What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect

October 2, 2009 - January 24, 2010

Enter the world of artist William T. Wiley, who has created a distinctive body of work during a 50-year career that addresses critical issues of our time. Art, politics, war, global warming, foolishness, ambition, hypocrisy, and irony are summoned by Wiley’s fertile imagination and recorded in the personal vocabulary of symbols, puns and images that fill his objects. His wit and sense of the absurd make his art accessible to all with multiple layers of meaning revealed through careful examination.

This retrospective, which features eighty-eight works from the 1960s to the present, is the first full-scale look at Wiley’s long career and explores important themes and ideas expressed in his work.

American Art Museum, 8th and F Streets, NW Washington, DC

Smithsonian American Art Museum July Programs

Tuesday, July 7, 6:00pm
A Conversation with Jean Shin
Artist Jean Shin, curator Joanna Marsh, and conservator Hugh Shockey discuss the challenges and considerations for museums in preserving art made of ephemeral materials.

Thursday, July 9, 6:00pm
1934: A New Deal for Artists - Gallery Talk with George Gurney
Deputy Chief Curator George Gurney leads a tour of the exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists, discussing conditions during the Great Depression that led to the Roosevelt Administration's federal relief program and how artists responded to it.

Fridays, July 10, 17, 24, & 31, Noon
Art Nouveau: New Style for a New Century (Four Sessions)
Bonita Billman, art history instructor at the Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies, explores the origins, characteristics, historical influences, and the chief proponents of art nouveau. Registration and fee required; call 202.633.3030 or register online at www.residentassociates.org

@
Smithsonian American Art Museum
at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture
8th and F streets, NW
202.633.1000
Metro: Gallery Pl-Chinatown, 9th & G or 7th & F (Arena) exits

Destination DC's Tweet Up #DCMeetup

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 5-7 pm

American Art Museum & Poste Brasserie @Hotel Monaco
F Street between 7th and 9th Streets


Meet @ the American Art Museum, F Street Entrance


@Destination DC invites you to the first ever MeetUp where you can enjoy $4 beer and wine and specials register to win a Flip Mino camcorder. Test your puzzle-solving skills, in a scavenger hunt while exploring the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Hotel Monaco

Source Authentic Art

Art:21-Consumption / Screenings

Wednesday, May 20, 6:00pm

The Smithsonian American Art Museum and Art:21 present a special series from the award-winning documentaries, Art in the Twenty-First Century. Each film features behind-the-scenes conversations with contemporary artists in their studios, homes, and communities.

May 20 screenings include artists Barbara Kruger, Michael Ray Charles, Matthew Barney, Andrea Zittel and Mel Chin.

@ Smithsonian American Art Museum

Collector's Roundtable - Dr. Walter O. Evans (final in a series of 3)

Tuesday, May 19, 7:00pm

Collectors' Roundtable provides a forum for experienced private collectors-and those just starting to collect-to learn from acclaimed experts. On May 19, Dr. Walter O. Evans, one of the country's foremost collectors of African American art, speaks.

Advance registration required at www.AmericanArt.si.edu/calendar. There is a $20 fee for this program.

@ Smithsonian American Art Museum

Artist Talk - Jean Shin: Common Threads

Friday, May 1, 7:00pm

Artist Jean Shin speaks about her ground breaking work converting everyday objects, such as empty pill bottles, into site-specific assemblages. Reception follows with refreshments by Cowgirl Creamery.

@ Smithsonian American Art Museum

New Deal Paintings

“1934: A New Deal for Artists”
Feb. 27 through Jan. 3, 2010,

The Smithsonian American Art Museum presents New Deal Paintings from the First Federally Funded Art Program in the United States. In 1934, Americans grappled with an economic situation that feels all too familiar today. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the U.S. government created the Public Works of Art Program—the first federal government program to support the arts nationally. A selection of paintings made with support from this program will be on view in the exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It will begin a three-year tour of the United States in 2010.

Read More at ArtDaily

Collector's Roundtable Lectures

Thomas Colville, Thomas Colville Fine Art

Quality and Connoisseurship
Tuesday, May 27, 7 p.m.
$20 (Non Member) Purchase Tickets Here

Thomas Colville has been a distinguished private dealer in fine nineteenth-century American and European paintings, drawings, and watercolors since 1972. He has worked with individuals, corporations, and museums throughout the world to broaden their collections. While specializing in the works of such American artists as George Inness, John La Farge, James McNeill Whistler, Sanford Gifford, Eastman Johnson, and Emil Carlsen, Colville also is one of the world’s leading dealers in French Barbizon paintings. Thomas Colville Fine Art has showrooms in New Haven, Connecticut, and New York City.

McEvoy Auditorium
Smithsonian American Art Museum and
the National Portrait Gallery
8th and F Streets, NW
Washington, D.C.
Smithsonian Information: 202-633-1000
TTY: 202-633-5285

Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975

I'll be heading to see this show at SAAM before it closes this week. See today's review
A Commitment to Color By DANIEL KUNITZ in the New York Sun.

02/29/2008 - 05/26/2008
Smithsonian American Art Museum

Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975 is the first full-scale exhibition to examine the sources, meaning, and impact of the Color Field movement and offers an opportunity to re-evaluate this important aspect of twentieth-century painting. Washington, D.C is the only east coast city to host this landmark exhibition.

"Color As Field: American Painting, 1950-1975,"curated by Karen Wilkin. Until May 26 (8th and F streets N.W., Washington, D.C., 202- 633-7970).

Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist

May 9 through Aug. 3, 2008

SAAM presents the world of Aaron Douglas (1899–1979), one of the most influential visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Susan Earle, curator of European and American art at the Spencer Museum of Art, organized the exhibition; Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator at the museum, is the coordinating curator.

Smithsonian American Art Museum
8th and F Streets N.W.
Washington, D.C.
11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily (except December 25)

AVANT-GARDE JEWELRY AT RENWICK

"Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection,"
contemporary jewelry from a global perspective

Mar. 14-July 6, 2008

The exhibition traces the development of artist-made jewelry and honors its craft roots while also placing the work within a larger framework of seminal movements in 20th century art. Ornament as Art showcases a broad array of national and international works made between 1963 and 2006. The exhibition includes 300 objects, including 275 pieces of jewelry and drawings, watercolors, sketchbooks and sculptural constructions by the artists. Cindi Strauss, curator of modern and contemporary decorative arts and design at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, organized the exhibition; Robyn Kennedy, chief of the Renwick Gallery, is coordinating curator for the exhibition in Washington.

The Renwick has also organized a symposium, "A Grand Passion: Global Perspectives on Contemporary Art Jewelry," Apr. 12, 2008, with presentations by Drutt as well as artists Robert Baines, Claus Bury, Robin Kranitzky and Kim Overstreet.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery
The Renwick Gallery is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W., steps away from the White House in the heart of historic federal Washington.

Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975

Rosetta DeBerardinis has a nice write up of the Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975 Exhibition on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum at Daily Campello News.

On exhibit thru May 26th, 2008 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Eighth and F Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily (202) 633-1000\ (202) 633-7970 (recorded museum information).

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Art of John Alexander
Saturday, March 1, 3:00pm

Jane Livingston, author and independent art historian, introduced Washington audiences to artist John Alexander in 1980. She returns to discuss her latest exhibition of his often luminous and occasionally satirical paintings. Livingston is the guest curator of John Alexander: A Retrospective. McEvoy Auditorium, Lower Level

Smithsonian American Art Museum
at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture
8th and F streets, NW
202.633.1000
Metro: Gallery Pl-Chinatown, 9th & G or 7th & F, Arena exit

More Color as Field at Smithsonian American Art Museum

"Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975," opens Feb. 29.
The exhibition covers the movement in abstract art that focused on thinned paint poured, painted and spread to soak into unprimed canvases to create a simple wash of color. Some of the movement's stars, such as Sam Gilliam and Gene Davis, were based in Washington (and were celebrated with a citywide ColorField.remix festival not too long ago), but this show at Smithsonian American Art Museum will look beyond our local scene, to include Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and a slew of others.

Free. 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. daily Feb. 29-May 26. Eighth and F streets NW, Washington, DC USA 202-633-1000.

From today's WaPo EXHIBITS

James Rosenquist at SAAM

I was away for this lecture and hope someone will fill me in. Over at Eye Level, Howard comments "Pop Goes the Artist: James Rosenquist at SAAM"

View the Webcast of Rosenquist's lecture and check out his Industrial Cottage, acquired by SAAM in 2006.

Fine Art Is Not a Career

November 28, 2007, 7pm
Artist James Rosenquist

Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture Series, 7:00 PM
McEvoy Auditorium, Lower Level
Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art present new insights from the perspective of a critic, a scholar, and an artist. This annual series is made possible by the generosity of Clarice Smith.

Artist James Rosenquist's talk is entitled, Fine Art is Not a Career!

Free tickets available in the G Street lobby, one hour prior.
Reception follows lecture.
McEvoy Auditorium, Lower Level

Discover Washington's First Art Movement

Read Heather Goss's report at DCist on the upcoming Art Events this Spring in Washington, DC.
Read DCist here.