SAAM Stories

Hayley Plack interned in American Art's External Affairs department during the summer. Before she left, she wrote this post about discovering her uncle's artwork in our collection.

Just outside the exhibition Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence is a small earlier piece by Christo.

This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: The Best of Ask Joan of Art. Begun in 1993, Ask Joan of Art is the longest-running arts-based electronic reference service in the country. Question: When did artists begin to sign their works? I would assume there was no need to sign commissions intended for private use. Is there a certain genre of paintings that tends to include signatures?

Silent Orchestra will be performing a live score for the classic silent film Salomé on Saturday, August 7, at 3:00 p.m. Free tickets will be distributed in the G Street Lobby thirty minutes before the program begins.Allison Jessing, public programs coordinator for American Art and the National Portrait Gallery, spoke with orchestra members Carlos Garza and Rich O'Meara about their work.

Before construction began in 1848 on the world's tallest stone structure, the Washington Monument, commemorating our first president, Horatio Greenough had already created the first Washington monument on the National Mall honoring him.

We’re very excited about the shiny new Art-O-Mat that arrived in the Luce Foundation Center this week. Now you can start your very own collection of American Art right here in the museum—becoming a collector has never been so convenient!

We get lots of questions about the craft objects in American Art's Luce Foundation Center. Visitors are often curious about the pieces on display and how they were created. So we seized the opportunity to invite local artists to the center to talk about their work.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Steven Spielberg by filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau on August 6, 2008.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with George Lucas by Laurent Bouzereau, filmmaker, and Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on September 12, 2008.

Where you off to this summer? We want to know and we've devised an art-related way you can show us where you've been. We've put together a set of artworks from our collection, depicting places around the country. Should you be going to any of these spots, take a photo and post it to our Flickr group: American Art Road Trip. The more the merrier.

Steven Spielberg tries his hand at being a shadow artist in front of Norman Rockwell's Shadow Artist.

Laurel Fehrenbach, public programs assistant here at American Art, spoke with Sergeant Kevin Burns from Airmen of Note. The jazz group will be performing Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4, from 1 to 3 p.m. as part of our celebration for the opening of our exhibition, Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg shows us how Rockwell went to great lengths to stage his pictures, laboring over costumes for each figure and the individual props that added to the story he wanted the viewer to understand at a glance.

This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: The Best of Ask Joan of Art. Question: A friend told me about an exhibition she had seen a few years ago of small paintings of eyes. I can't find any information on these "eye" paintings. Have you heard of this genre? Where could I find out more about these works?

Hugh Shockey, one of American Art's conservators, recently returned from Haiti where he was helping to preserve some of the country's artworks after the recent earthquake there. Here is one of the reports he filed while he was there.

Of all the stories of internees in the relocation camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, Isamu Noguchi's was the most unusual.

When I typed "birds" into American Art's search engine, I was able to view multiple artists' different takes on the natural world. I came across Seacoast and Flying Birds, a colorful woodblock print by Frances H. Gearhart (1869-1958), and decided to explore the work of an artist I knew nothing about.

American Art's Mandy Young is receiving reports from our conservator, Hugh Shockey, who is in Haiti to help with the rehab of the country's artworks after the recent earthquake there.