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"A Long and Tumultuous Relationship" East-West Interchanges in American Art

This two-day symposium explores the complicated interactions between American and Asian artists and visual traditions from the eighteenth century to the present. The history of American art has long been discussed primarily in terms of European training and influence.

Words Matter! The 20th Anniversary of the Eldredge Prize

This event brought together fourteen winners of the museum’s Charles C. Eldredge Prize, awarded annually to the author of the best book in the field of American art. Each speaker chose a word to muse upon—a word that is a critical term for the field, represents an especially compelling approach for the study of American art, or has galvanized his or her own scholarship.

American Art in a Global Context

This symposium looked at American art in a global context—from circum-Atlantic migrations in the eighteenth century to European training and travel in the late nineteenth century; from the export of U.S. culture and media in the twentieth century to the impact of immigration and globalization on the nation’s visual arts in the new millennium.

Saint-Gaudens Centenary Symposium

This symposium reexamined the influence and importance of one of America’s greatest sculptors, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907).

Conservation and Exhibition Planning: Material Testing for Design, Display, and Packing Conference

This conference explored practical considerations that facilitate and benefit collection care in museum exhibition workflows, and how they impact staff across departments. Presentations focused on designing exhibitions and fabricating display furniture; strategic approaches to collection care during the exhibition implementation process; designing storage environments; conservation work spaces; interpretation and sharing of analytical results from Oddy testing and alternatives to the Oddy test; and monitoring how materials change over time.

Ice Cold: Solid Carbon Dioxide Cleaning Symposium

On Thursday, September 10, 2015 the Lunder Conservation Center presented a symposium in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s McEvoy Auditorium. Talks focused on the discussion of past case studies, current considerations, and future possibilities in the use of solid CO2 cleaning for collection care.

The Modular Cleaning Program with added material on cleaning water-sensitive surfaces

This four-day workshop will focus on how the Modular Cleaning Program can help formulate a series of concentrated aqueous stock solutions and the materials to mix a range of emulsions and microemulsions. While solvent theory and solvent gels will be discussed, solvent gels will not be prepared in the workshop. The provided database, "The Modular Cleaning Program," assists the conservator in formulating and combining stock solutions which allows the conservator to create optimized cleaning solutions for more precise and tailored treatments.

Breaking New Ground: Computational Tools for Art Scholarship

Rick Johnson, the Geoffrey S. M. Hedrick Senior Professor of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, at Cornell University, and Paul Messier, Pritzker Director of the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage Lens Media Lab at Yale University, discuss their groundbreaking collaborative work that combines expertise from the worlds of signal processing and art conservation.

Traveling Exhibitions