Laura Baptiste

Chief of Communications and Public Affairs

Blog Posts

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  Betsy Broun’s Vision: An Appreciation

  I have worked my entire professional life knowing only one boss, Betsy Broun. She retired yesterday after nearly 30 years at the helm of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. So I've been taking stock of her vision for the museum and how the ways we connect with people to tell stories of art in a citizen democracy are tied to her ideas about American art and contemporary society.

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  Njideka Akunyili Crosby Wins the 2014 James Dicke Contemporary Artist Award

  The Smithsonian American Art Museum is delighted to announce that Njideka Akunyili Crosby is the 2014 winner of our biennial James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize. Akunyili Crosby was selected by an independent panel of jurors who wrote in their decision, "Her bold yet intimate paintings are among the most visually, conceptually, and technically exciting work being made today."

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  In Memoriam: Sam Maloof (1916-2009)

  There was something about Sam Maloof that makes him stick with you. It wasn't just that he was kind and generous; there was an energy about him that was truly inspiring.

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  Picture This: Morans on the Move

  Staff at the museum have been working all week to carefully orchestrate moving a suite of monumental landscape paintings by Thomas Moran out of the Grand Salon at the museum's Renwick Gallery to our main building in the Penn Quarter neighborhood.

  Categories

  Picture This

  Behind-the-Scenes

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  Paik for Everyone

  Laura had the great fortune to talk about Paik and the Archive with one of the world’s leading experts on Paik, John G. Hanhardt, who is the Museum’s consulting senior curator of film and media art.

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