Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work @ Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington + Other Venues

Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington 

October 24, 2025 - July 12, 2026

Grandma Moses 

We Are Resting, 1951 

Oil on high-density fiberboard 

Smithsonian American Art Museum, 

Gift of the Kallir Family, in Memory of Hildegard Bachert, 2019.55, 

© Grandma Moses Properties Co., NY

"Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work" repositions Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses (1860–1961) as a multidimensional force in American art, whose beloved painted recollections of rural life earned her a distinctive place in the cultural imagination of the postwar era. Drawing its name from Moses’ reflection on her own life as a “good day’s work,” the exhibition reveals how Moses’ art fused creativity, labor and memories from a century-long life. 

“Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” is anchored by artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, including many of Moses’ most celebrated paintings. The 88 works in the exhibition are drawn from the museum’s holdings and loans from private collections and public museums and institutions. This selection of objects, primarily created between the late 1930s and the artist’s death in 1961, are woven into a narrative that explores lesser-known aspects of Moses’ life, including the years she spent living, working and raising her family in post-Reconstruction Virginia. Later sections of the exhibition probe Moses’ artistic evolution as the labor of artmaking displaced the hours once dedicated to family and farming, and her personal transformation from farmwife to famous artist in Cold War America. Photographs, ephemeral objects and Moses’ own words—drawn largely from her autobiography—illuminate artworks that were deeply connected to the artist’s life.

The exhibition is organized by Leslie Umberger, senior curator of folk and self-taught art, and Randall Griffey, head curator, with support from curatorial assistant Maria R. Eipert. The exhibition will travel following its premiere in Washington, D.C.

“Grandma Moses was instrumental in bringing self-taught art to the forefront of American consciousness,” said Jane Carpenter-Rock, Acting Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “As one of the first major museums to champion and collect works in this tradition, our museum is honored to shed new light on Grandma Moses’ practice and engage new generations by becoming a major resource for studying her art and legacy.”

“Moses was many things to many people: she was an ambassador for democratic American values, a folk hero and pop-culture celebrity, a comforting grandmotherly figure representing a bygone age, an inspiring elder reinventing herself in retirement and an untrained artist presenting what was then considered ‘modern primitivism’ as a surprisingly successful alternative to abstract art,” Leslie Umberger said. “‘A Good Day’s Work’ reconciles these disparate truths while centering on Moses’ art and the life that inspired it—one shaped by ingenuity, labor, a doggedly positive outlook and a distilled understanding of a life well lived.” 

In a lifetime that spanned the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, the artist experienced seismic historical shifts, including the post-Reconstruction and civil rights eras and two world wars. She began painting in earnest in her late 70s and was 80 when gallerist Otto Kallir introduced her to the American public with her first solo exhibition. In her artworks, Moses melded direct observation of nature and life as she saw it, resulting in idiosyncratic, yet engaging, stories of America. “Grandma Moses” as the press would indelibly dub her, quickly became a media sensation, achieving a controversial celebrity status that surpassed the female artists of her day and remains compelling today.

Through a series of gifts and pledges of 15 important paintings from Kallir’s family, along with gifts from several additional donors and select museum purchases, the museum is establishing a destination-collection of 33 works by Moses, balanced across styles, dates, themes and historical moments. A major asset within the museum’s internationally recognized collection of work by folk and self-taught artists, the Moses collection will comprise significant works, from her earliest extant painting, “Untitled (Fireboard)” (1918), to iconic pieces including “Bringing in the Maple Sugar” (1939), “Black Horses” (1942) and “Out for Christmas Trees” (1946), to her last completed painting, “The Rainbow” (1961), all of which are represented in the exhibition. Also on view will be the first painting donated to the museum by the Kallir family in 2016, “Grandma Moses Goes to the Big City” (1946), a rare work in which Moses includes herself in the depicted narrative. The museum will be a premier Moses repository for scholars and the public.

Artist Grandma Moses

Anna Mary Robertson Moses was born in Greenwich, New York, in 1860 and raised on a farm. From early in her life, she worked as a hired girl, helping neighbors and relatives with cleaning, cooking and sewing. As a child, her father had encouraged her to draw on old newsprint, and she used berry and grape juices to color her images.  

Robertson married at 27 and moved, with her new husband, Thomas Salmon Moses, to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. There, over the course of the next 18 years, the couple raised five children and worked as dairy farmers, shaping a highly successful butter-making business. Moses did not start painting until she was in her late 70s, after her children had moved on and her husband had died, looking for something, as she put it, with which “to keep busy and out of mischief.” She made paintings that merged fact with fiction and personal with national history, drawing on her own memories as well as family and local lore. She began her foray into the limelight by presenting her pictures at country fairs, alongside her prize-winning fruit preserves.  

In 1938, a collector saw her paintings in the window of a local pharmacy and bought them all. Two years later, Kallir—an art dealer and recent immigrant who had fled the Nazi regime in his native Austria—gave Moses her first solo exhibition. In the aftermath of World War II, Moses was seen as a global ambassador for democratic American values, and her unpretentious sensibilities and the scenes of family life and holidays enchanted a populace weary from conflict and rapid change. Following a press event and presentation of her paintings at Gimbels department store, the media dubbed her “Grandma Moses.” Gradually, ‘Grandma Moses’ became a household name. In 1947, Hallmark licensed the rights to reproduce her paintings on greeting cards. Reproductions on drapery fabric, china and other consumer goods followed, along with magazine features, television and radio interviews and an Academy Award-nominated documentary. Moses died at 101 in 1961, after painting more than 1,500 images.  

Publication: A richly illustrated catalog, published in association with Princeton University Press, will accompany the exhibition. It is co-edited by Umberger and Griffey, with a foreword by Carpenter-Rock and contributions by Erika Doss, Eleanor Jones Harvey, Stacy C. Hollander, Jane Kallir and Katherine Jentleson. The book will be available for purchase ($60) in the museum’s store and online.

SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

8th and G Streets, NW, Washington, DC 20004

americanart.si.edu

State Fairs: Growing American Craft @ Renwick Gallery of the SAAM, Washington

State Fairs: Growing American Craft

Renwick Gallery of the SAAM, Washington

August 22, 2025 - September 7, 2026

Liz Schreiber

State Fairs: Growing American Craft, 2024-2025

Various seeds and flower petals 

Courtesy of Liz Schreiber

State fairs have sparked the American imagination with their celebrations of agricultural bounty, mechanical innovations and skilled handcrafts since the first fair was held in 1841 in upstate New York. Craft has always been an essential element of state fairs and Native American tribal fairs, expressing the creative and practical values of handmade goods in American society. State fairs enable artists to display and sell their work and help sustain unique regional and cultural traditions.  

State Fairs: Growing American Craft will occupy both floors of the Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s branch location for contemporary craft. It is the first exhibition dedicated to artists’ contributions to the great U.S. tradition of state fairs. With more than 240 artworks on view, dating from the mid-19th century to the present, this exhibition registers the many ways the craft of state fairs has enriched the lives of artists and deepened the understanding of American art.

The exhibition is the culmination of five years of on-the-ground research involving visits to 15 state fairs across the U.S.; collaborative projects with artists in Kentucky, New Jersey, Alaska, West Virginia and Utah; and research in several state historical societies, history museums and archives. Artists and 4-H clubs from 43 states and tribal nations are represented, with all 50 states represented in a photo gallery.  

“‘State Fairs’ showcases what the team at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery does best—it is the latest in a series of exhibitions that reassess and uplift craft’s relevance to our everyday lives and American culture,” said Jane Carpenter-Rock, Acting Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “To spotlight these extraordinary and often under-sung artists is an unparalleled opportunity for audiences to deepen and expand perceptions of craft in the United States.”

Visitors will enjoy show-stopping spectacles like the iconic size 96 boots of Big Tex (a 55-foot statue known as the world’s tallest cowboy) from the State Fair of Texas, a life-size butter cow created on-site by the Iowa State Fair’s official butter sculptor Sarah Pratt and a display featuring a pyramid of 700 glass jars of preserved fruits and vegetables by canning superstar Rod Zeitler. Additional highlights include sculptor Robert Arneson’s break from functional ceramics during a pottery demonstration at the 1961 California State Fair, Lillian Colton’s groundbreaking crop-art portrait of Richard Nixon, regalia from pageants hosted by Indigenous fairs, benches commissioned from craft students at Kentucky’s Berea College, a 1965 butter-carton dress created by the Minnesota State Fair’s Princess Kay of the Milky Way (the goodwill ambassador for Minnesota’s dairy farmers) and much more.

To complement the exhibition, the museum debuts a new site-specific installation by artist Justin Favela in the Renwick Gallery’s Rubenstein Grand Salon.

“The first state fair I attended as a child was the Minnesota State Fair, which we called the Great Minnesota Get-Together,” said Mary Savig, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft. “While organizing this exhibition over the past several years, I experienced firsthand the collective spirit of artists getting together at state fairs across the country, sharing their talents and memories with fellow fairgoers. ‘State Fairs: Growing American Craft’ provides a long-overdue spotlight on these exceptional artists. When looking at our history from the perspective of the fairgrounds, a richer picture of American art emerges.”

Each gallery in the exhibition considers personal stories of craft found in different areas of the fairgrounds, from the art exhibits and heritage villages to the parades, dairy barns and rodeos. Ribbon-winning artworks and engaging craft demonstrations illuminate the lives of the artists—their families, memories, honors and struggles. It offers a perspective on the social power of fairgrounds across the United States and dispels stereotypes about rural communities. Many of the artworks on view directly connect the artists’ personal experiences with the experience of the fair. The exhibition also calls attention to people and communities whose experiences with fairs are entangled with histories of exclusion and displacement.  

The works in “State Fairs” are drawn from the museum’s holdings and loans from various artists and fairs, private and family collections and public museums and institutions.

“State Fairs: Growing American Craft” is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

RENWICK GALLERY

Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006

americanart.si.edu

Mary Savig: Curator-in-Charge for the Renwick Gallery of the SAAM, Washington DC

Mary Savig

Curator-in-Charge for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Mary Savig

Photo by Libby Weiler 

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has appointed Mary Savig the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge for the Renwick Gallery, home to the museum’s craft and decorative art program since 1972. Mary Savig, who has served as acting curator-in-charge since January 2024, joined the museum staff in 2020 as the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft. During her tenure, Savig has continued to guide the direction of the Renwick Gallery’s curatorial program with a roster of acclaimed exhibitions that have contributed new scholarship to the field. As curator-in-charge, Mary Savig will oversee staff, acquire artworks for the museum’s permanent collection and present exhibitions and collection displays that advance appreciation for craft and maker culture at the Renwick Gallery. Savig’s appointment is effective immediately. 

“After a national search, I am delighted to welcome Mary Savig to this role,” said Jane Carpenter-Rock, acting Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Her distinctive vision for the state of craft in the United States and dedication to championing its importance within American culture opens up new possibilities for SAAM’s contemporary craft program.” 

Mary Savig is the lead curator for “State Fairs: Growing American Craft,” opening August 22, the first exhibition dedicated to artists’ contributions to the great U.S. tradition of state fairs. Other recent exhibitions that reassess and uplift craft’s relevance to American culture include “We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists” (2025), “Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women” (2024) and “This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World” (2022). 

Previously, Mary Savig was curator of manuscripts from 2013 to 2020 at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, where she pursued collections documenting the history of American studio craft and conducted oral-history interviews with Beth Lipman, Preston Singletary and James Tanner. 

Mary Savig earned a master’s degree from The George Washington University and a doctorate in American studies from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her dissertation was titled “Stitches as Seeds: Crafting New Natures.” Savig’s research interests include American studio craft, contemporary craft, American art and material culture. 

RENVICK GALLERY

Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006

americanart.si.edu

Shahzia Sikander: The Last Post @ SAAM - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Shahzia Sikander: The Last Post

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington

July 3, 2025 – July 12, 2026

Shahzia Sikander 

The Last Post, 2010

Single-channel HD digital animation, color,

5.1 surround sound; 10:00 minutes 

Music: Du Yun 

Smithsonian American Art Museum, 

Museum purchase through the 

Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment,

 in partnership with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, 2025.11

© 2025, Shahzia Sikander. 

Courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles

Shahzia Sikander’s iconoclastic multimedia explorations encompass drawing and painting, mosaics, sculpture and video. She initially trained in an illustration tradition—classical Indo-Persian miniature painting—that was bounded by frames, borders and precise architecture. From this, she developed her unique, disruptive style.  

Through precisely inked and animated scenes, Sikander’s video animation “The Last Post” (2010) critically considers the legacy of British colonialism in Asia, using her signature approach of infusing Indo-Persian manuscript compositions with a contemporary perspective. “The Last Post” centers a European gentleman in a red waistcoat, a symbol of British imperial power, based on miniature paintings from the late 18th century depicting British East India Company officials. Indian court architecture, Chinese cut-paper silhouettes and a watercolor map of South Asia all dissolve and reconfigure around him as electronic beats by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun explode on the soundtrack.  

“The Last Post” was acquired in 2025 by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The work is presented in a dedicated gallery for immersive media art installations that opened in 2023 on the museum’s third floor. The 10-minute film runs continuously and can be entered at any time. The presentation is organized by Saisha Grayson, curator of time-based media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

SAAM - Smithsonian American Art Museum

8th and G Streets, NW, Washington, DC 20004

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Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo @ Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC+ Other venues

Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo

Pictures of Belonging

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

November 15 - August 17, 2025

Miki Hayakawa 

One Afternoon, ca. 1935

Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 in. 

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, 

Gift of Preston McCrossen in memory 

of his wife, the artist, 1954, 520.23P

“Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo” is an unprecedented exploration of three trailblazing Japanese American artists of the mid-20th century who, until now, have been excluded from the story of modernism in the United States. The exhibition asserts their place in American art and reveals a broader picture of the American experience by presenting their artworks and life stories in dialogue with each other for the first time.

The exhibition is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s main building in Washington, D.C. The museum’s presentation is the second stop on a national tour, organized by the Japanese American National Museum with exhibition curator ShiPu Wang, Coats Family Chair in the Arts and professor of art history at the University of California, Merced. “Pictures of Belonging” is coordinated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum by Melissa Ho, curator of 20th-century art, with Anna Lee, curatorial assistant for Asian American art.

“The Smithsonian American Art Museum plays a leadership role in telling richer and deeper stories about art in the United States, featuring new voices and presenting a more inclusive narrative of American art through acquisition campaigns, reimagined permanent collection galleries, new scholarship and special exhibitions,” said Jane Carpenter-Rock, acting director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “I am delighted that SAAM is able to partner with the Japanese American National Museum to share with audiences in Washington, D.C., the incredible work of Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo.”

The exhibition highlights the paintings of Hayakawa, Hibi and Okubo, complemented by drawings, sketchbooks, archival material and video footage. The artworks span eight decades, revealing the range and depth of these three artists’ careers and connections that have not been explored previously. A visual timeline puts their life events in context with each other and with key moments in U.S. history. The prolific careers of Hayakawa, Hibi and Okubo are remarkable considering that they lived through the Exclusion Era (1882–1965), a period characterized by U.S. laws that restricted immigration, prevented Asians from becoming naturalized American citizens and contributed to the mass displacement and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Hayakawa, Hibi and Okubo were the three most visible and critically acclaimed Japanese American women artists in the United States in the 1930s. During World War II, all three were forced from their homes in California. The federal government imprisoned Hibi and Okubo in incarceration camps, first in California and then in Utah; Hayakawa relocated to New Mexico. Yet all three remained committed to making art, their creative work a vital means of navigating their experiences and building bonds of community.

By tracing the artistic development of Hayakawa, Hibi and Okubo before, during and after World War II, the exhibition offers the first nuanced and in-depth view of how each developed a distinct painting style. Hayakawa, who died young at age 53, displayed a special affinity for painting people early on and was known for her sensitive, luminous portraits. Hibi, over time, evolved from painting landscapes and still lifes to creating symbolically freighted canvases activated by abstract marks of color. Okubo, best known for her 1946 graphic memoir of wartime removal and incarceration, Citizen 13660, operated within the mainstream of American social realism in the 1930s, but turned to bold color, simplified forms and whimsical images of children and animals in later years. Collectively, their art, produced during tumultuous decades in U.S. history, carry powerful stories of resilience, beauty and connection.

“‘Pictures of Belonging’ demonstrates that the artists’ experience of mass incarceration and relocation during WWII, while pivotal, did not define them,” Ho said. “These women continued to evolve and challenge themselves as artists throughout their lives.”

The exhibition includes works by Hibi and Okubo recently acquired for Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, part of a multi-year initiative to expand and enrich the representation of Asian American experiences, perspectives and artistic accomplishment in public displays and new scholarship.

National Tour

The exhibition opened at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City. Following the presentation in Washington, D.C., it will travel to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia; the Monterey Museum of Art in Monterey, California; and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

“Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo” is organized by the Japanese American National Museum.

Publication

The accompanying catalog, co-published by the Japanese American National Museum and the University of California Press, includes essays by Ho; Wang; Becky Alexander, archivist at the San Francisco Art Institute Legacy Foundation + Archive; Rihoko Ueno, archivist at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art; Patricia Wakida, associate editor of the Densho Encyclopedia project and a contributing editor to the Discover Nikkei website; and Cécile Whiting, professor emerita and Chancellor’s Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. The book is available for purchase ($50) in the museum’s store and online.

SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM - SAAM

8th and G Streets, NW, Washington, DC 2000

americanart.si.edu

The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture @ SAAM - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

The Shape of Power

Stories of Race and American Sculpture

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

November 8, 2024 - September 14, 2025

ROBERTO LUGO

DNA Study Revisited, 2022

Urethane resin life cast, foam, wire, and acrylic paint 

Smithsonian American Art Museum, 

Museum purchase through the Catherine Walden Myer Fund, 2024.19

Photo courtesy the Smithsonian American Art Museum 

“The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum examines for the first time the role of sculpture in understanding and constructing the concept of race in the United States over nearly three centuries. Featuring 70 artists whose work crosses time, scale and media, the exhibition brings together American sculpture in its many forms to explore the ways in which it has shaped and reflected attitudes and understandings about race, and has served as an expression of resistance, liberation and a vital means for reclaiming identity. The exhibition includes 82 sculptures created between 1792 and 2023 ranging in size from palm-sized coins to monumental statues created from diverse media such as bronze, marble, shoes, paper and hair. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the sole venue for this groundbreaking exhibition.

Judith Baca, Rina Banerjee, Ed Bereal, Huma Bhabha, Sanford Biggers, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Sonya Clark, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Nicholas Galanin, Raven Halfmoon, Luis Jiménez, Simone Leigh, Yolanda López, Roberto Lugo, Pepón Osorio, Betye Saar, Alison Saar and Nari Ward, among other contemporary artists, have work displayed alongside works by artists who were active in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Daniel Chester French, Sargent Johnson, Edmonia Lewis, Isamu Noguchi, Hiram Powers, Frederic Remington and Augusta Savage.

“As stewards of the largest collection of American sculpture in the world, SAAM has a vital responsibility to foster conversations about the role sculpture has played in shaping our ideas of race in the United States, from its historical roots to contemporary perspectives by leading artists of the times in which these works were created,” said Jane Carpenter-Rock, acting director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “The presentation of the artworks in ‘The Shape of Power’ exhibition are an invitation to think deeply and openly to engage with ideas that are crucial to our understanding of the past and our present.”

“American sculpture remains an understudied area of art history with the last major publication to survey the medium’s development in the United States dating back more than 50 years ago,” said Karen Lemmey, the Lucy S. Rhame Curator of Sculpture at the museum. “‘The Shape of Power’ and its accompanying publication offers new scholarship that provides a fuller picture of American art history and a more nuanced understanding of our nation’s past and present.”  

The exhibition is organized to allow for juxtapositions of historical and contemporary works that invite dialogue and reflection on notions of power and identity. This includes works ranging from Edmonia Lewis’ “Hagar in the Wilderness” (1875) that depicts the biblical story of an enslaved woman, to Roberto Lugo’s life-size self-portrait “DNA Study Revisited” (2022) painted head to toe in patterns representative of his ancestors and proportional to the percentage in his family’s heritage. Taken together, the works on view express the special capacity of sculpture to give palpable physical form to how concepts of race have been reflected, defined and redefined in the United States.  

“The Shape of Power” draws extensively on works from the museum’s collection, which is the largest collection of American sculpture in the world. The exhibition includes key loans from private and public collections, including the American Numismatic Society; Chrysler Museum of Art; El Museo del Barrio; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.  

Planning the exhibition included an unprecedented collaborative effort that engaged a range of scholarly and community partners who provided insights that helped guide the themes and interpretive elements. The curatorial team engaged with colleagues at museums across the Smithsonian Institution to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the exhibition’s theme, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian; the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience; students and faculty at Howard University and members of George Mason University’s student organization the Native American and Indigenous Alliance; as well as nearly all 39 living artists participating in the show. Members of the exhibition’s advisory council, composed of interdisciplinary scholars who teach in different regions across the country, contributed to the catalog. A free exhibition audio guide features the voices of artists, university students and curators.

The exhibition extends beyond the traditional suite of galleries to include monumental sculptures on long-term view at the museum, including the recently unveiled installation “Bridge” (2013–2014) by Los Angeles-based artist Glenn Kaino, which pays tribute to Olympian Tommie Smith’s historic gesture at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games; and Luis Jiménez’s work installed outside the museum entrance, “Vaquero” (modeled 1980, cast 1990), which translates to cowboy in Spanish and emphasizes the Spanish and Mexican roots of this classic American icon. A printed gallery guide is available to orient visitors to these spaces.

The exhibition is organized by Karen Lemmey; Tobias Wofford, associate professor of art history at Virginia Commonwealth University; and Grace Yasumura, assistant curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Shape of Power

Stories of Race and American Sculpture

Exhibition Catalog

Smithsonian American Art Museum 

in association with Princeton University Press

292 pages -  ISBN 9780691261492

Publication: The exhibition catalog is co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Princeton University Press. It is written by Lemmey, Wofford and Yasumura with contributions by Renée Ater, Jacqueline Francis, Elizabeth Hutchinson, Tess Korobkin, Jami Powell, James Smalls and Claudia E. Zapata. The book is available for purchase ($65) in the museum’s store and online.

SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

8th and G Streets, NW, Washington, DC 2000

americanart.si.edu

We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection @ Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington

We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington

July 1, 2022 - March 26, 2023

Sister Gertrude Morgan

Fan, ca. 1970

Paint and ink on card, 9 3⁄4 × 8 1⁄2 in.; irregular, double-sided 

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Margaret Z. Robson Collection

Gift of John E. and Douglas O. Robson, 2016.38.43r-v 

Artists without formal training, who learned from family, community and personal journeys, have long been a presence in American art. But it was not until the 1980s, with the help of dedicated collector-advocates, that the collective force of their creative vision and presence reshaped the mainstream art world. “We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection” traces the rise of untrained artists in the 20th century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and bold self-definition became major forces in American art.

The exhibition celebrates Douglas O. Robson’s 2016 gift of 93 artworks collected by his mother, Margaret Z. Robson (1932–2014). Margaret Robson embraced art that reflected diverse and personal journeys, and she supported museums and scholars in making it more available to the public. Her son now carries these efforts into the future. The exhibition features selected works from the original gift, 32 additional promised gifts and a major painting by Dan Miller that Douglas Robson donated to the museum in 2022. It is organized by Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

“We are delighted to share recent gifts from the Robson Family collection with the public, and we celebrate Margaret and Doug Robson’s commitment to supporting the creativity of American artists,” said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Since the 1970s, the Smithsonian American Art Museum has been a trailblazer in recognizing the broadest range of artistic expression. With this exhibition, SAAM continues its commitment to building a truly diverse collection that reflects the unique stories and voices of all artists.”

“We Are Made of Stories” confronts issues of marginalization that extend far beyond definitions of “self-taught” versus “academically trained” artists. Featuring 110 artworks, the exhibition examines the extraordinary lives of 43 artists, including James Castle, Thornton Dial Sr., William Edmondson, Howard Finster, Bessie Harvey, Sister Gertrude Morgan, the Philadelphia Wireman, Nellie Mae Rowe, Judith Scott and Bill Traylor, among others. By bringing the personal stories of the artists into focus, the depth and meaning of the artworks they made comes more fully into view.

“The works of art in the Robson Family Collection give voice to people who faced challenge, oppression and often extreme marginalization in their lifetimes, but by leaving their imprint in the form of art, moved the needle toward a more enlightened age, a more humanistic moment,” Leslie Umberger said. “This project amplifies unique perspectives and argues that multivocality is essential for a full and genuine picture of the United States. It looks at the solitary paths many of these artists traveled, as well as the collective ground they gained by asserting their personal views of the world and telling their own story.”

An introductory video features interviews with curator Leslie Umberger and collector Douglas Robson. Fourteen artists identified as “game changers” are examined in greater depth in the exhibition through text panels featuring biographical information and portraits of the artists. Through audio clips, the voices of artists Calvin and Ruby Black, Finster and Morgan are in the galleries and provide critical insight into select artists’ practices and unique environments. In-gallery kiosks highlight additional artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, allowing visitors to further explore the creativity of these influential artists.

We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists 

in the Robson Family Collection

Exhibition Catalogue

Smithsonian American Art Museum / Princeton University Press

The lavishly illustrated catalog features more than 100 works with essays by Douglas Robson and Leslie Umberger that offer important and critically expansive contributions to the understanding of self-taught artists and how their individual stories have altered and enriched the complex history of American art. Co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in association with Princeton University Press.

SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM - SAAM

Eighth and G Streets N.W., Washington, DC

americanart.si.edu

¡Printing the Revolution! @ SAAM, Washington, DC - The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now

¡Printing the Revolution! 

The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Through August 8, 2021

LEONARD CASTELLANOS

RIFA, from Méchicano 1977 Calendario, 1976

Screenprint on paperboard

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Museum purchase through the Luisita L. 

and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2012.53.1, 

© 1976, Leonard Castellanos

In the 1960s, Chicano activist artists forged a remarkable history of printmaking rooted in cultural expression and social justice movements that remains vital today. The exhibition “¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now” presents, for the first time, historical civil rights-era prints by Chicano artists alongside works by graphic artists working from the 1980s to today. It considers how artists innovatively use graphic arts to build community, engage the public around ongoing social justice concerns and wrestle with shifting notions of the term “Chicano.” Mexican Americans defiantly adopted the term Chicano in the 1960s and 1970s as a sign of a new political and cultural identity. Graphic artists played a pivotal role in projecting this revolutionary new consciousness, which affirmed the value of Mexican American culture and history and questioned injustice nationally and globally.

The exhibition is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s main building. It includes 119 works, ranging from traditional screenprints to digital graphics and augmented reality (AR) works to site-specific installations, by more than 74 artists of Mexican descent and other artists who were active in Chicanx networks. All of the artworks on display are part of the museum’s permanent collection of Latinx art, one of the leading national collections of its kind and one of the most extensive collections of Chicanx graphics in an American art-focused museum. This exhibition features donated artworks from major collectors and an ambitious program to purchase artworks for the collection to create an inclusive view of American art that features Chicanx voices and contributions. The exhibition is organized by E. Carmen Ramos, acting chief curator and curator of Latinx art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with Claudia E. Zapata, curatorial assistant for Latinx art.

The museum is limiting the number of visitors permitted in the galleries and has established new safety measures in the museum to accommodate safe crowd management and implement safe social distancing. Visitors are required to obtain free, timed-entry passes in advance and should review new safety measures online before arriving at the museum.

“Since the late 1970s, the Smithsonian American Art Museum has demonstrated a deep commitment to building a rich collection of Latinx art in the nation’s capital,” said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “SAAM is uniquely positioned to engage in a conversation about an inclusive view of American history that features Chicanx voices and contributions, and we are proud to present the first major museum exhibition dedicated to this subject matter from a national perspective.”

The artists in the exhibition use graphics as a vehicle to debate larger social causes, reflecting the issues of their time period, including immigrant rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. Vibrant posters and images announced labor strikes and cultural events, reimagined national and global histories, and, most significantly, challenged the invisibility of Chicanos in U.S. society. The exhibition offers an expanded view of American art and the history of graphic arts, featuring previously marginalized voices from Chicano art, including women and LGBTQ+ individuals. The influential Chicano graphics movement has been largely excluded from the history of U.S. printmaking. “¡Printing the Revolution!” challenges this historical sidelining of Chicanx artists and their cross-cultural collaborators.

“Chicano graphic artists were among the first to immerse themselves in civil rights activism, many working to support the United Farm Workers union founded by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta,” Ramos said. “The exhibition explores how this early civil rights activity set the foundation for a truly noteworthy, politically engaged graphic arts movement among artists of Mexican descent and their cross-cultural collaborators that continues to thrive today, over five decades later. At a time when U.S. society is grappling with how to face a history of systemic racism, this exhibition presents a long line of artists doing exactly that.”

“¡Printing the Revolution!” includes iconic works by major artists like Rupert García, Malaquias Montoya, Juan Fuentes, Ester Hernandez, Yolanda López and members of the Royal Chicano Air Force collective (RCAF), and later generations working after the height of the civil rights era. It features works produced at major print centers, organizations and collectives located in cities across the U.S., including Austin, Texas; Chicago; Los Angeles; New York City; Sacramento, California; San Francisco; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Oakland, California. The exhibition is the first to consider how Chicanx mentors, print centers and networks collaborated and nurtured other artists, including multigenerational stories like that of Chicana artist Yreina D. Cervántez, who mentored her student Favianna Rodriguez, born to Peruvian immigrants in Oakland. Rodriguez herself would go on to mentor digital artist Julio Salgado, a Mexican-born artist and DACA recipient, who is well known for his work exploring the intersection of LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights.

Visitors enter the exhibition through a site-specific installation, “Justice for Our Lives,” by San Francisco Bay Area artist Oree Originol. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this artwork, which Originol also presents online and as public art interventions, includes memorial portraits of Oscar Grant, Alex Nieto, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others killed during altercations and interactions with law enforcement. Begun in 2014, Originol continues to add portraits to the work. The project reflects a major undercurrent within Chicanx graphic arts to respond immediately to urgent concerns as they are unfolding.

The 74 artists featured in the exhibition are Lalo Alcaraz, David Avalos, Jesus Barraza (Dignidad Rebelde), Francisco X Camplis, Barbara Carrasco, Leonard Castellanos, René Castro, Melanie Cervantes (Dignidad Rebelde), Yreina D. Cervántez, Enrique Chagoya, Sam Coronado, Carlos A. Cortéz, Rodolfo O. Cuellar (RCAF), Alejandro Diaz, Dominican York Proyecto GRAFICA (Carlos Almonte, Yunior Chiqui Mendoza, Pepe Coronado, iliana emilia garcía, Scherezade García, Reynaldo García Pantaleón, Alex Guerrero, Luanda Lozano, Miguel Luciano, Moses Ros-Suárez, René de los Santos, Rider Ureña), Richard Duardo, Roxana Dueñas, Shepard Fairey, Ricardo Favela (RCAF), Sandra C. Fernández, Juan Fuentes, Eric J. García, Max E. Garcia (RCAF), Rupert García, Ramiro Gomez, Daniel González, Héctor D. González (RCAF) , Luis C. González (RCAF), Xico González (RCAF), Ester Hernandez, Nancypili Hernandez, Louis Hock, Nancy Hom, Carlos Francisco Jackson, Luis Jiménez, Carmen Lomas Garza, Alma Lopez, Yolanda López, Linda Zamora Lucero, Gilbert “Magu” Luján, Poli Marichal, Emanuel Martinez, César Maxit, Oscar Melara, Michael Menchaca, José Montoya (RCAF), Malaquias Montoya, Juan de Dios Mora, Oree Originol, Amado M. Peña Jr., Zeke Peña, Favianna Rodriguez, Sonia Romero, Shizu Saldamando, Julio Salgado, Jos Sances, Herbert Sigüenza, Elizabeth Sisco, Mario Torero, Patssi Valdez, Xavier Viramontes, Ernesto Yerena Montejano and Andrew Zermeño.

Note about terms: The museum uses the term “Chicano” to refer to the historical Chicano movement in the United States (starting roughly in 1965) and its participants. “Chicana” references women who fought for and prefer this designation. "Chicanx” is a current, inclusive designation that is gender-neutral and non-binary.

¡Printing the Revolution!

The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now

Exhibition Catalog

Edited by E. Carmen Ramos, with contributions from E. Carmen Ramos, Tatiana Reinoza, 

Terezita Romo, and Claudia E. Zapata. 

Co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum 

in association with Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2020, 340 pages

ISBN Hardcover 9780937311066, ISBN Flexicover 9780691210803, Dimensions 9 x 12 in.

SAAM - SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

8th and G Streets, NW, Washington, DC 20004 

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Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty, SAAM, Washington DC

Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

October 23, 2015 – March 20, 2016

IRVING PENN

Bee, New York, 1995, printed 2001

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation

© The Irving Penn Foundation

IRVING PENN (1917–2009), known for his iconic fashion, portrait and still life images that appeared in Vogue magazine, ranks as one of the foremost photographers of the 20th century. “Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty,” the first retrospective of Penn’s work in nearly 20 years, will celebrate his legacy as a modern master and reveal the full expressive range of his work. The exhibition features work from all stages of Irving Penn’s career—street scenes from the late 1930s, photographs of the American South from the early 1940s, celebrity portraits, fashion photographs, still lifes and more private studio images. Irving Penn’s pictures reveal a modernist instinct for stark simplicity whether he was photographing celebrities, fashion models, still lifes or people in remote places of the world.

“Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty” is drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. On display will be 146 photographs from the museum’s permanent collection, including the debut of 100 photographs recently donated to the museum by The Irving Penn Foundation. The exhibition presents several previously unseen or never exhibited photographs. Also on view for the first time are Super 8 mm films of Irvin Penn in Morocco, made by his wife Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, that add a vivid picture of the artist at work.

Merry Foresta is the guest curator; she was the museum’s curator of photography from 1983 to 1999.

“Irving Penn’s art leads to many aesthetic discoveries, transcending daily life through intense leaps of feeling and understanding,” said Betsy Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “I am grateful to the Penn Foundation team for their generosity and for their participation at every step along our journey. They shared our excitement and encouraged us to pursue all new directions. A review of Penn’s whole career persuades me that in his last 20 years he became bolder and more daring, a turn that this exhibition begins to explore.”

In a career that spanned nearly 70 years, Penn’s aesthetic and technical skill earned him accolades in both the artistic and commercial worlds. He was a master of both black-and-white and color photography, and his revival of platinum printing in the 1960s and 1970s was a catalyst for significant change in the art world. He was one of the first photographers to cross the chasm that separated magazine and fine-art photography, narrowing the gap between art and fashion. Penn’s portraits and fashion photographs defined elegance in the 1950s, yet throughout his career he also transformed mundane objects—storefront signs, food, cigarette butts, street debris—into memorable images of unexpected, often surreal, beauty.

“From his first photographs to the ones he made in the last years of his life, Irving Penn’s consistency of artistic integrity is remarkable,” said Foresta. “He was able to elevate even crushed coffee cups and steel blocks to the realm of great art, printing his images with exacting care. But in the final analysis his work is not just about beauty, or about the potential of photography as an art form, but a combination of the two that is indivisible and unique.”

The 100 photographs announced as a donation to the museum in 2013 include rare street photographs from the late 1930s and 1940s, most of which are unpublished; images of post-war Europe; iconic portraits of figures such as Truman Capote, Salvador Dali and Leontyne Price; color photographs made for magazine editorials and commercial advertising; self-portraits; and some of Penn’s most recognizable fashion and still life photographs. All the prints were made during the artist’s lifetime and personally approved by him. In 1988, Irving Penn donated to the museum 60 photographs, spanning his career from 1944 to 1986.

IRVING PENN

Beyond Beauty

Exhibition Catalog

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog, co-published by The Irving Penn Foundation and the Smithsonian American Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, with an essay by Merry Foresta and an introduction by Broun. Foresta’s essay introduces Irving Penn to a younger generation and delves into his use of photography to respond to social and cultural change. 

Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty is traveling to six cities after closing at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Confirmed venues include:

Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas (April 15, 2016 – August 14, 2016)

Lunder Arts Center, Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (September 10, 2016 – November 19, 2016)

Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee (February 24, 2017 – May 29, 2017)

Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (June 17 – September 10, 2017)

Wichita Art Museum in Wichita, Kansas (September 30, 2017 – February 4, 2018)

Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, California (September 29, 2018 – February 17, 2019)

SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

8th and G Streets, NW, Washington, DC 20004 

americanart.si.edu

Updated 14.12.2020

Renwick Craft Invitational 2011 Exhibition at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

History in the Making: 

Renwick Craft Invitational 2011 

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Washington DC 

March 25 - July 31, 2011 

“History in the Making: Renwick Craft Invitational 2011” opens March 25 at the Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s branch museum for craft and decorative arts, and closes July 31. The exhibition features 70 works by ceramic artist CLIFF LEE, furniture maker MATTHIAS PLIESSNIG, glass artist JUDITH SCHAECHTER and silversmith UBALDO VITALI. Each artist is a master of his or her medium and creates artworks that combine historical techniques with contemporary forms.  

The artists were chosen by Nicholas R. Bell, curator at the museum’s Renwick Gallery; Ulysses Dietz, senior curator and curator of decorative arts at The Newark Museum; and Andrew Wagner, editor-in-chief of ReadyMade magazine. Bell is the curator of the exhibition. It is the fifth in the museum’s biennial series, intended to celebrate artists deserving of wider national recognition. 

“‘History in the Making’ captures the thrilling way crafts evoke the ‘remembrance of things past,’” said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “These four artists have the traditions of their media embedded deeply in their minds and hands, so their work feels at once profoundly rooted and entirely fresh.”

“Vitali, Lee, Schaechter and Pliessnig use varied histories of craftsmanship and creative expression as points of departure in the pursuit of original art,” said Nicholas R. Bell. “Drawing from diverse cultural histories and experiences, these artists explore the depth of the creative wellspring for contemporary craft in the United States. The objects in the exhibition reveal how the most dedicated and skilled individuals produce works of uncommon splendor.” 

UBALDO VITALI (b. 1944, works in Maplewood, NJ) is considered by some to be the greatest living silversmith in the United States. He is a fourth-generation silversmith, trained in the guild system of Rome, which ties him to the practices of previous generations. He also is a master conservator of antique silver and draws on his grasp of historical techniques to shape the contemporary pieces for which he is best known. His bravura works, such as “Tureen” (2001), combine undulating baroque forms and ornament with a distinctly modern spirit. 

UBALDO VITALI

Ubaldo Vitali 

Tureen, 2001 

silver, sodalite 

Courtesy of the artist

UBALDO VITALI

Ubaldo Vitali 

25th Anniversary Tea and Coffee Service, 2004 

(designed 1999) 

silver, glass [glass by Len DiNardo] 

Courtesy of Janet and Ricardo Zapata 

UBALDO VITALI

Ubaldo Vitali 

Singerie Candlestick, 1976 

silver 

Collection of the artist 

UBALDO VITALI

Ubaldo Vitali 

Triple Wave Pitcher, 1999 

silver, ebony 

Collection of the artist 

CLIFF LEE (b. 1951, works in Stevens, Pa.) was raised in Taiwan, surrounded by China’s rich ceramic past through porcelain collected by his parents and frequent visits to the National Palace Museum. Although trained as a neurosurgeon, his medical career was eventually overshadowed by his passion for clay. The knowledge and skills he developed as a doctor inform his work. Lee’s skilled hands mold and carve impeccable vessels in homemade porcelain. His technical knowledge and understanding of chemistry have proven invaluable in re-creating previously lost Chinese glazes, such as the imperial yellow glaze that took 17 years to replicate.  

CLIFF LEE

Cliff Lee, Teardrop (left), 2000 

porcelain, kuan glaze, india ink 

Courtesy of Marilyn and Irwin Scher 

Cliff Lee, Guan Ware Vase (right), 1994 

porcelain, kuan glaze 

Smithsonian American Art Museum 

Gift of Carol and Bill Wright in memory of Dr. Edward L. Katz 

CLIFF LEE

Cliff Lee, Teardrop

porcelain, oxblood glaze, 2001 

porcelain, chun blue glaze, 2004 

porcelain, imperial yellow glaze, 2001 

Courtesy of the artist

CLIFF LEE

Cliff Lee, Prickly Melon (short and tall), 2008 

Porcelain, imperial yellow glaze 

Courtesy of the artist 

JUDITH SCHAECHTER (b. 1961, works in Philadelphia) finds inspiration for her stained glass windows from disparate sources, including allegorical paintings, medieval tapestries, comic books, church windows, the American Civil War and punk rock. She almost single-handedly resurrected the art of stained glass in American studio craft by mastering the technical skills of a medium not previously used for personal narratives. Schaechter is known nationally and internationally as an innovator in the field.  

JUDITH SCHAECHTER

Judith Schaechter 

The Floor, 2006 

glass 

Courtesy of Claire Oliver 

JUDITH SCHAECHTER

Judith Schaechter 

John Fletcher Hamlin Is No More, 2003 

glass 

Courtesy of David Mittleman and Hugh Glats 

MATTHIAS PLIESSNIG (b. 1978, works in Philadelphia) uses traditional boat-building techniques to construct extraordinary furniture. His work blurs the lines between design, craft, sculpture and engineering. His organic forms are designed with 3-D modeling software and then assembled from steam-bent strips of white oak, melding ancient and futuristic technologies in the pursuit of comfort. A work in the exhibition, “Rivulet” (2009), has more than 7,000 points of contact, each joint locked with a tiny bamboo peg. Pliessnig has reinvigorated contemporary American furniture practice through his unexpected approach to design and dedication to craftsmanship.  

MATTHIAS PLIESSNIG

Matthias Pliessnig 

Amada, 2010 

white oak 

Courtesy of Arthur Dantchik 

MATTHIAS PLIESSNIG

Matthias Pliessnig 

Rivulet, 2009 

white oak, bamboo 

Courtesy of Arthur Dantchik

The EXHIBITION CATALOG, published by the museum and Scala Publishers Ltd., includes a foreword by Broun, essays by Bell, Dietz and Wagner, and biographies for each artist. The book is available in the museum’s store and online for $24.95 (softcover). 

The Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation Endowment provides generous support for “History in the Making: Renwick Craft Invitational 2011.” The Cohen Family’s generosity in creating this endowment makes possible this biennial series highlighting outstanding craft artists who are deserving of wider national recognition. 

The 2011 Renwick Craft Invitational is dedicated to the memory of Melvin S. Cohen, who died January 19, in recognition of his commitment to the arts, American craft and his community. 

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum 

Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. 

Washington DC 

americanart.si.edu