Prizewinning Prize Giver: BAM’s Crafty Old Man

Honors fly to Bellevue Arts Museum director emeritus Michael Monroe like iron filings to an electromagnet, from the American Craft Council’s Award of Distinction to the Outstanding Employee Award at the Smithsonian (where he ran the big-deal Renwick Museum). Bill and Hillary Clinton had him organize the White House Collection of American Craft. But now, at last, he gets to dish out the honors: the Michael W. Monroe Emerging Artist Award will be announced at BAM’s annual fundraising dinner next July. “It’s more blessed to give than to receive, and you can quote me on that,” says Monroe.

Starting with the 2011 award, one emerging craft artist a year will win $10,000 and a solo show at BAM. “What age group is ‘emerging’?” Monroe asks rhetorically. “We’re working on the guidelines now. Probably artists who are in their late teens, early twenties, up to thirties. It can also be somebody who’s starting out at seventy. I want to see some fresh thinking supported by technique.” Adds BAM spokesperson Tanja Baumann, “We’re looking to raise a total of $140,000 over the next ten years to support the award.”

BAM raised another $575,000 the night they announced the Monroe Award, and over $550,000 at the 2009 dinner. Not bad for the pit of the Great Recession. But Monroe remembers  when raising money for BAM was like trying to lift an SUV with your bare hands. “In 2004, I think we raised about $1,500,” he recalls. In 2001, BAM had moved from a 10,000-square-foot space in Bellevue Square to its current 36,000-square-foot building. Then came the tech crash and 9/11. The doors slammed shut in 2003. “It was a perfect storm,” says Monroe.

Reopening in 2005 wasn’t a breeze. “We faced terrific odds,” says Monroe. “When we tried to raise money, people said, ‘Show me first.’ It was catch-22.” Monroe’s resurrected BAM emphasized craft, the painstaking process of which is out of step with instant-commodity culture. “You have to slow down and stop and think, and people don’t want to take time anymore.”

Yet BAM’s slow-craft aesthetic is also distinctive. “What we do is not being done elsewhere in Puget Sound. We’re not like a McDonald’s opening across the street from another McDonald’s.” If there were an award for Most Original Museum Raised from the Dead, BAM would win, and Monroe would collect the trophy.

But Monroe prefers the Monroe Award to the ones he’s won. “It’s my favorite, because it’s about somebody else.” •