🗓️ Friday, March 5-Sunday, August 2, 2026
🕰️ 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays and Friday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursdays
📍 Seattle Art Museum: 1300 First Ave., Seattle
🎟️ $0-$32.99
Urban grit. Wild beauty. Seattle’s history is rooted in its fascinating juxtaposition of industry and nature, inspired by the region’s dramatic landscapes and rapidly changing city.
“Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest” invites you to meet the artists who captured that tension and transformed it into a bold new vision of modernism in the 20th century.
Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson and Morris Graves, the “Big Four” artists of the Pacific Northwest, were labeled “mystics” in a 1953 Life article — meaning their art evoked feelings of spirituality and conveyed “mystical feeling toward life and the universe.”
SAM’s latest exhibition challenges the “mystic” label ascribed to these artists, presenting more than 150 pieces in art styles of social realism, surrealism and abstract expressionism that express the duality of the natural world and city life — and warn of the environmental and social impacts of industrialization.
Inspired by the natural beauty of the Puget Sound region, these local artists brought awareness to environmental and social concerns in Seattle, including the destruction of natural resources and the rise of industrialization.
Among these concerns were clear-cutting/logging, diminished biodiversity, the rapid development of Seattle’s waterfront, the exploitation of the working class and the creation of new housing that displaced communities. Central District, Aurora Bridge and more Seattle landmarks are memorialized in hyperlocal works inspired by Seattle’s rapidly growing urban landscape.
“Beyond Mysticism” also offers a closer look at SAM’s history, spotlighting artists who helped shape the museum through their curatorial and creative direction. Much of the exhibition is drawn from SAM’s permanent collection — and many of these works have never been shown before.
Upcoming SAM events this March:
🎫 As part of the SAM Talks series, SAM’s Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art, Theresa Papanikolas, will lead a discussion and Q&A on the stories behind the “Beyond Mysticism” exhibition on Thursday, March 12.
🎫 Rounding out the SAM Talks series for March, Burmese-American space engineer MiMi Aung will speak to her work on both NASA’s Mars Ingenuity Helicopter and Amazon’s Project Leo as part of SAM’s Asia Society Series on Wednesday, March 18.
With three dynamic locations, Seattle Art Museum has been the center for visual arts in the Pacific Northwest since 1933.
