SAAM Staff

Mike wrote about one of the Kogod Courtyard's interesting features, a series of water scrims throughout the enclosure.

Jeremiah Gallay, one of SAAM’s exhibition designers, recently installed the show Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape in one of our galleries. He writes on how he chose to design the space.

It's the dawn of the new fiscal year (ok, so you're not interested in the ways of the federal government). But in this case it means I get to introduce you to a new addition to our Eye Level team, Howard Kaplan. Howard will be joining Kriston and the rest of us blogging all things American art.

We have launched two new podcasts this week: an audio podcast, The Prints of Sean Scully, (whose exhibition is on display at the museum until October 8) and our first video podcast on our Lunder Conservation Center.

Timing is everything. On my way to photograph the installation of Andrea Zittel's work for our upcoming exhibition Celebrating the Lucelia Artist Award, 2001—2006, I stopped off to see what was happening in our courtyard.

I didn't purchase the professional version of Smithsonian Radar when I signed on for this job ten years ago (that's reserved for our Public Affairs department who scours newspapers and magazines for all coverage of our museum). However, I frequently find myself using the open source version when I come upon our name in the media.

We've just launched our third podcast. This one is about art and the American West.

On my way through the museum this morning I found this construction scene of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard. Norman Foster's canopy is almost complete except for one hole that will remain open until the completion of the floor and landscaping in November of this year.

Ninety years from now, when America begins to reflect on the past one hundred years, what will our descendants think of the early part of the 21st century? And how will artists define the era?

We asked SAAM's lighting designer, Scott Rosenfeld, to discuss his thinking as he lit the exhibition on Joseph Cornell currently on view in the third-floor galleries.

I was watching a backlog of Desperate Housewives episodes on TiVo the other evening and suddenly I noticed something familiar. When Bree is confronting her new husband Orson, there in the background hangs The Girl I Left Behind Me by Eastman Johnson. The original painting hangs in SAAM's second floor galleries.

SAAM conservator Hugh Shockey has been hard at work conserving John Rogers' Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations.

For a behind-the-scenes look at museum blogging in general and Eye Level in particular, take a look at Now on exhibit, the blogger's view in Sunday's Los Angeles Times.

Gene Davis's Two Part Blue was given to American Art in the ‘90s as part of the late artist’s estate. The painting came with a surprise: it seemed to have some white accretions on its surface.

SAAM lighting designer, Scott Rosenfeld, gives us an inside look at the challenge of lighting artwork. Lighting the Color Field Gallery (3rd floor, West Wing), according to Scott, was an exciting endeavor:

With our opening festivities complete we're turning our attentions upward —to the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard being designed by renowned British architect Norman Foster and scheduled for completion by the fall of next year.

Rachel Allen, our Deputy Director, reminded us today of another milestone: "999 days ago, the museum started counting the days until reopening.

Venerable American Art Icons Await the Opening of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

There are just a few staffers who were here in January 2000 when SAAM closed for renovation. I was one of them. July 2006 seemed far away back then —very abstract.

Visitors to our Luce Foundation Center for American Artwill see visible storage cases holding some 3300 works, including this case of Southwestern art featuring Kenneth M. Adams' Juan Duran