SAAM Stories

Hartigan standing in front of framed black and white photographs.
04/21/2026
The Smithsonian announced the appointment of Lynda Roscoe Hartigan as the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, effective September 8, 2026.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Large-scale installation of corncob piñatas.
Gold-fringed walls and piñata corncobs transform the Grand Salon of SAAM's Renwick Gallery and highlight the role of maize in North American visual culture.
Five screen video installation.
Sir Isaac Julien’s moving image installation "Lessons of the Hour" interweaves period reenactments across five screens to create a vivid picture of nineteenth-century activist, writer, orator, and philosopher Frederick Douglass.
A white painting depicting a snowy landscape with houses on a distant hill.
12/27/2024
Artists have been capturing all the different moods of light for millennia. American artists such as members of the Hudson River School, or the American impressionists, managed to capture light as a way of defining the landscape.
Person leaning toward a vase in a plexiglass covered case in a museum gallery, other artworks fill the space in the distance.
The artist builds futuristic worlds and characters he pairs with his traditionally sourced and formed pots, where knowledge of the past provides guidance for future generations.
SAAM
Three paintings on a light blue background.
A new exhibition that restores three American women of Japanese descent to their rightful place in the story of modernism
SAAM
Teachers use rolled pieces of paper as telescopes.
Education 11/05/2024
SAAM's Education Department serves teachers and students in rural communities.
A man turns the nobs of a box sitting atop a small black and white tv monitor.
Connecting artist Nam June Paik, his archive at SAAM, conservation, and SAAM's video game program
SAAM
Highly decorative wooden bench.
Explore artist Rachel David's functional artwork created for SAAM's Renwick Gallery.
Elana Hain
Detail of a quilt featuring images of Martin Luther King Jr.
Artist L’Merchie Frazier threads thoughtful parallels to centuries of fiber art traditions.
A photograph of a woman.
Katie Hondorf
Public Affairs Specialist