In response to SAM’s exhibition Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris SAM and a host of community partners are presenting Elles: Seattle. This project will galvanize our community around art, culture and societal issues that are important to women and celebrate the contributions women have made across a variety of sectors. Many of our community partners have developed related projects and programming to make this a city-wide effort.

Highlights from around the city include Seattle Theatre Group presenting "Voices of Strength," a program of dance and theater created by African women living and working in Africa; the Henry Art Gallery exhibition of acclaimed video artist Pipilotti Rist in the exhibition A la belle étoile; and the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute hosting a conference titled “Images of Women,” exploring images of women in visual art, literature and clinical psychoanalysis.

Full listing of all city-wide partnerships >>


In true feminist fashion, Elles is not an argument, it’s an invitation: A survey of women artists of the 20th century that suggests there’s nothing so definitive, so limiting, as women’s art. Instead there is conversation, there is sharing, there is everything. –City Arts

The work is shocking, funny, disturbing, sexual, pissed off, poignant and exuberant (as all good art tends to be). –Seattle Magazine

(But) this is not a tidy, feminized re-telling of the flow of art historical movements. It is, instead, a revelation, in fits and starts, of the varied positions—hidden, forthright, peripheral and integral—occupied by women artists. –Seattle Times