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History of the Museum Collection

Introduction

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is dedicated to the art and artists of the United States. All regions, cultures, and traditions in this country are represented in the museum's collections, research resources, exhibitions, and public programs. Colonial portraiture, nineteenth-century landscape, American impressionism, twentieth-century realism and abstraction, New Deal projects, sculpture, photography, prints and drawings, contemporary crafts, African American art, Latino art, and folk art are featured in the collection. More than 7,000 American artists are represented, including major artists such as John Singleton Copley, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Rauschenberg, Nam June Paik, and Martin Puryear.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, begun in 1829, is the first federal art collection. The museum began with gifts from private collections and art organizations established in the nation's capital before the founding of the Smithsonian in 1846. The museum has grown steadily to become a center for the study, enjoyment, and preservation of America's cultural heritage. Today the collection consists of artworks in all media, spanning more than 300 years of artistic achievement.

History of the Collection

The collection began modestly in 1829 when a Washingtonian named John Varden set out to form a permanent museum for the nation with his collection of European art. At first, the art was placed in a room he added to his own house near the U.S. Capitol.

In 1841, Varden's collection was displayed in the newly constructed Patent Office Building—coincidentally, the museum's home today. Along with Varden's works came Varden himself as "curator" of the newly created "National Institute" for government-owned artistic and historic items. Paintings and sculptures shared exhibit space with the Declaration of Independence and Benjamin Franklin's printing press.

The establishment of the Smithsonian in 1846 eclipsed the prestige of the institute, which later disbanded. By 1858, many items in the Smithsonian Art Collection on view at the Patent Office Building were moved a few blocks to the newly completed Smithsonian Castle. The remainder of the collection followed in 1862. But a destructive fire there in 1865 increased the Smithsonian's reluctance to build cultural collections. For the rest of the century, most of the artwork was placed on loan to the Library of Congress and to the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

A Turning Point

A turning point in the history of the collection came in 1906. That year the probated will of Harriet Lane Johnston, an art collector and niece of President James Buchanan, forced an important decision in a federal court: the recognition that the Smithsonian's collection formed a "National Gallery of Art."

Coined during a national art-collecting boom, the official name soon attracted major gifts. Highly prized were diverse artworks owned by John Gellatly and American impressionist paintings and Barbizon landscapes collected by William T. Evans.

A Permanent Home

Plans to build a permanent home for the museum on the National Mall came and went, among them a prize-winning modernist structure that shocked federal officials. The competition had been organized after Andrew Mellon gave his European-focused art collection to the nation in 1937 with the stipulation that his new museum be called the "National Gallery of Art" in emulation of the National Gallery of Art in London.

To comply with Mellon's wishes for a National Gallery of Art to house his European collection, the Smithsonian museum known as the National Gallery of Art for thirty-one years was renamed the National Collection of Fine Arts in 1937. It was given a new mission based on New Deal idealism: to promote the work of living artists and to build a national audience.

The interest in historic preservation after World War II ultimately was responsible for giving the first Smithsonian art museum a new home—and preserving an architectural treasure. In 1957, a bill was introduced in Congress to tear down the elegant Patent Office Building to make way for a parking lot. Deteriorated but still one of the purest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the nation, the structure was saved when Congress turned the building over to the Smithsonian. In 1968, after an extensive interior renovation, the museum opened to the public. To learn more about the history of the building, visit the online exhibition for Temple of Invention: History of a National Landmark.

In 1972, the Renwick Gallery opened to the public as a branch museum featuring American crafts.

In 1980, the museum's name was changed to the National Museum of American Art as part of a Smithsonian initiative to standardize the names of its many museums and to reflect the national scope of the collections. Since then, the museum has focused its energy on acquiring and promoting the work of artists in the United States exclusively. Twenty years later, the museum proposed that it be called the Smithsonian American Art Museum as an easy-to-remember name and a straightforward presentation of its mission. Congress approved this change in October 2000.

Adapted from History of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, n.d.), brochure, copyright by Smithsonian Institution.