A photograph of Howard Kaplan on a plane.

Howard Kaplan

Writer

Blog Posts

  • Media - 1994.91.134 - SAAM-1994.91.134_1 - 72153
    How The West Was Framed: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O’Sullivan
    There hasn't been a major exhibition of the works by nineteenth-century photographer Timothy H. O'Sullivan in more than thirty years, but thanks to a collaboration between the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Library of Congress, all that changes this week in a big way with the opening of the exhibition Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan.
  • Gaman Image
    Gaman: FDR and the Japanese American Internment Camps
    On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the creation of internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. The order—a direct result of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor the previous December, which killed thousands of Americans—placed 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps.
  • Media - 1989.78.1 - SAAM-1989.78.1_2 - 125520
    In This Case: Happy Birthday Mr. President
    We usually think of Presidents' Day as celebrating the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. But we found this presidential gem of President and Mrs. Eisenhower, from 1955, two years after the former five-star general took office.
  • Media - 1976.131.3 - SAAM-1976.131.3_1 - 65699
    Matters of the Heart
    This Valentine's Day, love may be in the air, but it's also found its way into the museum. We've had canoodling sightings in the Kogod Courtyard, and even a highly romantic marriage proposal in one of the galleries (and the good news is that she said yes!).
  • Media - 2006.24.4 - SAAM-2006.24.4_1 - 67198
    All Eyes on Haiti: Lois Mailou Jones
    For almost a week now I have been trying to write about the devastating earthquake in Haiti from the point of view of art and culture, but it didn't seem right—or, at least, not the right time. With so many lives lost or destroyed, and with people still missing, what could I possibly say about paintings and sculpture that would be up to the task?
  • Media - 2009.24A-C - SAAM-2009.24A-C_10 - 92342
    In Conversation: Nicholas Bell on Karen LaMonte
    The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery recently acquired Karen LaMonte’s Reclining Dress Impression with Drapery. LaMonte, a glass artist, went to Prague in 1998 on a Fulbright scholarship to learn how to cast large-scale works in one of the most famous glass studios in the world. The glass dress series, of which the new acquisition is a part, took about ten years to complete.
  • Media - 1971.447.2 - SAAM-1971.447.2_1 - 4075
    Seeing Things (5): An Ordinary Day
    This is the fifth in a series of personal observations about how people experience and explore museums. Take a look at Howard's other blog posts on the subject.
  • Media - 1964.1.66 - SAAM-1964.1.66_2 - 89543
    Music for an Exhibition: Sounds of 1934
    On a recent Sunday afternoon, pianist and music educator Leslie Amper presented a program at American Art on the WPA Federal Music Project, providing a perfect antidote to the gloomy weather outside. With the exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists, currently on view through January 3, 2010, Amper's program added another layer to our understanding of the importance of FDR's initiatives to help artists, as well as composers, musicians, and dancers among others, in need.
  • Media - 1975.2 - SAAM-1975.2_1 - 81777
    Abe Pollin’s Home Run
    Abe Pollin changed the face of downtown D.C. when he opened the MCI (now Verizon) Center over a decade ago in Gallery Place, across the street from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. To coincide with the opening of the MCI Center on December 2, 1997, and to welcome our new neighbors, American Art curated the exhibition Time Out! Sports in Art.
  • Holiday card
    Season’s Greetings
    Season's Greetings, an exhibition from the Archives of American Art, features holiday cards made by artists, many of whose works are in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
  • Stanford White tabernacle-style frame
    Over the Edge with Martin Kotler
    A picture may be worth a thousand words, but doesn't the frame have an equally interesting story to tell? Martin Kotler, frames conservator at American Art, led an enthusiastic group through Frames 101 the other day in the Renwick Gallery's Grand Salon.
  • Media - 1969.21.143 - SAAM-1969.21.143_1 - 57926
    Thanksgiving, 1969 by Werner Drewes
    Forty years ago, German-born American artist Werner Drewes created this colorful woodcut in honor of what may be the most typically American holiday. I like it for its vivid lines, burst of energy, and full-blown spectrum, especially the use of the color purple.
  • Image Not Available
    Remembering Jeanne-Claude (19352009)
    When I heard that artist Jeanne-Claude had died, I went back to the blog post I wrote last year about her visit to American Art with her other half, Christo. Together, as husband and wife and as artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been reinventing the contemporary art landscape for more than fifty years with their installations such as wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf in Paris, and of course, Running Fence, their monumental project in Northern California from the 1970s.
  • Image Not Available
    Roy DeCarava, 1919 – 2009
    Roy DeCarava, an American master, died October 27, 2009, a few weeks shy of his ninetieth birthday. Born in Harlem in 1919, and coming to adulthood during the Harlem Renaissance, DeCarava became a photographer of the street and the people who inhabited that day-to-day world.
  • Dave Hickey
    Dave Hickey and the State of the Arts
    "My ten millionth grandfather was Jonathan Edwards," critic Dave Hickey told us last week as part of the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture Series at American Art. He added, "But I'm not going to give you any of that." What he did give us, instead, was a thought-provoking hour on the nature of contemporary art in America and how ideals of art and the artist in society were shaped centuries ago.
  • Media - 1964.1.44 - SAAM-1964.1.44_2 - 129866
    Discovering 1934: The Stories Behind the Paintings
    "What kind of highway signs did they have in Minnesota in 1934?" was just one of the questions Ann Prentice Wagner, guest curator of the exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists, needed to answer to place the paintings in context. "I was asking and answering questions of the kind that I hadn't had previously," Wagner told an enthusiastic audience who attended her lecture the other night at American Art.
  • Media - 1992.13.44 - SAAM-1992.13.44_1 - 47909
    Halloween 2009: Goblin Lanterns by Helen Hyde
    For the ghostly and ghoulish among you, I found Helen Hyde's Goblin Lanterns of 1906. The artist, born in New York in 1868, moved with her family to San Francisco two years later, where her father prospered in a business associated with the gold rush.
  • William T. Wiley stands next to his Punball: Only One Earth
    The World According to Wiley
    “So we’ll see what happens when it gets dark,” William T. Wiley said after introductory remarks at the McEvoy Auditorium the other night to inaugurate the 2009 Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art at the museum, and the lights were dimmed.
  • SunKoo Yuh, Can You Hear Me?, 2007, glazed porcelain, Collection of the artist
    On Stage with the Renwick’s Staged Stories
    To make her point that "museums are a place of theater," Kate Bonansinga, curator of Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009, began her introductory comments for the Artists' Roundtable on September 25th with an image of Charles Willson Peale's famous self-portrait where he lifts a thick red curtain to reveal his natural history museum. "It's all theater," Bonansinga added, "and that's the point that I'm interested in making."
  • Media - 1964.1.36 - SAAM-1964.1.36_1 - 69390
    Looking at 1934: Kenjiro Nomura’s The Farm, 1934
    Fully one-quarter of the painters depicted in the exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists were first-generation Americans: born elsewhere, but came to the United States in search of the American dream.