Results tagged “museum”

The current owner of Jimi Hendrix's childhood home has the little house resting on a foundation in a Renton mobile home park across the street from the musician's grave. Next week, however, is the final deadline for the owner, Pete Sikov, to come up with money, a plan, and a convincing argument for how he can meet City of Renton requirements to renovate the house appropriately; otherwise, he'll have to tear it down.

Around 8 a.m. today, you may have noticed Lake Union looking a little more weepy than usual--and for good reason. That was when the beloved Wawona, a really old schooner, moved to the dry docks on other side of the lake in order to begin the slow death of dismantlement after some 30 years beautifying the waterfront. Decades-long efforts to raise enough money to renovate the ship finally lost steam in the march towards creating a more perfect Union. (Har, har.) All this shippy hullaballoo reminds us of the Kalakala debacle. Apparently the Kalakala is now scheduled to be restored in 2010, potentially to be converted into a future museum site; has owner Steve Rodrigues considered purchasing the Wawona as well? It could be a really cool, touristy floating bar!

"SAM Seattle Asian Art Museum" by David Hogan

ANTIOXIDANTS WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL: Cherie Calbum might not, upon further examination, go that far. But she's really, really, really excited about the possibilities of making and drinking one's own juice--and about sleeping away your pounds, and about coconut as the secret ingredient to everything good in life (we agree with her on that last part). Head over to Town Hall to see what all the fuss is about; who knows, maybe you'll have a fruit combination epiphany that will improve your weekend smoothies exponentially.

TEXAS TEA: For legal reasons we never visit West Seattle, but ArtsWest is putting on the political satire Black Gold, winner of the 2008 Smith Prize for Best New Play, and it sounds like something to see. It opens tonight, so tell us how it is.

CHARITABLE INDULGENCES: If you're not too hungover from tonight's couture cocktails with Jack Mackenroth at Product Runway, something beautiful involving imported beer and fine Scotch is happening in Fremont both tonight and tomorrow: the HopScotch Spring Beer and Scotch Festival. The festival's a benefit for NW Folklife, so think of your purchase of extra tequila tastings as an act of springtime charity.

Last Friday we got a chance to poke our noses into the Northwest African American Museum before it opened, as part of a test lunch group for the St Clouds Museum Cafe. The Museum is in the historic Colman School, at 23rd and Massachusetts. It's historic now, that is -- back when we lived across the street, on 25th, it was condemned, boarded up, and left a home for pigeons, until a group of black activists arm-wrestled the city into letting them do something with it. Upstairs there are two floors of "affordable" rental units (studios are $620) for artists, historians, teachers, and anyone else with a good reason to make their home above the Museum.

This is the coolest collection of random, old Seattle photos we’ve ever stumbled upon while not working at work. For anyone who can’t imagine 3rd and Pine before crack, or the masochistic liberal who wants to marvel at a time when people would have paraded massive, old growth firs down the street in celebration, this is your time capsule.

The intrepid and dedicated bloggers over at My Ballard.com have been providing nearly minute-by-minute coverage of the Seattle Landmark Preservation Societies vote on the old Denny's building on 15th and Market. According to their pain-staking notes, around 6:30 the board's final vote of 6 to 3 in favor of landmark status, was met by gasps and cheers by supporters in the audience. The vote means that the building cannot be demolished and replaced by condos which were already planned for the space.

It's the first Thursday of February, which means that the Seattle Art Museum is open "After Hours," and entrance is free. Their Art for All musical guest is okanomodé, and provokes this cross-pollinated promotional copy:

Melding composition, style and genre with the skill of Basquiat blending color, okanomodé spins song into frenzy and makes magic with his tongue.

Francophiles attending the Beaujolais Nouveau gala in Bellevue Friday will have the chance to bid on more than a dozen travel packages (tickets to Paris? ho-hum...) as well as some rare and valuable works of art. An original lithograph by the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is likely to draw the most interest.

Stand at the corner of First and Pike, and you almost hear the thunder of Seattle's hotel wars, the howitzers of the future as they battle for attention in the trades, the travel mags, the lifestyle glossies.

While our colleagues in Houston wonder "whether the public might actually learn something about early human history from Lucy's exhibition," we're with the Smithsonian on this one. Unlike old, fragile museum pieces of art, Lucy is still an active scientific subject, despite her deadness. As Slate points out, there's still research that can be done with her frail old bones. We thought of a treasure near and dear to our country's heart--the Declaration of Independence--and how, when it has gone on tour, solely copies have been used. (In some cases, "rare original copies" were used, a phrase which will make our brain hurt for at least a few days.) And then we ran across this:

The International Association for the Study of Human Paleontology, a group affiliated with UNESCO, passed a resolution in 1998 saying such fossils shouldn't be moved outside the country of origin. The resolution, unanimously approved by representatives of 20 countries, including Ethiopia and the United States, said replicas should be used for public display.

Some people like going to the Eatonville Pioneer Farm Museum to see the genuine 1880s cabin. For others, it's the chance to participate in the craft instructions or walk the nature trail.

We finally made the (arduous!) four-block trek down to the Frye to check out "Anxious Objects: Willie Cole's Favorite Brands." The exhibit highlights the last 20 years of Cole's work, heavy on the mixed media sculptures he's famous for. Cole takes ratty, disposable, everyday domestic objects and transforms them into pristine pieces that mimic symbols from South Asian and African art: scorched ironing boards become Domestic Shields, detached gas pump nozzles arc up from the floor like vipers ready to strike, and hundreds of thrift store high-heeled shoes transform into masks and dragons and mandalas. Cole's understanding of the forms and symbols at work in African and South Asian art shines through everything; the shapes and styles he evokes are spot on, no matter the medium. We had no idea irons could be so sexy.

It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by poop. Finally D.C. contemplated taking Vermont's place as a state and marveled at the GOP lessons learned from the "Macaca Moment."

Oh, the Northwest New Works Festival is back this weekend and it's promising to be another fantastic installment of our favorite annual creative mindfuck. This year’s festival offers 4 showcases, featuring 18 artists and performance groups and spanning two weekends at On the Boards.

National film festival correspondent Kyle Anderson on Seattle's other one

It seems every blogger in the Pacific Northwest is singing the praises of the Seattle Art Museum after their reopening. It'd be fun to be the contrary voice that slams the whole affair but really, we don't have it in us - we loved the SAM this weekend as well, so chalk this one up in the "yay" column.

But let's not lose sight of another change that's proved another vast improvement: Pentagram's reworking of SAM's brand identity.

There will be plenty to see, do, and hate tomorrow, here is a guide—although we’ll probably end up sleeping in, before re-organizing our photo albums.

SATURDAY: In addition to talks and tours, you and the kids can see live demonstrations of wood carving, drum-making, and weaving at the Opening Day Celebration for In the Spirit of the Ancestors, the Burke Museum's new exhibit of contemporary Northwest Coast Native art.

--Northwest stocks weren't immune from yesterday's stock downturn. The market is up so far, though.

Austinist gets arty with an interactive guide to SXSW, loved some local art galleries and a new art exhibit and lamented the possible loss of "Friday Night Lights" production to New Mexico.

Carl Hancock Rux's No Black Male Show is presented as an anti-performance. The audience is introduced to its three players as a distraught Rux announces that there will be no show tonight despite having learned their lines. The show (obviously) continues, but it provides a sense of unease for the audience, immediately drawing them in.