SAAM Stories

Teresita Fernández's Nocturnal (Horizon Line), installed in the third floor galleries of American Art, strikes the viewer for both its beauty and its weight, as this piece is made of mined graphite. But in the artist's hands, the dense mineral becomes a canvas, and her work blooms into an homage to the beauty and mystery of evening, much the same as James McNeill Whistler's tonalist works and ethereal Nocturnes of the late 19th century, examined the beauty and poetry of twilight and the hours that followed.

October is Archives Month and this year blogs across the Smithsonian will highlight "true stories" about their collections and give an inside look at the Institution's archival collections and practices.

One of the coolest things to recently come out of the museum's Luce Foundation Center is our ongoing music collaboration with the Washington City Paper. Managing editor, Jonathan L. Fischer helps us select area bands for our Luce Unplugged Community Showcase and the end result is a magical combination of art, local music, brews, and a great group of people. This time we decided to focus our attention on two bands: Janel and Anthony, and Teen Mom.

Dawn Planas, a graduate conservation student at Buffalo State College, and an intern in the Lunder Conservation Center's objects lab, recently assisted with a treatment of Pepón Osorio's El Chandelier. Planas gives us some insight into how she prepared the chandelier for the exhibition.

Artists often visit the American Art Museum to give a lecture, meet with staff, or to attend the opening of an exhibition.

Drummer and Composer Nasar Abadey is the founder, leader and driving force of SUPERNOVA®. He will be performing "Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement" at the next Take 5! on Thursday, September 19th from 5-7 p.m. Public Programs Coordinator, Laurel Fehrenbach, interviewed Abadey to find out more about the theme of the concert and just how music impacted an important moment in history.

Artist and educator Muriel Hasbun is a member of the largest Latino community in the greater D.C. region. Hasbun grew up in El Salvador and settled here as a student in the 1980s. She is now department chair and associate professor of photography at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. Hasbun's personal history and artistic development speaks to a larger Salvadoran experience of migration and endurance in the midst of adversity.

This is the twelfth in a series of personal observations about how people experience and explore museums. Take a look at Howard's other blog posts about seeing things.

Morgan Nau, Conservation Kress Fellow, recently treated Emanuel Martinez's Farm Workers' Altar. The sculpture will be featured in the exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, which opens on October 25. Martinez created the altar in support of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. This work, like others the exhibition, shows how Latino artists were deeply woven into the civil rights movement. Nau gives us some insight into how she prepared the altar for the show.

Amelia Goerlitz, fellowship and academic Program coordinator for American Art, talks about our upcoming symposium "American Art in Dialogue with Africa and its Diaspora" taking place on October 4-5, 2013.

On August 31st, acclaimed composer and pianist Andrew E. Simpson will perform the world premiere of his original score for William Wellman's riveting story of love and tragedy, Wings (144 minutes, silent; 1927).

Emilie Reed was an intern in the Media and Technology Office this summer. Here, she discusses some of her favorite works by female artists that are currently on view in the Luce Foundation Center.

This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: Q and Art, where American Art's Research department brings you interesting questions and answers about art and artists from our archive.

How does it feel to leave your homeland and settle in a new country? In this blog post, curatorial assistant Florencia Bazzano-Nelson explores how one immigrant artist, iliana emilia garcía imagines her ongoing ties to her native county of birth.

Jazz musician (and DC native) Andrea Wood will present the music of Washington’s legendary Shirley Horn at Take 5! on Thursday, August 15th from 5-8 p.m. Laurel Fehrenbach, public programs coordinator, interviewed her about the upcoming concert.

Visual storyteller and insider into the worlds of high art and everyday objects, stage and street, Irving Penn is one of the most renowned photographers of the last century. He is perhaps best recognized for his fashion work for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue that helped to transform the images from magazine portraits into fine art.

Nam June Paik: Global Visionary closes this Sunday. The exhibition has been on view for a little over eight months, a long time for both the museum and the artworks. I will be sad to see it go. I'll sincerely miss having this work on view, and it is nice to see the artist himself as I pass through the gallery every day. But mostly, I’m excited. While this installation is indeed closing, Nam June Paik has really set the stage for the museum's Film and Media Art Initiative, in more ways than one.

Landscapes In Passing: Photographs by Steve Fitch, Robbert Flick, and Elaine Mayes opened last week on the museum's second floor. This installation looks at representations of the American landscape by three different artists. While each artist had a different approach, all of the works explore the impact of expanding civilization on the natural world.