The Evolution of the Tacoma Art Museum

The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is an art museum in Tacoma, Washington, that focuses primarily on the art and artists from the Pacific Northwest and broader western region of the U.S. Its story begins in 1891 with the Tacoma Art League, an informal gathering. Over the years, it transformed from the Tacoma Art Society into the Tacoma Art Museum in 1964. The museum moved into a 50,000 square foot building at 1701 Pacific Avenue in 2003, a steel and glass structure designed by Antoine Predock that nearly doubled the available space.

In 2014, a building project expansion designed by Olson Kundig Architects added approximately 16,000 square feet to the museum, housing the Haub Family Collection of Western American Art. The museum is dedicated to collecting and exhibiting the visual arts of the American Northwest, with a mission of bringing people together through art. The permanent collection includes the premier collection of Tacoma native Dale Chihuly’s glass artwork, on permanent public display.

The museum exhibits more than 5,400 pieces in its collection, two-thirds of which are classified as Northwest art. Since 1934, the museum has built a permanent collection that includes work from artists such as Mary Cassatt, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Edgar Degas, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Robert Rauschenberg, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jacob Lawrence, John Singer Sargent, and Andrew Wyeth. One of the museum's most iconic pieces is Untitled - Stone Wave, a major work by Seattle-based sculptor Richard Rhodes, which occupies the central court of the museum.

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