The Cascadia Art Museum is an

art museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own Collection (artwork), collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. A ...

Edmonds, Washington Edmonds is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located in the southwest corner of the county, facing Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west. The city is part of the Seattle metropolitan area and is located no ...

, primarily featuring art from the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

region of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The museum opened in 2015 and has a collection of over 200 works.

Location

The museum is located at 190 Sunset Avenue in downtown Edmonds, adjacent to the town's

ferry terminal A passenger terminal is a structure in a port which services passengers boarding and leaving water vessels such as ferries, cruise ships and ocean liners. Depending on the types of vessels serviced by the terminal, it may be named (for example) ...

and

train station A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track and a station building providing suc ...

. It is located inside a former

Safeway Safeway is an American supermarket chain founded by Marion Barton Skaggs in April 1915 in American Falls, Idaho. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and features a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, d ...

grocery store built in the 1960s, sharing the building with several shops and restaurants. Once slated for demolition and redevelopment, it was bought by the Echelbarger family in 2012 to be renovated and modernized for new tenants. The retrofit exposed the building's timber frame and added wood elements sourced from the Pacific Northwest as an expression of the region's eco-consciousness.

History

The idea of a museum for Pacific Northwest art was conceived by Lindsey Echelbarger during the acquisition of the Safeway building in 2012; Echelbarger had been collecting Northwest artists' work for decades prior. The museum opened on September 12, 2015, with an exhibit from the Northwest Watercolor Society. In its first year of operations, the museum hosted six main exhibitions and grew its membership to over 600.

Collection and exhibits

The museum's primary focus is on artwork from the

from 1880 to 1962, either from artists from the area or related to local places and events. Pacific Northwest art from this period, especially the years prior to 1930, has been largely forgotten by museums and collectors according to art historians. The region's artwork, according to curator

David F. Martin David F. Martin is an art historian with a primary focus on female, gay or Asian-American artists. He is an authority on the art of Washington State during the period 1890-1960, and in particular on members of the Seattle Camera Club, and chiefly ...

, differs from the rest of the United States because of influences from Native American and East Asian culture. The museum features five galleries, which are divided into annual and quarterly rotations, and over 200 works that it leases and borrows from other collections. The Cascadia Art Museum has featured works and exhibits from the Northwest Watercolor Society, Peggy Strong, Lance Wood Hart, and Northwest School artists John Matsudaira,

Mark Tobey Mark George Tobey (December 11, 1890 – April 24, 1976) was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophi ...

, and

Morris Graves Morris Graves (August 28, 1910 – May 5, 2001) was an American painter. He was one of the earliest Modern artists from the Pacific Northwest to achieve national and international acclaim. His style, referred to by some reviewers as Mysticism, ...

. The exhibits are curated by David Martin of the Martin-Zambito Fine Art gallery in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

References

{{authority control 2015 establishments in Washington (state) Art museums and galleries in Washington (state) Edmonds, Washington Museums in Snohomish County, Washington Museums of American art Art museums established in 2015