SAAM Stories

Multiplicity opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on November 11 and runs to March 11, 2012. Georgina Goodlander asked the curator, Joann Moser, a few questions about the exhibition.

This porcelain platter was made for President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 by Haviland & Company, in Limoges, France.

Judging by the conversation between Internet gurus Steve Crocker and Vinton Cerf, the world as we know it began about fifty years ago. That's when men like Crocker and Cerf began to figure out ways to break communication out of the box and into a brave, new world of global contact. In some ways, this IS your father's internet, or at least the story of how it all began. Cue the dial-up modem....

Sandra Y. Johnson and her jazz group will be performing at Take 5! on Thursday, November 17th from 5–7 p.m. in the Kogod Courtyard. Laurel Fehrenbach, Public Programs Coordinator for the museum, asked Sandra a few questions about her music and what to expect for her concert.

New York-based artist, Julie Mehretu, was the third and final speaker in this year's Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art. Her work uses layers of architectural images--stadiums, airports, ruins both contemporary and ancient--and repurposes them with an eye toward reconceiving and reconceptualizing.

Seventy years ago this week, on October 31, 1941, Mt. Rushmore was completed. More than 90 years ago work began on this iconic image of four presidents carved in granite rock on a mountainside in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Assisting the sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941) were 361 local miners who used dynamite, jackhammers, and drills to remove the excess rock.

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, which opens March 16, 2012 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

October is National Archives Month and as such it gives us a chance to celebrate some of the unique archival holdings that the Smithsonian owns. Blogs across the Smithsonian are giving an inside look at the Institution's archival collections. Kathleen A. Brown, an archivist tasked with sorting through and organizing 40 plus boxes of papers and ephemera from American Art's recently acquired archive of Nam June Paik fills us in on her process.

The Art of Video Games exhibition (opening March 16, 2012) will highlight images and footage from the 80 games that won the public vote in April, as well as five games that will be available for visitors to play for a few minutes.

"I think my work is more capable of articulating my thoughts and feelings than I'm willing to say. I'm going to let the work speak for itself," Elizabeth Peyton said at the beginning of her talk in the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture Series.

Featured in the new exhibition at American Art, Made in Chicago: The Koffler Collection, Don Baum's Chinatown is an assemblage made from wood, crushed metal cans, and rulers that have been cut, glued, and reassembled.

Beginning tomorrow, October 5, the American Art Museum will be hosting a two-day symposium called Encuentros: Artistic Exchange between the U.S. and Latin America.

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the White House Historical Association, established by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 to restore the historical ambiance of the rooms and create a museum-worthy collection, the Renwick is featuring the exhibition, Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House.

George Gurney, the nation’s foremost expert on American sculpture, is retiring after more than 36 years at the American Art Museum. He will be greatly missed, as a curator and friend! But before leaving, he gave a farewell tour of the museum. Three and a half decades adds up to a lot of interesting stories.

American Art's lighting designer, Scott Rosenfeld updates us on new developments in museum lighting.

Kicking off the 2011 season of the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art, Meryle Secrest presented an engaging and lively talk that could have been subtitled, "A City of Two Tales."

Pizza in a pill! Trust me, I tried one and it tasted like pizza. Artist Carmen Wong is the latest artist to grace the Luce Foundation Center's Art + Coffee series.

Charles Willson Peale, is the poster boy, er...gentleman, for the current exhibition, The Great American Hall of Wonders. In the iconic self-portrait (on a rare loan from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts) Peale lifts a plush curtain to reveal his own museum, and greets the visitor with an extended palm at the entrance of the exhibition.