SAAM Stories

How many of you, as youngsters, wanted to be a superhero when you grew up? I wonder if sculptor Bret Price had any such aspirations.

Conservators must use a variety of techniques when treating mixed media artworks, each suited to a particular material in that piece. Read on to learn about the different treatments that Paintings Conservator Amber Kerr-Allison used to prepare Löis Mailou Jones's mixed media painting Moon Masque for display in our exhibition African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, now on display through September 3.

Meet Martha the Passenger Pigeon and Incas the Carolina Parakeet. These two fine aves were lovingly crocheted by artist Laurel Roth for the exhibition 40 under 40: Craft Futures, opening at the museum's Renwick Gallery July 20.

The Art of Video Games exhibition includes a lot of interactive technology, but one of our favorite components is not hi-tech at all; it's a plain spiral-bound notebook that asks visitors to leave a comment.

In a poem titled, "Mother to Son," Langston Hughes wrote of an African American woman's hardships, as she advises her son to never give up: "Well, son, I'll tell you:/Life for me ain't been no crystal stair..." Far from it. These steps have tacks, splinters and torn up boards. Sometimes the stairs are bare. It is these steps I was reminded of when I visited American Art's new exhibition, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights, and Beyond, on view through September 3, 2012.

Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image, the dynamic exhibition of time-based media has been reinstalled, with new examples of video art that span the last fifty years. It has its own dedicated gallery on the third floor of the museum and is a welcoming space filled with works that fascinate, stimulate, and resonate.

The American Art Museum has been serving its own special pairing since November 2010. Called Luce Unplugged, we pair art with music. Each month the museum asks local musicians to perform on a Sunday afternoon after an art-talk on a piece chosen by the performing group.

Behind every good sunrise lurks an inevitable sunset. This Sunday, May 6, Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House closes at American Art's Renwick Gallery after a near seven-month run.

Combining "happy hour" and "handmade," our May 10th Handi-hour offers the opportunity to make crafts, taste selected craft beers, and listen to live music in the Grand Salon of our Renwick Gallery of American Craft.

Our latest exhibition, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, opens today and runs through September 30, 2012. The show features a selection of paintings, sculpture, prints, and photographs by black artists from the museum's collection.

Austin Wintory is the composer behind such video games as Journey and flOw. Wintory will be doing a pre-concert Q&A on April 29th at 2:30 p.m. before the University of Maryland Gamer Symphony Orchestra plays in the museum's Kogod Courtyard. Laurel Fehrenbach, public programs coordinator for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, asks Wintory how music is yet another form of the art of video games.

For the third straight year, the American Art Museum will be celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month with a tribute to the Empress of the Blues, Ella Fitzgerald. The performance will take place April 22 and is generously supported by the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation.

Sometimes loss is not a bad thing. In the case of art conservation, a tiny paint loss can be used to aid the conservators in their examination process. Here, objects conservator, Hugh Shockey, has the Hirox 3-D digital microscope focused on the edge of a small paint loss of the John Scott sculpture, Thornbush Blues Totem.

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. Today's question: What is Joan of Arc holding in her left hand? It looks like a mop, but I don't think that's the right answer.

Who doesn't like getting a personal letter in the mail? Some people get excited over coupons or magazines, but I enjoy receiving a letter hand addressed to me with a customized stamp. Well, there is now a new Forever® stamp, available from the United States Postal Service, which features a painting from the American Art Museum's collection. The artwork called, Flowers by William H. Johnson is now on view in the museum's 2nd floor galleries.

The American Art Museum mourns the loss of one of our country's most important artists, Elizabeth Catlett. Ms. Catlett, whose career spanned more than seventy years, connected her work to progressive causes, especially those she thought were important to African American women.

Have you ever taken a poster off a wall and found some pieces of foamy tape left behind? That's similar to what is stuck to the base of the John Scott sculpture, Thornbush Blues Totem.

Somewhere between the letters PhD and CSI lives the amazing work of painting conservators. Part researcher and part detective, they study paintings with state-of-the-art tools that help them see through layers of paint and varnish and enable them to conserve works of art whose colors may have gradually shifted over time and whose canvases may show signs of age.