SAAM Stories

The best place to watch afternoon thunderstorms in D.C.? Hands down, it's the third floor of American Art, a special corner in the current exhibition, Watch This! Revelations in Media Art. Cloud Music, created between 1974-1979 by artists Robert Watts, David Berhman, and Bob Diamond is a weather-driven audio/visual installation that reads the sky like it's a musical score.

MAGFest, the DC area's Music and Gaming Festival, will bring free-to-play video games to the courtyard as part of the Gamer Family Day on Saturday, August 15, 2015. We interviewed MAGFest's Chief Operating Officer, Nick Marinelli, about MAGFest's history, current projects, and relationship to art.

On July 25, two dozen volunteers spent their whole Saturday at SAAM working together on addressing some of gaps in high quality information about the arts by working on Wikipedia.

Our last Luce Unplugged of the summer arrives next Thursday, August 6th at 6 p.m. Our featured band will be Fellow Creatures and will be co-sponsored with local music site D.C. Music Download.

The ghosts, the commuters, the visitors, the stories...they all pass across the screen in Jim Campbell's Grand Central Station #2, a poetic meditation on movement and memory. On view in the exhibition, Watch This: Revelations in Media Art, Campbell's LED-based work features shadows that move across the floor of New York's Grand Central Station.

Karen Lemmey, SAAM's sculpture curator, has organized an installation entitled Measured Perfection: Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. Powers' Greek Slave was one of the most popular sculptures of the 19th century. As part of her preparation, Karen worked with Smithsonian X 3D, part of the Institution's Digitization program, to create a 3D model of the this sculpture. Karen continues to explain the process. You may also read her first post on creating a 3D model of the sculpture, as well as a piece about conserving the Greek Slave.

SAAM's Handi-hour is back on Thursday, July 23rd in the Luce Foundation Center for another fun evening of craft-making! Check out the video below with program coordinators Katie Crooks and Gloria Kenyon for a preview of this month's craft.

Russell Connor was an abstract painter, happily minding his own business, when in Boston in 1969, he met media visionary, Nam June Paik. As Connor told us the other night at a program in honor of Paik's birthday.

This month's Luce Artist Talk features artists Erik Thor Sandberg and Megan Van Wagoner, whose installation Saturated with the Subconscious uses ceramic pillows and rich imagery to explore the nature of vulnerability. Erik and Megan will talk about their process and inspiration and connect their work to pieces on view at the Luce Foundation Center.

On Friday, July 17th the Luce Foundation Center is hosting another Luce Unplugged Community Showcase from 6-8 p.m. Presented with Washington City Paper, the free show will feature local bands Be Steadwell and Olivia Neutron-John.

Jeremy Sutton is a California-based portrait painter and expert in digital art practices. American Art was lucky enough to have this talented and engaging artist perform live iPad painting at the America Now! Innovation in Art program on June 27.

Mingering Mike's Supersonic Hits feature a vibrant array of images and colors. Catherine (Kate) Maynor, paper conservator, is responsible for preserving the vitality of Mike's artwork for future audiences. Kate will be presenting a gallery talk on Tuesday, July 7 at 5:30 p.m. about the array of treatments that she performed to keep the artist's works fresh.

In Case 53B of the Luce Foundation Center sit four plates that first attracted my attention when I was a graduate student a few years ago. I was drawn to these by the figure of a boy, who looked very much like a famous painting, yet strangely manipulated. I also thought it odd that these plates were in the craft section, yet these white porcelain discs looked nothing like the plates I had been taught were craft while earning a degree in pottery.

This is the third and final blog post by the Archives of American Art's Mary Savig and Jason Stieber focused on the life of the artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The exhibition Artist Teacher Organizer: Yasuo Kuniyoshi in the Archives of American Art is on view in the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery, and is organized in conjunction with The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi on view at at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is thrilled to take part in America Now! a three-part collaboration jointly organized with the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American History. In our inaugural year, all three museums have been focused on highlighting a fundamental part of the American experience: innovation!

This is the fourteenth 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. Today, celebrating Christo's 80th birthday and a look at his Running Fence.

Luce Artist Talks presents Rachel Schmidt, whose exhibit, Forgotten Futures, tells the futuristic fairy tale of the last elephant. On Saturday, June 20th, Rachel will be in the Luce Foundation Center to talk about the exhibition, her other works, and the connections she sees between her work and artworks on view in Luce.

The American Art Museum's monthly concert series, Take 5!, brings one of America's original art forms—jazz—to the stage every third Thursday. On June 18th, the DC Jazz Composers Collective, will play new works they composed for this performance taking inspiration from our collection.