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Tag: Arts

Joseph Stella: Best of Both Worlds

Anne Evenhaugen
May 14, 2014
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-This post was written by American Art/Portrait Gallery Library (AAPG) Spring 2014 intern Sara Cecilia Johnson.

"Stella 1943"
Image of “Brooklyn Bridge” from the exhibition catalog “Stella 1943” (AA/PG Art & Artist Files)

Joseph Stella’s paintings sit quietly, unnoticed on the second floor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. People often pass them by, maybe one or two stopping to admire the vibrant color or dynamic movement, but otherwise Stella remains an obscure, unfamiliar name to the average American. What they don’t know about is his striking spectrum of work that evolved during the inter-war period in the 1920s and ‘30s or about his friendships with leading art figures of him time, such as Alfred Stieglitz, Walter Arensberg, Katherine Dreier, and Marcel Duchamp.

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Hansel and Gretel at the American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library

Doug Litts
November 1, 2013
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Hansel and Gretel: A Shadow Theatre Book
Hansel and Gretel: A Shadow Theatre Book

Through the generosity of an artists’ book enthusiast (and a member of the Smithsonian Libraries staff), the American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library has recently acquired a copy of a new book depicting scenes from a classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale: Hansel and Gretel: A Shadow Theatre Book.

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Research value? Taking the long view with weeding and digitizing at the AA/PG Library

Anne Evenhaugen
October 5, 2012
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The Real Latin Quarter

–This post was contributed by Kimberly Lesley, American Art and Portrait Gallery Library intern, summer 2012.

This summer I had the opportunity to work on two projects at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library: evaluating titles from the print reference section and selecting public domain titles for digitization. The majority of time was spent on the former, evaluating once heavily relied upon indexes and reference titles against databases and open access online resources. As I paged through volumes of reference titles I was grateful for the vast amounts of information available online with a few keywords and a couple clicks.

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F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald at the AAPG Library

Doug Litts
July 25, 2011
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In Woody Allen’s latest film Midnight in Paris, a modern-day writer finds himself repeatedly traveling back in time to Paris at the height of the 1920’s. While there he meets a number of the period’s famous writers and artists, from Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein to Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. Seeing this film made me want to learn more about the fascinating lives of these people, so I decided to research Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who in the film introduce us to the world of Paris in the twenties.

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