SAAM Stories

In honor of the Nam June Paik birthday celebration, electronic musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello will speak in American Art's Lincoln Gallery (3rd floor, East Wing) on August 1 at 5:30 p.m. Eye Level had a chance to check in with him and ask him about art, sound, and his interactions with Nam June Paik.

This July, American Art held its first Instagram Challenge through a partnership with Restless Collective (RC), a New York-based multimedia collective specializing in travel and adventure storytelling. For 30 days in July, we invited everyone to explore and interact with alfresco art anywhere: discovering it locally or traveling on summer vacation.

Getting to know some of our visitors was the inspiration for a new blog series, Visitor's Choice. In this series, we ask our regulars about their favorite artworks and why they like them. Since everyone has a unique relationship with art, some of the posts will be more in-depth than others, some might reflect the artist's intent, and some might have more of a personal meaning.

The American Art Museum will host its second Art-o-mat® swap meet on Saturday, July 26 in collaboration with Artists in Cellophane. Artists will gather in our Luce Foundation Center from all over the country for an afternoon of meet and greets, artist demoes, and artpak making. To appreciate an Art-o-mat®, read Eye Level's blog post from 2011, when the Luce Center received its own Art-o-mat®.

This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: Q and Art, where American Art's Research department brings you interesting questions and answers about art and artists from our archive.

Just in time for the arrival of D.C. heat and humidity, we're bringing you our special Luce Unplugged Community Showcase, live from American Art's Luce Foundation Center this Friday, July 18th.

On July 16th, the American Art Museum welcomes writer and director Michael Maglaras, who will introduce his documentary, The Great Confusion: The 1913 Armory Show.

American Art's curator of folk and self-taught art, Leslie Umberger, talks about the museum's recent acquisition of a major painting by Purvis Young, The Struggle. The artwork can be seen in the museum's east wing gallery on the third floor.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July! And in today’s technological age it has become almost traditional on social media to post holiday specific imagery in celebration of special days. Here at American Art we definitely have no shortage of American imagery that reflects our experiences as a people. Many of the incredible works in the collection are imbued with a sense of American pride and celebrate the American spirit. How can we possibly pick just one to share?

During the month of July 2014, join fellow photographers and the American Art Museum on a quest to find outdoor sculpture. We are partnering with Restless Collective, a multimedia group specializing in travel and adventure storytelling, to raise awareness and appreciation for outdoor sculpture across the nation.

This weekend the Smithsonian American Art Museum will screen two documentary films that focus on artists whose work is featured in the exhibit Modern American Realism: The Sarah Roby Foundation Collection: Jack Levine: Feast of Pure Reason, and Paul Cadmus: Enfant Terrible at 80. The director of these films, David Sutherland, will be in attendance at the screening to introduce both films and lead a Q & A with the audience. These screenings will be on Saturday, June 28th. Jack Levine starts at 2 p.m. followed by a 30-minute intermission; Paul Cadmus begins at 4 p.m. Check out museum’s calendar for more information. Programs Coordinator Alli Jessing had a few advance questions for the filmmaker.

It’s officially summer! And that means the return of Luce Design, a series of talks in the Luce Foundation Center hosting various types of designers and keen eyes throughout the city. We’ve featured local experts in the areas of fashion, jewelry, interior design, landscape architecture, and even letterpress. This year, we continue to mix things up with street artist Alicia DECOY Cosnahan, confectioner Meg Murray, and knitwear designer Tanis Gray.

If you've been following Eye Level for a while, you won't be surprised to know we love Nam June Paik. We celebrate his birthday every summer and held a comprehensive exhibition of more than 60 of his artworks, some of which were on public view for the first time. This month, we completed the installation of the Paik Archive case in the Luce Foundation Center. If you were able to see the exhibition you might remember some of these pieces from our Paik archive wall, including the sitting red Buddha and four martial arts figurines.

Recently, the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art opened an exhibition of archival photographs and documents dedicated to the untold stories of artists' models. Elizabeth Botten, who curated the exhibition, Artists and Their Models, points out that models are "too often given short shrift in art history, their names and stories left unknown unless their fame came by way of scandal."

In honor of Father's Day and in celebration of the exhibition "Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget," Eye Level asked the artist's son, Marc Fasanella, about his father's work, life, and legacy.

American Art's conservation department makes sure our collection is always in great condition, inside our galleries and outside with a several sculptures that are on our museum grounds. Last week, it was Roy Lichtenstein's Modern Head that got the royal treatment.

Katie Crooks, public program coordinator at American Art and the woman behind Handi-Hour, discusses the genesis for the DIY projects at our next Handi-Hour on Wednesday, June 11.

It's Throwback Thursday! And we at Eye Level have decided it's a great opportunity to bring back some of our interesting posts from the past. American Art has been publishing our blog since September 2005 (that's an eternity in Internet years) and some of our posts are as current now as the day we first posted them. First up: Howard's January 2008 post on capturing the moment, both the art and your visit. This post is part of a series of personal observations Howard has made about how people experience and explore museums.