SAAM Stories

SAAM lighting designer, Scott Rosenfeld, gives us an inside look at the challenge of lighting artwork. Lighting the Color Field Gallery (3rd floor, West Wing), according to Scott, was an exciting endeavor:

With our opening festivities complete we're turning our attentions upward —to the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard being designed by renowned British architect Norman Foster and scheduled for completion by the fall of next year.

I spoke to conservator Ann Creager, who explained that she was removing the last patch of a layer of old varnish from the this portrait (circa 1850), Woman with Gold Necklace.

Peer closely at Albert Bierstadt's Among the Sierra Nevada, California—you need to be standing up close and personal, because you won't find it even in a large image—and you will see, in the lower left-hand corner of the painting, hovering in a stream under the shadow of a rock outcrop, a trout.

Rachel Allen, our Deputy Director, reminded us today of another milestone: "999 days ago, the museum started counting the days until reopening.

From Eye Level's command center here in the recesses of the Luce Foundation Center yesterday, we were amazed at the surge of energy and people in our halls.

There were 18,744 visitors to the Donald W. Reynolds Center yesterday on its opening day.

Visitors to The National Portrait Gallery can see Andy Warhol's famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe.

Offset from the modern/contemporary Lincoln Gallery is a dark room (the kind of museum space in which you might watch a video piece) where David Hockney's 1995–96 Snails Space With Vari-Lites, "Painting as Performance" is installed.

A crowd of hundreds waited outside, everyone hoping to be the first to enter. Waving fans and folded papers, people were surely eager to escape the heat from today's bright sunshine. There was goofy entertainment aplenty; actors dressed as George and Martha Washington and Uncle Sam chatted up the crowd, and two people dressed as the iconic father and daughter from Grant Wood's American Gothic waved down from a portico.

Venerable American Art Icons Await the Opening of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Performances, demonstrations, and talks will mark the opening of the museum tomorrow. Assuming you have some interest in also seeing the art that’s on display, here’s a list of works that deserve your attention:

Tomorrow, a really wonderful thing happens, and though we’ve thought about it for days and months and years, now that the moment is here it’s hard to know quite what to say.

Tomorrow Eye Level moves its operations from our offices to the museum. We’ll be blogging live throughout the day, documenting the opening for posterity and, of course, for those of you who can’t be here in person. We’ll also be hosting the folks from DCist, who are joining us for the day.

There are just a few staffers who were here in January 2000 when SAAM closed for renovation. I was one of them. July 2006 seemed far away back then —very abstract.

Visitors to our Luce Foundation Center for American Artwill see visible storage cases holding some 3300 works, including this case of Southwestern art featuring Kenneth M. Adams' Juan Duran

Smithsonian Institution Secretary Larry Small, Smithsonian American Art Museum director Elizabeth Broun, and National Portrait Gallery director Marc Pachter assembled Wednesday for the dedication of the building that houses the two museums: the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.

We open in just nine days and everything is falling into place. Look behind the scenes at final artwork installations and finishing touches.