8th and G Streets, N W, Washington. DC 20560
Tel: (202) 357-2700
Fax: (202) 357-3108
TDDY: (202) 357-1729
Internet Address: www.nmaa.si.edu
Director: Dr. Elizabeth Broun
Admission: free.
Attendance: 400.000 Established: 1846 Membership: Y ADA Compliant: Y Parking: metered on street and nearby commercial lots.
Open: Closed for renovations until 2003.
Cloned: Christmas Day.
Kweku Kakanu, Flag, ca. 1935, cotton, 4214 x 60 inches, Fantc/Ghanaian. Museum purchase. National Museum of African Art Photograph by Franko Khoury. courtesy of National Museum of African Art. Smithsonian Institution. Washington. District of Columbia.
National Museum of American Art
Facilities: Architecture (Greek Revival Old Patent Office. 1836 design by Robert Mills, completed I 1867); Food Services Patent Pending Cafeteria (daily, 10am-3:30pm); Galleries; Lecture Hall; I Shop.
Activities: Concerts; Education Programs; Films; Guided Tours (Weekdays, noon & 2pm);
Lectures; Permanent Exhibits; Temporary Exhibitions: Traveling Exhibitions. Publications: blogs; calendar (monthly); exhibition catalogues; journal, “American Art”.
The National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution houses the first federal art collection. The museum grew out of gifts from private collections and art organizations established in the nations capital during the two decades preceding the founding of the Smithsonian in 1846. Today the collection contains more than 37,500 works in all media, spanning more than 300 years of the nations artistic achievement.
Officially designated the National Museum of American Art by an act of Congress in 1980, it has since then been devoted exclusively to this countrys art and artists. All regions, cultures, and traditions in the United States are now represented in the museums holdings, research resources, exhibitions, and public programs. Colonial portraiture, 19th-century landscape, American impressionism, 20th-century realism and abstraction,
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Photo Gallery
New Deal projects, sculpture, photography, graphic arts, crafts, and the work of self-taught artists are featured in the galleries. The permanent collection includes early American paintings from the colonial and federal periods by John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, and Charles Willson Peale; Hispanic colonial art; landscape paintings by Alvan Fisher, Thomas Cole, Thomas Moran, and Albert Bierstadt; more than 450 paintings from George Catlins Indian Gallery; American Impressionist and ! Gilded Age art, including in-depth holdings of works by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Childe Hassam, Albert Pinkham Ryder, and John Twachtman, as well as works by Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, John LaFarge, John Singer Sargent, Abbott H. Thayer, and James McNeill Whistler; more than 2.000 artworks by African-American artists, including extensive holdings by William H. Johnson, as well as works by Robert Scott Duncanson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Lois Mailou Jones, and Sam Gilliam; 20th century art including works by David Bates, William Christenberry. Gene Davis. Stuart Davis. Eric Fischl, David Hockney, Edward Hopper, Luis Jimenez, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland. Georgia OKeeffe, Pepon Osorio, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg. Frank Romero, Pat Steir, Renee Stout. Mark Tansey, and Masami Teraoka; the Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. collection of more than 400 works of folk art; and photographs, including masterworks by such early photographers as Carleton Watkins, John K. Hillers, and William H. Jackson and extensive holdings by Aaron Siskind and Irving Penn. The museum also has the nations largest collection of art produced for projects of I the New Deal, including numerous studies for post office murals, including work by Moses Soyer, Agnes Tait, and Stuart Davis. The Museums holdings of sculpture feature works by 19th-century I masters Hiram Powers. Edmonia Lewis, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, as well as by distinguished 20th-century artists such as Paul Manship, Louise Nevelson, and Isamu Noguchi. The Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, exhibiting American craft and decorative arts, is located in a separate building across from the White House. The Old Patent Office Building is also the home of the National Portrait Gallery. (For further information on the Renwick Gallery arid the National Portrait Gallery, see separate listings.) While the Museum is closed, five hundred of its finest artworks will tour the United States.
William H. Johnson, Going to Church, c. 1940-41. oil on burlap. 38 1/8 x 454 inches. Gift of the Harmon Foundation. National Museum of American Art. Photograph courtesy of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington. District of Columbia.
