The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) 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 ...

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, Washington, Olympia, and northwest of Mount ...

, United States. It focuses primarily on the art and artists 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 ...

and broader western region of the U.S. Founded in 1935, the museum has strong roots in the community and anchors the university and museum district in

downtown Tacoma Downtown is the central business district of Tacoma, Washington, United States, located in the inner Northeast section of the city. It is approximately bounded east-west by A Street and Tacoma Avenue, and north-south by South 7th Street and South ...

History

The Tacoma Art Museum developed out of the Tacoma Art League, an informal gathering that began around 1891. In the 1930s, it was renamed the Tacoma Art Society, before finally becoming the Tacoma Art Museum in 1964. The museum is dedicated to collecting and exhibiting the visual arts of the American Northwest, with the mission of bringing people together through art. The museum's permanent collection includes the premier collection of Tacoma native

Dale Chihuly Dale Chihuly () (born September 20, 1941) is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is best known in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture". Early life Dale Patrick Chihuly was born on September 20 ...

’s glass artwork, on permanent public display. In 1971, the L. T. Murray family (owners of the Murray Pacific Northwest timber company) gave the Tacoma Art Museum a three-story building at 12th Street and Pacific Avenue. Built in 1922, the building at 1123 Pacific Avenue previously housed the National Bank of Tacoma. In May 2003, the Tacoma Art Museum moved from this location into a new, 50,000 square foot (4,650 m²) building located at 1701 Pacific Avenue, which was designed by Antoine Predock. Nearly twice the size of its previous location, the new $22 million steel and glass structure provided 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) to the museum; it houses the Haub Family Collection of Western American Art. This established Tacoma Art Museum as the only major museum of Western American art of its caliber in the Northwest, and also enabled the museum to fully explore the art history of the West while integrating its Western and Northwest collections. From 2005 to 2017,

Stephanie Stebich Stephanie Antoinette Franziska Stebich (born January 26, 1966 in Mülheim) is a German-born American art historian and curator. Stebich is currently the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Career Born in Ger ...

served as Executive Director. She was preceded by Janeanne Upp and succeeded by David F. Setford.

Curatorial information

The museum exhibits more than 3,000 pieces in its collection, two-thirds of which are classified as Northwest art. Since 1934, Tacoma Art Museum has built a permanent collection that includes work from artists such as

Mary Cassatt Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar De ...

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot ( , , ; July 16, 1796 – February 22, 1875), or simply Camille Corot, is a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast ...

Edgar Degas Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is es ...

Robert Henri Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...

Edward Hopper Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Hopper created subdued drama ...

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...

Jacob Lawrence Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own ...

John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...

, and

Andrew Wyeth Andrew Newell Wyeth ( ; July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) was an American visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century. In his ...

. Nearly seventy percent of the collection consists of works from

Northwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

artists such as

Guy Anderson Guy Anderson (November 20, 1906 – April 30, 1998) was an American artist known primarily for his oil painting who lived most of his life in the Puget Sound region of the United States. His work is in the collections of numerous museums inc ...

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, ...

Jared Pappas-Kelley Jared Pappas-Kelley is an American curator, researcher, and visual artist. He studied at The Evergreen State College, Goddard College and the European Graduate School where he served as Graduate Teaching Assistant for both Jean-Luc Nancy and Paul ...

Akio Takamori Akio Takamori (1950 – January 11, 2017) was a Japanese-American ceramic sculptor and was a faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Biography Takamori was born in Nobeoka, Miyazaki, Japan in 1950 October 11. Th ...

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

Patti Warashina Patti Warashina (born 1940) is an American artist known for her imaginative ceramic sculptures. Often constructing her sculptures using porcelain, Warashina creates narrative and figurative art. Her works are in the collection of the Museum of ...

. ''Untitled -

Stone Wave ''Stone Wave'' occupies the central courtyard of Tacoma, Washington's Tacoma Art Museum and is a major public work by sculptor Richard Rhodes of Seattle, Washington. Completed in May, 2003, the wave is constructed using 650 unique pieces of ant ...

'', a major work by Seattle-based sculptor

Richard Rhodes Richard Lee Rhodes (born July 4, 1937) is an American historian, journalist, and author of both fiction and non-fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''The Making of the Atomic Bomb'' (1986), and most recently, ''Energy: A Human Histor ...

, occupies the central court of the museum. The museum is known as being more open to overtly

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

art than most American museums. In 2012, it presented the ''Hide/Seek'' show that was censored at the National Portrait Gallery; TAM intended to present the show uncensored. The museum also planned to follow with another show curated by

Jonathan Katz Jonathan Paul Katz (born December 1, 1946) is an American actor and comedian best known for his starring role in the animated sitcom ''Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist'' as Dr. Katz. He also is known for voicing Erik Robbins in the UPN/Adult Swi ...

: ''Art, AIDS, America''.

Exhibitions

Permanent Collections

* ''The Christopher and Alida Latham Display'' * ''Dale Chihuly at Tacoma Art Museum'' * ''Metaphor into Form: Art in the Era of the Pilchuck Glass School'' * Martin Blank's ''Current'' * Richard Rhodes' ''Untitled'' * Outdoor Sculptures at TAM

Current Exhibitions

* ''Animals: Wild and Captured in Bronze'' * ''On Native Land: Landscapes from the Haub Family Collection'' * ''Native Portraiture: Power and Perception'' * ''Places to Call Home: Settlements in the West'' * ''Winter in the West'' * ''Painting Deconstructed: Selections from the Northwest Collection'' * ''Benaroya Project Space: Glass as Canvas''

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Art museums and galleries in Washington (state) Museums in Tacoma, Washington Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Antoine Predock buildings 1935 establishments in Washington (state)