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...
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