Stories for July 2009

Picture This: Taking Down a House of Cards

July 31, 2009

De-installing Chance City by Jean Shin Jean Shin’s exhibition Common Threads just closed at American Art. Once a show is over, American Art’s Registrar’s Office is tasked with de-installing it. If the work is from our permanent collection, each piece...

Seeing Things (4): On Beauty

July 27, 2009

This is the fourth in a series of personal observations about how people experience and explore museums. Take a look at Howard's other blog posts on the subject: Seeing Things (1), Seeing Things (2): Art and Love, and Seeing Things...

Art Attack with Lee Sandstead

July 23, 2009

Lee Sandstead: Before Art and After Art Art historian and Travel Channel host Lee Sandstead welcomes each visitor at the door of the McEvoy Auditorium wearing what he called hippie pants ("genuine polyester, not the fake stuff we have today")...

Morris Louis: Making Faces

July 20, 2009

Faces by Morris Louis The son of a Russian immigrant, abstract painter Morris Louis grew up in Baltimore. As an adult, Louis lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, and in Washington, D.C., where, in a small bungalow on Legation Street, NW,...

A Graphic Master: Charles White

July 14, 2009

Joann Moser, Senior Curator, wrote the following blog post about one of our recent acquisitions to American Art's collection. Untitled, by Charles White, 1950, ink and graphite on paper, 29 3/4 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of...

Picture This: Out of This Case

July 9, 2009

Dave DeAnna and Matt Bacon from our Registrar's Office removed two artworks from the contemporary craft section in the Luce Foundation Center for American Art last week. These works (Alhambra Vase and Zanfirico Apple) will be going out on loan....

Jean Shin

July 6, 2009

Jean Shin's Everyday Monuments If you're walking through a city, say New York or Washington D.C., you may want to have Jean Shin by your side. You may know your way around familiar streets, but through Shin's eyes you'll be...

Robert Motherwell’s Monster for Charles Ives

July 2, 2009

Robert Motherwell's Monster (for Charles Ives) Robert Motherwell, known as an intellectual painter, has sometimes been called the spokesperson for the abstract expressionist movement. He painted in a style that often involved spontaneously generated images on large fields of canvas....