Howard Kaplan
Writer
We’ve Got Your Back...Pack
How SAAM is helping students stay creative when they can’t visit the museum
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Blog Posts
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Museum: A Tale of Art, Life, and Everything In Between
A funny thing happened on the way to the museum... -
David Levinthal: Toying with the Past?
Populated with toy cowboys and cavalry, Barbie dolls and baseball players, David Levinthal’s photographs reference iconic images and events that shaped postwar American society.Categories -
Mom's the Word with artist Tyler Fuqua
A blog post in honor of Mother's Day, featuring Burning Man artist Tyler Fuqua and his mother talking about his work in "No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man."Categories -
Museum: A Tale of Art, Life and Everything In Between
I'm throwing this one back five years to one of my favorite stories from one of my favorite poets that was originally posted in 2013. It comes with all good wishes from the blog for a wonderful, story-filled, Happy New Year. -
Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor opens today
Bill Traylor (ca. 1853–1949) is among the most important American artists of the twentieth century.
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A Brush with History: Letters to Jonathan Van Ness
We imagine the letters of 19th-century sitters to Jonathan Van Ness, star of the Netflix series, Queer Eye.Categories -
Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen Now OpenInstalling Trevor Paglen's Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite in the exhibition Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen.Categories -
On Lava Thomas's Requiem for Charleston
The other day, my colleague, Libby, and I walked through the museum in search of an artwork we could talk about. And though each artwork has a story to tell, Lava Thomas's "Requiem for Charleston," the artist's response to the church massacre at Mother Emanuel in 2015, spoke the most to us, in a quietly powerful way (if such a thing is possible).Categories -
The Renwick's (David) Best Temple
David Best creates temples for Burning Man that are made of recycled wood that are ritually burned at the end of the annual festival. In this video Best discusses the Temple he created for the Renwick Gallery’s Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon, as a sacred space for people to reflect on loss.Categories -
Discover the Art of Burning Man at the Renwick
"No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man" brings the large-scale, participatory work from this desert gathering to the nation’s capital for the first time.Categories -
Wendell Castle: Timeless
Master woodworker, furniture maker, and artist Wendell Castle died on January 20, at the age of 85. During his long and illustrious career, he helped define and redefine craft furniture in America.Categories -
Feel the Burn: The Art of Burning Man comes to the Renwick in March
Eye Level spoke with Nora Atkinson, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, to learn more about her upcoming exhibition No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, opening at t
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![Exhibition - Tamayo Rufino Tamayo, New York seen from the Terrace [Nueva York desde la terraza], 1937, oil on canvas, 20 3/8 x 34 3/8 in. FEMSA Collection. © Tamayo Heirs/Mexico/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo by Roberto Ortiz](https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.saam.media/files/styles/max_325x325/s3/images/2017-08/tamayo_new_york_terrace_0.jpg?itok=94tGIIyD)
In Harmony: Artist Rufino Tamayo and Composer Carlos Chávez
Carlos Chávez was Mexico’s most important composer of the twentieth century, as well as a conductor, theorist, educator, and founder of the Mexican Symphony Orchestra.
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![Exhibition - Tamayo Rufino Tamayo, Carnival [Carnaval], 1936, gouache on paper, 15 x 22 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2017.22 © Tamayo Heirs/Mexico/Licensed by VAGA, New York](https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.saam.media/files/styles/max_325x325/s3/images/2017-08/tamayo_carnaval_saam.jpg?itok=9xJ70TmF)
Drawn to the City: Tamayo in New York
New York City sparked Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's imagination during his early visits in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, Manhattan was a burgeoning new hub for the art world that welcomed artists from all over and supported cross-cultural exchanges. -
Rick Araluce: Tunnel Vision
You step out onto the edge of the platform and you wait. You look towards the end of the tunnel and see lights flicker in the distance and the rumblings of what sound like a train approaching. But how far away is it? -
Murder Is Her Hobby Opens at the Renwick
Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death takes a look at the godmother of forensics who combined art, craft, and criminology. -
Lumia: The Art of Light
Beginning in the 1920s and into the next few decades, Thomas Wilfred was something of an art-world star, having fused modern art and pre-digital technology to create his luminous works. -
Parallax Gap: Building a Drawing
Helen B. Bechtel, independent curator and coordinator of the installation, Parallax Gap, fills us in on the relationship between architecture and American craft. Parallax Gap remains on display at the Renwick Gallery through February 11, 2018.Categories -
Peter Voulkos: Breaking with Tradition
On view in our current exhibition at the Renwick Gallery, Peter Voulkos: The Breakthrough Years, are three of the artist's large-scale paintings: Blue Remington, Red Through Black #3, and Falling Red. Some people may be surprised to find paintings in Voulkos' oeuvre, but that's what makes their discovery (at least for me) all the more exciting.Categories