Stories for March 2006

Best of the Web

March 30, 2006

One of our "big" ones: Campfire Stories with George Catlin. The Museums and the Web conference announced the winners of its Best of the Web competition Friday in Albuquerque, New Mexico. All the winners are listed below, but the one...

Manifest Destiny

March 28, 2006

The Copely (sic) crater on Mercury. From the Center for Planetary Sciences. This doesn't specifically concern American art—or even anything on the planet Earth—but of the craters on the planet Mercury named after important terrestrial cultural figures, only one American...

Museums and the Web Wake-Up Call

March 25, 2006

An archetypal mobile superuser. It starts very, very early. I thought I was beginning to understand this job just a little bit. We talk to curators and educators about art, listen to the public, and generally get excited about things...

Safire's Spreadsheet

March 24, 2006

A grammar maven and self-described “vituperative right-wing scandalmonger,” former New York Times opinion columnist William Safire is not your typical arts advocate. But Safire wants you to rethink not only the politics of art but art itself, according to Philip...

Think Green

March 17, 2006

Frank Brito, Saint Patrick Missionary of Ireland, about 1960s, carved and painted cottonwood, 13 x 5 x 4 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Chuck and Jan Rosenak and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H....

A Herculean Move

March 15, 2006

How do you get a large painting into an art museum? Click on the image to begin the video (Quicktime, 4.3 MB). How does SAAM move a monumental artwork into the museum? Watch this video to find out! A tower...

Grant Wood's Studio

March 10, 2006

Visit Grant Wood’s virtual studio. Grant Wood’s iconic work, American Gothic, makes a return visit to Washington for the first time in 40 years. See it—along with lesser-known gems, such as Corn Cob Chandelier— in Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace of...

Shedding Some Light on Art

March 7, 2006

Scott Rosenfeld, our lighting designer, tests a new lighting system. A small crowd gathered in our offices this morning to watch Scott Rosenfeld, SAAM's lighting designer, play with this funky new light fixture. Instead of a halogen or incandescent bulb,...

Another (Alternate) Year, Another Biennial

March 3, 2006

The 2006 Whitney Biennial opened yesterday. These days biennials are met as often with fanfare as with handwringing about the state of the curated art survey. Mark Stevens discusses this year’s curator–critic matchup in his New York Magazine pregame analysis...

Site Specific

March 1, 2006

The site for the National Museum of African American History and Culture will be just northeast of the Washington Monument and west of the National Museum of American History. In light of the recent passing of both Rosa Parks and...