A photograph of Howard Kaplan on a plane.

Howard Kaplan

Writer

Blog Posts

  • Splash Image - Missed Connections for Valentine's Day
    Missed Connections for Valentine’s Day
    At SAAM, we're always connecting people with our artworks. On Valentine's Day, we thought we'd explore one of the more interesting sections of many print and online publications these days: the often poetic, always interesting urban haiku of missed connections. Please check out our Instagram feed for more artful missed connections.
  • Media - 1983.63.155 - SAAM-1983.63.155_2 - 122857
    Harlem Heroes and Black History Month
    The cultural efflorescence that was the Harlem Renaissance is captured in a series of portraits currently on view in the exhibition Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten.
  • Splash Image - Seeing Things (17): Art and Healing
    Seeing Things (17): Art and Healing
    This is the seventeenth in a series of personal observations about how people experience and explore museums. Take a look at Howard's other blog posts about seeing things in a museum.
  • Splash Image - Gene Davis: The Cool Guy of Hot Beat
    Gene Davis: The Cool Guy of Hot Beat
    Gene Davis, a journalist before he was a painter, knew the power of words. He spoke his wise and sometimes ornery mind, aware of the momentary impact and the eventual documentation of his life and career.
  • Splash Image - New Acquisitions: Self-Taught Art from the Margaret Z. Robson Collection
    New Acquisitions: Self-Taught Art from the Margaret Z. Robson Collection
    SAAM has acquired nearly one-hundred works of self-taught art from the collection of Margaret Z. Robson. The paintings, drawings, and sculptures were created by forty-eight artists including James Castle, Thornton Dial Sr., Judith Scott, and Bill Traylor. The Robson gift comprises the largest acquisition of self-taught artworks in 20 years and reaffirms the museum's deep and lasting commitment to this area of artistic endeavor.
  • Splash Image - Director's Choice: Who Made the Cut, Part II
    Director’s Choice: Who Made the Cut, Part II
    n honor of Elizabeth "Betsy" Broun's nearly thirty years at the helm of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and her imminent retirement, Broun spoke to a full house at the McEvoy Auditorium this past October, revealing insights and personal observations about her favorite works of art in SAAM's collection. And since she's the director, her Top Ten contains eighteen artworks. Last month, we posted the first part of her "Top Ten." Today, we are posting the rest on her list of favorites.
  • Splash Image - Director's Choice: Who Made the Cut?
    Director’s Choice: Who Made the Cut?
    In honor of Elizabeth "Betsy" Broun's thirty years at the helm of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and her imminent retirement, Broun spoke to a full house last month at the McEvoy Auditorium, revealing insights and personal observations about her favorite works of art in SAAM's collection.
  • Splash Image - Best of Both Worlds: Isamu Noguchi
    Best of Both Worlds: Isamu Noguchi
    Isamu Noguchi, Archaic/Modern opens today, a celebration of the renowned sculptor who often found inspiration in ancient art and architecture, including Egyptian pyramids and Buddhist temples, Zen gardens and American Indian burial mounds.
  • Splash Image - What We Talk About When We Talk About Self-Taught Art
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Self-Taught Art
    In honor of the renovation and reinstallation of SAAM’s galleries for folk and self-taught art on the first floor, four specialists in the field came together to address the perceptions and practice of folk and self-taught artists, each from a unique vantage point. The speakers joined Leslie Umberger, SAAM's curator of folk and self-taught art and emcee for the evening, in a discussion on the unique position of these out-of-the-ordinary makers of art.
  • Splash Image - Deborah Butterfield: Horsepower
    Deborah Butterfield: Horsepower
    Deborah Butterfield was speaking to a full house at SAAM's McEvoy Auditorium as the second speaker in this year's Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture Series. During the course of the evening, she led us through four decades of her work.
  • Splash Image - Reenvisioned Galleries of Folk and Self-Taught Art
    Reenvisioned Galleries of Folk and Self-Taught Art
    The Smithsonian American Art Museum's ground floor galleries of Folk and Self-Taught Art reopen today with a compelling, new installation that features more than 120 objects, including 59 new acquisitions. These include works by artists such as Emery Blagdon, Ralph Fasanella, Clementine Hunter, Eddy Mumma, and Achilles Rizzoli. These join visitor favorites by Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Martín Ramírez and Jon Serl.
  • Adam Gopnik
    Throwback Thursday: Art Critic Adam Gopnik on What Makes American Art American
    During this election season, Americans have been debating what it means to be American. So, it's fitting to consider what is American about American art. In October 2012, Adam Gopnik, writer for The New Yorker, spoke about this as part of SAAM's Clarice Smith Lecture series.
  • Image Not Available
    Knock Wood: The Future of Furniture is in their Hands
    Furniture "affects every single aspect of who we are and what we do though we don't always acknowledge that," said Nora Atkinson, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft at the Renwick Gallery, in her introductory remarks at the recent Maloof Symposium, Furniture and the Future. A stellar group of experts, designers, artists, and makers looked closely at the changing role of studio furniture, in light of the brave new world of digital technologies and marketplaces.
  • Splash Image - Glass Gardens: Agnes Northrop Designs for Louis C. Tiffany
    Glass Gardens: Agnes Northrop Designs for Louis C. Tiffany
    To kick off the 2016 season of the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art, scholar Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, brought us into the close circle of Louis Comfort Tiffany's art glass studio.
  • Splash Image - African American Artworks at SAAM
    African American Artworks at SAAM
    The Smithsonian American Art Museum boasts more than two thousand works of art in its collection by more than two-hundred African American artists. Covering centuries of creative expression, the artworks explore themes that reflect the African American experience in paintings, sculpture, prints, textiles and photographs.
  • Splash Image - Material World: The Renwick Invitational
    Material World: The Renwick Invitational
    This year's Renwick Invitational features the work of four craft artists—Steven Young Lee, Kristen Morgin, Jennifer Trask and Norwood Viviano—who share a common interest in the exploration of materiality, as well as the processes of transformation, decay, and rebirth.
  • Media - 1983.63.155 - SAAM-1983.63.155_2 - 122857
    Carl Van Vechten: Harlem Heroes
    When author and social commentator Carl Van Vechten focused his camera on the African American community of writers, artists, singers, athletes, and politicians in Harlem beginning in the 1930s, it was an eye-opening experience.
  • Maquette for Bearing Witness
    Bearing Witness: Martin Puryear’s Monumental Public Art
    SAAM's Curator of Sculpture, Karen Lemmey, recently joined forces with the GSA Art in Architecture Program's fine arts specialist Bill Caine to lead a "walk and talk" discussion about the importance of public art. Since 1972, the Art in Architecture program has reserved a small piece of the construction budget for new federal buildings around the country for public works of art. In nearly forty-five years, the program has commissioned five-hundred artworks, including Martin Puryear's Bearing Witness, the focus of this hour-plus program.
  • Splash Image - Some Strings Attached: the willful marionette  at SAAM
    Some Strings Attached: the willful marionette at SAAM
    SAAM's annual birthday celebration honoring the legacy of media pioneer Nam June Paik—an artist known for his interest in robotics and humanizing technology—featured artists Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault. Their work, the three-foot tall the willful marionette was built from 3-D scanned images of a human figure. It addresses what the artists refer to as "the frailty of the human body."
  • Splash Image - Light Fantastic: Gabriel Dawe in Conversation
    Light Fantastic: Gabriel Dawe in Conversation
    The final program in the WONDER series of artist talks featured Gabriel Dawe in conversation with Nora Atkinson, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft at the Renwick Gallery. Dawe's Plexus A1, one of the nine room-filling installations commissioned for the exhibition, spins a new riff on the theme of alchemy: it turns thread into light.