Links – top ten NW museum Web sites

Web site heights and depths: Seattle happens to have starring entries in the museum Web site heights and depths department. The Henry Gallery is the height: easy to use, rich in institutional depth, generous with images, beautiful and fun. The Seattle Art Museum is its opposite. Not only does it skimp on info/imagery, its graphics are hideously annoying.

Web life matters. Here are the region’s top 10 museums arranged in order of Web merit.

1. Henry. A thing of beauty is a joy forever, or at least until the update. Credit goes to Betsey Brock and her team.

2. Frye Art Museum. Useful, practical and informative. Lacks the Henry’s excitement and drive, but good job.

3. Vancouver Art Gallery. Nearly as good as the Frye’s, but needs more images.

4. Tacoma Art Museum. Dull design but in the game. Again, more images. Art museums are visual storehouses.

5. Bellevue Arts Museum: Considering the resources of this institution, tip top.

6. Portland Art Museum.
Clean design, but not nearly enough information on current shows, never
mind past and future, and flash prevents the site from releasing any
images. Let your images roam free on the Internets!

7. Museum of Contemporary Craft. Competent. Well done.

8. Museum of Northwest Art. Not bad but skimpy. Build it out.

9. Whatcom Museum of History and Art. A placeholder. A shadow of a shadow.

10.
Seattle Art Museum. It’s only last because as the premier art museum on
the West Coast south north of Los Angeles, it should be first. Instead, it’s
dull, unhelpful and withholding to the point of audience hostility.

A strain of malicious, hysterical crazy continues to assert itself in American politics, threatening progressive change. Is the heartland missing its heart? After 8 years of Bush, haven’t these people done enough damage to the world? Obama’s come-let-us-reason-together stance does not appear to be cutting it.

Walter Robinson (not the painter) diagnoses the problem with Cracker:
Time’s running out. Via

Garde Rail moving to Austin: Story here. The folk/outsider gallery owned by Karen Light and Marcus Pina opened in 1998, after the boom in that field had come and gone. Gradually, Light and Pina found a core of artists who are more than me-too and established themselves nationally.

Light, from the South, has been talking about moving to Austin for months. Her husband Pina is from Seattle and, she said, dreaded the heat. Moving in August is not going to assuage his fears. They close in Seattle Aug. 22.

Among the more singular artists they discovered and will continue to represent are Seattle’s Gregory Blackstock and Southern California’s John Taylor. (Click images to enlarge.)

Despite the recession or whatever the country’s economic ruin is currently called, Seattle has lost not a single significant gallery till now, and this one’s a move, not a closure.

Portland, on the other hand, has been hit hard. (See D.K. Row, who wonders if it’s too late to save the Portland gallery scene, here.) Recent closures include Quality Pictures, Pulliam Deffenbaugh and Mark Wooley.