SAAM Stories

When you work in an office building, especially if you sit at a computer all day, you need to force yourself to get outside every once and a while. Fortunately a stroll around here often rewards one with something interesting to see. The museum is in a neighborhood full of change: new stores, restaurants, clubs, and dwellings open every day, not to mention the hubbub of the renovation of our building.

I don’t consider Dutch Design to be design generated in the Netherlands. I consider Dutch Design a kind of work, or an attitude about work, or even a brand of work, that could theoretically occur anywhere at anytime.

While focusing on providing material aid and relief to the thousands displaced by Hurricane Katrina, it's certainly the case that much in the way of charity will be required to rebuild the unique cultural capital that is New Orleans and to restore the many Gulf Coast arts institutions damaged by the storm and subsequent flood.

Peter Schjeldahl said that he didn't think it was important that the community of art lovers (the "tent") grow much larger than it is right now—that art shouldn't play a larger role in the lives of Americans.

In 1762, American painter John Singleton Copley wrote to Swiss miniaturist Jean-Etienne Liotard about the condition of the arts in the American colonies.

I sat down with a gloss of the history of the Smithsonian arts holdings (adapted from William Kloss's Treasures from the National Museum of American Art) thinking that I might highlight a few of the more interesting historical facts for this blog.