Art of Darkness

In a University of Washington basement, Kris Anderson is picking through the history of the School of Art, one unidentified work at a time.

Kris Anderson holds up an untitled piece by Christian Straub from 1973. Photography by Andrew Waits for City Arts.

Kris Anderson hurries down a basement hall of the University of Washington’s Art Building and pulls open a pair of nondescript double doors to an unnumbered room. As he ushers me inside, Anderson, the director of the School of Art’s Jacob Lawrence Gallery, gives a friendly nod to a student hunched over a computer in the far corner, then ducks into an unlit dusty alcove crowded with discarded pieces of furniture. He pushes aside a couple of worn cardboard boxes to access the vertical files and drawers that hold the University of Washington’s collection of art. As I stand squinting, Anderson heads out of the room to locate the light switch, oddly situated in a separate locked space. The strangely remote area, like many of the works it contains, has been left utterly in the dark for decades.

The ensemble that lodges here does not constitute in any legal sense a collection: the objects in it have never been formally accepted. Nor have they been purchased. Instead, the works fighting for space in the School of Art’s basement have been brought together organically and largely through happenstance.

A portrait of Ralph Blake by Ambrose Patterson, the artist who established UW’s School of Painting and Design in 1919.

Anderson estimates that there are almost four hundred works of art spread out in two makeshift storage spaces. Some of the works are more than a century old, and 50 percent remain unidentified. Anderson has undertaken the Herculean task of sorting out these works. Those that can be saved will enter the school’s collection and be available for exhibition. A few will be mounted in a yearlong program that will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the university next year.

Many are past and present works by UW faculty, including fairly easily identified prints and paintings by Northwest masters like Alden Mason, Jacob Lawrence, Glen Alps and Walter Isaacs, the former chair of the UW’s department of painting, sculpture and design. Others were created by yet-to-be-discovered talent: students from the School of Art. Within the UW’s collection all exist on equal footing – the renowned alongside the virtually unknown.

“Every work in the basement is either student or faculty work,” Anderson later says, sitting in his cramped, tidy office, surrounded by his favorite unearthed works by students, faculty and alumni. “The problem is that oftentimes it’s impossible to tell which.”

A number of student works in the collection are remnants from the University of Washington’s Art on Loan program, which was run from 1998 to 2007 by director of academic advising Judi Clark. Although this program is now defunct, student work continues to swell the collection. About 160 art students graduate from the University of Washington’s School of Art every year. Most show in one of the yearly exhibits at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery curated by Anderson. At the end of each show 15 to 20 percent of the works don’t get picked up. “Multiply that by several years, and you can see how the infinite expansion of creative detritus could arise,” Anderson says.

Detail from an untitled 1956 work by Walter Isaacs.

Anderson has clear ideas about the importance of acquiring and maintaining the art in the university’s collection. “They’re works of art, but they’re also historical documents that chronicle the many personalities that have made the School of Art the excellent institution it is. Each piece remains a link in the continuously growing chain that connects the youngest freshmen to the spirit of world-changing artists such as Jacob Lawrence.” •