognized and bargained with the SAM VSO Union as the security officers' collective bargaining representative, and is negotiating with the VSO for the first contract to cover the security officers. The VSO Union began a strike in March 2025 due to the stalled negotiations and demands for higher wages, improved benefits, and a union security clause in the contract. The wage increase since the union formed in 2021 had been described as insufficient for the region's rising cost of living.
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Seattle Art Museum
The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, United States. The museum operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park, Capitol Hill; and Olympic Sculpture Park on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened in 2007.
The SAM collection has grown from 1,926 pieces in 1933 to nearly 25,000 as of 2008. Its original museum provided an area of 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2); the present facilities provide 312,000 square feet (29,000 m2) plus a 9-acre (3.6 ha) park. Paid staff have increased from 7 to 303, and the museum library has grown from approximately 1,400 books to 33,252.
SAM traces its origins to the Seattle Fine Arts Society (organized 1905) and the Washington Arts Association (organized 1906), which merged in 1917, keeping the Fine Arts Society name. In 1931 the group renamed itself as the Art Institute of Seattle. The Art Institute housed its collection in Henry House, the former home, on Capitol Hill, of the collector and founder of the Henry Art Gallery, Horace C. Henry (1844–1928).
Richard E. Fuller, president of the Seattle Fine Arts Society, was the animating figure of SAM in its early years. During the Great Depression, he and his mother, Margaret MacTavish Fuller, donated $250,000 to build an art museum in Volunteer Park on Seattle's Capitol Hill. The city provided the land and received ownership of the building. Carl F. Gould of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould designed an Art Deco/Art Moderne building for the museum, which opened June 23, 1933. The Art Institute collection formed the core of the original SAM collection; the Fullers soon donated additional pieces. The Art Institute was responsible for managing art activities when the museum first opened. Fuller served as museum director into the 1970s, never taking a salary.
SAM joined with the National Council on the Arts (later NEA), Richard Fuller, and the Seattle Foundation (in part, another Fuller family endeavor) to acquire and install Isamu Noguchi's sculpture Black Sun in front of the museum in Volunteer Park. It was the NEA's first commission in Seattle.
In 1983 to 1984, the museum received a donation of half of a downtown city block, the former J. C. Penney department store on the west side of Second Avenue between Union and Pike Streets. They eventually decided that this particular block was not a suitable site: that land was sold for private development as the Newmark Building, and the museum acquired land in the next block south. On December 5, 1991, SAM reopened in a $62 million downtown facility designed by Robert Venturi. The next year, one of Jonathan Borofsky's Hammering Man sculptures was installed outside the museum as part of Seattle City Light's One Percent for Art program. Hammering Man would have been installed in time for the museum's opening, but on September 28, 1991, as workers attempted to erect the piece, it fell, was damaged, and had to be returned to the foundry for repairs. Hammering Man was used in a guerrilla art installation on Labor Day in 1993 when Jason Sprinkle and other local artists attached a 700 lb (320 kg) ball and chain to the leg of the sculpture. In 1994, the Volunteer Park facility reopened as the Seattle Asian Art Museum. In 2007, the Olympic Sculpture Park opened to the public, culminating an eight-year process. In 2017, the Seattle Asian Art Museum closed for a two-year $54 million renovation and expansion project. The museum reopened February 8, 2020.
In September 2021, employees of Seattle Art Museum called for a boycott of the museum for policies they claim unfairly target unhoused people. Soon after, in October 2021, SAM Director and CEO, Amada Cruz, signed onto a letter on behalf of the museum in support of increasing the city's police budget. The letter also advocated for subsidized security for nonprofit institutions, despite the recent termination of SAM's contract with Star Protection Services due to employee misconduct and the continued opposition of staff and community members.
On January 7, 2022, the visitor service officers filed to unionize in partnership with IUPAT 116. In May 2022, security employees voted to form an independent union, the SAM Visitors Service Officers (VSO) Union. The National Labor Relations Board certified the SAM VSO Union as the security officers' representative on June 8, 2022. Since then, the museum has recognized and bargained with the SAM VSO Union as the security officers' collective bargaining representative, and is negotiating with the VSO for the first contract to cover the security officers. The VSO Union began a strike in March 2025 due to the stalled negotiations and demands for higher wages, improved benefits, and a union security clause in the contract. The wage increase since the union formed in 2021 had been described as insufficient for the region's rising cost of living.