Seattle Art Museum, Art museum in downtown Seattle, US

The Seattle Art Museum is an art museum in downtown Seattle, United States, in a building designed by Robert Venturi that opened on December 5, 1991. A wide stone staircase rises between pale walls to a standing stone figure on a blocky pedestal, with two seated animal sculptures flanking the lowest steps and a black banner reading "WELCOME" and "SEATTLE ART MUSEUM" above. Ceiling fixtures of frosted yellow-white panels in dark metal grids light the interior.

The museum grew out of the Seattle Fine Arts Society, which merged with the Washington Arts Association in 1917 and became the Art Institute of Seattle in 1931. During the Great Depression Richard E. Fuller and his mother Margaret donated $250,000 to build an Art Deco museum in Volunteer Park, designed by Carl F. Gould; it opened on June 23, 1933. In 1991 the main collection moved to a Robert Venturi-designed building downtown, and the Volunteer Park building reopened in 1994 as the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

The museum's nickname, SAM, appears on the black banner above the staircase, whose steps are flanked by two pale stone seated animals. The collection began with 1,926 pieces in 1933 and had grown to nearly 25,000 by 2008. A 1959 Van Gogh exhibition drew 126,100 visitors, and that same year SAM organized a Mark Tobey retrospective that traveled to four other U.S. museums.

The downtown building is entered from First Avenue, where Jonathan Borofsky's Hammering Man stands; the entrance leads to a stair hall with a pale stone standing figure at the top and two seated animal sculptures flanking the lowest steps. The museum is free on the first Thursday of each month. The Olympic Sculpture Park on the central waterfront is free to enter.

The 1992 Hammering Man by Jonathan Borofsky, installed outside the museum through Seattle City Light's One Percent for Art program, was meant to be ready for the 1991 opening, but on September 28, 1991 it fell during erection, was damaged and returned to the foundry. On Labor Day 1993, Jason Sprinkle and other artists attached a 320 kg ball and chain to its leg.