Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery

Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery SAAM and its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, celebrate the extraordinary creativity of artists whose works reflect the American experience.
(2657)

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation's first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience from the colonial period to today. The Renwick Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features one of the finest collections of American craft in the United States. Welcome to our page! Please feel free to share thoughts about our post

s, ask us questions, or tell us about your visit. Find us on other social media sites: www.americanart.si.edu/visit/social_media

While on-topic discussion is encouraged, we ask that you express yourself in a civil manner and treat other users with respect. The Smithsonian also monitors and may remove posts consistent with its terms of use, as described at http://si.edu/Termsofuse -gen. For our Privacy Policy: http://www.si.edu/Privacy

06/03/2026

By showcasing the ordinary and often forgotten bits and pieces of the world we live in, "Nick Cave: Mammoth" shines light on what we value and how we make meaning together. It evokes the lives and cultures we have lost, as well as the magical possibilities of a universe created through imagination and the humblest of materials.

The objects that make up “A Lit History” (2026) have passed through many hands and witnessed many stories; they might inspire conversations and spark memories of your own.

“Nick Cave: Mammoth” is currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

06/03/2026

By showcasing the ordinary and often forgotten bits and pieces of the world we live in, “Nick Cave: Mammoth” shines light on what we value and how we make meaning together. It evokes the lives and cultures we have lost, as well as the magical possibilities of a universe created through imagination and the humblest of materials.

The objects that make up “A Lit History” (2026) have passed through many hands and witnessed many stories; they might inspire conversations and spark memories of your own.

“Nick Cave: Mammoth” is currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Romaine Brooks was born in Rome in 1874 and lived for almost a century until her death in Paris in 1970. Her work mesmer...
06/01/2026

Romaine Brooks was born in Rome in 1874 and lived for almost a century until her death in Paris in 1970. Her work mesmerizes with its muted palette of black, white, and various shades of gray. Sometimes, there’s a small moment of red or brown. Her childhood was defined by unhappiness and abuse that she detailed in her unpublished memoir, “No Pleasant Memories.”

Brooks managed to transcend her early years to become a leading figure of an artistic counterculture of upper-class Europeans and American expatriates. Many in Brooks’s social circle were creative, bohemian, wealthy, and q***r. She created an androgynous look for herself, helping to disrupt conventional ideas of how women should act and dress.

You can’t help but look at her self-portrait from 1923 and wonder: Who is this person? What is she thinking? She looks out from the brim of her black top hat and stares directly at you. With this self-portrait, Brooks envisioned her modernity as an artist and a person. The shades of gray, stylized forms, and psychological gravity exemplify her deep commitment to aesthetic principles. The shaded, direct gaze conveys a commanding and confident presence, an attitude more typically associated with her male counterparts. The riding hat and coat and masculine tailoring recall conventions of aristocratic portraiture while also evoking a chic androgyny associated with the post—World War I “new woman.” Brooks’ fashion choices also enabled upper-class le****ns to identify and acknowledge one another.

Can you spot the moments of red in this painting?

Images:
Romaine Brooks, “Self-Portrait,” 1923, oil on canvas [detail]

Feathers and foliage fill the frames of these ornate, jewel-toned windows at SAAM. 🦚🦚This pair of stained glass windows ...
05/29/2026

Feathers and foliage fill the frames of these ornate, jewel-toned windows at SAAM. 🦚🦚

This pair of stained glass windows by John La Farge reflects the Gilded Age fascination with medieval art and craftsmanship. The industrial revolution had made inexpensive, mass-produced glass available to anyone, but art glass remained an emblem of wealth and good taste.

The tail feathers of the peacocks are made of bits of glass in the “broken jewel” technique; each peony blossom is a single piece of glass molded to catch the light differently through the day. La Farge layered his colored glass as a painter would build glazes of colors to achieve the right shade. For the composition, he borrowed from many cultures: the central panels with the bird and flower motif evoke Chinese and Japanese screens; the lower panels emulate Pompeian architecture; and the transoms above recall the tympanum above the door to a Romanesque cathedral.

Images:
1, 5 - Installation view of John La Farge, “Peacocks and Peonies I, II,” 1882, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2026
2, 3, 4 - details of ohn La Farge, “Peacocks and Peonies I, II,” 1882
6 - John La Farge, “Peacocks and Peonies I,” 1882
7 - John La Farge, “Peacocks and Peonies II,” 1882

Cozy Caturday mood(s). 🐈‍⬛Images:Chuzo Tamotzu, “Cats,” ca. 1935-1937, lithograph, 18 1⁄2 x 15 in. (47.0 x 38.1 cm), Smi...
05/23/2026

Cozy Caturday mood(s). 🐈‍⬛

Images:
Chuzo Tamotzu, “Cats,” ca. 1935-1937, lithograph, 18 1⁄2 x 15 in. (47.0 x 38.1 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

What do we carry with us, and what carries us? In “Mammoth” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, artist Nick Cave inv...
05/07/2026

What do we carry with us, and what carries us?

In “Mammoth” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, artist Nick Cave invites us into a world built from memory, imagination, and the materials of everyday life. On top of a massive glowing light table, he has placed thousands of objects: from vintage juggling balls to pie plates to a set of his grandmother’s thimbles. Some of these objects remain recognizable; others have been transformed into creatures and contraptions that seem to hum with spirit and intention.

“Mammoth” asks us to consider the stories embedded in to reflect on how we live with the things we inherit, what is lost and what is passed down to future generations. Cave’s art forms a kind of monument: not only to the past but to the everyday acts of making, preserving, and imagining that carry us forward.


“Nick Cave: Mammoth” is currently on view at SAAM.

Images:
Installation photography of “Nick Cave: Mammoth,” Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2026, ©Nick Cave; Photo by RON BLUNT STUDIO

Happy National Teacher Day! Here’s “Flower to Teacher” to honor all the educators out there. 🌻Image:William H. Johnson, ...
05/06/2026

Happy National Teacher Day! Here’s “Flower to Teacher” to honor all the educators out there. 🌻

Image:
William H. Johnson, “Flower to Teacher,” ca. 1944, oil on paperboard, 23 7⁄8 x 20 in. (60.6 x 50.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

We bet a few folks will recognize this iconic equine. Perhaps America’s greatest stud sire and champion Thoroughbred, t...
05/05/2026

We bet a few folks will recognize this iconic equine.

Perhaps America’s greatest stud sire and champion Thoroughbred, the racehorse Lexington was foaled in 1850. He won six of seven career races and earned his owner $56,600, equivalent to almost $1.5 million today. After retiring from racing due to rapid onset blindness, Lexington had a decades long career as a stud, siring more than 400 foals. These foals combined for more than 1,100 race wins.

Thomas J. Scott painted this image while living in Kentucky in the 1850s, when Lexington was at his peak. Lexington, the only true equine portrait held in the SAAM collections, stands out for its caliber, says the museum's senior curator Eleanor Harvey. “Scott’s painting of Lexington is visually riveting. It is painted with a kind of empathy that makes you want to stand in front of the canvas and know more about the horse.”

Shortly after his death in 1875, Lexington joined the National Museum of Natural History's (NMNH) collection. Over the next 125 years, he was displayed at the Smithsonian Castle, NMNH, and the National Museum of American History. Lexington's skeleton is currently on loan to the International Museum of the Horse. Scott’s “Portrait of Lexington” is currently on view at SAAM.

Image 1: Thomas J. Scott, “Portrait of Lexington,” ca. 1857, oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, sight 24 1⁄8 x 34 3⁄8 in. (61.3 x 87.4 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum

Image 2: Taxidermist Frank M. Greenwell with Lexington’s skeleton in 1969.

Satoru Abe was a modern artist known for his painting and sculpture. Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, he was widely recognize...
05/04/2026

Satoru Abe was a modern artist known for his painting and sculpture. Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, he was widely recognized as a leading artistic figure of the islands.

Abe was born in Moʻiliʻili, a district of Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, to parents who were immigrants from Japan. While his interest in art emerged in high school, it was his experience studying painting with Maui-based artist Hon Chew Hee at the YMCA that solidified his desire to pursue a career in art. In 1948, Abe spent a summer at the California Academy for Fine Arts in San Francisco, then moved to New York City, where he enrolled in the Art Students League. Returning to Hawaiʻi in 1950, Abe joined a growing circle of modernist artists.

Abe’s interest in sculpture began serendipitously in 1951 when he and Bumpei Akaji were given several pounds of bronze rods and began experimenting with metalworking techniques. By 1956, Abe returned to New York City and began working at the Sculpture Center, where he found the necessary space and resources to advance his practice thanks to the support of the Center’s founder and director Dorothea Denslow. The Sculpture Center showcased Abe’s work in four solo exhibitions between 1956 and 1965. During this time, several significant motifs emerged in Abe’s art that balance representation with geometric abstraction: the seed, moon, wheel, and tree. Abe has said of his tree forms, “[I think] of them as extensions or transformations of the human form, probably an influence of my Oriental birth and the philosophy of reincarnation. I am still searching for answers to the questions ‘Where was I,’ ‘What is life for,’ [and] ‘Where will I go?’”

In 1970, Abe returned to Hawaiʻi through an artist's residency funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and decided to stay permanently. Abe ran his gallery space, Satoru’s Art Gallery, between 2006 and 2014. Many of Abe’s public sculptures can be seen throughout Hawaiʻi.

Images:
Satoru Abe, “New Branches,” 1980, cast and welded copper and brass on wood base, 28 3⁄4 × 29 1⁄2 × 12 5⁄8 in. (73 × 74.9 × 32.1 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

In combining vivid graphic design that would attract attention from a distance with typography that formed visual poetry...
05/01/2026

In combining vivid graphic design that would attract attention from a distance with typography that formed visual poetry, this poster draws in viewers and gives additional meaning to the work when it is examined close-up.

“Hasta La Victoria Siempre” (1975) by brothers Luis C. González and Héctor D. González, combines eye-catching design, poetry, and international politics. The silhouetted figure holding a United Farm Workers flag quickly conveys support for the union. Typewritten letters in the background form “Viva la Huelga” (long live the strike), a rallying cry at UFW strikes, and “Viva la mañana” (long live tomorrow). Taking its title from a phrase associated with Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, the poster also functions as a concrete poem that elevates farmworkers’ rights to an international struggle.

Images:
Luis C. González, Héctor D. González, “Hasta La Victoria Siempre,” 1975, screenprint on paper, image: 22 1⁄8 x 14 1⁄4 in. (56.1 x 36.2 cm) sheet: 25 1⁄8 x 19 in. (63.8 x 48.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

Address

800 G Street NW
Washington D.C., DC
20004

Telephone

+12026331000

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery:

Shortcuts

Share

Category