SAAM Staff

Yoko Oshio is just a knitting newbie but that didn’t stop her from sitting down to knit and purl at the Renwick Gallery’s first Sit ‘n’ Knit. As part of American Art’s Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009 knitting volunteers, both experienced and not, will help complete a project started by artist Mark Newport over the next two months.

Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009 runs until January 3, 2010. Nicholas Bell, curator at the Renwick Gallery, introduces us to the art and artists now on exhibition.

Jean Shin’s exhibition Common Threads just closed at American Art. Once a show is over, American Art’s Registrar’s Office is tasked with de-installing it.

In This Case is a series of posts on art in the Luce Foundation Center for the Study of American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This piece was written by Jill Paschal, an intern here at the Luce Center this past year.

Calling all DC photographers! Ever daydream what it would be like to be a museum photographer? (Sure you have.) Well, here's your chance to help American Art illustrate Wikipedia articles with images from our collection (and you might win prizes in the process).

George Gurney, American Art's Deputy Chief Curator, came by my desk this afternoon to tell me today marked a special occasion in the art world.

Fotoweek DC, a week-long celebration of photography here in the nation’s capital, is being celebrated at the American Art Museum with a series of nightly contemporary photo landscape projections on the walls of our Kogod Courtyard.

Not sure what you want to be for Halloween? Do you have visions of making your grand entrance only to find you're the third person at the party wearing a superhero or witch costume? If you're looking for inspiration, please visit us at the Luce Center!

Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Glass opens tomorrow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery.

Julie Heath is the Program Coordinator for the Lunder Conservation Center, our open conservation lab. We asked Julie to fill us in on the Lunder's latest project.

In June SAAM, along with its partner Cisco, hosted teachers from Louisiana and Mississippi, who came to the museum to learn how to use technology in their classrooms. We asked Dr. Elizabeth Eder, SAAM's national education program manager, to write about the week's activities.

One of the most important things I've learned as a photographer is to slow down when looking at images.

We asked SAAM's Patrick Martin, to write a post about a new Web initiative from our museum’s Education department: Superhighway Scholars.

We just launched a new podcast in our museum series about our photography collection and exhibitions here at SAAM.

The Kogod Courtyard, shared by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, has just been named one of seven architectural wonders of the world by Condé Nast Traveler magazine. Way to go! From the article:

Bernice Ellis Lunder entered the Comics Quilt, featuring forty-nine characters from the funny papers, in a quilt context.

Over ten thousand people (including lots of children) attended our Friends and Family festival marking the opening of the Kogod Courtyard. Eye Level blogged a record eight stories that day (whew!), documented with many photos by us and by others (see our Flickr photostream).

The courtyard was designed to double as a performance space, and this must have been quite a challenge to the architects.

Museum intern Mary Savig spoke with several visitors on their reasons for coming to the grand opening.

SAAM's got a new Flickr group.