The Moon, 1864, George Frederic Barker, 1835-1910, albumen print, 16 3/4 x 21 1/8 in., Gift of Eleanor Wallace Hendrickson in memory of her great- grandfather, Thomas Wallace.
Sketches of the Amistad Captives: Grabo, ca. 1840. William H. Townsend, 1822-1851, graphite, 6 1/4 x 4 1/2 in., Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King-Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a Party of the 29th Regt.,1770, Paul Revere, Boston, Massachusetts, 1734-1818, handcolored engraving, 11 1/2 x 9 3/4 in.,
The John Hill Morgan, B.A. 1893, M.A. (Hon.) 1929, Collection.
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IF YOU GO
Where: Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave. (at University Street), downtown Seattle
When: Feb. 26 to May 25, 2009
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus Thursday and Friday, 5 to 9 p.m. Closed Mondays.
Cost: Adults $15, seniors (62 and older) $12, teens (13 to 17) and students (with ID) $9, children 12 and younger free. First Thursdays free for all. Second Fridays, 5 to 9 p.m. free to teens (ages 13 to 19) with ID.
Family Events: Saturday Family Fun programs include gallery tours for kids 12 and younger and a chance to make works of art: “If I Were President” March 14; “Animal Adventures” April 25; “Lookout Landscapes” May 16, all 10 a.m. to noon; free with admission. ARTattack: Teen Night Out has the theme “American Rebels” May 8, 6 to 9 p.m.; free for teens ages 13 to 19 with ID. A Northwest Girls Choir performance showcases music by American composers Thursday, May 7, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.; free for all.
If you’ve got fifth-graders in public schools or other students studying American history, they may already be signed up for the almost-filled school tours for “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Gallery,” now showing at the Seattle Art Museum.
If not, you have a chance to help your kids put a face on American stories from colonial times to 1900. For visual learners whose eyes glaze over during long lectures or extended reading, visiting the exhibit is a chance to make history come alive.
The collection of 230 paintings, prints, early photographs, furniture, silver pieces and ceramics has never before left Yale for the West Coast, and may never come here again. (It’s here because the Yale University Gallery is closed for remodeling.)
The collection is roughly chronological, beginning with some works from the colonial period, including a silver teapot made by Paul Revere. One lesson here: Colonial people were not all alike – see the Puritan man in austere clothing and other people in silver buckles and lots of lace.
The heart of the exhibit is a huge portrait of George Washington and eight depictions of the events of the Revolutionary War period painted by John Trumbull. Weird fact: The artist, a former aide-de-camp in George Washington’s army, idealized the first president and has his bones buried under the portrait in the Yale Gallery (no bones came to the Seattle Art Museum).
In some ways, Trumbull’s paintings are untrue. They are staged scenes meant to be educational and inspirational. For example, the iconic “The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776” shows all the delegates together in one room when they actually stopped by to sign the declaration over a period of weeks. However, as the tiny portraits in the adjoining room show, Trumbull traveled up and down the East Coast and made meticulously accurate paintings of each of the delegates. See if your kids can find Benjamin Franklin. (Hint: he’s the one with bed hair who doesn’t look like any of the others.)
You’ll see glimpses of America’s growth and the expansion West, from accurate portraits of the West Africans who mutinied on the slave ship Amistad (and were eventually acquitted of murder) to country dances, violence on the cattle range, trains moving across the plains and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. The exhibit even includes the earliest pen-and-ink political cartoons by Thomas Nast and an 1864 photograph of the moon. There are prints of early settlements in California, but nothing specifically related to Washington state.
There may be some smaller objects your kids would like to find: a child’s chair, a silver fireman’s trumpet with tiny firefighting scenes engraved on it, a gold rattle with a whistle and bells, and a blue salt holder shaped like a paddle wheel boat.
A small companion exhibit, “George de Forest Brush: The Indian Paintings,” shows another side of the story with 21 rare paintings of indigenous people. They are portrayed in idealized ways, most of them with beautiful birds. The artist felt that both Indians and native birds were being destroyed by the wave of Western European expansion.
Wenda Reed is a Bothell writer and frequent contributor to Seattle’s Child.
