Tattoos at the Museum
Tattoos by Nieu Studios Artists
One of the best parts of my job as the Manager of Public Engagement is I get to bring many facets of my interests to the Olympic Sculpture park, and my love of tattoos is no exception. The museum has had the pleasure of housing Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animal/Zodiac Heads in the park and as a welcome the Public Engagement team put together a day of programming highlighting amazing Seattle based Chinese artists and Standford scholar Haiyan Lee. We worked with Nieu Studios, who organized eight of their artists to make flash sheets of the Chinese zodiacs for visitors to choose from.
The day started at 5:30am for some visitors who lined up to ensure they were one of the limited free tattoo flash spots. By the time we opened doors, over 200 people were waiting in a line making its way around the pavilion.
While people waited on their tattoos they could enjoy performances by Shelby Natasha, Dragon dancing by Wei Dai, and Zodiac keychain making with Monyee Chau. This day was particularly fun and successful as the aim of the public engagement team has been to increase engagement with younger and more diverse audiences. Most of our members tend to skew older and whiter (like most museums). Right now in the museum community at large— there are many questions about engagement strategies to start to court newer generations into becoming sustaining members. Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z are all attracted to different thing but their is a trend toward participatory, family friendly, and more social based programming that strays from the ‘museum as object holder’ identity that institutions have held for so long. A personal measure for event success was that the tattoos were a big draw for a younger crowd with the first 22 received their permanent art for free—a forever billboard of their experience at the SAM for anyone who asks about their tattoo. If you are wondering- yes I did get a sheep tattoo. ;)
Shelby Natasha band and Wei Dai dragon dancing
A lesson of the day is to always be open to surprises. You can spend months putting together an event with all the pieces but the public will surprise you in how they react. A group called Urban Sketchers Seattle used the Community Celebration as event to meet and sketch around the park. The did beautiful renditions of sculptures and the performers of the day. You can see a blog post of there sketches here! I’m really grateful for the sculptures’ presence at the park and look forward to continuing to get to know them and the visitors they attract to the park as well.
Artist sketching Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animal/Zodiac Heads
