SAAM Stories

This is the twelfth 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.

Morgan Nau, Conservation Kress Fellow, recently treated Emanuel Martinez's Farm Workers' Altar. The sculpture will be featured in the exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, which opens on October 25. Martinez created the altar in support of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. This work, like others the exhibition, shows how Latino artists were deeply woven into the civil rights movement. Nau gives us some insight into how she prepared the altar for the show.

Amelia Goerlitz, fellowship and academic Program coordinator for American Art, talks about our upcoming symposium "American Art in Dialogue with Africa and its Diaspora" taking place on October 4-5, 2013.

On August 31st, acclaimed composer and pianist Andrew E. Simpson will perform the world premiere of his original score for William Wellman's riveting story of love and tragedy, Wings (144 minutes, silent; 1927).

Emilie Reed was an intern in the Media and Technology Office this summer. Here, she discusses some of her favorite works by female artists that are currently on view in the Luce Foundation Center.

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.

How does it feel to leave your homeland and settle in a new country? In this blog post, curatorial assistant Florencia Bazzano-Nelson explores how one immigrant artist, iliana emilia garcía imagines her ongoing ties to her native county of birth.

Jazz musician (and DC native) Andrea Wood will present the music of Washington’s legendary Shirley Horn at Take 5! on Thursday, August 15th from 5-8 p.m. Laurel Fehrenbach, public programs coordinator, interviewed her about the upcoming concert.

Visual storyteller and insider into the worlds of high art and everyday objects, stage and street, Irving Penn is one of the most renowned photographers of the last century. He is perhaps best recognized for his fashion work for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue that helped to transform the images from magazine portraits into fine art.

Nam June Paik: Global Visionary closes this Sunday. The exhibition has been on view for a little over eight months, a long time for both the museum and the artworks. I will be sad to see it go. I'll sincerely miss having this work on view, and it is nice to see the artist himself as I pass through the gallery every day. But mostly, I’m excited. While this installation is indeed closing, Nam June Paik has really set the stage for the museum's Film and Media Art Initiative, in more ways than one.

Landscapes In Passing: Photographs by Steve Fitch, Robbert Flick, and Elaine Mayes opened last week on the museum's second floor. This installation looks at representations of the American landscape by three different artists. While each artist had a different approach, all of the works explore the impact of expanding civilization on the natural world.

You can now see Constantino Brumidi's Study for the Apotheosis of Washington in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol Building on the second floor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, near the sculpture of George Washington Resigning his Commission by Ferdinand Pettrich. This was the final study that Brumidi completed before beginning work on the interior of the Capitol dome, and the painting reveals a great deal about the artist's process.

Laurel Fehrenbach is a Public Programs Coordinator at the American Art Museum, and runs the "Is This Art?" gallery talks with her colleague, Carol Wilson, Assistant Chair of Education for In-Gallery Programs. The next "Is This Art?" program is this Saturday, July 27th at noon. Meet in the Lincoln Gallery, 3rd floor.

What's the story behind the girl of this sculpture? Who was she? We aren't sure exactly because very little is known about the artist, Ed Davis, who inscribed his name along with the year, 1935, on the front of the sculpture's wooden base. All we know is that Mr. Davis was active in New York in the 1930s. Like much of the American Art Museum's folk art pieces, this one came into the collection through a gift by folk art collector Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. in 1986. Girl with Tambourine was done in a style similar to the artist Elie Nadelman who was known for using curved lines and simplified volumes. Nadelman found inspiration for his work in movies, jazz, and vaudeville as well as in his own collection of American folk art which was on view in Riverdale, New York for eleven years starting in 1926.

The artwork and ideas of Nam June Paik were a major influence on late twentieth-century art and continue to inspire a new generation of artists. Each year, the museum celebrates Paik's birthday on July 20 with a talk by a contemporary artist who was influenced by his work.

Jazz drummer Harold Summey will present the music of the Weather Report at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Take 5! concert on July 18, 2013 from 5-8 p.m. in the Kogod Courtyard.

The Smithsonian AIDS Memorial Quilt Panel will be displayed in the Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery on July 17th, between 11:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. This is a special one-day-only opportunity for members of the public to view a meaningful Smithsonian community art project. Alli Jessing, Programs coordinator and auditorium manager at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, talks about her experiences working on the quilt.

With the recent acquisition of Cloud Music, a collaboration between Robert Watts, David Behrman, and Bob Diamond, one window-lit corner of the Lincoln Gallery has been turned into a sky-driven audio/video installation.