Howard Kaplan

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?

Artists have been capturing all the different moods of light for millennia. American artists such as members of the Hudson River School, or the American impressionists, managed to capture light as a way of defining the landscape.

Bring the entire family to the museum's Kogod Courtyard on Saturday, January 24 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. as we celebrate The Year of the Ox in style!

Greetings from D.C. where change comes every four—or sometimes eight—years. It's an interesting time to be in the nation's capital. On January 20th, our newest president will be sworn in; his election was a momentous achievement in so many ways.

What’s better than an evening at a museum while the world around you is settling down for the night: it’s magic.

I think of Ansel Adams as the Walt Whitman of American photography, creating "silent songs" about monumental landscapes. Georgia O'Keeffe, on the other hand, reminds me of Emily Dickinson.

"I didn't choose painting," Grace Hartigan once told an interviewer, "It chose me. I didn't have any talent. I just had genius."

We've just turned the last page on this year's calendar and it's time to count down the days remaining in 2008. To take a good look at the last month of the year, I've chosen December from Harry Cimino's Marchbanks Calendar.

Who'd have thought that spending an hour and a half with a lawyer could be so entertaining? Local attorney Joshua Kaufman of Venable LLP enlighted the audience at American Art the other night on the legal issues of acquiring, owning, inheriting, and selling art, from the big picture to the fine print.

December 1 is World AIDS Day as well as what was once known as A Day Without Art. That began December 1, 1989, in response to the AIDS crisis and in honor of all the artists who lost their lives or were affected by the disease.

George Elbert Burr created this menu for a Thanksgiving dinner in 1905 that included consomme, English plum pudding, charlotte russe (a dessert of cream and ladyfingers), and of course, the turkey, illustrated here in a simple pen and ink and watercolor drawing.

O'Keeffe's Manhattan was created for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932. If the flowers don’t seem like typical O’Keeffe, they’re not: she based them on paper and cloth decorative flowers created by Hispanic women in New Mexico.

The grand Renwick Gallery, which is part of SAAM, was built in the mid nineteenth century to house the art collection of Washington banker and philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran. From the beginning the Renwick was an important building, and Corcoran was a superstar mover and shaker in D.C.

A Brush with Georgia O'Keeffe is a play about the artist who is being celebrated—along with photographer Ansel Adams—in SAAM's current exhibition, Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities. Actress and playwright Natalie Mosco stars in the play she wrote about O'Keeffe and the important people in her life, most notably her husband, photographer and general mover and shaker, Alfred Stieglitz.

Lewis Nerman is a passionate collector of contemporary art. In 2007, he and his family opened the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas.

When Lino Tagliapietra's wife had admired a Valentino couture gown some years back, he told her to forget about the dress: he'd make her something even better.

In honor of our recent exhibition Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, the Lunder Conservation Center presented a behind-the-scenes look at the artist's Fisk murals.