Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past will shed new light on one of art history’s most important movements when it opens at the Seattle Art Museum on June 19, 2008 and will run through September 21, 2008.

The Seattle Art Museum is launching a new contemporary art exhibition program entitled SAM Next. The program will present a series of three exhibitions each year introducing audiences to emerging or underappreciated artists working in the Northwest, around the United States and internationally.

This winter, the Seattle Art Museum presents Roman Art from the Louvre, an exhibition of works from the Musée du Louvre in Paris which will be on view from February 21 to May 11, 2008.

The Seattle Art Museum will be the only West Coast venue for a stunning masterwork of the Italian Renaissance, three of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s celebrated panels from the doors of the Baptistery in Florence, known as the Gates of Paradise. The exhibit is scheduled for January 26 through April 6, 2008 at SAM Downtown.

This fall, the Seattle Art Museum showcases the splendid exhibition Japan Envisions the West: 16th -19th Century Japanese Art from Kobe City Museum, which will be presented in two parts, Part I: Oct. 11 through Nov. 25, 2007 and Part II: Dec. 1, 2007 through Jan. 6, 2008.

Seattle Art Museum announced that it is in the advanced stages of bringing to Seattle a stunning masterwork of the Italian Renaissance, three of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s celebrated panels from the doors of the Baptistery in Florence, known as the Gates of Paradise. The exhibit is tentatively scheduled for January 26 through April 6, 2008 at SAM Downtown.

This fall, the Seattle Art Museum will present a 30-year retrospective of the Eastern Washington-based painter Gaylen Hansen (b.1921). Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Painting will include approximately 35 works tracing his evolution as an artist and will be on view at SAM Downtown Oct. 11, 2007 through Jan 6, 2008.

The contemporary video art program at the Seattle Asian Art Museum continues with the presentation of Sio Ieng (Cindy) Ng’s installation Ink in Motion: the Art of Sio Ieng Ng, opening August 9, 2007.

This August the Seattle Asian Art Museum will present Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art, a thought-provoking exhibition that examines the impact and notion of the book on Chinese artists.