Washington: Tacoma museum to debut Western American art collection

The Tacoma (Wash.) Art Museum debuts its new Western American art collection in November in a new wing that doubles its gallery space.

The collection’s 295 pieces, which spans two centuries, includes familiar artists such as Thomas Moran and Frederic Remington and contemporary ones including Native American painter Kevin Red Star.

Designer Tom Kundig created a horizontal building for four new galleries with screens that adjust light and evoke the history of the West, including Native American longhouses and railroad boxcars. (Tacoma was the terminus for the Northern Pacific Railroad that connected the Midwest to the West Coast.)

“This building does what new museums do, opening themselves up to the life of the street ... leaving the ‘locked box’ behind,” says Stephanie A. Stebich, museum director. Natural light fills the first gallery, which holds bronze sculptures of cowboys, Native Americans and wildlife figures, she says.

Among the highlights of the other galleries are an 1826 full-length portrait of a Native American chief by Charles Bird King; a 1907 landscape titled “Green River, Wyoming,” by Thomas Moran; “Pinons With Cedar, a 1956 work by Georgia O’Keeffe.

And there’s a classic portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart that was once owned by his nephew. “George Washington comes home to the state,” Stebich says as explanation of how the first president fits into the Western art theme.

The Haub Family Galleries in the new wing are named for Erivan and Helga Haub, who donated their considerable art collection to the museum in 2012. The museum spent almost $16 million on the wing that took just one year to build.

The museum founded in 1935 welcomes about 80,000 to 100,000 visitors a year, Stebich says. The new collection is expected to boost that number by about 20,000 annually.

The new collection debuts Nov. 15. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. the third Thursday of the month.

Info: Tacoma Art Museum, (253) 272-4258