2024 Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellows Lectures – Day 3From May 8–10, 2024, the Smithsonian American Art Museum will present a series of lectures by the museum’s 2023–2024 research fellows. This webcast captures the five talks presented in Sessions V and VI of the series on May 10. For more information on SAAM’s fellowship program, visit https://americanart.si.edu/research/fellowships. The fifth session brings together discussions of three contemporary artists and t...
2024 Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellows Lectures – Day 2From May 8–10, 2024, the Smithsonian American Art Museum will present a series of lectures by the museum’s 2023–2024 research fellows. This webcast captures the six talks presented in Sessions III and IV of the series on May 9. For more information on SAAM’s fellowship program, visit https://americanart.si.edu/research/fellowships. The third session focuses on representations of nature and landscape in the work ...
Meet the Artist: Alison SaarSculptor Alison Saar reflects on her artistic practice, from the collaborative process she develops with her materials to the influence of her family including her children and her parents, artists Betye and Richard Saar. She shares some of the meaning and symbolism behind her work, “Rouse,” part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, and invites the viewers to find their own meaning in the work. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/alison-saa...
2024 Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellows Lectures – Day 1From May 8–10, 2024, the Smithsonian American Art Museum will present a series of lectures by the museum’s 2023–2024 research fellows. This webcast captures the six talks presented in Sessions I and II of the series on May 8. For more information on SAAM’s fellowship program, visit https://americanart.si.edu/research/fellowships. The first session features new research by predoctoral fellows Phillippa Pitts, Eli...
Artist Spencer Finch in ConversationMultidisciplinary artist Spencer Finch joins Sarah Newman, James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in conversation about his body of work. Finch is best known for his large-scale, site-specific works that explore changing landscapes, such as the Hudson River and Great Salt Lake. Through his work, he touches on the ideas of memory, environmentalism, the passage of time, and perception of experience. In this conver...
Exploring Art Conservation and the Preservation of the “Fighters for Freedom” SeriesHow do you preserve important paintings to ensure they last into the future? Keara Teeter, the Lunder Fellow in Paintings Conservation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, discusses the role of an art conservator and shares her journey into the field. At SAAM, Teeter worked on the two-year process of carefully preserving artworks in William H. Johnson’s “Fighters for Freedom” series. Created ...
Preserving William H. Johnson’s “Fighters for Freedom”How do you preserve important paintings to ensure they last into the future? Keara Teeter, the Lunder Fellow in Paintings Conservation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, explains the two-year process of carefully preserving artworks in William H. Johnson’s “Fighters for Freedom” series. Created in the mid-1940s and showing signs of age, Teeter describes the painstaking steps of treating the works and the careful consi...