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Balanced between ocean and rainforest, the constant thread that moves through the arts of Seattle is the concealing and revealing of light as it meets water. From modern glassblowers drawing new color out of fire to the artists of the Pacific Northwest Native groups—the Salish, the Tlingit, the Kwakwaka’wakw—who figured out cubism (it was simply the reflection of landscape on broken ocean) centuries before Jose Ruiz Blanco handed young Picasso his first crayon, this place has always been all about looking at the world through rain-speckled glasses.

Seattle itself—Rain City or the Emerald City—"has always been the big city," says gallery owner William Traver. Growing on the edge of the frontier, out of reach of San Francisco or art hot spots, Seattle "had to develop a cultural center, because it had to look to itself for its culture."

Today, the city directs 1 percent of all capital projects to be used for public art, so it’s no surprise that the Seattle Art Museum (call it SAM, like the locals) hosts a world-class permanent collection—Greek amphorae, Bozo sculptures, Arnhem Land funeral logs, a 10th-century Samarkand bowl decorated with black calligraphy that alone is worth the price of admission—but the core of the museum is the traditional Pacific Northwest arts, including rare examples of Tsimshian and Nu xalk ritual masks that were meant to be destroyed after a single use.

SAM is undergoing a massive expansion and will close from January 4, 2006, until the first quarter of 2007 as it moves into its new digs, next door to the current location. But before that happens, a special exhibit of Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural designs opens June 9 in an installation designed by Robert Wilson. The final show before the close will be a Tiffany glass retrospective, opening in October.

The museum overlooks the ocean from the core of Seattle’s downtown. A couple blocks uphill is City Center, a shopping/office complex with a public art glass collection ranging from vase forms to glass whale ribs. Downhill is Pike’s Place Market, full of eclectic shops and the kind of restaurants where you can get a piroshki just like Mom used to make. It’s also the venue for Seattle’s most famous performance art: fish-flinging, that arc of silver scales against the silver water beyond.