Seattle Art Museum Mark Tobey Screening

Seattle Art Museum will screen three short documentaries on Mark Tobey on Saturday, April 25, in a free afternoon program curated by Scarecrow Video. (seattleartmuseum.org) The screening runs from 2 to 4 p.m. at the downtown museum, and the museum says RSVP is required because SAM Films events can have limited capacity. (seattleartmuseum.org 1) (seattleartmuseum.org 2) Seattle Art Museum says the program includes three rare films shot between the 1960s and early 1970s, all drawn from the museum’s film collection and tied to its current exhibition, *Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest*. (seattleartmuseum.org 1) (seattleartmuseum.org 2) One film follows Tobey through Pike Place Market in 1969 with a KOMO TV journalist. Another traces him through Seattle with gallery footage and market scenes, and a third, made in Europe in 1973 by Harvard’s Film Study Center, shows him discussing Cubism and Pablo Picasso, sketching, and playing piano. (seattleartmuseum.org) The timing lines up with a broader push by SAM to reframe Northwest modernism. The museum’s *Beyond Mysticism* exhibition, on view through August 2, features more than 150 works and argues that the region’s art history extends beyond the usual focus on the Northwest School’s “Big Four,” including Tobey. (seattleartmuseum.org) Tobey remains central to that story. SAM identifies him as one of the local figures who helped spearhead the movement, and its online collection lists a group of his *Market Scenes* sketches from Seattle Public Market made between 1939 and 1941. (seattleartmuseum.org) (art.seattleartmuseum.org) Scarecrow Video’s role adds another Seattle institution to the program. The nonprofit says it recently bought a permanent home and is still raising money to pay off the building and expand access to its collection and public programming. (scarecrowvideo.org) The April 25 matinee turns Tobey’s Seattle back into a moving picture: Pike Place Market, museum galleries, and a modernist painter seen on film instead of only on the wall. (seattleartmuseum.org)