The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, part of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. Together with its branch museum, the

Renwick Gallery The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that ...

, SAAM holds one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. The museum has more than 7,000 artists represented in the collection. Most exhibitions take place in the museum's main building, the

old Patent Office Building Old or OLD may refer to: Places * Old, Baranya, Hungary * Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, ...

(shared with the National Portrait Gallery), while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the

Smithsonian American Art Museum National Portrait Gallery Exterior

The museum provides electronic resources to schools and the public through its national education program. It maintains seven online research databases with more than 500,000 records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that document more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide. Since 1951, the museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program; as of 2013, more than 2.5 million visitors have seen the exhibitions.

History

The museum's history can be traced to the creation of the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. The act of Congress establishing the Smithsonian called for it to include "a gallery of art". In its early years, however, little effort was put into developing the art collection, as Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry preferred to focus on scientific research. The collection was first on display in the original Smithsonian Building (now known as the Castle). In 1865, a fire destroyed much of the collection. Those art holdings that survived were mostly loaned to the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

and the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

in the following decades. In 1896, the artworks were brought back to the Smithsonian, after Congress appropriated money to construct a fireproof room for them. The Smithsonian began to refer to its art collection as the National Gallery of Art in 1906, in connection with efforts to receive

Harriet Lane Johnston Harriet Rebecca Lane Johnston (May 9, 1830 – July 3, 1903) acted as first lady of the United States during the administration of her uncle, lifelong bachelor President James Buchanan, from 1857 to 1861. She has been described as the first ...

's art collection, which she had bequeathed to the "national art gallery". The collection grew as the Smithsonian buildings grew, and the collection was housed in one or more Smithsonian buildings on the National Mall. In 1920, the National Gallery of Art was separated from the National Museum, becoming its own branch of the Smithsonian, with

William Henry Holmes William Henry Holmes (December 1, 1846 – April 20, 1933), known as W. H. Holmes, was an American explorer, anthropologist, archaeologist, artist, scientific illustrator, cartographer, mountain climber, geologist and museum curator and ...

as its first director. By this time, space had become critical: "Collections to the value of several millions of dollars are in storage or temporarily on exhibition and are crowding out important exhibits and producing a congested condition in the Natural History,

Industrial Arts Industrial arts is an educational program that features the fabrication of objects in wood or metal using a variety of hand, power, or machine tools. Industrial Arts are commonly referred to as Technology Education. It may include small engine re ...

, and Smithsonian Buildings". In 1924, architect

Charles A. Platt Charles Adams Platt (October 16, 1861 – September 12, 1933) was a prominent American architect, garden designer, and artist of the "American Renaissance" movement. His garden designs complemented his domestic architecture. Early career Pai ...

drew up preliminary plans for a National Gallery of Art to be built on the block next to the Natural History Museum. However, this building was never constructed. In 1937, the National Gallery of Art became the National Collection of Fine Arts (NCFA), because

Andrew Mellon Andrew William Mellon (; March 24, 1855 – August 26, 1937), sometimes A. W. Mellon, was an American banker, businessman, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector, and politician. From the wealthy Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylv ...

insisted that the previous moniker be given to a new institution formed through his donation of a large art collection. By the 1950's, the NCFA still occupied a small space in the Natural History Building. In 1958, Congress finally granted the NCFA a home, the

Old Patent Office Building Old or OLD may refer to: Places * Old, Baranya, Hungary * Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, ...

, which was about to be vacated by the

U.S. Civil Service Commission The United States Civil Service Commission was a government agency of the federal government of the United States and was created to select employees of federal government on merit rather than relationships. In 1979, it was dissolved as part of ...

. The building would be shared with the planned National Portrait Gallery, with the NCFA occupying the northern half of the building. Renovation work on the building began in 1964. The NCFA opened in its new home on May 6, 1968. The museum's relocation came at an unfortunate time, as the neighborhood had been devastated a month earlier by the Martin Luther King assassination riots. The NCFA struggled to attract visitors over the following decades, as the streets around it remained bleak and lonely. This would remain a factor until the late 1990's, when the work of the

Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site is a National Historic Site in the city of Washington, D.C. Established on September 30, 1965, the site is roughly bounded by Constitution Avenue, 15th Street NW, F Street NW, and 3rd Street NW. The his ...

and the opening of the

MCI Center Capital One Arena is an indoor arena in Washington, D.C. Located in the Penn Quarter neighborhood, the arena sits atop the Gallery Place rapid transit station of the Washington Metro. It has been largely considered to be a commercial success a ...

(now Capital One Arena) across the street from the museum sparked a revitalization of the neighborhood. The NCFA gained a new branch in 1972, opening the

, dedicated to design and crafts, in a historic building near the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

. In 1980, the name was changed to the National Museum of American Art, to better distinguish it from other federal art museums and to emphasize its focus on American artists. From 1982 to 1988, Charles C. Eldredge served as the museum director, followed by the tenures of

Elizabeth Broun Elizabeth "Betsy" Broun (born December 15, 1946 in Kansas City) is an American art historian and curator. Broun served as the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum from 1989 to 2016, and is the longest-servin ...

and Stephanie Stebich. In January 2000, the museum closed to begin a planned three-year, $60-million renovation of the Patent Office Building. To keep the museum's collection accessible to the public during the closure, many of the artworks were sent out in a "Treasures to Go" series of traveling exhibitions, billed as "the largest museum tour in history". The museum's name was changed to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in October 2000 so that the museum and its traveling exhibitions could benefit from the Smithsonian's brand recognition. After renovations were underway, the plans were broadened in an effort to restore much of the building's original elegance. Many of the building's exceptional architectural features were restored: porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows, and skylights as long as a city block. New features added to the building included the Lunder Conservation Center, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium, and the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard. Meanwhile, the museum's offices, library, and storage were moved to the nearby Victor Building, freeing up valuable space and allowing the museum to display four times as many artworks as before. The renovation ultimately took six years and $283 million. The museum and the National Portrait Gallery reopened their combined building, renamed as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, on July 1, 2006. Old Patent Office, Washington, D

Affiliated museums

National Portrait Gallery

The Smithsonian American Art Museum shares the historic Old Patent Office building with the National Portrait Gallery, another Smithsonian museum. Although the two museums' names have not changed, they are collectively known as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.

Renwick Gallery

Also under the auspices of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the

is a smaller, historic building on

Pennsylvania Avenue Pennsylvania Avenue is a diagonal street in Washington, D.C., and Prince George's County, Maryland, that connects the White House and the United States Capitol and then crosses the city to Maryland. In Maryland it is also Maryland Route 4 (MD 4 ...

across the street from the

. The building originally housed the collection of the

. In addition to displaying a large collection of American contemporary craft, several hundred paintings from the museum's permanent collection — hung salon style: one-atop-another and side-by-side — are featured in special installations in the Grand Salon.

Features and programs

Collections

Part of the

, the museum has a broad variety of American art, with more than 7,000 artists represented, that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States. SAAM contains the world's largest collection of New Deal art; a collection of contemporary craft, American impressionist paintings, and masterpieces from the

Gilded Age In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era extending roughly from 1877 to 1900, which was sandwiched between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Wes ...

; photography, modern folk art, works by

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

and

Latino Latino or Latinos most often refers to: * Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America * Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States * The people or cultures of Latin America; ** Latin A ...

artists, images of western expansion, and realist art from the first half of the twentieth century. Among the significant artists represented in its collection are

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...

Jenny Holzer Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces and includes large-scale installations, advertising billboards, ...

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

, Richard Hunt,

Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Ame ...

, John Singer Sargent,

Albert Pinkham Ryder Albert Pinkham Ryder (March 19, 1847 – March 28, 1917) was an American painter best known for his poetic and moody allegorical works and seascapes, as well as his eccentric personality. While his art shared an emphasis on subtle variations of ...

Albert Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not ...

, Frances Farrand Dodge,

Edmonia Lewis Mary Edmonia Lewis, also known as "Wildfire" (c. July 4, 1844 – September 17, 1907), was an American sculptor, of mixed African-American and Native American ( Mississauga Ojibwe) heritage. Born free in Upstate New York, she worked for most of ...

Thomas Moran Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 – August 25, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family, wife Mary Nimmo Moran and daughter Ruth too ...

, James Gill,

Edward Hopper Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Hopper created subdued drama ...

, John William "Uncle Jack" Dey,

Karen LaMonte Karen LaMonte (born December 14, 1967) is an American artist known for her life-size sculptures in ceramic, bronze, marble, and cast glass. Background LaMonte was born and grew up in Manhattan, New York. In 1990, after she graduated from the Rhod ...

and

Winslow Homer Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in ...

. SAAM describes itself as being "dedicated to collecting, understanding, and enjoying American art. The museum celebrates the extraordinary creativity of artists whose works reflect the American experience and global connections."

Galleries and public spaces

The American Art's main building contains expanded permanent-collection galleries and public spaces. The museum has two innovative public spaces. The Luce Foundation Center for American Art is a visible art storage and study center, which allows visitors to browse more than 3,300 works of the collection. The Lunder Conservation Center is "the first art conservation facility to allow the public permanent behind-the-scenes views of the preservation work of museums".

The Luce Foundation Center for American Art

Luce Foundation Center for American Art 13

The Luce Foundation Center, which opened in July 2000, is the first visible art storage and study center in Washington, D.C. and the fourth center to bear the Luce Family name. It has 20,400 square feet on the third and fourth floors of American Art Museum. It presents more than 3,300 objects in 64 secure glass cases, which quadruples the number of artworks from the permanent collection on public view. The purpose of open storage is to allow patrons to view various niche art that is usually not part of a main exhibition or gala special. The Luce Foundation Center features paintings densely hung on screens; sculptures; crafts and objects by folk and self-taught artists arranged on shelves. Large-scale sculptures are installed on the first floor. The center has John Gellatly's European collection of decorative arts.

Lunder Conservation Center

The Lunder Conservation Center, which opened in July 2000, is the first

art conservation The conservation and restoration of cultural property focuses on protection and care of cultural property (tangible cultural heritage), including artworks, architecture, archaeology, and museum collections. Conservation activities include prev ...

facility that allows the public permanent behind-the-scenes views of preservation work. Conservation staff are visible to the public through floor-to-ceiling glass walls that allow visitors to see firsthand all the techniques which conservators use to examine, treat, and preserve artworks. The Lunder Center has five conservation laboratories and studios equipped to treat paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures, folk art objects, contemporary crafts, decorative arts, and frames. The Center uses various specialized and esoteric tools, such as hygrothermographs, to maintain optimal temperature and humidity to preserve works of art. Staff from both the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery work in the Lunder Center.

Selected exhibitions

The museum has put on hundreds of exhibitions since its founding. Many exhibitions are groundbreaking and promote new scholarship within the field of American art. What follows is a brief list of selected, and more recent, examples: *'' Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination'' (2019–2020) *'' Michael Sherrill Retrospective'' (2019–2020) *''American Myth & Memory: David Levinthal Photographs'' (2019–2019) *''Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965–1975'' (2019–2019) *''Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018'' (2018–2019) *''Between Worlds: The Art of

Bill Traylor William Traylor (April 1, – October 23, 1949) was an African-American self-taught artist from Lowndes County, Alabama. Born into slavery, Traylor spent the majority of his life after emancipation as a sharecropper. It was only after 19 ...

'' (2018–2019) *''

Trevor Paglen Trevor Paglen (born 1974) is an American artist, geographer, and author whose work tackles mass surveillance and data collection. In 2016, Paglen won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and he has also won The Cultural Award from the ...

: Sites Unseen'' (2018–2019) *''

Diane Arbus Diane Arbus (; née Nemerov; March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971
" The New York ...

: A box of ten photographs'' (2018–2019) *''No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man'' (2018–2019) *''

Do Ho Suh Do Ho Suh (hangul: 서도호, born 1962) is a Korean sculptor and installation artist. He also works across various media, including paintings and film which explore the concept of space and home. His work is particularly well known in relation t ...

: Almost Home'' (2018) *'' Tamayo: The New York Years'' (2017–2018) *''Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death'' (2017–2018) *''

Kara Walker Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best ...

: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)'' (2017–2018) *''Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography'' (2017) *'' June Schwarcz: Invention and Variation'' (2017) *'' Gene Davis: Hot Beat'' (2016–2017) *''

Isamu Noguchi was an American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and severa ...

, Archaic/Modern'' (2016–2017) *''Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten'' (2016–2017) *''Visions and Revisions: Renwick Invitational 2016'' (2016) *''Artworks by African Americans from the Collection'' (2016) *''The Art of

Romaine Brooks Romaine Brooks (born Beatrice Romaine Goddard; May 1, 1874 – December 7, 1970) was an American painter who worked mostly in Paris and Capri. She specialized in portrait painting, portraiture and used a subdued tonal Palette (painting), palette ...

'' (2016) *'' Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget'' (2014) *''Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection'' (2014) *''Pop Art Prints'' (2014) *''Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art'' (2013) *''Landscapes In Passing: Photographs by Steve Fitch, Robbert Flick, and Elaine Mayes'' (2013) *''A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum'' (2013) *''

: Global Visionary'' (2012) *''The Civil War and American Art'' (2012) *''40 under 40: Craft Futures'' (2012) *''African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond'' (2012) *''

The Art of Video Games ''The Art of Video Games'' was an exhibition by the Smithsonian American Art Museum which was on display from March 16, 2012 through September 30, 2012. The exhibition was designed to highlight the evolution of art within the video game medium o ...

'' (2012) *''

Annie Leibovitz Anna-Lou Leibovitz ( ; born October 2, 1949) is an American portrait photographer best known for her engaging portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of Jo ...

: Pilgrimage'' (2011) *''Multiplicity'' (2011) *''The Great American Hall of Wonders'' (2011) *''Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House'' (2011) *'' Alexis Rockman – ''A Fable for Tomorrow'''' (2010) *''

The West As America ''The West as America, Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820–1920'' was an art exhibition organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (then known as the National Museum of American Art, or NMAA) in Washington, D.C. in 1991, featuring ...

'' (1991) * '' Sandra C. Fernández: The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics''

Outreach

The museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program since 1951. During the 2000s renovation, a "series of exhibitions of more than 1,000 major artworks from American Art's permanent collection traveled to 105 venues across the United States," which were "seen by more than 2.5 million visitors". Since 2006, thirteen exhibitions have toured to more than 30 cities. SAAM provides electronic resources to schools and the public as part of education programs. An example is ''Artful Connections'', which gives real-time video conference tours of American Art. In addition, the museum offers the Summer Institutes: Teaching the Humanities through Art, week-long professional development workshops that introduce educators to methods for incorporating American art and technology into their humanities curricula. American Art has seven online research databases, which has more than 500,000 records of artworks in public and private collections worldwide, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture. Numerous researchers and millions of virtual visitors per year use these databases. Also, American Art and

Heritage Preservation Heritage Preservation (active 1973-2014) was an American non-profit organization. Its mission was to preserve the nation's heritage for future generations through innovative leadership, education, and programs. As of June 30, 2015 the organization ...

work together in a joint project, Save Outdoor Sculpture, "dedicated to the documentation and preservation of outdoor sculpture". The museum produces a peer-reviewed periodical, ''American Art'' (started in 1987), for new scholarship. Since 1993, American Art has been had an online presence. It has one of the earliest museum websites when, in 1995, it launched its own website. EyeLevel, the first blog at the Smithsonian Institution, was started in 2005 and, as of 2013, the blog "has approximately 12,000 readers each month".

In popular culture

In 2006, fashion designer

Isaac Mizrahi Isaac Mizrahi (born October 14, 1961) is an American fashion designer, television presenter and chief designer of the Isaac Mizrahi brand for Xcel Brands. Based in New York City, he is best known for his eponymous fashion lines. Mizrahi was prev ...

designed the conservators' denim work aprons. In 2008, the American Art Museum hosted an

alternate reality game An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. The form is defined by inten ...

, called ''Ghosts of a Chance'', which was created by City Mystery. The game allowed patrons "a new way of engaging with the collection" in the Luce Foundation Center. The game ran for six weeks and attracted more than 6,000 participants.

References

External links

*
Luce Foundation Center
at SAAM
Lunder Conservation Center
at SAAM *
Virtual tour of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
provided by Google Arts & Culture * {{Authority control 1829 establishments in Washington, D.C. Art museums established in 1829 Art museums and galleries in Washington, D.C. Members of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington Museums of American art Penn Quarter

American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...