Howard Kaplan

The son of a Russian immigrant, abstract painter Morris Louis grew up in Baltimore. As an adult, Louis lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, and in Washington, D.C., where, in a small bungalow on Legation Street, NW, he turned his dining room into a studio. Some of his pictures were larger than the room itself, and he had to work on folded canvas.

If you're walking through a city, say New York or Washington D.C., you may want to have Jean Shin by your side. You may know your way around familiar streets, but through Shin's eyes you'll be able to look at the overlooked and see how the ordinary can rise to the level of art.

Robert Motherwell, known as an intellectual painter, has sometimes been called the spokesperson for the abstract expressionist movement. He painted in a style that often involved spontaneously generated images on large fields of canvas.

In Lily Furedi's homage to the New York subway, part of the current exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists, I'm captivated mostly by the woman applying lipstick on the far left—so much that I want to create a narrative for her.

The May 25th edition of the New Yorker features a poem by Philip Levine, an American poet who can count among his numerous awards the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1928, and he often portrays that city in his poetry: the grit as well as the grace. He digs deep into the lives of ordinary people, if there is such a thing.

Abraham Walkowitz's iconic sketches of dancer Isadora Duncan capture her spirit, passion, and zest. They also reveal her sturdy physique, which is the opposite of the balletic ideal.

After hanging for more than five years in the Renwick's Grand Salon, the 300 or so George Catlins (as well as the Thomas Morans) have come down to make room for a new installation from the museum's permanent collection.

Renowned New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast was the fourth and final speaker in this year's American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series and often had the crowded auditorium in stitches.

The other night, my friend Nancy was heading over to American Art to see the Jean Shin exhibition that had just opened. Last year she had answered Shin's call for trophies from local residents. (I heard Shin got more than 2000.) That evening, Nancy was going to a reception for those who contributed. I had been drafting some notes for a post about Shin, so when Nancy asked if I wanted to go, I said, "Yes, I'm coming with you."

In the early years of the twentieth century, brothers Charles and Henry Greene created some of the most original and important architecture in the country. After the second world war, they were nearly forgotten. But why? For starters, out of approximately 140 houses designed by the brothers, sixty-six have been demolished, while another fourteen were substantially altered. About sixty homes were left standing (literally) to represent their body of work.

On a recent Saturday afternoon writer Jamaica Kincaid offered ninety minutes of personal remembrances in one of the most interesting and heartfelt presentations in the American Pictures Distinguished Lecture series. Although she started, hesitated, then began again, you couldn't help but be on her side. "I'm thinking of this as a dress rehearsal," she said, after trying to get her powerpoint to behave, "because if this works, I'm taking it on the road."

I recently discovered a side of Abraham Lincoln I didn't know too much about: our sixteenth president was a nineteenth-century technophile. Not only is he the only president to this day to have a patented invention (come'on President Obama, your turn), he used then-new technology to help win the Civil War.

The Hallmark Photo Collection (yes, that Hallmark) began in the early 1960s, and was even displayed in a gallery on the ground level of their flagship store in Manhattan. Keith F. Davis joined the Hallmark Fine Art Collection in 1979, when its holdings included about 2500 photos. By 2006, when Hallmark donated the collection to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City (where Davis was named curator of photography), the collection boasted 6500 photos by 900 different photographers.

This morning I found Alex Katz in a very unusual place: my J. Crew catalogue, which faithfully arrived with its usual thud in today's mail.

"You make me feel so respectable," writer and filmmaker John Waters wryly remarked after a rousing welcome to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, then added, "We'll see what we can do about it." Baltimore-native Waters, best known for his films Hairspray and Pink Flamingos, spoke, if not performed, at the McEvoy Auditorium, as the inaugural speaker in the second annual American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series.

Looking at the painting and the photo together reminds me of the experience of watching a landscape artist work en plein air and glancing back and forth between the canvas and the subject. In between lies the vast world of interpretation.

Two things immediately struck me about the new exhibition at American Art, 1934: A New Deal for Artists. First, I was surprised to learn that the Public Works of Art Project, or PWAP, the first of President Roosevelt's relief programs for artists, lasted just seven months. Second, these artworks, done around the time of the Great Depression (as opposed to the Great Recession of current times), are rich in color and speak of a world trying to look forward rather than forced to look back.

Lots of museum work takes place behind the scenes, so that when you visit, you can enjoy the exhibitions, lectures, or public programs. Everything is in its place: curators curate, conservators conserve, and bloggers blog. (I just threw that last one in there for a little attention.) Actually, there's a lot more to it than that.

On Thursday evening, January 29, photographer Frank Gohlke presented Stories in the Dirt, Stories in the Air, a program of selected readings followed by conversation with American Art's Curator of Photography, Toby Jurovics. The exhibition of Gohlke's work, Accommodating Nature, is on view at the museum through March 3.

Paul Feeley's sculpture Jack is a visitor favorite at The Luce Foundation Center. In fact, it's one of the objects people want to reach out and touch. And probably more would do so if it weren't for the sign that asks you not to. What is it about Jack?