Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the United States. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the museum's collection. Most exhibitions are held in the museum's main building, the Old Patent Office Building (shared with the National Portrait Gallery), while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.

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Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Lincoln Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum with Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii by Nam June Paik in the background
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Established	1829[1]
Location	8th and F Streets NW, Washington, D.C.[2]
Coordinates	38°53′52″N 77°1′24″W / 38.89778; -77.02333][[Category:Pages using gadget WikiMiniAtlas]]"},"html":"Coordinates: </templatestyles>\"}' data-mw='{\"name\":\"templatestyles\",\"attrs\":{\"src\":\"Module:Coordinates/styles.css\"},\"body\":{\"extsrc\":\"\"}}'/>38°53′52″N 77°1′24″W / 38.89778°N 77.02333°W / 38.89778; -77.02333"}">
Type	Art museum
Visitors	1.1 million (2022) [3]
Director	Jane Carpenter Rock[4]
Public transit access	Gallery Place-Chinatown
Website	americanart.si.edu

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The museum provides electronic resources to schools and the public through its national education program. It maintains seven online research databases with more than 500,000 records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that document more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide. Since 1951, the museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program; as of 2013, more than 2.5 million visitors have seen the exhibitions.

In 2022 the museum received 1,100,000 visitors, ranking it seventh in the List of most-visited museums in the United States.^[5]

The museum's history can be traced to the creation of the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. The act of Congress establishing the Smithsonian called for it to include "a gallery of art".^[6] In its early years, however, little effort was put into developing the art collection, as Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry preferred to focus on scientific research.^[7][8] The collection was first on display in the original Smithsonian Building (now known as the Castle). In 1865, a fire destroyed much of the collection.^[9] Those art holdings that survived were mostly loaned to the Library of Congress and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the following decades.^[10] In 1896, the artworks were brought back to the Smithsonian, after Congress appropriated money to construct a fireproof room for them.^[11]

The Smithsonian began to refer to its art collection as the National Gallery of Art in 1906, in connection with efforts to receive Harriet Lane Johnston's art collection, which she had bequeathed to the "national art gallery".^[12] The collection grew as the Smithsonian buildings grew, and the collection was housed in one or more Smithsonian buildings on the National Mall.^[13]

In 1920, the National Gallery of Art was separated from the National Museum, becoming its own branch of the Smithsonian, with William Henry Holmes as its first director.^[14][15] By this time, space had become critical: "Collections to the value of several millions of dollars are in storage or temporarily on exhibition and are crowding out important exhibits and producing a congested condition in the Natural History, Industrial Arts, and Smithsonian Buildings".^[16] In 1924, architect Charles A. Platt drew up preliminary plans for a National Gallery of Art to be built on the block next to the Natural History Museum.^[16] However, this building was never constructed.^[17]

In 1937, the National Gallery of Art became the National Collection of Fine Arts (NCFA), because Andrew Mellon insisted that the previous moniker be given to a new institution formed through his donation of a large art collection.^[18][19][20]

By the 1950s, the NCFA still occupied a small space in the Natural History Building.^[21] In 1958, Congress finally granted the NCFA a home, the Old Patent Office Building, which was about to be vacated by the U.S. Civil Service Commission.^[21][22] The building would be shared with the planned National Portrait Gallery, with the NCFA occupying the northern half of the building.^[23][24] Renovation work on the building began in 1964.^[25] The NCFA opened in its new home on May 6, 1968.^[26]

The museum's relocation came at an unfortunate time, as the neighborhood had been devastated a month earlier by the Martin Luther King assassination riots.^[27] The NCFA struggled to attract visitors over the following decades, as the streets around it remained bleak and lonely.^[28] This would remain a factor until the late 1990s, when the work of the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation and the opening of the MCI Center (now Capital One Arena) across the street from the museum sparked a revitalization of the neighborhood.^[29]

The NCFA gained a new branch in 1972, opening the Renwick Gallery, dedicated to design and crafts, in a historic building near the White House.^[30]

In 1980, the name was changed to the National Museum of American Art, to better distinguish it from other federal art museums and to emphasize its focus on American artists.^[31][32] From 1982 to 1988, Charles C. Eldredge served as the museum director, followed by the tenures of Elizabeth Broun and Stephanie Stebich.

In January 2000, the museum closed to begin a planned three-year, $60-million renovation of the Patent Office Building.^[33] To keep the museum's collection accessible to the public during the closure, many of the artworks were sent out in a "Treasures to Go" series of traveling exhibitions, billed as "the largest museum tour in history".^[34][35] The museum's name was changed to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in October 2000 so that the museum and its traveling exhibitions could benefit from the Smithsonian's brand recognition.^[36]

After renovations were underway, the plans were broadened in an effort to restore much of the building's original elegance.^[37] Many of the building's exceptional architectural features were restored: porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows, and skylights as long as a city block.^[38][39][40] New features added to the building included the Lunder Conservation Center, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium, and the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard.^[39] Meanwhile, the museum's offices, library, and storage were moved to the nearby Victor Building, freeing up valuable space and allowing the museum to display four times as many artworks as before.^[33][41] The renovation ultimately took six years and $283 million.^[42] The museum and the National Portrait Gallery reopened their combined building, renamed as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, on July 1, 2006.^[43]

In 2006, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi designed the conservators' denim work aprons.^[61][81][82]

In 2008, the American Art Museum hosted an alternate reality game, called Ghosts of a Chance, which was created by City Mystery. The game allowed patrons "a new way of engaging with the collection" in the Luce Foundation Center. The game ran for six weeks and attracted more than 6,000 participants.^[56]

• List of largest art museums
• List of most-visited art museums
• List of most-visited museums in the United States