Booty time: gifts to SAM in honor of Mimi Gates

Any museum director (and plenty of curators) who leave the job to
applause gets presents for the institution. Mimi Gates has earned her
share.

In her 14-year tenure as director of the Seattle Art Museum,
Mimi Gates, 66, guided guided SAM through a major expansion as
well as the opening of a waterfront sculpture park, what John Walsh,
former director of the Getty Museum, called her “benign, beautiful land
grab.” 
She came to Seattle after 19 years at the Yale University Art Gallery,
seven-plus of those years as its director.

With
a doctorate in Chinese art history, her background is art rather than
business. Under her tenure, however, the museum has been successful on
both fronts. When she announced her retirement last year, Walsh said:

It
helps if you’re a fundamentalist, and she is. She believes in the
basics of building the collections and mounting serious exhibitions.
Expansions are great and nobody has done it better than she has, but
she proceeds from sound museum ideas.

Future plans include starting a Center for Asian Art and Ideas at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

(Photo of Gates with Richard Serra by Joshua Trujillo/P-I. All other images from SAM.)

Today SAM announced a list of 20 gifts donated in her honor.

Highlights:

Pine and Rock and Lotus and Ducks,
1690s
Bada Shanren (Zhu Da)
Chinese, 1626-1705 Set of two hanging scrolls; ink on satin; 172 x 43cm
each.
(The Gates Foundation Art Acquisition Fund, backed by Gates’ step-son
and step-daughter-in-law, Bill and Melinda Gates, contributed to this
gift.)

St. Sebastian Tended by St. Irene, ca. 1638-39
Attributed to Georges de La Tour and studio, oil on canvas; 42 x 55 7/8 inches.

Left, Awelye Women’s Ceremony, 2006 Abie Loy, acrylic on linen; 102 x 152 cm.
Right, Number 2, 1949, 1949 Clyfford Still, oil on canvas; 91 ¾ x 68 7/8 in.

Both
gems, but I believe that collections from which they derive are already
in the bag, the Loy from Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan, and the Still
from Jane Davis (now Lang) and the late David Davis.

 

Full list here. It’s as wide as art itself, in tribute to the breath of Gates’ interests.

Curious that there are no fish. Here’s the lead of a profile I wrote in 2005. I would have gone on in this gory vein, but back then I had editors.

When an engine failed in an old military helicopter riding low in a
mountainous region of Mongolia, Mimi Gates was huddled with female
friends on benches in the chopper’s rear. As the second engine started
to sputter, they continued to observe their version of the golden rule:
no complaining.

They remained calm even after the pilots began trading insults, then blows.

Under these circumstances, the landing was lucky, but the near-death
experience nearly a decade ago did not derail the trip. Ranging in age
from mid-40s to early 80s, none insisted on the solace of a good hotel.

Instead, they hopped on a replacement helicopter and continued to
camp out. Two nights later, Gates was hip-deep in a river near the
Russian border, pursuing the elusive taimen, a monstrous member of the
salmonid family.

Because of a full moon, she could clearly see streams of furry
creatures swimming across the river. Occasionally, one would squeak as
it was pulled under. The taimen were feeding on rats. Undeterred, Gates
continued to try to land fish that had just dined on rat.

The woman isn’t squeamish.

P.S. Bad
idea: SAM also announced that the bridge in the Olympic Sculpture Park spanning railroad tracks that is host to Teresita Fernandez’ Seattle Cloud Cover will be named the Mimi Gates Bridge. What? Nobody’s going for that. The bridge is already known as Seattle Cloud Cover, a title used ironically, as those clouds are from Miami. Let the artist have the bridge. It’s hers already.