The American Art Forum, a small group of collectors from across the United States, was begun twenty years ago by Charles C. Eldredge while he was director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

40 Under 40: Craft Futures examines the expanding role of the handmade in contemporary culture through the work of the next generation of artists.

Often called the great corridor of America’s westward expansion, in the nineteenth century the Great Platte River Road carried wagon trains and settlers through Nebraska Territory to points farther west.

Graphic Masters celebrates the extraordinary variety and accomplishment of American artists’ works on paper.

The eighty-four pieces of studio furniture owned by the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum constitute one of the largest assemblages of American studio furniture in the nation.

A prolific landscape record evolved as soon as cameras and equipment could be reliably used outdoors. Most nineteenth-century photographers worked on government-sponsored surveys. Others helped to lure investors westward with the images they made along the routes of the railroads.

During the Great Depression, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised a “new deal for the American people,” initiating government programs to foster economic recovery. Roosevelt’s pledge to help “the forgotten man” also embraced America’s artists.

In the 1920s, inspired perhaps by the particular light and quality of Gloucester, Massachusetts, Edward Hopper began painting watercolors. He has been celebrated since then as one of the most eloquent of America’s realists.

The six artists whose earthy, urban subjects led critics to call them the “Ashcan School” are featured in this book. The authors document how closely the work of these artists reflected current events and social concerns at the turn of the century.

African American Masters focuses on black artists whose efforts in the twentieth century demonstrate their command of mainstream traditions as well as the open assertion and exploration of their dual heritage.

Inspired by nineteenth-century landscape painting, science-fiction film, and firsthand study, Rockman’s paintings proffer a vision of the natural world that is equal parts fantasy and empirical fact.

Nation Building: Craft and Contemporary American Culture brings together twenty voices leading the current dialogue about critical craft studies.

The Civil War redefined America and forever changed American art. The war’s grim reality, captured through the new medium of photography, was laid bare. American artists could not glamorize the hero on the battlefield.

The Great American Hall of Wonders is a vividly illustrated survey of the American ingenuity that energized all aspects of nineteenth-century society, from the painting of landscapes and scenes of everyday life to the planning of scientific expedition and the development of new mechanica

Artist George Catlin journeyed west five times in the 1830s, traversing the Great Plains and visiting more than 140 American Indian tribes. In hundreds of canvases, Catlin recorded the lifeways of Plains Indians, including illustrating massive herds of buffalo and their importance in daily life.