SAAM Stories

n this blog post Curatorial Assistant Florencia Bazzano-Nelson explores the rich links between Latino art and the Cuban poster movement, which captivated artists in the United States and abroad in the 1960s and 1970s. The works discussed below will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, opening October 25, 2013, along with other works that attest to the importance of graphics and international artistic models for Latino artists.

The next Handi-hour is on Wednesday, July 10 and will feature garden crafts!

At the museum's McEvoy Auditorium the other evening, guest curator Merry Foresta set out to talk about how she put together the new exhibition, A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

We are always sad to see a piece leave the Luce Foundation Center, especially when it's a visitor favorite. Sometimes though, an artwork's departure (for loan or display elsewhere in the museum) gives us an opportunity put up another piece from our collection. This was the case with Palmer Hayden's The Janitor Who Paints.

The exhibition A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens today, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of the museum's pioneering photography collection. The exhibition title refers to Walt Whitman's belief that photography was a quintessentially American activity, rooted in everyday people and ordinary things and presented in a straightforward way. The exhibition features 113 photographs selected from the museum’s permanent collection and includes works by Timothy O'Sullivan, Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Trevor Paglen, William Eggleston and Ana Mendieta.

This is the eleventh 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.

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.

Morgan Nau, an objects conservator and plaster specialist on fellowship with American Art's Lunder Center clues us into how conservators keep our artworks clean.

Last Friday night, American Art's Luce Foundation Center hosted local bands, brews and great art all in one place— and with no cover charge. Amid the 3,000 artworks located in the Luce Center, we presented the latest installment of our Luce Unplugged Community Showcase.

This past week, the iconic sculpture Vaquero, which was modeled in 1980 and cast in 1990 by Luis Jiménez, received its annual cleaning by museum conservators.

The elegant Grand Salon was the setting for a panel discussion on the many lives and interests of Thomas Day, the subject of the Renwick Gallery’s, Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color.

On May 19th, composer and pianist Andrew E. Simpson will perform his original score for the 1928 silent film The Wind at a special afternoon screening at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Lillian Gish, the "First Lady of American Cinema", plays an innocent girl who moves from her Virginia home to the western prairies and is haunted by the ever-present wind.

he exhibition Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color opened last month at the Renwick Gallery. Georgina Goodlander chatted with Jim Baxter, an exhibits specialist at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, who created architectural components inspired by Day's work to complement the pieces of furniture on view.

As an intern at the American Art Museum's Luce Foundation Center, one of my first assignments was to write an object label for Edward Kemeys' bronze sculpture, Prairie Chicken. The Kemeys biography at my disposal mentioned he was the first American to make a career out of animal sculpture, but there was no specific information on this particular sculpture. Now Prairie Chicken and I were deep in uncharted territory. Who was going to tell me about this sculpture's creation? How was I going to determine its historical and artistic significance? And were those really a pair of tiny wings sticking out of its neck?

As part of our activities surrounding the exhibition Nam June Paik: Global Visionary, American Art organized a Paikbot Family Day of activities that would make the artist proud. "What or who is Paikbot?" you ask. PaikBot lives in the Nam June Paik Archive here at American Art, and can be seen in our current exhibition.

Few architectural ideas are able to capture a sense of historical romanticism as readily as the notion of the nineteenth century parlor. Dark wood interiors complimented by the delicate white lace of table doilies, the aroma of cigar smoke passing before a glowing table lamp, and children in evening wear awaiting the dinner bell, such are the details of our popular imagination of this entrancing space. If we could transpose ourselves in time to those elegant rooms and take part in the pageantry and decorum that they showcased, what would we find?

This blog post is part of a monthly Eye Level feature on our exhibition The Civil War and American Art. Curator Eleanor Harvey talks about many of the important intersections between American art and the Civil War. The exhibition runs through April 28, 2013.

On Saturday, April 27, American Art will be one of the over 240 museums around the world that will be hosting Slow Art Day. The event is free to the public. Jeff Gates took some time to talk with Slow Art Day's founder, Phil Terry, about the genesis of this event.