SAAM Stories

I TiVoed Imagining America: Icons of 20th-Century American Art but didn’t have the time to sit down and watch it before I set off for a vacation in Texas.

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.

On a flight recently I saw so many people reading books by Malcolm Gladwell—three reading Blink (myself included) and one other reading The Tipping Point—that I began to suspect it was a new Federal Aviation Administration security mandate. (At least I would have been on the right side of the law.)

I nearly forgot about the recent NPR interview with John Updike, author of Still Looking, a collection of essays on artists, along with scores of novels and literary essays.

This year I had planned to attend Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB)—the 4-day Miami gala comprising five contemporary art fairs [Art Basel, Pulse, Aqua Art, New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), and Design05]—but the weekend disagreed with my schedule. Stuck out in the cold.

Here's an excerpt from Paul Richard's Washington Post article about Audubon's Birds of America, selections from which are on view at the National Gallery of Art's Audubon's Dream Realized exhibition:

Washington Post art critic takes the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to task for screening Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at its Imax theater.

When art touches and powerfully shapes someone’s life, it always makes for a good story. But it’s not often that one hears such testimony about work made as recently as 1985. We’re happy our Renwick Gallery could be the conduit.

First in a three-part series about fall lectures in Washington, DC. Glenn Lowry, the director of MoMA, spoke at the Hirshhorn in late October.

Economist Tyler Cowen mentioned that he's still thinking about Dana Schutz's paintings after a recent tour through MoMA. There's been no lack of attention for Schutz since 2003, when her works were featured in both the Venice and Prague biennales—just one year after her graduation from Columbia's MFA program.

You'll want to read Ben Davis's Artnet write-up of the Noguchi Museum's exhibition, "The Imagery of Chess Revisited," whether you're a chess player or not.

Welcome to Eye Level! I'm pleased to introduce the Smithsonian American Art Museum's blog, the first by the Smithsonian and one of just a handful of museum sites in the blogosphere.

Easily one of the iconic visual artworks from the last few decades—and all the more so for having been seen by so few people—Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970) has possibly never looked better. Underwater for years, the land art sculpture reemerged in 2002 after the Great Salt Lake's waters subsided slightly.

Senior Art Historian Richard Murray estimates that the stereograph was taken in the late 1890s; the presence of stairs leading up to the building indicate that the image cannot have been taken more recently than the 1930s.

A little background: In the 1830s George Catlin, a painter, traveled across the Great Plains in order to document the "manners, customs, and conditions" of the Native American Plains tribes. Catlin roughly followed the Missouri River, journeying nearly 2,000 miles, and in doing so produced his Indian Gallery, a body of work that catalogued individuals and activities of fifty different tribes.

The Heritage Emergency National Task Force is acting as a clearinghouse for information about cultural resources in the states affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Edward Winkleman wrote about Andrew Wyeth recently, commenting on the distinction between art we love for the pure visual pleasure it provides and the art we value conceptually. Winkleman observes, "In the end, this discussion seems to turn on whether we place more value on concept or pleasure in artwork. . . . [I]f we're honest, we'll admit we don't have as many qualms about celebrating concept sans pleasure . . . it's just the other way around that makes us squeamish."

I don't think I'm alone when I say that, from time to time, an artist whose work I've always casually admired will—without warning—completely capture my attention. In my case, after some light research into the artist's background, I began devouring anything I could find about Sean Scully and his abstract work.