The Seattle Art Museum has a new head of art.
After an international search, curator and scholar Frank Feltens has been appointed SAM’s chief curator, the museum announced Thursday morning. Feltens starts Aug. 17.
Feltens joins the museum from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., where he most recently served as associate director for curatorial affairs and curator of Japanese art.
As chief curator, the 43-year-old Feltens will help shape the museum’s collection, exhibitions, publications and long-term artistic vision across SAM, Seattle Asian Art Museum and Olympic Sculpture Park. Working closely with museum leadership, including Director and CEO Scott Stulen, Feltens will also oversee collection strategy, art purchases and a team of six curators.
Feltens will also recruit for several key curatorial positions, including the Native American art curator, a position that’s been vacant for several years.
Feltens’ predecessor, José Carlos Diaz, had been SAM’s director for art since 2022, leaving in September for the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
“People in the interview process were (asking) me: How are you going to deal with the weather?” Feltens said Tuesday before catching a flight to visit his parents in Germany, where he grew up. “And I said: I know this weather. I like this weather. It’s perfectly fine.”
Stulen, who became CEO about two years ago, said Feltens was the clear choice and a unique fit for this moment at SAM and for the broader cultural sector.
“He is both an accomplished scholar and curator and a leader who understands the significant challenges museums face today, as well as the urgency to evolve,” Stulen said Tuesday in an email.
“Throughout the search, he consistently demonstrated an ability to build meaningful relationships across audiences, not only inside the museum but out in the community. He is a connector who works effectively with collectors, artists, community partners, staff, trustees and other stakeholders.”
Stulen said museum leadership was especially excited by Feltens’ vision for connecting SAM’s collection more deeply to its visitors, creating “immersive and participatory experiences,” and ensuring the museum is relevant to the daily lives of people across the region.
“My hope is that we can become a place that is fun, engaging and gives our communities an interesting experience that is both meaningful and surprising,” Feltens said.
Feltens said museums are at a crossroads and that it will be crucial to figure out who is visiting SAM currently — and who is not, as well as why they are not.
We know already that many Seattle Art Museum visitors hail from the Pacific Northwest, which “offers opportunities for the museum to become a hub for people to see themselves and be part of the community, not just a tourist destination,” Feltens said.
Another opportunity: Seattle’s connection and proximity to the Pacific. Feltens intends to explore how to tie these stories, reflected in the museum’s art collection, to local stories of the city and its people.
That vision stretches beyond Asia, as far as South and Central America.
“My background is in Japan and in Asia, but as the chief curator at the Seattle Art Museum, my job is to really empower and guide and support every curator across the museum,” he said. “I see my role as supporting them and aligning much of what we do with the bigger vision of the museum.”
Asked how he saw the museum fulfilling its diversity, equity and inclusion goals, given that the museum was previously led by a Latina woman and a Mexican American man but now has two white men at the helm, Feltens said he saw his role as one that supports an exceptional curatorial team and works collaboratively across the institution.
“It’s my charge and my hope to continue to build a program that reflects the richness and diversity of Seattle and the museum’s audiences,” he said. “So that’s deeply at my heart and I will do everything I can to accomplish that.”
Previously, Feltens held research appointments at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin and the Nezu Museum and Sensō-ji temple in Tokyo. At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, he co-stewarded a collection of more than 46,000 objects dating from antiquity and saw curatorial teams focused on Chinese, Japanese and Korean art.
He also organized multiple exhibits, including the recent print and photograph show at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo, “From Kiyochika to Hasui.” It was NMAA’s largest outgoing loan exhibition to date.
Traveling exhibits like this help share the collection and spread the name and reputation of the museum. He hopes SAM can do more of those, domestically and internationally.
“In order for museums to be popular and to be visited, they need to be relevant, and relevance is created (in) different ways,” Feltens said. “I find the most effective way is to connect your collections to contemporary stories, issues that people deeply care about.”
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