Lab Museum Design & Interpretation

Horotio Greenough’s statue of George Washington on the Capitol grounds (photographer and date unknown) is from the American Sculpture Photograph Study Collection, Photograph Archives (S0001154).

Before construction began in 1884 on the world's tallest stone structure, the Washington Monument, commemorating our first president, Horatio Greenough had already created the first Washington monument on the National Mall honoring him. The statue was placed in the Capitol Rotunda in 1841 and moved several times after that. In 1963 the statue was moved to its current location in the National Museum of American History (on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum).

Recently American Art awarded the 2010 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art to Kirk Savage for his 2009 book Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape. Savage writes: "Greenough's soon-to-be-infamous statue of a semi-nude Washington, seated rigidly on a huge throne in the posture of Jupiter, has gone down in the annals of American art history as the most reviled public statue ever erected."

Savage explains that allegorical depictions were not as popular in the United States as in Europe. He adds, “Although the works had some eloquent defenders, more often than not they became the butt of deliberate misreadings: Washington with his loincloth slipping down was waiting for his clothes. . . ” Although made fun of, the statue at the time bore testament to the struggling ideals of the nation when it was seeking to define its place in history and its vision for the future.

In the July 4th issue of the Washington Post ("What would you do to change America's front yard?"), four Washington leaders share their vision of the future of the National Mall. James P. Clark, chairman of the steering committee for the National Ideas Competition of the Washington Monument, comments: "The Washington Monument continues to be . . . the centerpiece of the nation's most symbolic open space. . . No matter what, this significant space and what it can teach us cannot be forgotten."

What does the future hold for the National Mall? To understand a little of its past, be sure to see Greenough's Washington monument in the National Museum of American History and also that better-known Washington Monument on the National Mall.

• George Washington, National Mall, Washington Monument, Sculpture, Horatio Greenough, Kirk Savage,
  American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Our Art-O-Mat is now dispensing art in our Luce Foundation Center.

We’re very excited about the shiny new Art-O-Mat that arrived in the Luce Foundation Center this week. Now you can start your very own collection of American Art right here in the museum—becoming a collector has never been so convenient!

In the late 1990s, artist Clark Whittington took advantage of the recent ban on cigarette vending machines and re-purposed one to sell his cigarette-packet-sized photographs. The idea took off and Whittington now oversees 83 active Art-O-Mat machines, including our new addition to the Luce Foundation Center.

The machines are more art installations than they are vending machines, but each one is fully-functioning and sells original art for just $5. Our Art-O-Mat is a late 1950s National Consoline Vending machine that was discovered on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee. Check out this Flickr set to see photos of this 60-year-old machine being transformed.

Over 400 artists from ten different countries currently participate in the Art-O-Mat project, contributing paintings, jewelry, prints, sculptures, collages, and mixed-media creations. Each work is the same size as a packet of cigarettes and comes wrapped in acetate. You see a small description of the content on the machine, but you don't know exactly what you will get until you make a choice and pull the handle. The mystery is half the fun! So, what are you waiting for? Come along to the Luce Foundation Center and start your collection today.

• Art-O-Mat, Luce Foundation Center, Art Installation, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Jan Baum discusses her work in the Luce Foundation Center.

We get lots of questions about the craft objects in American Art's Luce Foundation Center. Visitors are often curious about the pieces on display and how they were created. So we seized the opportunity to invite local artists to the center to talk about their work. We've had two wonderful artist talks so far, and two more are planned for August.

Jewelry artist Jan Baum spoke on Sunday, July 11. As she opened one of our pneumatic jewelery drawers to reveal her piece Structure, she told visitors about her interest in the plumb-bob, or amphora, shape and the idea of containment, which she explores by making multilayered objects that can be opened or disassembled to reveal their interiors. She brought in examples of recent and unfinished works that visitors could hold.

Our second guest, Rob Barnard, a potter, spoke a week later. Like Baum, he felt his piece Pot was in "good company" in the Luce Center. He discussed the uniqueness of each object as a result of the firing process and where each was located in the wood-fired kiln. Barnard also said that he is more concerned about the feeling a piece evokes than its shape. His objects, he said, should be "vehicles for carrying feelings to other people." He also commented that they are meant to be used, so he offered everyone his cups and mugs to drink from during his talk.

To hear more about craft directly from the artists, attend the two talks coming up in August: jewelry artists Robin Kranitzky and Kim Overstreet on Sunday, August 8, and ceramic artist Margaret Boozer on Sunday, August 22.

And look for more artist talks this fall!

• Craft, Jewelry, Pottery, Luce Foundation Center, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Steven Spielberg by filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau on August 6, 2008.

Steven Spielberg

Laurent Bouzereau : What was your first encounter with Norman Rockwell?

Steven Spielberg: Whenever my dad would bring home a Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell's work was often the cover art. So often, in fact, that I looked forward not even to opening the Post to see what was inside. I was mainly interested in seeing what story this painter was telling on the cover.

LB: What do you think he managed to capture that was universal?

SS: Rockwell in a way pushed a benign but important agenda of a kind of community, a kind of civic responsibility and patriotism. And he did this in one frame, with one image. And he did it, like Rashómon, from many different approaches to the same theme, which was tolerance of the community, of each other, of parents, of presidents, of Boy Scouts, of our veterans, and of soldiers fighting abroad. He was really one of the greatest Americans that this country has produced since, maybe, Samuel Clemens.

LB: Rockwell was almost like a filmmaker because he cast people to pose for him. He did sketches just like a filmmaker does storyboards. Can you comment on that?

SS: Norman Rockwell was the great American storyteller. And he did his storytelling in a flash; he did it with a single image. And he invites you to explore that image. He draws you into that image, and he invites you, once it makes an impression on you, to question why, simply question why. And as you answer your own question, there are clues throughout all of his paintings. In The Jury Room, you wonder how long have they been trying to convince the only holdout, who happens to be the only woman, to change her mind? You can guess by her position, her straight back, and by the schleppyness of all the other jurors who have found comfortable positions around the table. But then you look on the floor and see all of these cigarette butts, and you understand that this has been going on so long that perhaps she is going to hang that jury.

LB: Talk about Twelve Angry Men. I love the source light in The Jury Room. It's important to you, isn't it—that detail of where he places light in his painting?

SS: Rockwell had a really wonderful sense of source lighting. It was very evocative of the mood that he was trying to communicate. He would use a window, often a single source of light, and he'd be very true to that source. But he would also add a lot of fill light, which is what frequently happens when you light a movie set. You can just imagine Rockwell having fill light, but using his brushstrokes to allow us to get into the shadows, then letting those figures pop and separate themselves from the canvas by outlining them or backlighting them or top lighting them. That's why his paintings are so snappy.

LB: I also love the mischievousness in the painting Pardon Me, where the boy is stepping on the girl's feet while dancing.

SS: I think Rockwell was a great humorist. So many of his paintings are evocative of the humor of the times, innocent humor, not raunchy humor like we have today, but innocent humor like stepping on a girl's toes at the dance. This is something we've all done when we were younger, and we still do at my age. This was Rockwell extolling the virtues of this 1940s, '50s, and '60s innocence, which is how he saw America. Simple values and simple moments. . .

LB: Boy on a High Dive is both funny but so evocative of a little boy facing the biggest challenge of life, with that big blue sky behind him, but no view of the water. What's your take on it?

SS: I've always loved that painting. It means a lot to me, because we're all on diving boards hundreds of times during our lives, taking the plunge or pulling back from the abyss. For me, that painting represents every motion picture just before I commit to directing it. Just that one moment, before I say, "Yes, I'm going to direct that movie." For Schindler's List, I probably lived on that diving board for eleven years before I eventually took the plunge. So that painting spoke to me the second I saw it. When I saw that the painting was available to add to my collection, I said, "Well not only is it going in my collection, but it's going in my office so I can look at it every day of my life."

LB: The Connoisseur is an interesting painting because you have this old man, so obviously an older generation, looking at a Jackson Pollock, the next generation. Can you equate that to the way you felt when you started in the film business?

SS: The Connoisseur is a fascinating painting for me. On the one hand, Rockwell actually had to do a Jackson Pollock. He had to get that drip effect on that canvas. That means he had to completely change the paradigm of his style to accomplish a Jackson Pollack and a very convincing Jackson Pollock, before going back to his sort of conventional human characters. For me that represents how an artist can suddenly change his style and be unrecognizable in one form in another medium and then return to the style that we're familiar with. So personally, it speaks to whether a filmmaker can also have more than one style throughout his or her career.

LB: If Rockwell had been a filmmaker, do you think he'd have been a good one?

SS: I think if he had been a filmmaker, he'd have been a great filmmaker, and he would have been a famous filmmaker. But thank God he wasn't a filmmaker; thank God he painted pictures to inspire other filmmakers to do better work. I think that's what Rockwell has done for all of us who love him and appreciate his paintings. He has made us better artists.

Related Link: Listen to American Art's podcasts about our exhibition Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

• Norman Rockwell, Steven Spielberg, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Note: The following is an excerpt from an interview with George Lucas by Laurent Bouzereau, filmmaker, and Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on September 12, 2008.

George Lucas

Laurent Bouzereau and Virginia Mecklenburg: Do you remember the first time you saw Norman Rockwell?

George Lucas: Well, I grew up in the heyday of the Post magazine. We subscribed and every week or so we'd get a picture in. I would enjoy it and I became a fan of illustrators. I liked drawing, I liked art, and I especially liked magazine illustration and comic illustration. So that was my first introduction to art in general. And then as I went on I took history of art and a lot of other things that broadened my range of art appreciation, but at the same time my heart stayed with illustrators. When I graduated from high school, I really wanted to go to Art Center and become an illustrator. My father didn't want to have an artist in the house, so I ended up going into anthropology instead. But eventually that's probably what moved me into film in the first place. But I like the sentiment. I've always been interested in art. I've always been interested in anthropology, and I've always been interested in art that speaks to the time in which it was made.

LB and VM: And Norman Rockwell, specifically to your point, speaks to that.

GL: As somebody that records a time, I think he's brilliant at it. Because it's not just recording it, he captures the emotion and more importantly the fantasy, the ideal of that particular time in American history. So you really get a sense of what America was thinking during those years and what their ideals were, and what was in their hearts.

LB and VM: Rockwell said he painted life as he'd like it to be. Do you agree with that statement?

GL: Well, I'm not sure—that's true, I mean, we say that in movies. When we were in film school, we would say, "We're not making movies about the way things are, we're making movies about the way things should be." And that's the power you have as an artist, to be able to put your spin on reality and make it the way you think it should be. Rockwell created his art to relate to people, but at the same time he showed generations to come what it was like in those years.

LB and VM: You have a number of Rockwell sketches, as opposed to the final piece. Tell me about that.

GL: With Rockwell the pencil sketches are as illuminating and as interesting as the paintings. Sometimes even more interesting. He simplified his style very much during the 1960s and late '50s, and I like his earlier works, and I like the sketches of the later works because they have much more detail in them, and they're much more elaborate.

LB and VM: Tell me about Happy Birthday Miss Jones. Steven has the painting and you have the study. I'm wondering what your emotional reaction is to that particular painting and sketch?

GL: It was one of those nice situations where I actually had the sketch first, and then he went and bought the painting. Again, I like the craftsmanship of the sketch, but the actual painting itself demonstrates that with Rockwell every person is a character, which is what we always aim for in the movies. We have to make sure that the extras and everybody that's on the screen has a personality, a life. They aren't just nameless, faceless drones that walk through the shot. And a lot of artists don't bother with that.

LB and VM: Do you think that one of the reasons why he was embraced so universally is that he showed a love for ordinary people? And that he made everyone seem special?

GL: He really talked about real people. He showed you the way they lived their lives, and I like that about him. At the same time, he had a great deal of sensitivity toward those people's lives, their jobs, and their character. And in so doing, he encapsulated lives that existed at that particular point in time. That idealism, that naïveté, that innocence is Norman Rockwell. He is very emblematic of a certain part of America during that time.

LB and VM: Do you think a Rockwell painting is like an image in a movie, where if you watch it once, you'll take something away from it, but if you watch it twice, you start looking in the corners, embracing other aspects of the same frame?

GL: Norman Rockwell is very cinematic. He is a storyteller, trying to convey an ambiance and underlying themes and at the same time entertain and make sure the story is clear. When we make a movie, we have to put a lot of the same elements in our frames that he puts in his frame. There's nothing that hasn't been thought through very carefully by the art department, by the cameramen, by the actors, etc. Growing up on Rockwell was probably a very big reason that I felt so comfortable when I got into the movie business.

LB and VM: You've used the term illustrator, but I think Rockwell struggled with that and wanted to be seen more as a painter. Do you find an interesting ambivalence about being popular and successful?

GL: My feeling is that all art, pretty much up until the nineteenth century anyway, to make it very clean, is illustration. After that, you start getting into the Impressionists, you get into photography, and you get into other things. Then art split off into illustration, which depicted reality and interpreted it. It eventually turned into a business, like magazine covers and other similar type entities. It's still art. If it appeals to you emotionally, it's art. If it doesn't appeal to you emotionally, then it's not art as far as I'm concerned. And Norman Rockwell was emotional. So whether he was a painter, an illustrator, a guy that did covers, a popular guy is all irrelevant. The point is, he was an artist. He was an artist just like any artist who was painting, say the caves in France and showing you the spiritual value of antelope. Because he wasn't trying to say this is a good representation of an antelope that you would find in a textbook. This was a spiritual painting of an antelope, and that's what Norman Rockwell was doing. He was doing the spiritual paintings of America and American ideals in the 1930s and '40s that went beyond the literal.

LB and VM: What a beautiful way to end.

Related Link: Listen to American Art's podcasts about our exhibition Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Next on Eye Level: an interview with Steven Spielberg

• Norman Rockwell, George Lucas, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Summertime,
And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high

Thomas Moran's Mist in Kanab, Utah

One of my favorite songs is George Gershwin's "Summertime." I must have twenty renditions of it on my iPhone. When the weather gets as hot and muggy as it's been here on the East Coast my wanderlust kicks in and I start longing for an escape from all this atmospheric oppression. It's vacation time!

My road trip isn't until August but if I need a break right now I can saunter over to the museum to breath in the cool mountain air of Alfred Bierstadt's Sierra Nevada, California or Thomas Moran's Mist in Kanab Canyon, Utah.

How about you? Where you off to this summer? We want to know and we've devised an art-related way you can show us where you've been. We've put together a set of artworks from our collection, depicting places around the country. Should you be going to any of these spots, take a photo and post it to our Flickr group: American Art Road Trip. The more the merrier.

I've got to work for the next few weeks. But I'll gladly live vicariously through your road trip pics. Let's see what you've got!

• Summer Vacation, Photography, Flickr, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Steven Spielberg tries his hand at being a shadow artist in front of Norman Rockwell's Shadow Artist. The piece is now on display as part of our exhibition Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

All right, Mr. DeMille, Steven Spielberg is ready for his close-up.

• Norman Rockwell, Steven Spielberg, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Laurel Fehrenbach, public programs assistant here at American Art, spoke with Sergeant Kevin Burns from Airmen of Note. The jazz group will be performing Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4, from 1 to 3 p.m. as part of our celebration for the opening of our exhibition, Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Airmen of Note will be performing at American Art's Kogod Courtyard on Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4, from 1–3 p.m.

Eye Level: The Airmen of Note is the premiere big band of the U.S. Air Force, and your repertoire and sound have been influenced by the Glenn Miller Orchestra of the '30s and '40s. Can you give us a little history of how the "Note" came to be?

Kevin Burns: Back in 1950, one man recognized the need for a group like the Airmen of Note and made the idea a reality: Brigadier General Sydney D. Grubbs, the Bolling Air Force Base Commander. The United States Air Force Band was one of the units under his command, and he was justifiably proud of that unit. The Band was made up of a number of highly regarded ensembles, including the Concert Band, the Air Force Symphony, the Strolling Strings, and the Singing Sergeants, as well as a variety of smaller groups that could be put together to fit special occasions. But Gen. Grubbs felt that something was still missing—a dance band to bring first-class entertainment to the officers and men of the Air Force, just as the Glenn Miller Army–Air Force Band had done so effectively during World War II. Although the Airmen of Note was formed to carry on the musical traditions of the Miller AAF Orchestra, the relationship had another aspect as well: it was at Bolling Field that the Miller AAF Orchestra made its final broadcast on November 17, 1945. So the Airmen of Note picked up exactly where the Miller AAF Orchestra had left off, geographically as well as musically.

EL: You have a big anniversary this year! How is the Note celebrating sixty years of music?

KB: We have several events that celebrate this landmark year for the Airmen of Note. We have an exciting and unique summer concert series this year . . . in which we are taking a "historical journey" through the various eras of the group. Our musical director SM Sgt. Joe Jackson has been listening to old recordings and digging through our music library to put together entire concerts that focus specifically on the music played with each of the Note’s band leaders.

This will all culminate with a great weekend of events that include as many alumni of the Note as can make it back to D.C. We are having a private alumni dinner and jam session with former members. We are also dedicating our first Jazz Heritage Series concert in early September to our sixtieth year, and will be featuring several alumni at that concert.

EL: Do you think music still has a role in supporting our troops today?

KB: Certainlymdash;we have many opportunities to support our own troops in the twenty-first century. Music in almost any form is such an uplifting experience. It reaches deep into your spirit. There is also no replacement for the live music experience. We regularly use our gifts and talents to support our "internal" audience, whether at local private events or publicly sponsored concerts and broadcasts, or overseas performances that reach our troops deployed to remote areas that are far from family and home. In every instance, we are met with great enthusiasm and invitations to return.

EL: Where in the world have you traveled most recently to perform?

KB: Our mission is primarily in the States. We have traveled literally from coast to coast. The Note’s most recent overseas tour was back in 2002 when we performed for the troops stationed around the Middle Eastern nations of the Persian Gulf. There are smaller groups from the USAF Band that have deployed and continue to tour in those areas. It’s been a matter of logistics with sending smaller groups than the Note to hot spots like that, but we would love to return.

EL: Besides performing at the American Art Museum, how do the Airmen of Note like to celebrate Fourth of July?

KB: Of course throughout our history we have always enjoyed performing for the public on July Fourth. Sometimes we accept an invitation to go out of town, but there is no greater place to play on that day than in Washington, D.C. We’re going to have a great time at the American Art Museum!

• Norman Rockwell, Airmen of Note, July 4th, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Norman Rockwell, Shadow Artist, 1920, oil on canvas, Collection of George Lucas

And the Oscar goes to . . . Norman Rockwell? Not quite, but the beloved American illustrator and painter was well connected to the movie business. In fact, Rockwell once said, “If I hadn’t become a painter, I would have liked to have been a movie director.” Taking a closer look at Rockwell and his working process, the exhibition Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg shows us how Rockwell went to great lengths to stage his pictures, laboring over costumes for each figure and the individual props that added to the story he wanted the viewer to understand at a glance. He typically made multiple preparatory sketches to get the composition and details right.

Just like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Rockwell was a storyteller. And like the filmmakers, he tried to convey in each painting as much visual information as possible. All three men are linked by a desire to capture particularly American stories and distill life into myth. Rockwell emphasized the heroism of the ordinary man, such as in the painting The Runaway in which a friendly policeman talks a little boy who has run away from home into returning.

The artist was born in 1894, and his work limned a good part of the twentieth century. His last paintings were created in the 1970s, at about the time Lucas and Spielberg were thinking inside a different frame. Had the storytelling mantle been passed from picture frame to movie frame? Rockwell often employed Hollywood themes in his work, and Americans gravitated to them in good times as well as bad, in war as well as peace. His images of soldiers returning from World War II, for example, feel like stills from films by William Wyler, Frank Capra, and of course, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

The exhibition Telling Stories opens July 2, just in time for the long holiday weekend. Come and see Rockwell through a different lens. Popcorn not included.

• Norman Rockwell, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: The Best of Ask Joan of Art. Begun in 1993, Ask Joan of Art is the longest-running arts-based electronic reference service in the country. The real Joan is Kathleen Adrian or one of her co-workers from the museum’s Research and Scholars Center. These experts answer the public's questions about art. Earlier this year, Kathleen began posting questions on Twitter and made the answers available on our Web site.

Eye by an unidentified artist. We used this artwork to announce the inauguration of Eye Level in November 2005.

Question: A friend told me about an exhibition she had seen a few years ago of small paintings of eyes. I can't find any information on these "eye" paintings. Have you heard of this genre? Where could I find out more about these works?

Answer: The demand for miniature portraits detailing an eye as a symbol of love took hold during the late eighteenth century and continued through the early nineteenth century until the advent of photography. The idea of using a part of the body to stand for the whole was widely employed in the painting of miniatures. Because of their intimacy, they were considered private tokens and associated with sentimental and memorial art.

The gift of an eye miniature from one lover to another was meant to remain a secret, and documented examples are rare. Probably the most famous is Mrs. Fitzherbert's Eye, which was painted by Richard A. Cosway as a love token for the Prince of Wales (later George IV). Maria Fitzherbert’s eye portrait, set within a locket, was worn by the prince as a memento of her love.

Robin Jaffee Frank wrote in her book Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures: "This was the catalyst that began the popularity of lover’s eyes. From its inception, the very nature of wearing a miniature painting of an eye is a personal one and a statement of love by the wearer. Not having marks of identification, the wearer and the piece are intrinsically linked, just as the miniature itself is linked to both painting and the decorative arts."

There are seven miniature paintings depicting eyes in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. All are on display in our Luce Foundation for American Art.

• Miniatures, Eye, Trompe L'Oeil, Ask Joan of Art, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum

Hugh Shockey, one of American Art's conservators, recently returned from Haiti where he was helping to preserve some of the country's artworks after the recent earthquake there. Here is one of the reports he filed while he was there. For additional coverage visit our Flickr set of Shockey's photographs and our Facebook page.

Conservator Hugh Shockey in Haiti

Day 11 (June 16, 2010)

Today was the day I've been waiting for. After setting up the objects conservation lab I finally had the chance to do treatment in the space. After filling out the appropriate registration paperwork, the materials were moved to the lab and it was time to proceed with treatment.

The inaugural object to be treated was a small reclining figure attributed to the Taíno people. The Taínos were the indigenous inhabitants of Hispaniola and would have been the people who greeted Columbus. The sculpture was broken into four parts as a result of the earthquake. The treatment began with cleaning followed by mending. I had to stop the treatment at this point since we have yet to receive the conservation filling material we had ordered. And we haven't found a substitute for it on the island. I moved on to another small sculpture of a snake, also attributed to the Taíno people. Someone had previously repaired the work but it was broken in the earthquake. Therefore, it was necessary to remove the old adhesive before I could start the new repair. I did this by creating solvent chambers for the areas with adhesive and left them overnight.

In the meantime Vicki Lee, Head of Conservation, Maryland State Archives was beginning her first object treatment as well. It was a significant historical document once belonging to General Alexandre Pétion (who was later president of Haiti). With her experience at the Archives treating the document is right up Vicki’s alley. While not as long a day as yesterday, today was very productive and rewarding for everyone.

• Haiti, Art Conservation, Smithsonian, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Isamu Noguchi, Interned at Poston, Arizona, Bust of Ginger Rogers, Pink Georgia marble, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, © Isamu Noguchi Foundation, Inc., New York.

Of all the stories of internees in the relocation camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, Isamu Noguchi's was the most unusual. He lived in New York City, and could have avoided internment, which affected only Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. When the war broke out, Noguchi, whose mother was an Irish-American writer, and whose father was a well-known Japanese poet, formed the Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy, to speak out against the forced evacuation. His efforts took him to Washington, D.C., where John Collier, the commissioner for Indian Affairs, recommended that he organize a guild for Asian crafts at Poston, the site of an internment camp on an Indian reservation in Arizona. Noguchi voluntarily entered Poston on May 8, 1942, with the agreement that he could leave at any time. Almost immediately, he found conditions in the camp unbearable. The temperatures rose to well over one hundred degrees, and many in the camps—unsophisticated farmers and fishermen—were suspicious of him. Many thought that he was sent in by the authorities. Within a month, he wanted out, but was unable to leave for seven months. As guest curator Delphine Hirasuna has written, "he was viewed as just another prisoner."

Most of what was made in the camps was assembled from scrap and found materials, such as a cigarette case made of fibers from unraveled onion sacks. Noguchi, however, was able to bring tools and materials into camp. When his seven months were over, he went back to being an artist in New York. After the war, most others put their arts and crafts from the camp behind them and returned to their professions, be it dentist or farmer. Many discarded their creations and refused to discuss their time in the camps.

During his time at Poston, Noguchi worked on this bust of Ginger Rogers in pink Georgia marble. He was friends with Rogers and started on the bust before he entered camp and had the half-finished work sent to him in Poston so he could complete it. For a depiction of a woman who floated across the big screen, this sculpture is quite solid and seems rooted to the earth. The head held high above an elongated neck gives her a classical, almost queenly, bearing.

If you know Noguchi's work from this time period, you'll be familiar with his collaborations with a different dancer: dancer and choreographer Martha Graham. In 1935 he created the simple stage set for Frontier, her ballet of crossing boundaries as early settlers traveled the length of America. In 1944, he and Graham (and composer Aaron Copland) collaborated on Appalachian Spring, Graham's best-known work, which premiered in Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress. This was Graham's tribute to the pioneer spirit of America, as was Frontier. I wonder if Noguchi saw life in America differently when creating the set for Appalachian Spring as opposed to how he was life when he worked on Frontier, nearly a decade earlier, with his time at Poston, separating the two projects.

For an additional look at Isamu Noguchi read a transcript from a 1973 oral history interview with the artist from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. The exhibition, The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 continues through January 30, 2011. On June 24, 2010 guest curator Delphine Hirusana will be leading a gallery tour and sharing her stories at the Renwick Gallery.

• Isamu Noguchi, Gaman, Renwick Gallery, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Frances H. Gearhart's Seacoast and Flying Birds

Whenever something odd, new, magical, or troubling happens in the world, I like to see how artists have responded. With the recent events in the Gulf and the horrific images of seabirds covered in oil, I wanted to see images of birds and be reminded about their place in our lives, the visual arts, as well as the written word, poetry and prose. When I typed "birds" into American Art's search engine, I was able to view multiple artists' different takes on the natural world. I came across Seacoast and Flying Birds, a colorful woodblock print by Frances H. Gearhart (1869-1958), and decided to explore the work of an artist I knew nothing about.

Gearhart was born in Illinois but moved with her family to Pasadena, California, at the age of eighteen or nineteen. She attended the State Normal School (now UCLA) and was largely self-taught. Both of Gearhart's sisters were artists and studied with renowned printmaker Arthur Wesley Dow, though Frances apparently did not. In the 1870s and 1880s, Western audiences admired Japanese woodblock prints, which influenced California printmakers (Gearhart became a member of the Printmakers Society of California in 1919). These California artists created a uniquely West Coast style of color block print.

In Seacost and Flying Birds, Gearhart captures California's beautiful rocky coastline. And there are the birds, in the right-hand corner, completing the scene. As Emily Dickinson says, "Hope is the thing with feathers." The birds seem like messengers from another world. We should take better care of them.

• Frances H. Gearhart, Printmaking, Birds, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Art damaged in the 2010 earthquake, awaiting conservation efforts. Photo by American Art's Hugh Shockey

American Art's Mandy Young is receiving reports from our conservator, Hugh Shockey, who is in Haiti to help with the rehab of the country's artworks after the recent earthquake there. For additional coverage visit our Flickr set of Shockey's photographs and our Facebook page.

The Smithsonian is leading a team of cultural organizations to help the Haitian government assess, recover and restore Haiti’s cultural materials damaged by the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. A building in Port-au-Prince that once housed the United Nations Development Programme will be leased by the Smithsonian and will serve as a temporary conservation site where objects retrieved from the rubble can be assessed, conserved and stored.

Smithsonian American Art Museum objects conservator Hugh Shockey is traveling with several other Smithsonian employees on the recovery team, and has been sending us updates and pictures of the tasks at hand. Hopefully, with the hard work of Hugh and his colleagues, Haitian conservators can be trained to take over the restoration and protection of objects displaced by the earthquake, ensuring their safety and preserving Haiti’s rich heritage for generations to come.

• Haiti, Art Conservation, Smithsonian, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Thomas Wilmer Dewings's America Receiving the Nine Muses on Gilded Age Steinway piano. Photo via Flickr by
Mr. T. in DC

I always wondered what it would be like to compose a score for particular artworks in the collection of American Art. Clearly a late- nineteenth-century painting by Thomas Wilmer Dewing would sound different from a meditative Mark Rothko work painted seventy years later. American composer Morton Feldman composed a score for the Rothko Chapel, an interfaith chapel in Houston that houses fourteen Rothko paintings commissioned by the de Menil family.

Today, I heard a story about composer George Gershwin—a fairly good painter by the way—who was viewing works in the New York City apartment of Chester Dale, a prominent collector. Gershwin admired one painting in particular, and much to Dale's surprise, the composer was able to identify it as a work by Cezanne. "Are you interested in art outside of your great art?" Dale asked, to which Gershwin replied, "Yes, Chester, I'm crazy about pictures." Dale then asked him to go to the piano and "play a Cezanne" for him. Gershwin obliged and must have knocked the collector off his feet. He later recalled, "I haven't got any more idea than the man on the moon what he played, but emotionally there was Cezanne to the both of us."

Speaking of Dewing, I think he wins the award for the portrayal of music in painting. On the second floor of American Art, you'll come across an imposing gilded Steinway from Teddy Roosevelt's White House. The president's goal was to "initiate a more active musical life at the White House," and he commissioned Steinway to produce the piano. Decked out in symbols of Americana from eagles to garlands to the coats of arms of the first thirteen states, the piano was presented to Roosevelt in 1903. Dewing painted the piano's lid, merging the classical theme of the muses with America as the new standard bearer of Western culture. In the scene they pay homage to a seated figure, who represents the spirit of the country.

"I hear America singing," Walt Whitman famously wrote in 1860. Now, with Dewing's painting, America can sing and play the piano, too.

This is the sixth installment of "Seeing Things," a periodic series of personal observations about how people experience and explore museums. If you liked this you may enjoy our other posts.

• Steinway Piano, Music, George Gershwin, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum

Louise Bourgeois's Maquette for Facets to the Sun. The sculpture can be found at the Norris Cotton Federal Building in Manchester, New Hampshire.

American artist Louise Bourgeois died on Monday, May 31, at the age of ninety-eight. Born in France to parents who made their living repairing tapestries, she moved to New York City in 1938 and lived and worked there for the rest of her life. She gained attention for her provocative artworks late in life and is often most recognized for her giant spider sculptures known as Maman. The Maquette for Facets to the Sun is a small piece from 1978 in the collection of American Art. Here Bourgeois has created the model for a larger work of painted steel that explores the natural world. The wooden pieces have all turned to face the same direction, pulled (like the artist's need to create) by a force that's greater than themselves.

• Louise Bourgeois, Sculpture, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Louis Comfort Tiffany's Fishermen Unloading a Boat, Sea Bright, New Jersey

For me, the name Louis Comfort Tiffany conjures up images of art glass, opulence, and the mystique of the Gilded Age. But I had no idea that he was also a photographer and gained some amount of renown for his images. I love this one, an albumen print entitled Fishermen Unloading a Boat, Sea Bright, New Jersey, taken in 1887. It's both documentary and narrative, and to me it reads like a painting. The fisherman in the boat, second from left, who looks coolly at the camera, reminds me of the oarsman in Thomas Eakins's oil on canvas The Champion Single Sculls, painted in 1871. Taken nearly one hundred and twenty-five years ago, the photograph seems to capture the American spirit of hard work, the bounty of the land and sea, and a kind of rough-and-tumble, homegrown character. It feels like Tiffany has captured the flip side of affluence. I also admire how he caught the white line of surf that streaks across the print, as if the fishermen had just landed on our shores.

So now, if somebody mentions "the Jersey Shore," you can close your eyes and think back to this image created at the end of the nineteenth century, way before television entered the picture, and reality was just a way of life.

• Louis Comfort Tiffany, Photography, Gilded Age, Thomas Eakins, Seascapes, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum

Wendel Castle's Ghost Clock

This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: The Best of Ask Joan of Art. Begun in 1993, Ask Joan of Art is the longest-running arts-based electronic reference service in the country. The real Joan is Kathleen Adrian or one of her co-workers from the museum’s Research and Scholars Center. These experts answer the public's questions about art. Earlier this year, Kathleen began posting questions on Twitter and made the answers available on our Web site.

Question: At the museum's Renwick Gallery, I saw a grandfather clock covered in a white cloth, but I can't remember the artist or title of this work.

Answer: You are referring to the sculpture Ghost Clock by Wendell Castle.

Castle's clever work is neither a classic grandfather clock nor a statement about time. His magnificent Ghost Clock is a haunting sculpture that is so still it suggests eternity. Constructed from laminated and bleached Honduras mahogany, it is a powerful example of trompe l'oeil, a French term that means "to fool the eye." Here, the drapery is not supple cloth but beautifully carved wood that looks like muslin in color and texture. What we think we see is, in fact, not what is.

Castle's piece was part of the exhibition Renwick at 25, which celebrated the Renwick Gallery's twenty-fifth anniversary. But you can still see it on display on the Renwick's second floor. For further information about the artist and his work, take a look at the book Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery.

• Wendell Castle, Craft, Trompe L'Oeil, Ask Joan of Art, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum

Wes Yamaka recently wrote a comment about his father-in-law on our The Art of Gaman exhibition comment page. We'd like to post it on Eye Level as a testament to the personal stories that have been passed down from internees in the camps.

Giichi Sase's tools and wood carvings. Photos courtesy of Wes Yamaka.

My wife's (Rose) father (Mr. Giichi Sase) was interned at Poston during WW II. He worked as a farmer in California's Imperial Valley. Rose did not know her dad to be any kind of craftsperson or gifted in the visual arts. Her father, not having a farm to tend, had "free" time, the first time in his life. She did not know that he took up carving wooden birds.

Recently we received a treasure trove of his works, about a dozen birds and the tools with which he was able to do his delicate carving. They are indeed fine works of art.

On leaving the camp he stopped carving. Before his death he took up writing poetry. These gifts of artistry were latent in him. Incarcerated, his latent gifts were allowed to flourish. Indeed, his was the art of gaman, to endure and to discover the artist within!

The exhibition The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese Internment Camps, 1942-1946 continues at our Renwick Gallery through January 30, 2011.

• Gaman, Renwick Gallery, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The back of Henry O. Tanner's Study for the Annunciation. Click on image for a close-up of notes believed to be Tanner's.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has the largest collection of works by African American Henry O. Tanner in the United States. Several paintings are in the Lunder Conservation Center undergoing technical analysis in preparation for the 2012 exhibition Henry O. Tanner: An International Retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Since Tanner was known for experimenting with materials, Smithsonian conservators are collaborating with PAFA researchers to understand the evolution of his methods. The findings from the study will be published later in the exhibition catalogue.

This image shows the back of Study for the Annunciation, which Tanner painted around 1898. The detail highlights scribbled notes believed to be Tanner's. The first word is difficult to read, but the second is "cracks" and points to a crack pattern in the top glazing layer on the square of test paint. These types of paintouts have never been documented on Tanner's works, and this is an important discovery for use in our analysis. It appears that he was experimenting with various glazes and formulas to achieve different effects in the paint layers. This notation may support the theory that Tanner manipulated his materials to achieve or prevent certain visual effects on his surfaces.

Mary Tait and Amber Kerr-Allison contributed to this post.

• Henry O. Tanner, Lunder Conservation Center, Art Conservation, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum