Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery, 800 G Street NW, Washington D.C., DC (2026)

10/12/2026

“I like to use maps because maps can tell stories.” —Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith

Dripping paint and newspaper clippings obscure a map of North America in “State Names” (2000). Names are missing, and the edges of the states are obscured. The only names left visible are those that stem from indigenous sources. It is a reminder that the state boundaries of today are not the ones that are relevant to Native American peoples—the dripping paint covering the outlines reinforcing how arbitrary these boundaries are. Through her use of iconic shapes formed with clippings from newspapers, including the “New York Times” and “Char-Koosta”—her reservation’s newspaper—Quick-to-See-Smith’s artwork challenges notions of heritage, identity, and history.

What stories are being told and who is telling them? With this artwork, Quick-to-See-Smith is interested in telling a particular story from a particular point of view.

Image:
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, “State Names,” 2000, oil, collage and mixed media on canvas, 48 x 72 in. (121.9 x 182.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

10/09/2026

This painting, titled “Un Lugar Distante (a distant place),” functions both as a memory of a lost land and a gateway to new creative adventures. After migrating to Miami in 1962 in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, Rafael Soriano began using a semi-abstract visual style that helped him to channel his feelings of loss and nostalgia into a process of spiritual renewal. The radiant oranges and rich browns in the painting suggest the climate of the Caribbean, but the futuristic shapes that make up Soriano’s abstracted landscape indicate a journey into undiscovered realms.

Images:
Rafael Soriano, “Un Lugar Distante (A Distant Place),” 1972, oil on canvas, 29 3⁄4 x 39 5⁄8 in. (75.6 x 100.6 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

10/06/2026

Photographer and performance artist ADÁL moved to New York City from Puerto Rico at 17 years old.

This experience of dislocation encouraged him to keep his Puerto Rican roots alive in New York as he spent his career exploring themes of identity; he believed in “the impossibility of ever achieving a definitive picture of one’s self.” ADÁL received acclaim for several collective photographic series that highlight Puerto Rican diasporic artists, performers, and intellectuals. He photographed Rita Moreno, Willie Colón, Marc Anthony, Tito Puente, and many more. Poet Pedro Pietri, photographed here, was a long-time collaborator with ADÁL. Together they co-founded El Puerto Rican Embassy Project, creating passports, anthems, evidence of a space program, and more from an imagined liberated nation.

Passports reflect the identities of the people who hold them and the nations that issue them. ADÁL adopted this official format to comment on the ambiguous national identity of Puerto Ricans. “El Puerto Rican Passport” honors music and dance as cultural treasures that connect communities—core to the “Nuyorican” spirit keeping Puerto Rican roots alive in New York. The artwork, a passport for fictional singer “Kokí Kikí,” highlights creativity as proof of the island’s resilience. At its center is the coquí, a symbol of Puerto Rican identity whose unique call is intrinsic to the island’s spirit.

📸: Pedro Pietri by ADÁL, 1999. Gelatin silver print. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquisition made possible through the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the National Museum of the American Latino. ©1999 Adál.
📸: ADÁL, “El Puerto Rican Passport, El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rico: Koki Kiki,” 1994, issued 2005, lithography with photograph in staple-bound booklet, closed: 5 x 3 1⁄2 in. (12.7 x 8.9 cm) open: 7 x 5 in. (17.8 x 12.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 2013.19.3, © 2012, ADÁL

10/03/2026

On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was.

(It’s October 3rd.)

Happy Mean Girls Day! 📅

Images:
William Clarke Rice, “October (cover illustration for Harper’s Magazine),” 1903, oil on canvas, 21 1⁄8 x 19 1⁄8 in. (53.5 x 48.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

09/27/2026

In “Radiante,” Olga Albizu rhythmically applied large blocks of pigment against a yellow background to orchestrate what she called “a conversation between color and form.” Her vivid palette conveys that, like other abstract expressionists, she believed in the emotive power of color.

Albizu was part of a vanguard of artists in Puerto Rico who favored abstraction over figuration or nationalist-inflected themes. After graduating from university, she studied painting in New York, Paris, and Florence before returning to and settling in New York in 1946. There, her work became increasingly aligned with abstract expressionism at a time when this movement was defining New York as a new global art center.

Albizu’s works are recognized worldwide because her canvases graced the covers of several RCA and Verve jazz albums, including the bossa nova classic Getz/Gilberto (1964).

Image:
Olga Albizu, “Radiante,” 1967, oil on canvas, 68 x 62 in. (172.7 x 157.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

09/26/2026

Meow. Meow. Woof.

Woof? Swipe to see the pup that charmed their way into this Caturday round up by Marguerite Zorach.

Painter, textile artist, and designer, Marguerite Zorach was an early innovator in the modernist movement in the United States.

Images:
1 - Marguerite Zorach, “Cat and Flowers,” 1929, lithograph on paper, image: 18 3⁄8 x 13 5⁄8 in. (46.6 x 34.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum
2 - Marguerite Zorach, “Dahlov with Cat,” n.d., pencil on paper, sheet: 11 x 8 1⁄2 in. (27.9 x 21.6 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum
3 - Marguerite Zorach, “(Dog at Window),” n.d., pen and ink on paper, sheet: 7 1⁄2 x 7 in. (19.2 x 17.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

09/22/2026

Time to turn over a new leaf for the First Day of Fall 🍂 📆

When 8-year-old Mary Vaux received a set of watercolor paints, that gift helped set in motion a life spent studying and documenting wildflowers. She spent summers with her family in the Canadian Rockies and became an avid mountain climber, outdoorswoman, and photographer. One summer a botanist asked her to paint a rare blooming arnica; her success in recording the flower encouraged her to concentrate on botanical illustration. For many years she explored difficult terrain, looking for important flowering species to document.

After marrying Smithsonian Secretary Charles Doolittle Walcott in 1914, the couple spent from three to four months each season in the Canadian Rockies. Mary Vaux Walcott painted hundreds of watercolor studies of native plants while he focused on geological and paleontological research.

A selection of four hundred of her illustrations was published in 1925 by the Smithsonian Institution in a five-volume edition titled North American Wild Flowers.

Has a meaningful gift helped shape your interests or future aspirations?

Images:
Mary Vaux Walcott, “Untitled (Autumn Leaves),” 1874, watercolor on paper, sheet: 10 x 6 7⁄8 in. (25.4 x 17.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum [detail]

Mary Vaux Walcott, “Untitled (Autumn Leaves),” 1874, watercolor on paper, sheet: 10 x 6 7⁄8 in. (25.3 x 17.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum [detail]

Mary Vaux Walcott, “(Untitled),” ca. 1876, watercolor on paper, sheet: 5 x 3 1⁄4 in. (12.8 x 8.1 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum [detail]

Mary Vaux Walcott, “Untitled (Autumn Leaf),” 1872, watercolor on paper, sheet: 5 1⁄4 x 5 1⁄2 in. (13.2 x 14.1 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

Mary Vaux Walcott, “Untitled (Autumn Leaves),” 1877, watercolor on paper, sheet: 9 7⁄8 x 6 3⁄4 in. (25.2 x 17.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum [detail]

Mary Vaux Walcott, “Untitled,” 1873, watercolor on paper, sheet: 4 1⁄2 x 6 1⁄8 in. (11.3 x 15.6 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum

09/18/2026

From the California coast to the Kansas heartland to the streets of New York City, the photographs in “Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U. S. Bicentennial” offer an expansive and evocative portrait of America in the 1970s and early 1980s. Explore selected images from photography surveys that document people and places in the United States from the 19th century to the years before and after the U. S. Bicentennial in 1976.

“Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U. S. Bicentennial” opens at SAAM on September 18 and is on view through April 18, 2027.

Images of artwork are from “Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial,” on view at SAAM. © for NEA photographs are held by the photographer.

Video description: photographs of scenes across the U.S., both landscapes and portraits, montage on the screen as a person speaks. Then, the same person stands facing the camera in a light-filled museum interior with a large golden sculpture suspended behind them. As their words continue, more photographs show on screen. Text on screen says: Much Here Is Beautiful Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial on view through April 18, 2027 at SAAM.

09/17/2026

From the California coast to the Kansas heartland to the streets of New York City, the photographs in “Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U. S. Bicentennial” offer an expansive and evocative portrait of America in the 1970s and early 1980s.

As the United States approached its 1976 Bicentennial, Congress endorsed a project to document the nation through photography. Inspired by the Farm Security Administration’s Depression-era survey, lawmakers entrusted the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) with leading the initiative. NEA supported some seventy survey projects from 1976 to 1981, producing thousands of images by more than two hundred photographers across the country. In 1981, the NEA transferred its partial archive of nearly 1,000 photographs to the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). Their arrival marked the beginning of the museum’s photography collection. In 2019, SAAM began reconstructing the surveys’ scattered histories and working to bring the projects back into conversation with one another. “Much Here Is Beautiful” is the first exhibition to assemble the photographs as a single, though still incomplete, body of work.

"Much Here Is Beautiful” is the culmination of years of research, drawing on SAAM’s rich photography holdings and uncovering U.S. Bicentennial survey photographs held in collections nationwide, revealing new discoveries and previously unseen works.

Images:
David Seman, “Masten, from the Buffalo, New York Documentary Survey Project,” 1979, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Emmet Gowin, “Mount St. Helens, Washington,” 1980, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Joan Clark Netherwood, “Fourth of July celebration, unit block of North Curley Street—a 23 year tradition,” 1978, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Joe Deal, “Back Yard, Diamond Bar, CA, from the Los Angeles Documentary Project,” 1980, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Linda Eber, “Did You Know?, Ocean Front Walk,” 1982, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Reagan Louie, “Golden Dragon Restaurant, Washington and Waverly,” 1979, printed 2025, inkjet print, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Robert K. Hower, “July 4, 1976, Louisville, KY,” 1976, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Robert Townsend Jones Jr., “Cotton Row Cafeteria, Center Lane Alley, Memphis, TN, February 1978,” 1978, printed 2025, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Ted Wathen, “Former Company Houses, Jenkins, Letcher County, Kentucky,” 1975, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Installation photograph of “Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U. S. Bicentennial,” Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2026; photo by Albert Ting

09/16/2026

How many years did it take artist James Hampton to complete “The Throne”?

James Hampton worked on “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly” from 1950, when he rented the carriage house he used as a studio, until his death in 1964.

So, the answer is complicated: it took Hampton 14 years to create the over 180 elements that make up the artwork, but his life’s work was left unfinished.

In a video that takes a closer look at this complex work of art, curator Leslie Umberger reflects, “We really don't know a great deal about James Hampton. He died before he finished ‘The Throne’ or before anyone could ask him all of the questions that we would want to today. But another reason that we know so little about him is because artists like Hampton were almost always overlooked. It was generally believed that if you weren’t educated to be an artist or you weren’t making things that were in step with the mainstream art world, that your art didn’t matter. And if you happened to be an untrained artist of color, there was even less chance of being recognized as an artist of any value.”

Hampton’s reference to the “third heaven” is based on Christian scriptures, citing it as the “heaven of heavens” — God’s realm. The massive array was inspired by several religious visions that prompted him to prepare for Christ’s return to earth. Hampton had a vision that he brought to life but, sadly, died before he could complete it, let alone see it acquired by SAAM in 1970. SAAM is the proud home of one of the deepest and most significant collections of work by self-taught artists anywhere in the world and the only museum to hold James Hampton’s art in depth.

Image:
James Hampton, “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly,” ca. 1950-1964, mixed media, dimensions variable, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery

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