Three Cheers for 100 Years of Fine Arts research at the Smithsonian! The largest art library of the Smithsonian Institution hits a major milestone on July 1, 2020: the American Art & Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library more »
Tag: AA/PG Library
This Earth Day, the Smithsonian celebrates the Earth Optimism movement, which aims to shift the conservation conversation from one of doom & gloom to hope, optimism and positive action. While there are a number of voices adding more »
The Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library has in its collection a book of poetry bound in a beautiful hand-painted vellum cover, with scrolling Celtic calligraphy and designs of more »
–This blog post was contributed by Sara Donovan, summer 2019 intern at the Smithsonian AA/PG Library. Sara is finishing her undergraduate degree in history at the College of William more »
Mary Vaux Walcott (1860-1940), was a botanist, glacial geologist, and artist, whose work was instrumental in the development of a new technique for printing which came to be known as more »
On the occasion of Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, the first major retrospective ever organized for an artist born into slavery and the most comprehensive look at Bill Traylor’s work to date, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Sept. 28, 2018 – Mar. 17, 2019, we take a look at a special Traylor work in our library collections.
Bill Traylor’s art is colorful—floating silhouettes of yellow, red and purple dogs, rabbits and snakes; brown, green and blue people walking, talking, working and drinking. Set against simple backgrounds, Traylor’s inspired figures interpreted the world of his youth on Alabama plantation farms through the world of his old age, the downtown streets of Montgomery.
This post was contributed by Jessica Downie, 2018 Smithsonian American Art Museum summer intern with the American Art and Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library, and a rising senior at Bucknell University.
During my internship this summer, I have been working to merge a recent donation of materials from the Arts Students League of New York (ASL) with the AA/PG Library’s Art & Artist Files. Through the process I have come across a variety of different catalogs, announcements as well as letters and personal notes written to the director, secretary, and archivists of the ASL.