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Portraits Sheila Farr

Michael McCafferty / From King Tut to a giant steel "Eagle," he puts them in their proper place

During his 31 years at Seattle Art Museum, Michael McCafferty has had some stellar moments.

There was the heart-pumping day in 1981 when he escorted Katherine Hepburn through the Volunteer Park Museum. As a reward, he got second-row-center tickets for Hepburn's performance in "The West Side Waltz." And there was the 1978 blockbuster "Treasures of Tutankhamen" show at the Seattle Center, when McCafferty made his debut as SAM's exhibition designer.

Now McCafferty has been working at SAM longer than anybody else in the museum's exhibition and curatorial staff. An artist himself, McCafferty is the guy in charge of making the art look its best. For the past year, much of his time has been devoted to planning and installing huge outdoor sculptures at the Olympic Sculpture Park on the waterfront.

"I had a model fabricated of the sculpture park and, with Lisa (Corrin, former SAM chief curator), would move the sculptures around and around until they found their spot." There was no room for second-guessing, though, in locating the nearly 40-foot-tall Alexander Calder "Eagle," with its hidden concrete footings. "It had to be right," McCafferty said.

Like many local artists, McCafferty started at SAM as a security guard, which "was unbearably boring." Fortunately, he had other skills. "I could drive a fork (lift) . . . and exhibition designer Neil Meitzler said, 'You're what I need.' " McCafferty helped install a big Claes Oldenburg show and for a while worked on exhibitions, among other things. Then, suddenly, Meitzler retired. And there McCafferty was, SAM's exhibition designer by default, just in time to take over King Tut.

How does he do it? "It is using my eye and physical intuition," McCafferty says. With the sculpture park, "I had to arrange the work so there was a balance, an eccentric balance. Their weight, their visual mass. You can't put too many large works together or it will feel like the park is tipping into the water."

Bringing the park to fruition has been high-pressure work, but McCafferty isn't complaining."It could be pouring down rain and as I am leaving the house with my rain gear on, Ann knows I am the happiest. When I am going to the sculpture park, I don't care what the weather is."

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