Dangerous Act

Celebrating a milestone, Tacoma Art Museum plans boldly for an uncertain future.

Granted, there are plenty of reasons to kick up your heels. More than twice the population of Tacoma has trooped through TAM since 2004. The architectural masterpiece that houses TAM is the institution’s fourth home and, says director Stephanie Stebich, a structure whose building campaign involved more people pitching in than for any other project in local cultural history. TAM has become a respected peer and collaborator with prestige magnets like Seattle’s Henry Gallery and Seattle Art Museum. And TAM is successfully challenging SAM and Portland Art Museum as the arbiter of Northwest art.

But times are tight. Once-prosperous galleries are folding. TAM’s nearest rival, the Museum of Glass, just won accreditation, heating up the competition for visitors and dwindling funding.

Undaunted, Stebich is doubling down TAM’s bet on a still bigger future. For February 2011 she plans a Norman Rockwell blockbuster, providing the traveling show with its sole Northwest venue; later will come a splashy Dale Chihuly show honoring his seventieth birthday and local roots. TAM is also upping the ante by launching a $17 million fundraising campaign, Securing the Future. “Ten million to make the museum accessible and to explore free admission for youth eighteen and under,” says Stebich, outlining some of the campaign’s goals. “Three million to redesign our plaza, to connect us to the water, the university, the rest of the museum district.”

Stebich, whose brother used to urge her to jump off the high dive at pools, thinks the times call for daring and points to a particular Rockwell painting in TAM’s upcoming show as inspiration. “Spielberg owns it. He has it in his office: it’s a boy clutching a diving board, looking down. That painting, for him, says, ‘Remember risk.’ Every project is a risk. We can be a little more experimental here in Tacoma. We can take risks.” •