Eye Level

Eye Level is the blog of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery. Publishing behind-the-scenes museum stories since 2005.

Perhaps a Pose with a Panda?

Even if you're not familiar with her name, you’ve probably seen muralist Kelsey Montague's art. Kelsey’s interactive street murals can be found throughout the country and around the globe, as well as on the Instagram accounts of multiple celebrities.

Luce Foundation Center

The Renwick’s New Touch Cart is a Work of Art

Being invited to touch objects in a museum is a rare and thrilling experience. Renwick visitors will now have the opportunity to explore tactile connections thanks to a new mobile touch cart.

Submit your work for SAAM Arcade 2018: Game on!

It’s that time again! The Smithsonian American Art Museum is inviting all independent video game developers to submit their work to the museum's fourth annual SAAM Arcade.

Games

Exhibition - Kara Walker, Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats

Two Artists, One Vision: Kara Walker and Spike Lee

Kara Walker’s series Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), currently on view at SAAM through March 11, and Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled, are two great examples of how art has the power to tackle sensitive and important matters. Although these works are very different, they discuss the same things: history, race, gender, and stereotypes.

Education

Wendell Castle: Timeless

Master woodworker, furniture maker, and artist Wendell Castle died on January 20, at the age of 85. During his long and illustrious career, he helped define and redefine craft furniture in America.

Craft and Decorative Arts

Exhibitions - Lumia, Thomas Wilfred, Lumia Suite, Op. 158, 1963–64. Projectors, reflector unit, electrical and lighting elements, and a projection screen; approx. 9 yrs., 127 days, 18 hrs. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund, 582.19

How’d He Do That? A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Lumia

Lighting designer Scott Rosenfeld takes you behind the scenes of the exhibition, Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light.

Behind-the-Scenes

Seeing Star Wars

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...some museum nerds kept seeing Star Wars connections in the artworks.

Press - Murder is Her Hobby Nutshell Studies

Recipe for a Holiday Murder Mystery

We challenge you to create your own murder mystery crime scene. Out of gingerbread.

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Pantone Ultra Violet Inspiration

We searched the museum's collection in search of Pantone's 2018 Color of the Year, PANTONE 18-3838 Ultra Violet.

Feel the Burn: The Art of Burning Man comes to the Renwick in March

Eye Level spoke with Nora Atkinson, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, to learn more about her upcoming exhibition No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, opening at t

Five Question Interviews

Craft and Decorative Arts

Exhibition - Tamayo Rufino Tamayo, New York seen from the Terrace [Nueva York desde la terraza], 1937, oil on canvas, 20 3/8 x 34 3/8 in. FEMSA Collection. © Tamayo Heirs/Mexico/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo by Roberto Ortiz

In Harmony: Artist Rufino Tamayo and Composer Carlos Chávez

Carlos Chávez was Mexico’s most important composer of the twentieth century, as well as a conductor, theorist, educator, and founder of the Mexican Symphony Orchestra.

"Thanksgiving" with Grandma Moses

Grandma Moses' depiction of farm life and the annual Thanksgiving ritual of catching the holiday bird.

Exhibition - Tamayo Rufino Tamayo, Carnival [Carnaval], 1936, gouache on paper, 15 x 22 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2017.22 © Tamayo Heirs/Mexico/Licensed by VAGA, New York

Drawn to the City: Tamayo in New York

New York City sparked Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's imagination during his early visits in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, Manhattan was a burgeoning new hub for the art world that welcomed artists from all over and supported cross-cultural exchanges.

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Stranger Things

It has been a bumper season for eerie exhibitions at SAAM and the Renwick Gallery.

Fall Movies at SAAM

Movies at SAAM invites you to screenings of two extraordinary documentaries that explore the craft and philosophy of the 1970s New York art world.

Rick Araluce: Tunnel Vision

You step out onto the edge of the platform and you wait. You look towards the end of the tunnel and see lights flicker in the distance and the rumblings of what sound like a train approaching. But how far away is it?

Exhibition - Nutshells Frances Glessner Lee, Parsonage Parlor, about 1946-48. Collection of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, courtesy of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Baltimore, MD

Murder Is Her Hobby Opens at the Renwick

Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death takes a look at the godmother of forensics who combined art, craft, and criminology.

Kara Walker: Dark Shadows of History

For over two decades, African American artist Kara Walker has been making work that weaves together imagery from the antebellum South, the brutality of slavery, and racist stereotypes. Walker, one of the most prominent artists working today, emerged in the mid-1990s with incendiary, provocative works set in the past but that were very much about the present.

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