Stories for May 2006

Baseball at Night

May 26, 2006

Top: Morris Kantor, Baseball at Night, 1934, oil, 37×47 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Morris Kantor, 1976.146.18. Bottom: Camden Yards, Photo by Mike Edson. What can paint on canvas do better than a photograph? A few...


A Sound Take on Craft

May 23, 2006

Norm Sartorius, Spoon from a Forgotten Ceremony, 1994, dogwood, 1 1/2 x 18 x 3 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John and Robyn Horn, 1994.75 A few weeks ago, I wrote about a special project here at SAAM...


A Friday Afternoon Toot

May 19, 2006

Earlier this month we announced our new kids’ Web site, Meet Me at Midnight, with a nine-year-old’s impressions. Not to toot our own horn or anything, but this week we got word that our site was picked as a Macromedia/Adobe...


Machine Love: Sir Norman Foster's Courtyard Canopy

May 17, 2006

Float like a butterfly, sting like a beeTen tons of steel finally flying free. —With apologies to Muhammad Ali Hoisting the framework for our courtyard canopy. Construction begins. Click on the image to begin the video (Quicktime, 14.2 MB). One...


Hiroshi Sugimoto (Part II)

May 11, 2006

Chrysler Building (Architect: William van Alen), 1997, private collection. Courtesy of the artist. “Pushing out my old large-format camera’s focal length to twice-infinity,” Sugimoto writes, ". . . I discovered that superlative architecture survives the onslaught of blurred photography.” The...


The Chair: An Update

May 10, 2006

Multiple versions of this piece exist. But SAAM's is the only one Thiebaud's studio knows about. Wayne Thiebaud, Electric Chair, 1957, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2005.5.69 Last month I picked up on an item from the American Art collection highlighted...


Meet Me at Midnight

May 4, 2006

Meet Me at Midnight, a new art game for kids (midnight.si.edu) Today we are launching Meet Me at Midnight, an interactive art mystery Web site for kids. It's perfect for eight- to ten-year-olds and is meant to be a fun...


Before and After

May 1, 2006

Last week Kriston posted his impressions of the newly renovated Old Patent Office building which will house SAAM and the National Portrait Gallery come July 1. We showed a vintage photograph of the building interior when it was used as...