SAAM Stories

"Getting my art on . . ." That's what one visitor said she liked to do when she comes to American Art's Luce Foundation Center.

On Tuesday, January 24, a couple of hours before the President delivered his address to Congress, Annie Leibovitz presented her own state of the union to a sold-out audience at American Art's McEvoy Auditorium.

The Art of Video Games exhibition opens in less than two months (on March 16, 2012), so things are getting a little hectic around the museum!

American Art's Renwick Gallery is celebrating its 40th year—40 years of the best in American craft, decorative arts, exhibitions, and programs. To commemorate this milestone, we challenged our visitors to design a postcard to help us celebrate.

To celebrate the opening of The Art of Video Games exhibition, we will be holding three jam-packed days of events and activities from Friday, March 16 through Sunday, March 18, 2012.

This post is the first of an ongoing series on Eye Level: "Q and Art" and is the successor to our series "The Best of Ask Joan of Art." Begun in 1993, Ask Joan of Art was the longest-running arts-based electronic reference service in the country.

Pilgrimage is a personal journey by photographer Annie Leibovitz, celebrated over the decades for her astute portraits of the cultural landscape.

Washington National Opera Principal Coach for the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Ken Weiss provides some insider information on how he selected the artists and repertoire for the upcoming January 22 performance in the Renwick Gallery's Grand Salon, in a discussion with Jo Ann Gillula, Chief of External Affairs at the museum.

The Renwick Gallery is celebrating a milestone year in 2012, its 40th! To give our audience a chance to participate in the fun, we're holding a postcard design contest. We want to see how visitors (both onsite and online) translate the best in American craft, decorative arts, exhibitions, and programs on a mail-worthy 5 by 7 inch space. And most of all, we are excited to see the creative way in which you see the Renwick Gallery.

Helen Frankenthalter, the last of the Abstract Expressionists, died on December 27, 2011, at the age of eighty-three. In 1951, when she was only twenty-three, she began to soak, or stain, her canvasses with extremely thin paint.

The current exhibition, The Great American Hall of Wonders celebrates the 19th-century American spirit of ingenuity through the examination of art, science, and invention. It was a great time to be a scientist, unless, of course, you were a woman (with the field of astronomy being the exception, thanks in part to astronomer Maria Mitchell and the comet she discovered in 1847), a newly arrived immigrant, or a person of color recently granted freedom.

Multiplicity features contemporary prints from the museum's permanent collection. All of the prints are editions and each impression is considered a work of art. Also of interest is the fact that the works on view represent a collaboration between artist and printer.

Exhibition coordinator Georgina Goodlander and curator Chris Melissinos conducted interviews with video game designers, developers, writers, and composers for the upcoming exhibition, The Art of Video Games.

While walking around Toledo, Spain last summer I came upon the Santa Cruz Museum. Much like our museum's nineteenth-century building, which originally housed government offices and was used as a hospital during the Civil War, the Santa Cruz Museum also is housed in a historic building that was once a hospital (their building dates to the sixteenth century).

The American Art Museum is no stranger to invention. The building that houses the museum was formerly the United States Patent Office (President Andrew Jackson authorized the construction of the building in 1836), with thousands of patent models on display on the third floor, including one designed by President Lincoln.

Curator for Latino Art, E. Carmen Ramos, shares some of her thoughts about a recent acquisition now on view in the Lincoln Gallery on the third floor.

Sarah Gowen, American Art's Paintings Conservation Intern, gives us a behind the scenes look at how we solved a painting mystery.

Ah, a walk through the museum on a chilly autumn afternoon. Lots of folks walking the corridors and looking at art. It's a good day. In American Art's Lincoln Gallery on the third floor of the museum, I spent some time getting acquainted with Homage to Still Life by Carlos Almaraz.