SAAM Stories

October is National Archives Month and as such it gives us a chance to celebrate some of the unique archival holdings that the Smithsonian owns. Blogs across the Smithsonian are giving an inside look at the Institution's archival collections. Kathleen A. Brown, an archivist tasked with sorting through and organizing 40 plus boxes of papers and ephemera from American Art's recently acquired archive of Nam June Paik fills us in on her process.

The Art of Video Games exhibition (opening March 16, 2012) will highlight images and footage from the 80 games that won the public vote in April, as well as five games that will be available for visitors to play for a few minutes.

"I think my work is more capable of articulating my thoughts and feelings than I'm willing to say. I'm going to let the work speak for itself," Elizabeth Peyton said at the beginning of her talk in the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture Series.

Featured in the new exhibition at American Art, Made in Chicago: The Koffler Collection, Don Baum's Chinatown is an assemblage made from wood, crushed metal cans, and rulers that have been cut, glued, and reassembled.

Beginning tomorrow, October 5, the American Art Museum will be hosting a two-day symposium called Encuentros: Artistic Exchange between the U.S. and Latin America.

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the White House Historical Association, established by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 to restore the historical ambiance of the rooms and create a museum-worthy collection, the Renwick is featuring the exhibition, Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House.

George Gurney, the nation’s foremost expert on American sculpture, is retiring after more than 36 years at the American Art Museum. He will be greatly missed, as a curator and friend! But before leaving, he gave a farewell tour of the museum. Three and a half decades adds up to a lot of interesting stories.

American Art's lighting designer, Scott Rosenfeld updates us on new developments in museum lighting.

Kicking off the 2011 season of the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art, Meryle Secrest presented an engaging and lively talk that could have been subtitled, "A City of Two Tales."

Pizza in a pill! Trust me, I tried one and it tasted like pizza. Artist Carmen Wong is the latest artist to grace the Luce Foundation Center's Art + Coffee series.

Charles Willson Peale, is the poster boy, er...gentleman, for the current exhibition, The Great American Hall of Wonders. In the iconic self-portrait (on a rare loan from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts) Peale lifts a plush curtain to reveal his own museum, and greets the visitor with an extended palm at the entrance of the exhibition.

Growing up in New York when the Twin Towers were being built makes me think we were raised at about the same time. They became a part of the landscape and my friends and I marveled at their growth, their prominence in the city, and how they helped to make history, especially the following year, when Philippe Petit decided to walk an aerial between the two buildings.

The history of American Art's Renwick Gallery is a rich one. Recently, The Bigger Picture, the blog of the Smithsonian Institution Archives posted a story about the Renwick during the Civil War written by Intern Aly DesRochers. We thought it would be interesting to our readers as well.

Now that the exhibition, To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America is closing on September 5, we thought we'd share some visitor comments.

I first experienced Albert Pinkham Ryder's work through slides projected onto a dingy classroom wall and tiny images reprinted in my college textbook on nineteenth-century American art. Needless to say, neither of these methods of reproduction did his work justice.

The Luce Foundation Center’s Mary Tait who leads the weekly sketching program, Draw & Discover, recently discovered that one of the regular participants, C. Pamela Palco, is a miniature artist.

Last month, we asked people to submit questions for Chris Melissinos, curator of The Art of Video Games exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We received more than 85 great and thoughtful questions, so thank you to everyone that participated! While we would love for Chris to answer all of the questions, he is busy working on the exhibition, so here are his answers to five of our favorites.

Luce Unplugged is an acoustic concert series in the museum's Luce Foundation Center for American Art. The series brings in local talent to perform after an accompanying talk on an artwork chosen by the performing group.