American Art Elsewhere

States of Grace: Remembering Grace Hartigan (1922–2008)

December 23, 2008

Frank O'Hara by Grace Hartigan "I didn't choose painting," Grace Hartigan once told an interviewer, "It chose me. I didn't have any talent. I just had genius." I came to Grace Hartigan through her association with the poet Frank O'Hara....

A Momentous Seventy-Fifth Art Anniversary

December 12, 2008

Ray Strong's Golden Gate Bridge George Gurney, American Art's Deputy Chief Curator, came by my desk this afternoon to tell me today marked a special occasion in the art world. On December 12, 1933, seventy-five years ago today, the Public...

Stop-Loss: Restoring the Aaron Douglas Murals at Fisk University

October 14, 2008

South wall, North Reading Room, Cravath Hall, Fisk University. Post-Treatment. 2003 In honor of our recent exhibition Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, the Lunder Conservation Center presented a behind-the-scenes look at the artist's Fisk murals. In 1930, when Aaron Douglas...

Mark Dion wins the Lucelia Artist Award

September 26, 2008

Mark Dion, Neukom Vivarium, 2004-2006, mixed-media installation, Seattle Art Museum. Photo by Paul Macapia, 2007, courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York. Dion placed a log within a greenhouse where visitors are encouraged to study the funguses, insects,...

Americans in Paris

June 26, 2008

Louise Bourgeois' Maman. Photo by Howard Kaplan. Greetings from Paris. I'm here for a week for the exhibition of a friend's paintings and have fallen in love all over again with this city. It's a city for the senses: everything...

Philadelphia Story: Gary Wills on Thomas Eakins

May 5, 2008

Thomas Eakins's study for a second round of images of the Rush workshop from the SAAM collection: William Rush's Model What would you choose if someone were to ask you to pick an iconic work of art that spoke to...

Drawing on Love: Artists' Love Letters

February 13, 2008

Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, ca. 1946. Photograph by Ronald Stein. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, ca. 1905-1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. One of my all-time favorite stories is a love story between Russian poet Anna Akhmatova...

Night Baseball

September 13, 2007

Top: Morris Kantor, Baseball at Night from SAAM's collection. Middle: my photograph of an Oriole’s game. Bottom: Phillips, Marjorie, Night Baseball, 1951, Oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 36 in.; 61.595 x 91.44 cm., Gift of the artist 1951 or...

Veteran Photography

September 7, 2007

Six William Bell photographs of wounded Civil War solders are on view at SAAM. Even cherished memorial traditions fade as new generations adopt new practices to memorialize the wars, deaths, and other public losses that they deem significant. For example,...

Popular Music, Popular Art

August 31, 2007

Song siren Laura Burhenn with SAAM's Harry Bertoia American art makes a few surprise appearances in popular music this week: James Hampton's Throne Of The Third Heaven Of The Nations Millennium General Assembly is discussed in SAAM's latest podcast on...