The Seattle Art Museum has laid out its exhibit plans for the next couple of years, beginning with its October blockbuster, "Picasso Masterpieces." The French national Picasso museum in Paris is undergoing renovations, so they're sending much of the collection--Picasso's private stash, mostly--on a worldwide tour: Madrid, Moscow, Helsinki, Seattle. Seattle? Yes, indeed. "This is what we built the museum to do," director Derrick Cartwright told a press luncheon. An extremely ambitioius undertaking, 150 pieces, that requires a couple of "Presenting Sponsors" (Microsoft and JP Moran Chase) not to mention a "major sponsor" (Sotheby's) and a hotel sponsor (the Four Seasons, duh, right across First Avenue).
Cultural tourism is expected to be a windfall for the local economy. The last really big show at SAM (Van Gogh to Mondrian, in 2004) drew nearly 300,000 visitors, a third of them from out of state. The Picasso exhibition is expected to be even more of a visitor magnet.
Arts are big business. Leaving aside sports and movies, the non-profit arts sector generates 8,000 jobs, $175 million in salaries and $28 million in local tax revenues. Another study says the city's 4,000 creative industries generate 20,000 local jobs, making the Seattle area number one in the nation in per-capita arts related businesses and organizations. The related good news is that nearly 5 million people attended an arts event in 2008, spending $120 million in addition to tickets. A third of them were out-of-towners, who dropped over $30 apiece as part of their cultural experience.
But even before Picasso arrives, Kurt Cobain gets his own show. For those who remember the days of grunge and roses, it's an altogether fitting notion that Seattle's most mainstream museum would bring together works that comemorate Cobain's life, music and suffering.
There's more, much more, on SAM's schedule. Read the whole lineup here.
Photo © Estate of Pablo Picasso, courtesy of SAM
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