Search for Museums and Paintings

Seattle / United States

Seattle see-AT-əl) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. Seattle is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America. According to U.S. Census data released in 2019, the Seattle metropolitan area's population stands at 3.98 million, making it the 15th-largest in the United States. In July 2013, Seattle was the fastest-growing major city in the United States and remained in the top five in May 2015 with an annual growth rate of 2.1%. In July 2016, Seattle was again the fastest-growing major U.S. city, with a 3.1% annual growth rate.Seattle is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. It is the northernmost large city in the United States, located about 100 miles south of the Canadian border. A major gateway for trade with Asia, Seattle is the fourth-largest port in North America in terms of container handling as of 2015.The Seattle area was inhabited by Native Americans for at least 4,000 years before the first permanent European settlers. Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers, subsequently known as the Denny Party, arrived from Illinois via Portland, Oregon, on the schooner Exact at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The settlement was moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay and named "Seattle" in 1852, in honor of Chief Si'ahl of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. Today, Seattle has high populations of Native, Scandinavian, Asian American and African American people, as well as a thriving LGBT community that ranks sixth in the United States by population.Logging was Seattle's first major industry, but by the late 19th century, the city had become a commercial and shipbuilding center as a gateway to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. Growth after World War II was partially due to the local Boeing company, which established Seattle as a center for aircraft manufacturing. The Seattle area developed into a technology center from the 1980s onwards with companies like Microsoft becoming established in the region; Microsoft founder Bill Gates is a Seattleite by birth. Internet retailer Amazon was founded in Seattle in 1994, and major airline Alaska Airlines is based in SeaTac, Washington, serving Seattle's international airport, Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. The stream of new software, biotechnology, and Internet companies led to an economic revival, which increased the city's population by almost 50,000 between 1990 and 2000. Owing largely to its rapidly increasing population in the 21st century, Seattle and the state of Washington have some of the highest minimum wages in the country, at $15 per hour for smaller businesses and $16 for the city's largest employers.Seattle has a noteworthy musical history. From 1918 to 1951, nearly two dozen jazz nightclubs existed along Jackson Street, from the current Chinatown/International District to the Central District. The jazz scene nurtured the early careers of Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Ernestine Anderson, and others. Seattle is also the birthplace of rock musician Jimi Hendrix, as well as the origin of the bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters and the alternative rock movement grunge.

Seattle Art Museum

Seattle / United States

The Seattle Art Museum is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington. It maintains three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill, and the open Olympic Sculpture Park on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened on January 20, 2007.

Frye Art Museum

Seattle / United States

The Frye Art Museum is an art museum located in the First Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, USA. The museum emphasizes painting and sculpture from the nineteenth century to the present. Its holdings originate in the private collection of Charles and Emma Frye. Charles, owner of a local meatpacking plant, set aside money in his will for a museum to house the Fryes' collection of 232 paintings. The Frye Art Museum opened to the public in 1952 as Seattle's first free art museum. The museum building was originally designed by Paul Thiry, although it has since been considerably altered.Charles Frye's will required that the majority of the Fryes' own collection continue always to be on view in rooms of a certain size; stipulations were also made about lighting conditions and specifically concrete floors . He also required that admission always be free. These conditions were enough to keep the Seattle Art Museum from being interested in his collection.The Fryes' collection consisted entirely of representational works, with a tendency toward "the dark, the dramatic, and the psychological" rather than "the genteel". The museum's permanent collection reflects Charles Frye's relatively conservative artistic tastes, and the museum continued to be dedicated exclusively to representational art, both in its acquisitions and its exhibits. This conservatism reflected the artistic and social values of its first director, Walser Greathouse and of his even more conservative widow and successor Ida Kay Greathouse, who ran the museum until 1993.However, exhibitions under new, professional management in recent years have been far more venturesome, eliciting comparisons to Seattle's Henry Art Gallery. Exhibitions in recent years have included "Subspontaneous: Francesca Lohmann and Rob Rhee," featuring sculptures involving natural forces and ecological growth, "Agnieszka Polska: Love Bite," and "Unsettling Femininity: Selections from the Frye Art Museum Collection." The museum often redeploys its permanent collection, experimenting with exhibiting it in different arrangements. In 2018, the museum had 109,249 total attendees and a membership base of 2,383.In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum temporarily closed for in-person visits and now offers online art viewing and educational opportunities through the Frye From Home program. On August 28, 2020, the museum announced its expectation to reopen for in-person visits in October 2020.

Henry Art Gallery

Seattle / United States

The Henry Art Gallery is the art museum of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it was founded in February, 1927, and was the first public art museum in the state of Washington. The original building was designed by Bebb and Gould. It was expanded in 1997 to 40,000 square feet , at which time the 154-seat auditorium was added. The addition/expansion was designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects.