SAAM Stories

George Washing Sculpture
07/29/2010
Before construction began in 1848 on the world's tallest stone structure, the Washington Monument, commemorating our first president, Horatio Greenough had already created the first Washington monument on the National Mall honoring him.
Nicole
Art-O-Mat
07/26/2010
We’re very excited about the shiny new Art-O-Mat that arrived in the Luce Foundation Center this week. Now you can start your very own collection of American Art right here in the museum—becoming a collector has never been so convenient!
Georgina
Jan Baum
We get lots of questions about the craft objects in American Art's Luce Foundation Center. Visitors are often curious about the pieces on display and how they were created. So we seized the opportunity to invite local artists to the center to talk about their work.
Tierney
Steven Spielberg
07/16/2010
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Steven Spielberg by filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau on August 6, 2008.
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor
George Lucas
07/16/2010
The following is an excerpt from an interview with George Lucas by Laurent Bouzereau, filmmaker, and Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on September 12, 2008.
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor
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07/09/2010
Where you off to this summer? We want to know and we've devised an art-related way you can show us where you've been. We've put together a set of artworks from our collection, depicting places around the country. Should you be going to any of these spots, take a photo and post it to our Flickr group: American Art Road Trip. The more the merrier.
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor
Steven Spielberg
07/08/2010
Steven Spielberg tries his hand at being a shadow artist in front of Norman Rockwell's Shadow Artist.
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor
Airmen of Note
07/02/2010
Laurel Fehrenbach, public programs assistant here at American Art, spoke with Sergeant Kevin Burns from Airmen of Note. The jazz group will be performing Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4, from 1 to 3 p.m. as part of our celebration for the opening of our exhibition, Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor
Rockwell
07/01/2010
Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg shows us how Rockwell went to great lengths to stage his pictures, laboring over costumes for each figure and the individual props that added to the story he wanted the viewer to understand at a glance.
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06/29/2010
This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: The Best of Ask Joan of Art. Question: A friend told me about an exhibition she had seen a few years ago of small paintings of eyes. I can't find any information on these "eye" paintings. Have you heard of this genre? Where could I find out more about these works?
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor
Conservator Hugh Shockey in Haiti
Hugh Shockey, one of American Art's conservators, recently returned from Haiti where he was helping to preserve some of the country's artworks after the recent earthquake there. Here is one of the reports he filed while he was there.
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor
Noguchi
06/22/2010
Of all the stories of internees in the relocation camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, Isamu Noguchi's was the most unusual.
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06/14/2010
When I typed "birds" into American Art's search engine, I was able to view multiple artists' different takes on the natural world. I came across Seacoast and Flying Birds, a colorful woodblock print by Frances H. Gearhart (1869-1958), and decided to explore the work of an artist I knew nothing about.
Art in Haiti
American Art's Mandy Young is receiving reports from our conservator, Hugh Shockey, who is in Haiti to help with the rehab of the country's artworks after the recent earthquake there.
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor
Thomas Wilmer Dewings
06/04/2010
I always wondered what it would be like to compose a score for particular artworks in the collection of American Art. Clearly a late- nineteenth-century painting by Thomas Wilmer Dewing would sound different from a meditative Mark Rothko work painted seventy years later.
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06/01/2010
American artist Louise Bourgeois died on Monday, May 31, at the age of ninety-eight. Born in France to parents who made their living repairing tapestries, she moved to New York City in 1938 and lived and worked there for the rest of her life.
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05/28/2010
For me, the name Louis Comfort Tiffany conjures up images of art glass, opulence, and the mystique of the Gilded Age. But I had no idea that he was also a photographer and gained some amount of renown for his images. I love this one, an albumen print entitled Fishermen Unloading a Boat, Sea Bright, New Jersey, taken in 1887.
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05/26/2010
This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: The Best of Ask Joan of Art. Question: At the museum's Renwick Gallery, I saw a grandfather clock covered in a white cloth, but I can't remember the artist or title of this work.
SAAM Staff
Blog Editor