A Brief History
In 1983, Seattle Art Museum (SAM) Curator of Contemporary Art, Bruce Guenther, launched Documents Northwest: The PONCHO Series (DocsNW). At the time, the region had very few venues that presented contemporary art by Pacific Northwest artists; Guenther was one of a few local curators who successfully addressed this need.
During his tenure curating Documents Northwest, Guenther produced 18 solo exhibitions that were largely applauded by the local art community for their focus on contemporary art and local artists, and for the high quality of work. After Guenther left SAM for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, curators Vicki Halper, Patterson Sims, Rod Slemmons, Trevor Fairbrother, and others continued the series.
Working with book designer, and now a highly respected publisher, Edward Marquand, a full-color, text-rich brochure was developed for each exhibition. According to Guenther1, the brochures were an intrinsic part of the series. They were created to be a promotional piece for the artist--each recieved 50 copies--that also acted as an informational guide for visitors and, importantly, an artifact for the exhibition. There were two exceptions to this: longer, more substantial catalogues were produced for Paul Berger's 1990 exhibition and Fay Jones's retrospective exhibition.2
As with many cultural endeavors in Seattle, Documents Northwest was not without its challenges, the primary one being the continuation of the series given the museum's transition and development in the late 1980s and early 1990s. SAM closed its Modern Art Pavillion location at the Seattle Center, which included a separate dedicated gallery space for the series, when it opened its new downtown location in 1991. While new curators and directors continued the series, by the early 2000s the series started to wane. Given the wealth of galleries, museums, and alternative art spaces dedicated to exhibiting both regional and international contemporary art, Documents Northwest may have simply ceased to be necessary.
1Hurwitz, Anna R. and Traci Timmons, Phone interview with Bruce Guenther, June 21, 2018.
2Except for these two longer catalogues, all of the brochures from this collection are available here in full. The physical collection of brochures is held at the Seattle Art Museum's Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library.