Not long after the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park opened on the waterfront, visitors expressed their enthusiasm by patting the flanks of various artworks as if they were nervous horses.
SAM doesn’t want anybody touching the art, be it inside a building or on the grass. It’s a museum, after all, and art museums exist to protect art, then to share it, but first to protect it, and not just from sledgehammers. Unless built to withstand them, smudges matter.
SAM got a fair share of press (here) and performance art ridicule (here) for its keep-your-hands-to-yourself policy. But museums are like that, which is why Over The Net And On The Table art bloggers Jim and Mary Barr were sure alarm bells were about to ring when a father helped his child use Gabriel Kuri’s sculpture as a slide in Mies Van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin:
Until we noticed a guard smiling benevolently. Later we found out that all this was pretty much what Kuri intended. But kids, don’t try this on a Donald Judd.
A friend e-mailed to ask why SAM doesn’t have anything like this at the park. The answer is, it does, and SAM’s version is more interesting.
Also in the park, McMakin’s “Love & Loss” is an installation that spells out its title in benches with white tables, winding pathways, a partially painted living tree and a rotating, red neon ampersand. Without spending a dime, visitors can kick back on a little lettering to watch a red connective as it glows against the blue waters of the Puget Sound.