Smithsonian's Archives of American Art

Smithsonian's Archives of American Art Collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources on the history of the art in the US.
(113)

Since 1954, the Archives has collected roughly 16 million letters, photographs, diaries, oral history interviews, sketches, scrapbooks, business records, and other documents that support the study of the history of the visual arts in America. Smithsonian Privacy Statement: http://www.si.edu/privacy/
Smithsonian Terms of Use: http://www.si.edu/termsofuse/

📣 We are excited to announce that the finding aid to the papers of Japanese American painter and muralist Hide Noda (190...
12/06/2024

📣 We are excited to announce that the finding aid to the papers of Japanese American painter and muralist Hide Noda (1908-1939) is now online!

Hideo Noda, also known as Hideo Benjamin Noda and Benjamin Hideo Noda, was a Japanese American painter and muralist active in New York, New York; Tokyo, Japan; and San Francisco, California. Born in in Santa Clara, California, Noda attended the California School of Fine Arts, became a member of the Mural Painters Guild and Woodstock Artists Association in New York, studied with Arnold Blanch and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera. He and Ruth Kates married around 1932, and in the late 1930s he traveled with Ruth, and then alone, through Europe and Japan, where he became a member of the Shinseisakuha Art Society. In January 1939, Hideo Noda died of brain cancer and was buried in Kumamoto, Japan, where his parents lived prior to emigrating to America.

The collection includes illustrated letters and correspondence between Ruth and Hideo during his time traveling, and photograph albums with Noda’s travel snapshots and family photographs, as well as albums of photographs of artwork. Also among the papers are personal business records, printed materials, drawings and sketches, estate papers, and film and video recordings.

View the finding aid on our website: s.si.edu/3Vm0IKz

Images:
All, Hideo Noda papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1-5, 7. Letters with illustrations from Hideo Noda to Ruth Noda, 1937-1938.
6. Letter from Ruth Noda to Hideo Noda, 1938.
8. Photograph of Ruth Noda and Hideo Noda, circa 1938-1940.
9. Page from Photograph Album - Hideo Noda's Photographs and Notes, 1934-1936.

12/03/2024

ARTiculated is back for season four, with Anita Fields: How We Gather. Hear from ceramicist and textile artist Anita Fields (b. 1951 | Osage) about her innovations in cloth, clay, and community building as she has cultivated a career all her own for more than 50 years.

Available wherever you get your podcasts or at https://s.si.edu/4ihS9KI

This podcast is sponsored by Next50, the Denver based national foundation that works towards creating a world that values aging.

Images: 1) A photographic portrait of Anita Fields, an Osage woman in her 70s, stands in a colorful blanket with purple, turquoise, tan, and yellow.
2) Photograph of an installation with an open tan-colored Osage robe with embroidered pictogram symbols of humans, trees, and flowers with green sleeves, all below a large-brimmed top hat with red, white, brown, and purple bands, surrounded by hanging cut-outs of symbols including hands and serpents.
3) A rectangular plains landscape made of six clay squares with hills and grass painted on top with gold rosettes dotting the skyline.

All images courtesy Anita Fields.

Support the Archives of American Art’s vital work this Cyber Monday 🎨  In honor of our 70th anniversary, we’re offering ...
12/02/2024

Support the Archives of American Art’s vital work this Cyber Monday 🎨

In honor of our 70th anniversary, we’re offering a selection of limited-edition prints from some of America’s most prominent contemporary artists. Shop works by Polly Apfelbaum, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and Pat Steir, among others.

On Cyber Monday only, receive a free gift with your purchase. Give the gift of art this holiday season: https://s.si.edu/4eL9tVm

Image credits:
1) Cindy Sherman, Untitled, c-print, 2004.
2) Polly Apfelbaum, Durham Dogwood, PA, lithograph, 2010.
3) Joel Shapiro, For the Archives, inkjet print, 2008.
4) Pat Steir, untitled, monoprint, 2011.
5) Robert Bechtle, Santa Barbara Patio, lithograph,1982.

This Native American Heritage Day, we celebrate ongoing traditions and their bright futures. Anita Fields (b. 1951 | Osa...
11/29/2024

This Native American Heritage Day, we celebrate ongoing traditions and their bright futures.

Anita Fields (b. 1951 | Osage) is an Oklahoma-based artist who uses ceramics and textiles to expand heritage practice for new generations, often pulling from the vibrant aesthetics of Osage ribbonwork and crafts.

Tune in for Season Four Episode One of the ARTiculated podcast, Anita Fields: How We Gather on December 3rd, to hear more about her work with clay, cloth, and community. aaa.si.edu/articulated

What if oral history and painting were—literally—woven together? How can settler archives shed light on Indigenous world...
11/29/2024

What if oral history and painting were—literally—woven together? How can settler archives shed light on Indigenous worldmaking? This Native American Heritage Month, learn how to rethink the archives with recent contributions to the Archives of American Art Journal.

In the journal’s Fall 2023 issue, Apsáalooke (Crow) artist Wendy Red Star, winner of an esteemed 2024 MacArthur Fellowship, makes the archives her medium as she weaves together pages from the transcript of Joan Mitchell’s 1986 oral history in the Archives’ collection and color reproductions of Mitchell’s vibrant paintings in her Weaving Abstraction series.

Meanwhile, in the Spring 2024 journal issue, professor Jessica L. Horton proposes reading settler archives relationally. Using the digitized papers of Olive Rush (1873-1966), Horton delves into the white settler’s account of a Bureau of Indian Affairs mural project at the Santa Fe Indian School in search of information on how Native artists transformed the colonial environment.

For a transcript of the Archives’ oral history with Joan Mitchell, visit: https://s.si.edu/3B03M8b

To access the Archives’ Olive Rush Papers, visit: https://s.si.edu/3CGbkgN

For more information on the Archives of American Art Journal, visit: https://s.si.edu/419NmVc



Image credits:
1) Wendy Red Star, Joan One, from the Weaving Abstraction series, 2022. Paper weaving, 11 x 8 ½ in. Collection of the artist.
2) Page from Olive Rush’s diary featuring her own rendering of Julian Martinez’s sketch of “girl + skunks,” 1932. Olive Rush Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Two sets of papers that are now at the Archives of American Art have added to our holdings of California collections. Th...
11/27/2024

Two sets of papers that are now at the Archives of American Art have added to our holdings of California collections. The papers of Whitney Chadwick and David Em also join collections of feminist art historians and our growing holdings of computer art. Learn more about Chadwick and Em and their papers on our blog: s.si.edu/3B9vY8w.

Images:
All Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1. David Em during his artist residency at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1979. Photographer unknown. David Em Papers.
2. David Em, illustrated list of electronic components needed to construct a framebuffer board, May 22, 1978. David Em Papers.
3. Whitney Chadwick, detail of scrapbook from her American Field Service “America Abroad” scholarship trip, 1960. Whitney Chadwick Papers.

11/26/2024
📣 We are excited to announce that finding aid to the papers of California printmaker, painter, sculptor, and educator Wa...
11/26/2024

📣 We are excited to announce that finding aid to the papers of California printmaker, painter, sculptor, and educator Walter Askin (1929-2021) is now online! Researchers will find materials dating from 1930 to 1992 including correspondence, writings, professional activity files, printed materials, and photographs. Visit our website to learn more about this collection. s.si.edu/4fAwmMw

Images:
All Walter Askin papers, circa 1930-1992:
1. J.G. Uribe. Photograph of Walter Askin, circa 1955.
2. Margaret Stovall. Photograph of Walter Askin, circa 1955.
3. Colorized copy of a photograph, circa 1980.

What's the difference between accessioned vs. catalogued in archival lingo? We're breaking it down as part of our Talkin...
11/25/2024

What's the difference between accessioned vs. catalogued in archival lingo? We're breaking it down as part of our Talking Terminology series.

While both terms refer to new records being brought into collections, the difference between them is a little more nuanced. Swipe to learn more!

Image credit: Paul Vanderbilt and other staff at work, 1944-1945. Paul Vanderbilt papers, 1854-1992. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

11/22/2024

Season 4 of ARTiculated arrives just in time for the holidays on December 3.

Come hear about the lives and work of ceramicist and textile artist Anita Fields (Osage), muralist Leo Tanguma, painter and photographer Lenore Chinn, and painter Pat Steir as they've navigated their careers over the decades.

Through four thirty-minute podcast episodes, the Archives will highlight artists who continue to blaze trails. With an eye to sustained creativity and adaptability, these artists showcase the powerful combination of experience and drive, and their stories reflect the strength and vitality of the visual arts across the United States. Drawing from the Archives' oral history collection and new interviews, each episode gives listeners insight into the artists' journeys and enduring inventiveness.

This trailer was narrated by Susan Cary, our registrar and collections manager.

This podcast is sponsored by Next50, the Denver based national foundation that works towards creating a world that values aging.

Photograph of Anita Fields, courtesy Anita Fields.
Starr Mann, a ceramic sculpture by Anita Fields, courtesy Anita Fields
Leo Tanguma in front of a painting of a Quetzal bird, courtesy Leo Tanguma
Leo Tanguma in front of his mural, The Torch of Quetzalcoatl, courtesy Leo Tanguma
Lenore Chinn portrait by Mia Nakano, courtesy Lenore Chinn
Lenore Chinn, Land's End, 1987, acrylic on canvas, 37 1⁄8 × 49 1⁄8 × 1 7⁄8 in. (94.3 × 124.8 × 4.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong Endowment, 2024.4, © 1987, Lenore Chinn
Portrait of Pat Steir by Grace Roselli, Pandora's BoxX Project. Image courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Pat Steir, Painted Rain #8, 2022-23 courtesy of Hauser & Wirth, photo by Elisabeth Bernstein

Image descriptions:

A photographic portrait of Anita Fields, an Osage woman in her 70s, stands in a colorful blanket with purple, turquoise, tan, and yellow.
A ceramic humanoid figure painted black and decorated with white painted symbols.
A photograph of Leo Tanguma, a Chicano man in his 80s with a gray beard in a black cardigan stands in front of a painting of a vibrant Quetzal bird flying above a church before a mountainscape
A photo of Leo Tanguma in front of a large mural with a three-faced figure, a figure clothed in an American flag, Rosie the riveter, farmers, Quetzalcoatl, and other mestizo heroes and figures.
A picture of Lenore Chinn, a Chinese American woman in her 70s wearing a tan hat, black-rimmed glasses, and a Hawaiian button-up shirt.
A painting of a shirtless man in shorts and boots with a mustache sitting on a boulder in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
A photographic portrait of Pat Steir, a white woman in her 80s with gray hair and her hands placed on her cheeks in a white shirt and blue coat.
An abstract painting on a Caribbean blue background with thick stacked brush strokes of maroon, hunter's green, orange, grey, royal blue, and white paint at the center forming a long drip pattern down the canvas.

Announcing our latest batch of oral history transcripts with women who made lasting and significant contributions to the...
11/20/2024

Announcing our latest batch of oral history transcripts with women who made lasting and significant contributions to the history of art and culture in the United States. Read transcripts of oral history interviews with: Edna Andrade, Margaret Taylor Burroughs, Jane Piper, Blanchette Rockefeller, Audrey Sabol, and Amy Freeman Lee.

The Archives of American Art is currently working on a multi-year initiative to convert legacy oral history typescripts to digital form and to make them available on the Archives’ website. This project received Federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.

Images:
All Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1. Reuben Goldberg. Edna Andrade with sculptural mask, ca. 1942. Edna Andrade papers.
2. Margaret Taylor Burroughs, n.d. Parish Gallery records.
3. Exhibition postcard for Jane Piper, 1983. William P. Daley papers.
4. Joan Kron and Audrey Sabol seated during a New York Times interview, ca. 1965. Joan Kron papers.

📣  We are excited to announce that the finding aid to the papers of Kentucky artists Harold Helwig and Lenore Davis is n...
11/14/2024

📣 We are excited to announce that the finding aid to the papers of Kentucky artists Harold Helwig and Lenore Davis is now available online! The collection is rich with sketches, drawings, and photographs, as well as personal and business correspondence, biographical material, and files relating to their careers as artists and educators. Visit link to learn more about this collection: s.si.edu/4hLLoQN



Images:
All, Harold Helwig and Lenore Davis papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1. Photograph of Lenore Davis and Harold Helwig, 1988.
2. Contact sheet of Lenore Davis posing with artworks, circa 1970-1995.
3. Davis. Sketch from the wedding of Debra Frasier and Jim Henkel, 15 March 1984.

During World War II, an unlikely team of soldiers was charged with identifying and protecting European cultural sites, m...
11/11/2024

During World War II, an unlikely team of soldiers was charged with identifying and protecting European cultural sites, monuments, and buildings from Allied bombing. Officially named the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) Section, this U.S. Army unit included art curators, scholars, architects, librarians, and archivists from the U.S. and Britain. They quickly became known as The Monuments Men.

Towards the end of the war, their mission changed to one of locating and recovering works of art that had been looted by the N***s. The Monuments Men uncovered troves of stolen art hidden across Germany and Austria– some in castles, others in salt mines. They rescued some of history’s greatest works of art.

Among the holdings of the Archives of American Art are the papers of Monuments Men George Leslie Stout, James J. Rorimer, Walker Hancock, Thomas Carr Howe, S. Lane Faison, Walter Horn, and Otto Wittman.

Learn more on our blog: https://s.si.edu/3YIebgr



Image credits:
ALL: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1) Walker Hancock, Lamont Moore, George Stout and two unidentified soldiers in Marburg, Germany, 1945 June. George Leslie Stout papers, 1855, 1897-1978.
2) George Stout at entrance to the Altaussee salt mine, 1945. Thomas Carr Howe papers, 1932-1984.
3) Lt. Daniel J. Kern and Karl Sieber examining the Ghent Altarpiece in the Altaussee mine, 1945. Thomas Carr Howe papers, 1932-1984.

Thank you to everyone who attended this year’s Archives of American Art Gala, marking our 70th anniversary. We so apprec...
11/05/2024

Thank you to everyone who attended this year’s Archives of American Art Gala, marking our 70th anniversary.

We so appreciate the community coming together to celebrate our three honorees—Senga Nengudi, Richard Tuttle, and Ann Philbin—whose imagination and creativity have forever changed the art world. And we so appreciated having a chance to applaud our special anniversary honorees whose vision and gifts have been transformational for the Archives. Thank you for being on this journey with us!

The gala provides critical support to the Archives of American Art—making it possible for us to collect, preserve, and share the vital stories and voices of American art. We are grateful for everyone who makes our work possible, ensuring that the past can shape our shared future. We invite you to join us at next year’s gala!

Thank you,
Anne Helmreich, director

Images by Rupert Ramsay and Madeleine Thomas // BFA.com

Do you believe in ghosts? Halloween is the perfect time to visit this example of spirit (or ghost) photography, a popula...
10/31/2024

Do you believe in ghosts? Halloween is the perfect time to visit this example of spirit (or ghost) photography, a popular format in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many viewers believed they were seeing actual “spirits” in these photographs, though in reality they were a product of darkroom technology.

Stay spooky! Stay Safe! 📷 👻

Image:
Photograph of Lisette Makdougall Gregory and her cousin Eleanor Brisbane represented as a spirit, undated. Hiram Power papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Meet the honorees of the Archives of American Art’s 2024 Gala!  We are pleased to announce artists Senga Nengudi and Ric...
10/29/2024

Meet the honorees of the Archives of American Art’s 2024 Gala!

We are pleased to announce artists Senga Nengudi and Richard Tuttle will each receive an Archives of American Art Medal. Artists Senga Nengudi and Richard Tuttle will each receive an Archives of American Art Medal and Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles will receive the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History.

In celebration of our 70th anniversary, we will also acknowledge an additional eight honorees in recognition of their vision and gifts that have been transformation for the Archives. They are Alice Walton, Ann Kinney, Barbara G. Fleischman, Frank and Katherine Martucci, Nina W. Werblow Charitable Trust, Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and The Henry Luce Foundation.

Learn more about this year’s distinguished honorees and their contributions to American art, art history, and scholarship in their bios below.

SENGA NENGUDI is an African American conceptual and performance artist. She is renowned for her innovative sculptures that blend found objects with choreographed performances. Known for abstract-poetic work that uses ordinary materials, Nengudi casts new light on the relationship between work and viewer while critically exploring sociopolitical realities’ effects on the body. In 2020, she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2023, she was named Nasher Prize Laureate for excellence in modern sculpture. Her most recent career retrospective was on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2021. Nengudi’s work is included in a number of collections, both national and international: the Museum of Modern Art, Dia Art Foundation, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Lenbachhaus Museum in Munich. She completed an oral history interview for the Archives of American Art in 2013 and donated her papers to the Archives in 2018 and 2019.

RICHARD TUTTLE, a postminimalist artist and author based in New York City and New Mexico, is celebrated for his boundary-crossing art. Tuttle’s first exhibition was at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1965, and his first major museum exhibition took place at the Whitney Museum in 1975. He has since been featured in exhibitions at prominent national and international museums and is represented by the Pace Gallery. In 2013, Tuttle was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The artist completed an oral history interview for the Archives of American Art in 2016 and donated his papers to the Archives in 2017, 2018 and 2020.

ANN PHILBIN, director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, will retire in November after 25 years of transformative leadership. Before her tenure at the Hammer, she was the director of The Drawing Center in New York. Under Philbin’s guidance, the Hammer has become a powerhouse in contemporary art both locally and internationally. She has integrated the UCLA campus into the museum’s activities, revolutionizing its collections, programs and audiences. Philbin launched the “Made in LA” biennial, which has been instrumental in the careers of many contemporary artists. She also presented groundbreaking exhibitions, such as “Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980,” a PST initiative curated by Kellie Jones, which introduced many to the work of Nengudi.

Images:
Senga Negudi: Senga Nengudi papers, 1947. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Richard Tuttle: Photo by Melissa Goodwin
Ann Philbin: Photo by Mark Hanauer

The Fall 2024 issue of the Archives of American Art Journal is here, and it highlights personal and professional connect...
10/24/2024

The Fall 2024 issue of the Archives of American Art Journal is here, and it highlights personal and professional connections between people and across oceans!

Explore the influence of q***r relationships in late twentieth-century art, trace the multilayered connections between artists from the United States and Great Britain in the early 1900s, and probe the representation of political exiles in the Archives’ collections. The issue also features a collaborative curatorial project that intertwines artists’ self-presentations and the perspectives of those closest to them.

Image:
Front cover of the Fall 2024 issue of the Archives of American Art Journal, featuring a detail of a photograph of Maren Hassinger “social dance” session, 1985. Photographer unknown. Maren Hassinger Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

📣 The Alice Kagawa Parrott papers have been digitized! 🎉Alice Kagawa Parrott (1929-2009) was a Japanese American fiber a...
10/23/2024

📣 The Alice Kagawa Parrott papers have been digitized! 🎉

Alice Kagawa Parrott (1929-2009) was a Japanese American fiber artist and ceramicist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, studied weaving at Cranbrook Academy of Art, and taught weaving and ceramics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1956, she opened a weaving and craft shop called The Market, which later became Parrott Fabrics Inc. From 1971-1972, Parrott was an artist-in-residence in Maui, where she taught workshops and created tapestries for several public commissions, and in 1977, she became an American Craft Council Fellow. Parrott passed away in 2009 in Santa Fe.

Her papers include photographs of her studio and gardens, extensive correspondence with Lenore Tawney, Toshiko Takaezu, and notable museums and galleries, dyed yarn samples, and patterns used in custom orders.

View the digitized collection at s.si.edu/3CeTs9c

This project received federal support from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

Images:
All, Alice Kagawa Parrott Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1. Helga Gilbert. Photograph of Alice Kagawa Parrott, undated.
2. Photograph of a tapestry by Alice Kagawa Parrott, circa 1963-2000.
3. Alice Kagawa Parrott. Dyed yarn sample (bougainvillea), circa 1960-1990.

Address

750 9th Street NW
Washington D.C., DC
20001

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+12026337950

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Smithsonian's Archives of American Art 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's Archives of American Art:

Videos

Share

Category

Nearby museums


Other Museums in Washington D.C.

Show All