Howard Kaplan

In the museum, I like to take some time away from looking at the art to look at people, especially people when they’re looking at art. Almost everybody today seems to have a cell phone camera with them as they wander the galleries, looking for something that catches the eye.

Frank O’Hara was a poet near and dear to my heart. Born in Baltimore in 1926, he died tragically forty years later in an accident on Fire Island. The death of a poet is never a pretty thing, and this one was especially ugly: he was run over by a jeep one evening on the dunes.

The other day I went searching for a painting on the third floor of the museum—nothing in particular, but something to quench my visual thirst, as it were. I walked into a room with a Helen Frankenthaler and a Morris Louis, and was immediately drawn to the three-dimensional piece that stood out from the other artwork in the room.

"I have always enjoyed going to museums," said Gertrude Stein, "because the view from museum windows is usually very pleasant.”

Interesting what happens when an artist speaks about his/her life and work: you get to see the other side of the canvas. As part of the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art, James Rosenquist, an artist on the Pop scene since the 1960s, spoke to an standing-room only house at SAAM on 11.28.

I plan to make this post the first in a series on technique and medium. Paint. The stuff that gets under the artist’s fingernails, and can barely be scrubbed away. I love paint. I love color. I love walking up to a painting and trying to decipher its DNA.

With the new glass canopy in place, the courtyard itself becomes a place of changing light, in a sense, alive.

Today, during the family festival in the new courtyard you'll be able to make Andy Warhol-like collages using cool, vibrant, colorful materials.

One of the coolest things going on this afternoon is the area where you can make your own hats. You begin by working with a basic shape of a hat but whatever else you add is really up to your own imagination.

It's a little after noon on Sunday and the Kogod Courtyard is now open. The sun is shining through the beautiful new glass canopy, and it's the perfect day to spend some time listening to music or create a hands-on project with friends and/or members of your family.

There was a huge crane outside the museum and a large truck that contained Holzer's For SAAM, her 2007 conceptual site-specific sculpture. The twenty-eight-foot piece was protected by a long crate.