A Conservation Win at Volunteer Park: Seattle Asian Art Museum Takes Action to Save Birds

The historic Seattle Asian Art Museum builing at Volunteer Park | Rootology | CC BY-SA 3.0

by Joshua Morris, Conservation Director

 The Seattle Asian Art Museum sits in the middle of Volunteer Park. The original Art Deco building has been there since 1933. With a beautiful pink sandstone facade and few windows, the historic building was about as bird-safe as it gets.

From 2017 to 2020, the building underwent a major expansion and renovation project, adding nearly 14,000 feet of gallery and education spaces in a new three-story wing with extensive windows that fill the museum with light and sweeping views of the park.

The new wing is a demonstration of nearly every risk factor for bird-window collisions: expansive glass surfaces that alternately reflect habitat and sky or create transparent corridors that create the illusion of clear passage from one side of the park to the other. We suspected the expansion would be a bird killer when we added it to the Seattle Bird Collision Monitoring Project as a monitoring site beginning in 2023.

After our first season of monitoring, our suspicions were confirmed. Mortality rates at the museum were four to nine times higher than study buildings on the Seattle University campus, and 33 to 63 times higher than mortality rates at residential structures being monitored.

Notably, collisions weren’t occurring evenly around the building: nearly 90% of the collision victims we found were along the northeast side of the new wing, suggesting specific environmental conditions make this section particularly hazardous.

Map of bird-window collision evidence found at the Seattle Asian Art Museum 2023-2024.

In December 2023, I met with the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s facility directors to share our findings. Their response was immediate and encouraging. Staff expressed a genuine concern about the birds of Volunteer Park and quickly innitiated internal processes to address the problem.

Though I made it a practice to share seasonal updates and offer support, the museum team required no external pressure to act. By spring 2024, we observed them conducting site tests of various collision prevention products, demonstrating their commitment to finding a solution.

When I arrived to lead onsite training for the summer 2025 season of the Seattle Bird Collision Monitoring Project, I was delighted to discover collision prevention film had been installed on the third-story windows along the expansion’s deadly northeast facade. The museum chose Bird Divert, a product tested and approved by the American Bird Conservancy and backed by a six-year manufacturer warranty. This intervention will prevent hundreds of bird deaths in the coming years and spare countess others from painful injuries.

The Seattle Asian Art Museum installed Bird Divert collision prevention film on the upper story of their new wing.

This success exemplifies the direct impact of community science. I am incredibly grateful to the hundreds of Seattle Bird Collision Monitoring Project participants who are collecting data and advocating for solutions. Their contributions make conservation wins like this possible.

I am also grateful to the team at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. They have requested no special recognition, preferring to focus on their core mission, the art. In that spirit, I encourage all bird lovers to visit the museum to appreciate both their world-class collections and the bird-safe view.

The Seattle Asian Art Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parking is free at Volunteer Park. Learn more and plan your visit to the Seattle Asian Art Museum here.