Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery

Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery SAAM and its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, celebrate the extraordinary creativity of artists whose works reflect the American experience.
(2655)

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation's first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience from the colonial period to today. The Renwick Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features one of the finest collections of American craft in the United States. Welcome to our page! Please feel free to share thoughts about our post

s, ask us questions, or tell us about your visit. Find us on other social media sites: www.americanart.si.edu/visit/social_media

While on-topic discussion is encouraged, we ask that you express yourself in a civil manner and treat other users with respect. The Smithsonian also monitors and may remove posts consistent with its terms of use, as described at http://si.edu/Termsofuse -gen. For our Privacy Policy: http://www.si.edu/Privacy

06/22/2026

Seed the day and learn how to make your very own crop art using seeds, beans, lentils, and a few simple materials! Mary demonstrates our latest Handi-hour craft, inspired by “State Fairs: Growing American Craft” at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery.


Video description:
A person wearing glasses, a floral top, and white cardigan sits at a table with craft supplies and demonstrates how to make crop art.

Emerging from the weekend, dazed but ready for summer.From 1885 to 1905, Thomas Wilmer Dewing was an important member of...
06/22/2026

Emerging from the weekend, dazed but ready for summer.

From 1885 to 1905, Thomas Wilmer Dewing was an important member of the artist community in Cornish, New Hampshire. There, he developed a soft, dream-like style that he used to portray a beautiful past. His painting, “Summer,” shows women in fancy evening dresses striking dramatic poses outdoors and conveys the “Cornish*te’s” attitude that life should be a chain of beautiful moments. Each summer, Dewing organized evening picnics and took part in theatrical shows with other artists and writers in the woods of Cornish.

Images:
Thomas Wilmer Dewing, “Summer,” ca. 1890, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

06/21/2026

“I wrote this poem out of love you see / Because this man is the father of me.” ❤️

Before her father died, Kentucky artist Kaye D. Miller began making this hooked rug to help him see the value and beauty in his life.

Miller spent a year lovingly illustrating Elisha Delaney’s memories and passions. Scenes from his life stretch across the surface, ranging from childhood to old age. He's feeding his horse, Beauty, who lived on his grandparent's farm. Notice the overalls: his grandmother made young Elisha's outfit, a detail Miller made sure to include. He wears his Army uniform in another section about his service during World War II. We see his love of nature, his favorite guitar, and a green onion—a food he ate every single day.

In addition to vignettes from his life, his daughter depicted the ones he loved. There’s his late wife, Peggy, his 22 grandchildren and great grandchildren, and his beloved dogs, Ben and Toby. Miller’s poem makes it clear that they loved him, too.

Freckles and skin so fair
A touch of red in his hair
Eyes that are misty blue
A heart that is forever true
His pleasures are in the simple things
Toby dog, a guitar and a song to sing
A temper that can frighten you
This man is Irish through and through
He has worked hard all his live
Lived through hardships and strife
An old fashioned man to the bone
I am thankful for values he has shown
I wrote this poem out of love you see
Because this man is the father of me

Miller’s rug, which won “Best in Show” at the 2019 Kentucky State Fair, is on view at our Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery in “State Fairs: Growing American Craft,” the first major exhibition dedicated to artists’ contributions to the great U.S. tradition of state fairs.

When family lore inspires a painting...In “Black Horses” (1942), Grandma Moses depicts a bit of the oral history of New ...
06/19/2026

When family lore inspires a painting...

In “Black Horses” (1942), Grandma Moses depicts a bit of the oral history of New York state’s Cambridge Valley. The painting recalls a tale about her great-grandfather, Archibald Robertson, who served as a lookout during the Revolutionary War. While working his fields one day in 1777, he spied the British army approaching. Robertson then “unhitch[ed] his horses from the plow, turning one loose, and rode the other down through Coila, warning all that the British were coming,” Moses explained. According to the legend, one of the horses was killed in the ensuing battle. Though the painting is not overtly historical, the accompanying story reveals Moses’s innate understanding of the places she knew as sites of ancestry and history.

Images:
Grandma Moses, “Black Horses,” 1942, oil on high-density fiberboard, 24 3⁄8 × 28 5⁄8 × 2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum

Installation view of “Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work”, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2025; photo by Albert Ting

“What are you looking at?”“Butter cow.”POV: a sampling of some of the more than 240 artworks on view in “State Fairs: Gr...
06/10/2026

“What are you looking at?”
“Butter cow.”

POV: a sampling of some of the more than 240 artworks on view in “State Fairs: Growing American Craft” at the Renwick Gallery.

Visitors will enjoy show-stopping spectacles like the iconic size 96 boots of Big Tex® 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 more than 700 glass jars of preserved fruits and vegetables by canning superstar Rod Zeitler.

Each gallery in this 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.

“State Fairs: Growing American Craft” is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery now through September 7.

Images:
Installation photography of “State Fairs: Growing American Craft,” Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, 2025; photos by Albert Ting

06/03/2026

By showcasing the ordinary and often forgotten bits and pieces of the world we live in, "Nick Cave: Mammoth" shines light on what we value and how we make meaning together. It evokes the lives and cultures we have lost, as well as the magical possibilities of a universe created through imagination and the humblest of materials.

The objects that make up “A Lit History” (2026) have passed through many hands and witnessed many stories; they might inspire conversations and spark memories of your own.

“Nick Cave: Mammoth” is currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

06/03/2026

By showcasing the ordinary and often forgotten bits and pieces of the world we live in, “Nick Cave: Mammoth” shines light on what we value and how we make meaning together. It evokes the lives and cultures we have lost, as well as the magical possibilities of a universe created through imagination and the humblest of materials.

The objects that make up “A Lit History” (2026) have passed through many hands and witnessed many stories; they might inspire conversations and spark memories of your own.

“Nick Cave: Mammoth” is currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Romaine Brooks was born in Rome in 1874 and lived for almost a century until her death in Paris in 1970. Her work mesmer...
06/01/2026

Romaine Brooks was born in Rome in 1874 and lived for almost a century until her death in Paris in 1970. Her work mesmerizes with its muted palette of black, white, and various shades of gray. Sometimes, there’s a small moment of red or brown. Her childhood was defined by unhappiness and abuse that she detailed in her unpublished memoir, “No Pleasant Memories.”

Brooks managed to transcend her early years to become a leading figure of an artistic counterculture of upper-class Europeans and American expatriates. Many in Brooks’s social circle were creative, bohemian, wealthy, and q***r. She created an androgynous look for herself, helping to disrupt conventional ideas of how women should act and dress.

You can’t help but look at her self-portrait from 1923 and wonder: Who is this person? What is she thinking? She looks out from the brim of her black top hat and stares directly at you. With this self-portrait, Brooks envisioned her modernity as an artist and a person. The shades of gray, stylized forms, and psychological gravity exemplify her deep commitment to aesthetic principles. The shaded, direct gaze conveys a commanding and confident presence, an attitude more typically associated with her male counterparts. The riding hat and coat and masculine tailoring recall conventions of aristocratic portraiture while also evoking a chic androgyny associated with the post—World War I “new woman.” Brooks’ fashion choices also enabled upper-class le****ns to identify and acknowledge one another.

Can you spot the moments of red in this painting?

Images:
Romaine Brooks, “Self-Portrait,” 1923, oil on canvas [detail]

05/29/2026

Today, we settle for chatting over dating apps. Back in the 19th century, Americans were sending their crushes custom perfume bottles with their own faces on it.

Dr. Tamir Williams, Curatorial Fellow for African American Photography at our Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery, breaks down the tintype, a form of photography that became popular and widely accessible in the 1860s and '70s.



This story focuses on Smithsonian American Art Museum's early photography collection with objects acquired from the L. J. West Collection, the Dr. Robert L. Drapkin Collection, Mitchell and Nancy Steir, and Charles Isaacs.

Feathers and foliage fill the frames of these ornate, jewel-toned windows at SAAM. 🦚🦚This pair of stained glass windows ...
05/29/2026

Feathers and foliage fill the frames of these ornate, jewel-toned windows at SAAM. 🦚🦚

This pair of stained glass windows by John La Farge reflects the Gilded Age fascination with medieval art and craftsmanship. The industrial revolution had made inexpensive, mass-produced glass available to anyone, but art glass remained an emblem of wealth and good taste.

The tail feathers of the peacocks are made of bits of glass in the “broken jewel” technique; each peony blossom is a single piece of glass molded to catch the light differently through the day. La Farge layered his colored glass as a painter would build glazes of colors to achieve the right shade. For the composition, he borrowed from many cultures: the central panels with the bird and flower motif evoke Chinese and Japanese screens; the lower panels emulate Pompeian architecture; and the transoms above recall the tympanum above the door to a Romanesque cathedral.

Images:
1, 5 - Installation view of John La Farge, “Peacocks and Peonies I, II,” 1882, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2026
2, 3, 4 - details of ohn La Farge, “Peacocks and Peonies I, II,” 1882
6 - John La Farge, “Peacocks and Peonies I,” 1882
7 - John La Farge, “Peacocks and Peonies II,” 1882

Address

800 G Street NW
Washington D.C., DC
20004

Telephone

+12026331000

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Establishment

Send a message to Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery:

Shortcuts

Share

Category