Seattle Art Museum Presents Retrospective Of Boundary-Breaking Artist Joyce J. Scott
SEATTLE, WA – The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) presents Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams (October 17, 2024–January 19, 2025), the summative career retrospective of one of the most prolific and boundary-breaking artists of our time. The exhibition features over 140 works from the 1970s to the present, including beadwork, sculpture, textiles, jewelry, printmaking, and performance, reflecting how Scott has upended hierarchies of art and craft over her 50-year career. Her work confronts racism, sexism, classism, and what she calls “all the ‘isms’ society offers” through impish and audacious humor, expressions of beauty, and a humanistic engagement with global events.
Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams is co-organized by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) and co-curated by Catharina Manchanda, SAM Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Cecilia Wichmann, BMA Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, with support from Leslie Rose, former Joyce J. Scott Curatorial Research Assistant. The exhibition was on view in Baltimore from March 24 through July 14, 2024.
“This virtuosic retrospective opened in Scott’s hometown of Baltimore, where her work captivated scores of visitors and was lauded by national press. We look forward to sharing it with Northwest audiences,” said co-curators Manchanda and Wichmann. “Whether about trauma or transcendence, her work tells stories with deep concern and care. For Scott, art is the vehicle to bring people of different generations together and build understanding while respecting difference. Beauty and biting irony are her preferred tools to help make people more receptive to humane ways of seeing and thinking.”
“It’s thrilling to share Joyce J. Scott’s dazzling work with SAM audiences,” says Scott Stulen, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. “Her singular voice and vision kicks off a compelling fall season at the Seattle Art Museum, as we show the work of three celebrated Black artists of three different generations. A month after we open this retrospective, we debut At Sea, the solo show of Bethany Collins, the 2023 winner of the Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize, and then Following Space, which places the large-scale wood sculptures of Pittsburgh artist Thaddeus Mosley in dialogue with Alexander Calder as part of our ongoing Calder at SAM initiative. Through their incredibly varied practices, these artists reflect a full spectrum of artistic excellence.”
Scott has embraced her identity as an artist and performer since childhood. At home in Baltimore, her mother, the artist Elizabeth Talford Scott (1916–2011) taught her to sew and express herself creatively. Scott considers this knowledge her inheritance: both the specific techniques and aesthetic traditions carried across generations by enslaved people from Africa to the Americas and the awareness of her own life’s potential as part of a continuum. In the 1970s, Scott began what would become a lifelong commitment to artistic learning and engagement with global cultures. Her extensive travels have taken her to many countries, including Mexico, Cuba, Peru, Mali, Senegal, Scotland, South Africa, Thailand, and Italy, where she connected with local artisans and community members through a shared embrace of textiles, beads, and glass. As a result, Scott’s work has responded to global events—including the AIDS crisis, South African apartheid, and American police brutality—and served to memorialize personal and collective transformations and traumas.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams brings together artworks from public and private collections from around the US. The exhibition reflects Scott’s deep ties and personal history in the city of Baltimore as well as her ties to the Seattle region, through her residencies at venues such as Pilchuck Glass School since 1992. The exhibition features three works from SAM’s collection: a major sculpture—War Woman III, 2014/19— acquired by SAM in 2020; seven prints from Scott’s Soul Erased portfolio (1999); and Untitled (necklace) (1992–1996). The latter are both recent gifts to the collection.
The exhibition is organized in ten thematic sections, with pivotal works reflecting the artist’s cyclical return to motifs and materials over time as she brings forward new ideas and fosters dialogue to support personal healing and critical social change. Additionally, it includes an expansive array of archival materials and photographs drawn in part from Scott’s personal collection.
Exhibition highlights include:
∙ Works debuting for the SAM iteration of the exhibition: Buddha (Fire and Water) (2013), a loan from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; the sculpture Yellow Submarine (2006); and an expanded selection of six prints from the artist’s 2012 Obama print series.
∙ A new large-scale commission titled The Threads That Unite My Seat to Knowledge (2024), which gathers heirloom family quilts to honor generations of makers in Scott’s family and create a storytelling environment within the exhibition.
∙ A fashion vignette featuring expressive garments Scott made for herself and friends beginning in the 1970s, and sculptural necklaces such as What You Mean Jungle Music (necklace) (1987) and Hunger (necklace)
(1991) that bridge performance and sculpture, showing how wearing difficult truths can incite conversations about social justice.
∙ Significant examples from iconic cycles of work reunited for the first time in many years, including Scott’s Mammy/Nanny series of the 1980s–90s, riffs on the watermelon trope such as Man Eating Watermelon (1986), and works from her Still Funny series confronting American history and racial violence in the US and around the world.
∙ Ephemera and rare performance footage that bring to life Scott’s earliest performances with Robert Sherman (late 1970s), her legendary Thunder Thigh Revue act with Kay Lawal-Muhammad (1985–90), and solo theater pieces such as Generic Interference/Genetic Engineering (1988–95) and Walk a Mile in My Drawers (2006).
∙ A gallery devoted to a communal weaving project that echoes Scott’s improvised performances from the 1970s and invites a new generation to discover this art form. Visitors may participate any time, and the loom and tables will be periodically activated by local teaching artists.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Joyce J. Scott (b. 1948, Baltimore, MD) earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a Master of Fine Arts from the Instituto Allende in Mexico. In 2018, she was awarded an honorary fellowship from New York University and honorary doctorates from Maryland Institute College of Art and the California College of the Arts; in 2022, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. Her work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including major solo shows Joyce J. Scott: Harriet Tubman and Other Truths at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ (2018); Joyce J. Scott: Truths and Visions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2015); Maryland to Murano: The Neckpieces & Sculpture of Joyce J. Scott at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2014-15); and Joyce J. Scott: Kickin’ It with the Old Masters at the BMA (2000). She has received commissions, grants, awards, residencies, and honors, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2016), Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for the Arts (2010), Anonymous Was a Woman (1997), and Smithsonian Visionary Artist Award (2019), among others.
PROGRAMS AND INTERPRETATION
In conjunction with the exhibition, SAM offers a dynamic lineup of programs and interpretative experiences for all audiences.
∙ On Friday, October 18, the museum hosts SAM Open House, a recurring after-hours series that’s free to all and features programs related to the exhibitions on view. This edition offers tours, demonstrations, and art-making exploring glass art to coincide with Refract, a festival celebrating Pacific Northwest glass artists.
∙ Docent tours will be offered throughout the run of the exhibition. ∙ An audio guide, available via smartphone, features Joyce J. Scott reflecting on her work and key themes of the exhibition along with seven conversation partners, many of them her friends.
∙ A SAM Soundtracks playlist features songs selected by Joyce J. Scott. Available on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music.
∙ A conversation guide, produced by the Baltimore Museum of Art, available online and in person, will be a “guide for grown-ups visiting with kids” to the exhibition, offering a resource for exploring the more challenging themes of Scott’s art as well as its beauty and joy.
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
A fully illustrated 288-page catalogue—co-published by SAM and BMA and distributed by Yale University Press—is available for purchase in person and online at SAM Shop ($60). Also titled Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams (ISBN: 978-0300276206), it offers a critical resource on the richness and complexity of Scott’s work through new scholarship, artist reflections, and vital out-of-print source materials. In addition to an introduction by Manchanda and Wichmann, the publication features two thematic interviews with the artist by Dr. Leslie King Hammond, Dean Emeritus of the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Essays on key aspects of Scott’s work are contributed by scholars Tiffany E. Barber, Angela N. Carroll, Henry J. Drewal, Ashley Minner Jones, and Lowery Stokes Sims. A cross-generational group of artists—Oletha DeVane, Sonya Clark, Kay Lawal-Muhammad, Jeffrey Gibson, Malcolm Peacock, and William Rhodes— reflect on Scott’s influential role as artist, mentor, and educator.
PLANNING A VISIT
Museum Hours
∙ Closed Monday and Tuesday
∙ Wednesday–Sunday 10 am–5 pm
∙ Holiday hours on the website
Admission Prices
∙ Adults: $29.99 (advance), $32.99 (day of)
∙ Seniors (65+), Military (with ID): $24.99 (advance), $27.99 (day of) ∙ Students (with ID), Teens (15–18): $19.99 (advance), $22.99 (day of) ∙ Children (14 and under): FREE
∙ SAM members: FREE
Free & Discounted Options
First Thursdays: Free to all
First Fridays: $5 admission for seniors (65+)
Complete list of discounts available: Discount Access Programs EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION AND SUPPORT
Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams is co-organized by the Seattle Art Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art.
This exhibition and national tour are made possible by substantial grants from the Ford Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
