SAAM Stories

Tomorrow at 3:00 p.m., Chief Curator Eleanor Harvey hosts a discussion with artists William Christenberry, David Bates, Betye Saar, and David Beck.

Karoline von Günderode is not a name you'd expect to pop up in modern art—she was a minor German Romantic poet. Her history, however, is fascinating, marked by fatal longing. After being refused romantically by the philologist Friedrich Creuzer, von Günderode succumbed to suicide. She was immortalized by her friend Bettina Brentano, who compiled and published their correspondence with the poet's verse.

Though it opened in fall last year, Perspectives, a mini-retrospective of Simryn Gill's work at the Sackler Gallery, complements the spring Craft Invitational at the Renwick. One piece in the Sackler show represents another way that artists commonly approach craft: they reconsider design and craft objects using unfamiliar materials.

I was bound and determined to avoid Second Life as long as possible, but it seems just as determined to invade First Life.

Julie Heath, the programs coordinator for the Lunder Conservation Center, sent us a heads up about this event.

After a late March snowfall, spring made its glorious debut, tempting this winter homebody to take a pleasant stroll through northwest D.C. down to the National Mall. One of the shows in bloom is the 2007 Craft Invitational at the Renwick Gallery, a show of artists working in media often associated with craft (paper, glass, and clay).

In a recent post on his Time blog, Richard Lacayo makes a strong point while discussing the Armando Reverón exhibit at MoMA.

The Wave Field, completed by Maya Lin in 1995 for the University of Michigan, incorporates two landscapes. There's obviously the physical landscape into which it's built, a 10,000-square-foot patch of earth. But Lin's also addressed a sort of social landscape by designing the piece to correspond with aerospace engineering concepts.

On my way through the museum this morning I found this construction scene of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard. Norman Foster's canopy is almost complete except for one hole that will remain open until the completion of the floor and landscaping in November of this year.

The AIA's Twenty-five Year Award honors architectural structures that have stood for twenty-five to thirty-five years and have shown lasting importance to the culture throughout. Artdaily reports that AIA selected Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the 2007 award.

The Luce Center staff made a Valentine's Day word scramble game for visitors.

Ninety years from now, when America begins to reflect on the past one hundred years, what will our descendants think of the early part of the 21st century? And how will artists define the era?

We asked SAAM's lighting designer, Scott Rosenfeld, to discuss his thinking as he lit the exhibition on Joseph Cornell currently on view in the third-floor galleries.

Back before the holidays we got a question about how jewelry was displayed in the Luce Center.

Joseph Cornell paved the way for artists like David Beck. Beck was commissioned to create MVSEVM to commemorate the reopening of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in July of this year.

The Happenstance Theater returned Prufbox to the stage after a well received run in the first annual Capital Fringe Festival. The encore performance was staged before the holidays at SAAM, a proper setting, since the play's mise en scène is built to resemble the work of Joseph Cornell.

Twenty-six major paintings from America's Gilded Age make up the collection assembled by San Antonio's Hugh and Marie Halff, all of which are now on display at American Art.

Following the landmark National Gallery of Art Dada exhibition, the Phillips Collection contributes to the District's year of Dada with the exhibition, Société Anonyme: Modernism for America.