Seattle Art Museum to replace longtime lobby sculpture with new piece

On Monday afternoon, the sound of stainless steel cables snapping rang through the Seattle Art Museum’s lobby. With wire cutters and laser focus, John Grade strategically cut the cables that have held aloft one of Seattle’s most famous public art pieces for years. 

“Middle Fork,” Grade’s 105-foot cedar sculpture that has hung from the ceiling of SAM’s entrance lobby since 2017, is coming down, allowing the museum to hang a brand-new commission by Los Angeles duo FriendsWithYou. 

The new work, a cluster of cutesy clouds, represents a bit of an artistic weather shift — from rooted to airy. 

Grade’s showpiece will next travel to the Ferry Building on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Then, “Middle Fork” will likely make stops in a handful of other U.S. museums before, Grade hopes, finding its final resting place near the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River in the Cascade foothills, where the sculpture will decompose and become one with the elements once again.  

Originally put together from nearly a million reclaimed cedar pieces by Grade and an army of volunteers, “Middle Fork” is now coming apart, albeit in bigger chunks. With the help of seven installation experts and multiple scissor lifts, Grade carefully lowered sections of each slender, 30-foot branch to the floor on Monday. 

“It’s like I’m pruning the sculpture,” Grade said, chuckling, as he took a break from tree dismantling. 

“Middle Fork” was never meant to stay at SAM forever; its original five-year loan was extended largely due to the pandemic. The previous lobby artwork, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s piece known as the “tumbling Tauruses,” debuted in January 2007 and hung until early 2016.

The museum announced Tuesday what is next for the free, unticketed Brotman Forum: a whimsical installation by FriendsWithYou, the moniker of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III, a duo known for their pop art, manga-inspired sculptures, plush toys, fuzzy robots and inflatables. Their work is meant to bring joy and combat loneliness and has been shown in galleries and museums as well as stores, malls, hotels and parks (and even the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade). 

“Little Cloud Sky,” set to open June 27, will feature 40 identical, 4-foot-wide “Little Clouds” made of thermoplastic. Together, these cloud-shaped smiley faces with black saucer eyes will form a sky of cheerful cumuli. 

“The beauty of [FriendsWithYou’s] work is that it creates really uplifting atmospheres,” said José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s Susan Brotman deputy director for art. He commissioned the work. 

Working in Takashi Murakami’s postmodern “superflat” tradition, FWY’s work has no sharp edges; it’s bubbly and airy, meant to uplift and soothe. Transitioning from “Middle Fork,” a tender, probing work about mortality and regeneration, to something so poppy feels like a tonal record scratch. But to Diaz, who began working on the commission upon his 2022 arrival at the museum, it makes sense. With “Little Cloud Sky,” much like with a tree, the museum is bringing the outside world inside. 

But it is different — and that’s kind of the point. 

“What you’re getting is basically the viewpoint of a different curator,” Diaz said. “I came from the Andy Warhol Museum. I’m really interested in popular culture.” 

The sculpture will also provide an opportunity to organize the kind of interactive, fun events that FWY is known for, Diaz added, like parades, dance parties and “well-being festivals.” 

And even if the clouds outside — metaphorical or meteorological — portend doom, Diaz hopes that these new clouds inside “will delight audiences.” 

Information from The Seattle Times archives was used in this report. 

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