SAAM Stories

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

Curator E. Carmen Ramos and curatorial assistant Florencia Bazzano-Nelson discuss Sophie Rivera's untitled photographic portraits that will be included in our upcoming exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, opening October 25, 2013.

The Civil War and American Art on exhibition at American Art through April 28, 2013, explores the transformative and emotional impact of the war on America through landscape and genre paintings.

Nam June Paik: Global Visionary opens next week on December 13, 2012. The exhibition features key artworks from Paik's career that demonstrate the complexity of his ideas as well as his groundbreaking approach to technology and video.

This blog post is part of a monthly Eye Level feature on our exhibition The Civil War and American Art. Curator Eleanor Harvey talks about many of the important intersections between American art and the Civil War. The exhibition runs through April 28, 2013.

Art handlers' shoes were not removed because a religious convention required it, but because they didn't want their sneakers to mar the fresh paint covering the floor of the exhibition niche. It was a fitting scene for the reinstallation of James Hampton's Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly.

The exhibition Nam June Paik: Global Visionary opens at American Art on December 13, 2012. This is a complicated installation with artworks that involve a mix of old and new technology, robots made from TVs, and even several hundred plants, and staff has been working hard behind-the-scenes to get everything ready.

Kerry James Marshall, whose work "Sob Sob" is part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, chronicles the African American experience in his paintings.

I've had dreams about WPA murals measuring forty inches wide. Visions of playful, contemporary teapots that stand eight inches tall have danced in my head. This is what the gaps in the Luce Foundation Center's cases have done to me! But these gaps also present the exciting opportunity to put a fresh artwork from storage out on view at the museum. Here's how it works.

Eye Level had a chance to speak with Eleanor Harvey, senior curator at American Art, and curator of the new exhibition, The Civil War and American Art, opening at the museum on November 16. The exhibition takes a close look at the war through the eyes of artists who captured the soldiers in the field, the people back home, as well as the war’s aftermath: abolition, emancipation, and reconstruction.

In this post, program coordinator Christopher Wayner talks about a recent discovery made by conservators in the museum's Lunder Conservation Center.

Question: Is American Art’s Liberty sculpture one of the models made to raise money for the construction of the Statue of Liberty? If not, what is it?

Today, the American Art Museum announced that Kathy Butterly is the 2012 winner of our Contemporary Artist Award. She was selected after a lively discussion by a panel of five independent experts who know the contemporary art world inside and out. This biennial award recognizes an artist younger than fifty who has produced a significant body of work and consistently demonstrates exceptional creativity.

This blog post inaugurates a monthly Eye Level feature on our upcoming exhibition The Civil War and American Art. Curator Eleanor Harvey will be talking about many of the important intersections between American art and the Civil War. The exhibition will open November 16 and run through April 28, 2013.

This blog post begins a series of pieces about our film and media arts initiatives here at American Art. First up, Michael Mansfield, associate curator of film and media art, fills us in on our upcoming exhibition Nam June Paik: Global Visionary, which opens December 13 and runs through August 11, 2013.

"Like most of you in this audience , I suspect, I am a museum goer, a gallery goer. I get no thrill as large as I do from simply setting foot in a museum and beginning to look,"

You may not think about the potential dust that could collect in-between the teeth of Tiger by Felipe Archuleta on display in American Art's first floor folk art galleries, but it is the job of Susan Edwards, conservation technician, to make sure he has a clean smile.

The Luce Foundation Center has been organizing scavenger hunts throughout the space since we reopened after our renovation in 2006. Over twenty thousand people have searched our open storage for those elusive objects. It's one of the special ways visitors can experience our collection.