SAAM Stories

In this blog post Curatorial Assistant Florencia Bazzano-Nelson comments on John Valadez's Two Vendors, an intense and large-scale pastel that will be featured in the upcoming 2013 exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art. Like other works in the exhibition, this work demonstrates the masterful ways in which Latino artists—many born and/or raised in large cities in California, New York and beyond—have drawn inspiration from America's urban streets.

"I'll be talking about the entire history of studio glass, all 3500 years of it, in about twelve minutes. That's 300 years per minute but I'm going to skip some centuries entirely," William Warmus, independent curator and studio glass expert said at the beginning of the recent program at the Renwick Gallery titled "Art Glass @50," that also featured the artists Toots Zynsky and Matthew Szösz.

We sat down with Debrah Dunner, curatorial assistant at the museum's Renwick Gallery, to ask her about the experience of helping curator Nicholas Bell put together 40 under 40: Craft Futures. Dunner worked for two years alongside Bell ensuring the exhibition content and catalogue came together.

"Is there anything left to be said about Edward Hopper? Poet of light, documentarian of alienation, isolation, angst, stasis, human disconnection and impotence?" art historian Kevin Salatino asked at the start of his talk, Edward Hopper and the Burden of (Un)Certainty the first of this year's annual Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art.

After more than six months on view, The Art of Video Games exhibition will be closing at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on September 30, 2012.

We are delighted to introduce a new member of our social media team here at the Smithsonian American Art Museum - PaikBot! PaikBot is the nickname we've given to one of the robot artworks in the upcoming exhibition, Nam June Paik: Global Visionary.

Have you ever thought about the way the paper fibers hold on to ink as you are writing down your grocery or to do list on a sheet of paper? Neither had I, until I listened to Kate Maynor, paper conservator here at American Art, speak about the examination and treatment of works on paper in the Abstract Drawings show.

In the words of How I Met your Mother's Barney Stinson, our next Luce Unplugged is going to be, "legen . . . wait for it . . . dary." Legendary. Pop culture references aside, this Friday's Luce Unplugged Community Showcase features great local musicians, Alex Minoff, The Caribbean, and Kokayi, as well as a free beer tasting by local brewery DC Brau (get here early, the tasting is from 6 to 7 p.m.). We have also partnered with the Washington City Paper, which has been an invaluable music resource for us as well as the community at large.

Our next Handi-hour event is coming up this week, with the usual live music, craft beers, and almost-unlimited crafting options. This month we have a special guest with artist Daniel Michalik, one of the artists from 40 under 40: Craft Futures who will be sharing his love of recycled cork and helping with the featured cork-related crafts.

Florencia Bazzano-Nelson recently joined the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A scholar of Latin American and Latino art, Bazzano-Nelson is assisting in the preparation of the upcoming exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, opening October 25, 2013. In this blog post Bazzano-Nelson considers the paintings of Rafael Soriano, who like other Cuban American artists, actively explored the theme of exile.

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.

Amelia Cornfield was an intern in the Media and Technology Office this summer, where she worked on a variety of web and social media projects. She loves the Luce Foundation Center, and selected this painting from the folk art collection on display in the Center to write about for the blog.

These warm August afternoons often make me step inside of American Art not just to cool off, but to have an ah-ha moment with something that strikes me inside the museum: person or painting. Maybe it was the heat but the image that grabbed me today, Bar and Grill by Jacob Lawrence, was about quenching one's thirst while struggling with a deeper need: freedom.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, artists from around the world began making art by reworking existing films and using other moving image technologies like video. One pioneer of this new art form is Raphael Montañez-Ortiz. Born in 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, Montañez-Ortiz attended Pratt Institute in the 1960s. During this time he also studied Native American cultures, in part motivated by a desire to explore his own indigenous heritage.

The American Art Museum building used to be the U.S. Patent Office Building. During the Civil War, it also served as a barracks, a hospital, and the location of President Lincoln's second Inaugural Ball.

In This Case is a series of ongoing posts on art in the Luce Foundation Center, a visible art storage facility at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that houses about 3,000 pieces in sixty-four secure glass cases. Not every work of art has a secret but if it wasn’t for a tip from one of our conservators, I wouldn’t have known about the treasures hidden on the back of this folk art Guitar by an unidentified artist

Did you know that sandpaper technology has improved over the past 40 years? Neither did I until I spoke with objects conservator Hugh Shockey about Frederick Eversley's Untitled, a sculpture he was treating in his lab.

We recently opened 40 under 40: Craft Futures at the museum's Renwick Gallery.