HOME AWAY FROM ROME
Next week, the Seattle Art Museum opens its new building like it's opening its eyesâremember the darkness of the galleries in the Robert Venturi building? Gone. That's the first difference you'll notice. I'll point out other noteworthies in next week's paper, but if you must visit the new building before 10:00 a.m. on May 5, the retail store (entrance on First Avenue) is humming now. (The restaurant, which features Moroccan spiced carrots and bacon over frisĂ©e, doesn't serve until opening day.)
SAM isn't the only museum with a new wing this spring. Last Friday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York unveiled its atrium for Roman and Greek art, and I happened to be in town. The marble and bronze sculptures seemed to take it personally that the big spring sun came out, becoming animated under the hot light and all the attention.
Thanks to the restoration of the original architectural plans for this wingâit was turned into a light-filled restaurant instead for several decadesâeverything was illuminated: the brawny double Hercules figures, the enormous Sardi column, the maze of the study collection, and the sarcophagus of a couple with a woman whose face was unfinished, probably because her husband preceded her in death and nobody was left to compel the sculptor to finish the job. Everything makes sense now: You walk back in time, through the collection in order, instead of being shuffled off to another part of the museum midway.
SAM has a small collection of ancient Mediterranean and Islamic objects. Various coins of the realms. A marble posthumous bust of the Roman Emperor Claudius in the realistic, wrinkly-skinned style of the time. An Egyptian pair of eyes once inlaid in an Egyptian statue or coffin.
In early 2008, when a show of Roman art from the Louvre arrives, we'll get to see how hospitable SAM's special-exhibition galleries are to ancient art. Seattle artists Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo (known as Lead Pencil Studio, Stranger Genius Award winners) will miss that show. They'll be in Romeâlast week they won the prestigious Rome Prize, which includes 11 months in that city, during which they'll use lidar technology to map some of the great spaces of Rome, including the Pantheon.
DEPARTMENT OF EXTRA-ROMAN AFFAIRS
1. Portland Art Museum stepped up its biennial program and announced it will give out a $10,000 award every two years and curate an authoritative look at all of the Northwest, not just Oregon. Watch out, Tacoma Art Museum, former holder of the NW biennial title, which is heavyweight by definition.
2. TAM's NW biennial closes May 6. Curator Rock Hushka, in addition to sweating over the next edition, is organizing a survey on how visual art has shaped the dialogue about AIDS. Slated to open in 2009, it has been moved back to 2011 or later as the museum looks for touring partners. "It's complicated," Hushka says. It's complicated bringing AIDS and art museums together? I can't imagine. 
