TeenTix Blog Museum Tour

Arguably one of the most famous glassblowers in the world, Seattleite Dale Chihuly is known for pushing the boundaries of glass with his unique style and incredible skill. From intricate sculptures of sea life to grandiose chandeliers, Chihuly Garden and Glass invites the public into Chihuly's world of glassblowing artistry in a truly beautiful and unique way.  

The journey through the museum was truly an adventure, in the way that each turn brought something completely new. Each exhibit had its own unique atmosphere, showcasing the glass art in a different way. The Sealife room centered a huge sculpture representing the Puget sound surrounded by smaller pieces of different underwater elements. The Chandelier room showcased detailed colorful sculptures hanging from the ceiling, each one different from the next. Winter Brilliance highlighted clear, spiky pieces manipulated by colorful lights, conjuring the image of icicles in the winter sun. The variety shown throughout really highlighted Chihuly's versatility as an artist, as well as the versatility of the medium. Glass is essentially a clear, blank canvas, but he brought it to life through shapes and color, conveying complex meaning and sparking emotion in every piece. Winter Brilliance. Photo by Donovan Olsen.

Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism at the Seattle Art Museum is a visual feast that highlights the importance of food during a period of evolving national values in France. I was drawn to Farm to Table by my love of farmers markets, French culture, and Impressionism.  As an editor for the TeenTix Newsroom, I was lucky enough to attend the press preview, which turned out to be a perfect mix of my interests: half art lesson and half history lesson. The exhibit of more than 50 Impressionist paintings and sculptures by artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Eva Gonzalès shows how food became a defining symbol of French history, identity, and pride following the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. I was fascinated by this inextricable link between food and culture, which feels just as relevant today as it was in 19th-century France.

On show now through January 18, 2026, Farm to Table is a traveling exhibit organized by The American Federation of Arts and The Chrysler Museum of Art. It has been adapted for presentation at SAM by curator Theresa Papanikolas, who led the press preview along with co-curators Lloyd DeWitt and Andrew Eschelbacher. Filled with details about French history, the tour helped me fully grasp the meaning behind each painting. Papanikolas started by explaining how Charles-Émile Jacque’s The Shepard and His Flock serves as a nostalgic depiction of farming before industrialization—a theme repeated throughout the exhibit. Meanwhile, DeWitt and Eschelbacher highlighted different connections like the link between French writer Émile Zola’s novel The Belly of Paris and Victor Gabriel Gilbert’s The Square in Front of Les Halles, which depicts the famous food markets Zola wrote about. After the tour, I had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with the exhibit curators, who thoughtfully answered all my questions about Impressionism. As DeWitt pointed out the subtle details and beautifully captured light in Étienne Prosper Berne-Bellecour’s The Remains of the Meal, I found myself sharing his enthusiasm. The beauty of the exhibit’s paintings can only be fully appreciated in person. The Gleaners, 1887, Léon Augustin Lhermitte, French, 1844-1925, oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 37 3/4 in., Philadelphia Museum of Art, The George W. Elkins Collections, 1924, E1974.4.19, Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and American Federation of Arts.

Whether you know it or not, you’ve certainly seen Keith Haring’s art. From being plastered on the subways of New York in the ‘80s to the classic motifs of his featured on brands like Converse and Uniqlo today, it’s no doubt that Haring is a household name, despite the tragic brevity of his career; Haring unfortunately passed away at 30 from complications due to AIDS, only 10 years into his career. The Museum of Pop Culture recently presented a special exhibition called Keith Haring: A Radiant Legacy, with over 240 pieces of his artwork on display, as well as selections from Haring’s personal art collection and work from his close friend and inspiration Angel Ortiz. The exhibit is a thorough, comprehensive overview of the artist’s life, if sometimes improperly structured. 

The first room acts as a landing depot, transporting you straight into the ‘80s.  Cyndi Lauper plays as you walk around the first room and read about Haring in his childhood, early career and life as an art student. Haring’s work is famously recognized for its iconic lexicons, so it’s no surprise that the exhibits start with the early forms of his classic figures, such as his Smiling Face, an iconic early piece which appears in many iterations throughout the gallery. The first room provides context needed to appreciate the rest of his featured work, and elaborates on his signature styles through the three sections of the gallery. Keith Haring: A Radiant Legacy. Photo courtesy of MoPOP.

Resisters: A Legacy of Movement from the Japanese American Incarceration is an unintentionally misleading gallery. The impersonal nature from which history is often told is drastically subverted in this exhibit, featured at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience from October 14, 2022, to September 17, 2023. The gallery is a special exhibition designed by Scott Méxcal, written by Tamiko Nimura, and developed by Mikala Woodward. The exhibit is structured similarly to a maze, where you—placed into the shoes of Japanese Americans facing these aggressions—are led through the passage of time without being able to anticipate what will come up next.

Stories in history that are fraught with tragedy are often dulled down into easy, comprehensible individual values when they are retold. Retellings frequently pick and choose their facts simply by virtue of being a retelling. It would be impossible to cover every single event without meticulously recreating it step by step, as some parts are naturally lost over time. To only cover the certain pieces of the exhibit that remain would be an injustice to all the stories left untold—and to cover the entire exhibit as if it is a holistic record of internment camps would do the same. Instead of picking and choosing a few specific stories, this exhibit and review ask the viewer to put themselves through the experience of internment and view each possible story offered through their own lens. You can hear the recorded testimonies throughout the exhibits echoing through history, just as the exhibit is set up as a timeline that prevents you from seeing what's left to come.

Let's start from the vantage point of a bug. Imagine the sheer scale of everything never before acknowledged—the foundations of the environment around, where the very roots of the buildings around you are anchored. Even in this scenario, it is tempting to focus on the central character of the bug. However, after visiting From the Ground Up: Black Architects and Designers at the Museum of History and Industry, this perspective may be shifted into one that is not typically adopted. The exhibit asks, what parts of your surroundings have you brushed past in noticing? Who was integral to the existence of these surroundings?

As David Adjaye said, "Buildings are deeply emotive structures which form our psyche. People think they're just things they maneuver through, but the make-up of a person is influenced by the nature of spaces." The exhibit itself was presented overlooking Lake Union with the information laid out in placards, which lent an integrated feel to the exhibit—seemingly a conscious choice, as a note by the window asks the viewer to consider their own surroundings more thoughtfully. The pieces were varied but characteristic of the works typically found at MOHAI, though this exhibit was a bit more information-dense than others, which made fully understanding it a longer endeavor. There were rows designating specific architects and their contributions, as well as institutes that these architects contributed to, which organized information presented in a clear, chronological order. There was also an interactive element where children could create their own buildings, and several video stations within the exhibit. From the Group Up, photo courtesy of MOHAI

Equal parts enthralling and bewildering, your queries will spiral as you immerse yourself in Donna Huanca’s MAGMA SLIT. Transporting the viewer from the mundane reality of Seattle traffic and tedious routine, Huanca provides a reprieve from the ordinary, casting the viewer into a cathartic land of discovery. Residing in the Henry Art Gallery, MAGMA SLIT consists of four expansive paintings depicting each season, bringing life to their formerly inanimate white backdrop. These paintings emerged from an array of digitally printed photographs from Huanca’s life, which were stitched together and transformed into the paintings. Huanca coated these foundations with vivid strokes of paint, hues primarily corresponding with their associated seasons: warmer tones depicting summer, cooler ones characterizing winter, and a flurried blend of both expressing the transitory seasons of spring and fall. Echoed with hints of life, these paintings display glimpses of the photographs of people and natural textures concealed within them, providing a real life connection between the audience and Huanca’s abstract world.

In the middle of the exhibit lies a stage. Down the center, a line of six steel sheets with alternating reflective and opaque sides create a transcendent mirror effect. This allows you to simultaneously view slivers of the paintings behind you, before you, and even catch glimpses of yourself. Cast against the vibrant settings of the paintings, viewers are further immersed in Huanca’s surreal world by becoming part of it. This deepens the viewer’s connection with the exhibit through encouraging them to relate Huanca’s pieces to themselves. Donna Huanca, Installation view of Donna Huanca: MAGMA SLIT, 2022, Henry Art Gallery, University of Seattle, Washington. Photo: Jonathan Vanderweit courtesy of the Henry Art Gallery.

MoPOP, formerly known as The EMP, has always been the epicenter for all things pop culture, art, and music in Seattle and is constantly showcasing art in innovative ways. Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop is no exception. This exhibit features four decades of hip-hop through film and digital photography, giving visitors a chance to know what photos didn’t make it onto classic album covers and magazine spreads while overall celebrating the culture and craft that is hip-hop.

Rickey Powell’s work welcomes me at the entrance, a magnificent glowing wall with some of Powell’s original slides from the 80s and 90s. Seeing familiar faces like rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy and TV host Oprah excited me for the work ahead. Throughout the first space of the exhibit, contact sheets (a preview of all the images on the roll of film), framed prints, and magazine spreads tell magnificent stories. It was at this moment that I understood “visual history” to be a completely accurate description of the exhibition.