Meet the SAM curators

Chiyo Ishikawa leads Seattle Art Museum's curatorial department as deputy director of art and curator of European painting and sculpture, overseeing the permanent collection and artistic programs for the institution. Ishikawa says the overarching theme to the new installations is the notion of "bridging" and "thresholds" — ways of connecting seemingly disparate cultures and time periods.

Since joining SAM in 1990, Ishikawa has played a key role in several major exhibitions, notably, "Spain in the Age of Exploration 1492-1819," which she organized in conjunction with Spain's Patrimonio Nacional, and "Leonardo Lives: The Codex Leicester and Leonardo da Vinci's Legacy of Art and Science," co-curated with former SAM deputy director Trevor Fairbrother.

Ishikawa has a Ph.D. in art history from Bryn Mawr College and she interned at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, before coming to Seattle.

Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com

Barbara Brotherton, curator of Native American art, worked at the Burke Museum and as an associate professor at Western Michigan University before coming to SAM in 2001. The focus of the new Native American installations, Brotherton says, is to emphasize the authority of individual native artists, past and present. "The underlying principle is on the artist behind the art," she says.

Brotherton holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Washington, where she studied with Bill Holm and Robin Wright, and is a member of the Lushootseed research organization founded by Upper Skagit elder and scholar Vi Hilbert.

Michael Darling took over as curator of modern and contemporary art at SAM in 2006 and has since devoted himself to learning the collection and getting involved in the local art scene. In planning the installation of the new galleries, Darling took into account SAM's strong holdings in Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop art, and chose to "give an immersive experience in a style or approach, more than a breakneck history ... "

Darling previously was associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, where he helped organize the exhibitions "Roy McMakin: A Door Meant as Adornment" (which traveled to the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle), "Painting in Tongues" and "Masters of American Comics." He has written about art and architecture for a number of publications, including the L.A. Weekly, Flash Art and New Art Examiner.

Darling has a Ph.D. in art history from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Julie Emerson established SAM's decorative-arts department in 1981 and is curator of its collections. She's the force behind SAM's new Porcelain Room, which brings most of the museum's collection of European and Asian porcelain out of storage and into the public eye. Emerson modeled the opulent display on those of 17th-century European royalty: "I didn't want to just do Asian, I didn't just do European, I didn't want to do it by factory and by country — the old boring museum approach."

A graduate of the College of Wooster, Ohio, Emerson was a consulting curator for the Smithsonian Institution's "Treasures and Traditions," and was SAM's in-house curator for traveling exhibitions on Louis Comfort Tiffany and Frank Lloyd Wright. In 2000, Emerson co-curated "Porcelain Stories: From China to Europe" with SAM director Mimi Gates.

Patti Junker specializes in 19th-century American art and was hired in 2005 as SAM's first curator of American art. She came on board with her work cut out for her: To attract major donations. To that end, Junker has borrowed a number of works for the opening of the new American art galleries, hoping that eventually the loaners will become donors. "We expect all the galleries to change regularly while we are collection-building," she says. "We are showing the history of American art ... My interest is showing artists at their best — whatever that might be."

Junker holds a master's degree in art history from the University of Michigan and was curator of paintings and sculpture at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, where she organized the 2002 exhibition "Casting a Spell: Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler."

Pam McClusky, curator of African and Oceanic art, helped SAM establish its department in 1980 while a graduate student at the University of Washington. The following year the museum benefited by receiving the extensive Katherine White collection of African art. Now, McClusky says, SAM's African collection ranks among the nation's top 10 and the Australian aboriginal gallery in the new expansion is a first for a public institution in the U.S.

McClusky installed the African, Australian and textile galleries with an eye to connecting them to artworks and cultures in the surrounding spaces. "It's a chance to rethink how we present [the artwork] with entirely new interpretations," she says. "So many people think of Africa as alien, but there are so many familiar elements — and look at how it interacts with the rest of the collections."