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Current, Upcoming and Traveling Exhibitions
Current Exhibitions
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is now open! Its glorious historic main building in the heart of Washington's downtown cultural district is a dazzling showcase for American art. Special exhibitions are in galleries at the Donald W. Reynolds Center, located at Eighth and F Streets N.W., unless otherwise noted. Exhibitions of contemporary craft and decorative arts are ongoing at the museum's branch, the Renwick Gallery.
Local Color: Washington Painting at Midcentury
Now through Oct. 13, 2008
Explore the expressive possibilities of color in this special installation of twenty-seven large-scale paintings from SAAM's permanent collection. Local Color: Washington Painting at Midcentury examines the cross influences of Washington, D.C.-based artists between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s when our nation's capital was home to one of the most dynamic artistic communities in the country. Looking beyond the Color School label, this exhibition explores the astonishing breadth of styles and techniques adopted by Washington artists Leon Berkowitz, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Sam Gilliam, Fel Hines, Jacob Kainen, Howard Mehring, Paul Reed, and Alma Thomas who were conducting innovative experiments with color and form.
Earth and Sky: Photographs by Barbara Bosworth
Now through Nov. 9, 2008
Nature's strength, endurance, and fragility are captured in the dynamic work of Barbara Bosworth (b. 1953). Best known for her photographs of National Champion trees—the largest identified example of each species in the United States—Bosworth creates panoramic images using a unique method that combines multiple large-format negatives in a single print. The exhibition, which celebrates a recent gift of the artist's work, will feature forty of Bosworth's photographs, including The Bitterroot River, an extended narrative sequence that deals with loss and recovery, and her most recent color photographs of songbirds and the New England landscape surrounding her home near Boston. While Bosworth's subjects appear direct and straightforward, her images are notable for their grace and emotional resonance. Surveying two decades of her photographs, this exhibition reveals an artist who speaks with singular passion and sentiment for the American landscape. Toby Jurovics, curator for photography, is the exhibition curator. See an online exhibition of Bosworth's photographs.
Credit
Haluk Soykan and Elisa Frederickson generously donated the photographs in this exhibition. The Bernie Stadiem Endowment Fund supports the exhibition of Earth and Sky: Photographs by Barbara Bosworth.
The Honor of Your Company Is Requested: President Lincoln's Inaugural Ball
Now through Jan. 18, 2010
Travel back 143 years to the revelry of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural ball. This small, focused exhibition celebrates the president's second inaugural ball, held on March 6, 1865 in what is now the museum's historic home. The ball took place as Lincoln's second term began, with the Civil War in its final stages, and only six weeks before Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater nearby. The exhibition, which relates the ball to the building and its history, features ephemera from the inaugural ball, including the invitation and menu as well as engravings illustrating the night's events and other artifacts. From pomp and politics to feasting and fights over food, this was one night destined for the history books. Charles Robertson, author of the recent book Temple of Invention: History of a National Landmark and a specialist in American decorative arts, is the guest curator of the exhibition.
Credit
The exhibition is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with support from the Ford Motor Company Fund.
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Upcoming Exhibitions
2008
Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities
Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Glass (Renwick)
Graphic Masters I: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke
2009
The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene (Renwick)
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Renwick Craft Invitational 2009 (Renwick)
What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect
2010
Framing the West: The Expedition Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan
2011
Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image
"Better Angels of Our Nature": Art During the Civil War and Reconstruction
Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities
September 26, 2008 through January 4, 2009
Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities celebrates the deep commitment to the American landscape by these two iconic artists. The exhibition explores how both artists intensely focused their attention on beauty in nature and transformed these elements with color and tone. The exhibition includes forty-three paintings from public and private collections and fifty-four photographs borrowed primarily from the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, which holds the largest single collection of Adams' work. Independent scholar Anne Hammond selected the artworks for the exhibition. Eleanor Harvey, chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is the coordinating curator with Toby Jurovics, the museum's curator of photography.
Credit
Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities was organized by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The exhibition was made possible in part by MetLife Foundation, the exhibition's Lead National Sponsor, The Burnett Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, The Kerr Foundation, The Annenberg Foundation, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's National Council.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum wishes to thank The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, The Robert S. & Grayce B. Kerr Foundation, The Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, and the Smithsonian Council for American Art for their generous support of the exhibition's presentation in Washington, D.C.
Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Glass (Renwick)
October 3, 2008 through January 11, 2009
Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Glass is the first exhibition to thoroughly examine the art of Lino Tagliapietra (b. 1934), widely revered as a master of glass blowing, and to document his unparalleled contributions to fostering a new generation of glass artists. He is widely credited with changing the course of contemporary studio glass through his teaching. The exhibition will feature 140 works from Tagliapietra's 40-year career, including pivotal works from the artist's own collection and collections around the world, as well as designs made for industry and objects that have never been exhibited. The exhibition curator is Susanne Frantz, former curator of twentieth-century glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.
Credit
Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Glass has been organized by the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington. The exhibition is sponsored by Rebecca and Jack Benaroya, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Russell Investments, Windgate Charitable Foundation, Heritage Bank and The Boeing Company.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum wishes to thank the James Renwick Alliance, John T. and Colleen Kollar Kotelly, the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, the Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation, The Karma Foundation and Sharon Karmazin, and Chris Rifkin for their generous support of the exhibition in Washington, D.C.
Publication
The catalogue, co-published by the Museum of Glass and the University of Washington Press, features essays by Susanne Frantz, Helmut Ricke, internationally acclaimed scholar and glass historian at the museum kunst palast in Düsseldorf, Germany, and Dante Marioni, an early Tagliapietra student and currently a leading glass artist in the United States. It is available in the museum store for $50.
Graphic Masters I: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
November 27, 2008 through May 25, 2009
Graphic Masters I: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum is the first in a series of special installations that celebrate the extraordinary variety and accomplishment of American artists' works on paper. These exceptional watercolors, pastels, and drawings from the early nineteenth century through the 1930s reveal the central importance of works on paper for American artists, both as studies for creations in other media and as finished works of art. Rarely seen works from the museum's permanent collection by masters such as John James Audubon, Romaine Brooks, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, John La Farge, Man Ray, John Marin and Georgia O'Keeffe will be featured in the exhibition. Joann Moser, senior curator for graphic arts, selected the artworks in Graphic Masters.
Publication
The accompanying book, Graphic Masters: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is available in the museum's online shop for $19.95.
Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke
December 5, 2008 through March 1, 2009
For more than 30 years, Frank Gohlke (b. 1942), a leading figure in American landscape photography, has explored the ways Americans build their lives in a natural world that rarely fits within a traditional pastoral ideal. This retrospective exhibition, which captures Gohlke's longstanding fascination with nature's proclivities for growth, destruction and unexpected change, features 85 photographs—both black and white and color prints—spanning the artist's career from the early 1970s through 2004. Rather than celebrating uninhabited landscapes or avoiding evidence of human intrusions, Gohlke's photographs reflect how people interact with an environment that can never be fully controlled. Whether photographing his hometown of Wichita Falls, Texas; the grain elevators that punctuate the vast spaces of the Midwest; the effect of the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in Wash.; or the neighborhoods of Queens, N.Y., Gohlke deftly captures the tension between humanity and the natural world, exploring how people adapt to the forces of nature both great and small, even within the confines of their own backyards. The exhibition was organized by John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; Toby Jurovics, curator for photography, is the coordinating curator in Washington.
Credit
Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke is organized by the Amon Carter Museum and is made possible in part by generous support from the Perkins-Prothro Foundation, Exelon Power and the Vin and Caren Prothro Foundation.
Charles and Judith Moore and Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz support the exhibition's presentation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene (Renwick)
March 13 through June 7, 2009
The architecture and decorative arts designed by brothers Charles and Henry Greene a century ago in California are now recognized internationally as among the finest of the American Arts & Crafts movement. Such appreciation is inspired by the Greenes' careful consideration of every detail of the buildings and objects they designed. Like their contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright, the Greenes believed architecture to be no less than a design language for life, imbuing their houses and furnishings with an expressive sensitivity for geography, climate, landscape and lifestyle. The Gamble House, constructed between 1907 and 1909 in Pasadena, California, is one of their best known commissions. The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene, the largest exhibition of their work to date, examines the brothers' legacy with approximately 130 objects representing a variety of media including beautifully inlaid furniture crafted from exotic hardwoods, artfully executed stained glass and metalwork, as well as rare architectural drawings and photographs.
Credit
The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene is organized by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions and The Gamble House.
Jean Shin: Common Threads
May 1 through July 26, 2009
Jean Shin is nationally recognized for her transformative installations that imbue the castoffs of consumer society with new life. Utilizing scavenged and obsolete materials such as worn shoes, lost socks, broken umbrellas and discarded lottery tickets, Shin employs a meticulous process of dismantling, alteration and reconstruction. Shin's most compelling projects to date have employed clothes gathered from friends, relatives and colleagues that she disassembles and then reassembles in colorful, textural murals. This aspect of collaboration is an integral part of Shin's process, and many of her recent projects emerge from a close dialogue with the organizing venue and surrounding community. The exhibition will include at least five recent "site-responsive" sculptures and installations by Shin and one new installation that engage both the Smithsonian and Washington-area communities. Joanna Marsh, The James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art, is the exhibition curator.
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
June 19, 2009 through January 10, 2010
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the second in a series of special installations, celebrates the extraordinary variety and accomplishment of American artists' works on paper. These exceptional watercolors, pastels, and drawings from the 1920s to 1990 reveal the central importance of works on paper for American artists, both as studies for creations in other media and as finished works of art. Rarely seen works from the museum's permanent collection by artists such as Paul Cadmus, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Willem de Kooning, Saul Steinberg, Grant Wood and Andrew Wyeth will be featured in the exhibition. Joann Moser, senior curator for graphic arts, selected the artworks in Graphic Masters.
Publication
The accompanying book, Graphic Masters: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is available in the museum's online shop for $19.95.
Renwick Craft Invitational 2009 (Renwick)
August 7, 2009 through January 3, 2010
The Renwick Craft Invitational 2009 is the fourth in a biennial exhibition series, established in 2000, that honors the creativity and talent of craft artists working today. The exhibition will feature the work of ceramic artist Christyl Boger, fiber artist Mark Newport, glass artist Mary Van Cline and ceramic artist SunKoo Yuh. The artists were chosen by Kate Bonansinga, director of the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso; Jane Milosch, Renwick Gallery curator; and Paul J. Smith, director emeritus of the Museum of Arts & Design. Bonansinga is the guest curator for the exhibition.
Boger (b. 1959), an assistant professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, creates large-scale gilded ceramic figurines that incorporate contemporary props. Newport (b. 1964), artist-in-residence and head of the fiber department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, examines issues of masculinity through knitted superhero costumes. Van Cline (b. 1954), who lives and works in Seattle, uses plate glass and pâte de verre to construct sculptural pieces that often incorporate black-and-white photographs. Yuh (b. 1960), an associate professor at the University of Georgia in Athens, creates densely layered ceramic sculptures that explore complex issues of family, faith and community with Eastern and Western imagery.
Credit
The Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation generously supports the Renwick Craft Invitational 2009.
What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect
October 2, 2009 through January 24, 2010
William Wiley (b. 1937) has stood the test of time in the face of changing styles, successive movements, critical theories and passing fashion. His self-deprecating humor and sense of the absurd make his art accessible to even those who do not comprehend his more ambiguous ideas, allusions, narratives, private symbols and layers of meaning. Puns are fun, and they make more palatable his deadly serious commentary on war, pollution, global warming, racial tension and other threats to contemporary civilization. What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect, the first full-scale look at Wiley's career since 1979, will feature approximately 100 works from the late 1960s to the present, borrowed from public and private collections as well as from the artist. It will provide a serious overview of Wiley's career while exploring important themes and ideas expressed in his work. Joann Moser, senior curator for graphic arts, is the curator of the exhibition.
Framing the West: The Expedition Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan
February 12 through May 9, 2010
Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840–1882), a photographer for two of the most ambitious geological surveys of the 19th century, is likely to have witnessed more of the American interior than any photographer of his generation. O'Sullivan traversed the mountain and desert west for six seasons between 1867 and 1874 as part of government-sponsored expeditions led by Clarence King and Lt. George Wheeler, returning to Washington with hundreds of photographs of newly explored landscapes. These images reveal a photographer whose reach was far beyond practical documentation, exhibiting a forthright and rigorous style formed in response to the American west. Faced by terrain that was physically challenging, and without previous artistic examples to follow, O'Sullivan created a mature body of work that was without precedent. Framing the West: The Expedition Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan, the first major look at O'Sullivan photographs in more than 25 years, is a critical re-examination of the artist's work and his continuing influence on American photography. The exhibition and accompanying catalog will present a careful analysis of O'Sullivan's images, the conditions under which they were made, the influences that shaped his work and a study of the lasting historic importance of this remarkable body of photographs. Toby Jurovics, curator for photography, is the exhibition curator.
Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image
March 11 through July 10, 2011
"Watch This!" will examine the narrative power and poetic invention in recent film, video and media art created by a new generation of artists whose fresh approach speaks to the immediacy and visibility of a new media culture taking form around the world today. These artists draw inspiration from a variety of global sources including animation, popular movies, documentary, cinéma vérité, soap operas, telenovelas, reality television, performance art, avant-garde film, video art, surveillance, and the Internet. How artists see and experience work from the 1960s and 1970s is in part shaped by the spread of media culture and the growing digital archive of film and video. Artists refashion genres not as nostalgia or remakes of art world styles but as fresh and innovative moving images and narratives. The ever expanding media environment of digital media and its accessibility through such channels as YouTube and iPhone gives new mobility and access to the production and distribution of these moving images. The exhibition will feature single and multi-screen works by both established and emerging artists. John G. Hanhardt, consulting senior curator for film and media arts, is the exhibition curator.
"Better Angels of Our Nature": Art During the Civil War and Reconstruction
May 15 through September 5, 2011
"Better Angels of Our Nature" will explore the impact of the Civil War and its aftermath on the visual arts in America using some of the finest artworks made during this period by leading figures such as Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Hiram Powers, and John Rogers. Although the exhibition will include photographs by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan, the focus will be on how artists addressed the metaphorical war, dealing allegorically or elliptically with the issues of internal warfare, the future of the union, abolition and race relations, and the post-war search for a new American identity. These artists' solutions resulted in some of the most compelling landscapes and genre paintings of the mid-nineteenth century, often containing layers of meaning beyond their war-related allusions. Eleanor Jones Harvey, chief curator, is the exhibition curator.
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Traveling Exhibitions
Nationally Touring Exhibitions Organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum's traveling exhibition program has circulated hundreds of exhibitions since it was established in 1951. Here are the museum's latest offerings that are traveling to communities across the United States.
The Prints of Sean Scully
Sean Scully (b. 1945) has been making prints for more than 30 years and considers these works to be as significant as his paintings. The Prints of Sean Scully presents a selection of 44 works from a master set of prints that was acquired in 2001 and is updated annually with newly created works. Scully chose the Smithsonian American Art Museum as the only museum in the United States to receive a master set. Using his instantly-recognizable block shapes, Scully’s richly layered prints explore recurring themes in his work, such as the play of light and shadow, the expressive qualities of color and the spatial relationships created by the edges of his distinctive abstract forms.
After closing in Washington, the exhibition travels to the Naples Museum of Art in Naples, Fla. (Nov. 10, 2007–Jan. 13, 2008); the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, Minn. (March 1–May 4, 2008); and the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, N.Y. (Sept. 5–Nov. 2, 2008).
The Prints of Sean Scully is organized and circulated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with support from Gisele Galante Broida, Don Brown, Ruth Holmberg and Norfolk Southern Corporation. The exhibition’s tour is supported in part by the C.F. Foundation, Atlanta, and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Endowment Fund.
Elihu Vedder's Drawings for the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Since the first English translation in 1859, hundreds of editions of the Rubáiyát, written around 1120 by the Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet Omar Khayyám, have been published. The poem expounds on the transience of existence and the uselessness of science or religion to untangle the knotted meaning of life. Elihu Vedder (1836–1923), an ardent admirer of the verses, arranged the most famous and elaborate edition in the 1880s. Vedder created the designs for the entire book—its cover, lining paper, compelling drawings and eccentric hand-drawn letters—which set the standard for an artist-designed book in America and England at the time. This exhibition features 55 drawings from the museum's collection. To browse the full collection online, visit the museum's microsite at AmericanArt.si.edu/vedder.
The exhibition travels to the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (March 15, 2008–May 18, 2008) and the Phoenix Art Museum (November 14, 2008–February 10, 2009).
Elihu Vedder's Drawings for the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is organized and circulated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition's tour is supported in part by the C.F. Foundation, Atlanta, and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Endowment Fund.
Earl Cunningham’s America
Earl Cunningham’s America examines the paintings of Earl Cunningham (1893–1977), one of the foremost folk artists of the twentieth century. This retrospective presents the artist as a folk modernist who used flat space and brilliant color to create sophisticated compositions with complex meanings about the nature of American life. The exhibition and the fully-illustrated catalogue trace the story of Cunningham’s life and place his work in the context of the folk art revival that brought Edward Hicks, Grandma Moses, Horace Pippin and other folk masters to national attention.
The exhibition travels to the American Folk Art Museum in New York City (March 4, 2008 – August 31, 2008); the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York (September 26, 2008 – December 31, 2008); and The Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Florida (March 6, 2009 – August 2, 2009).
Earl Cunningham’s America is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition is made possible by generous support from Darden Restaurants Foundation; the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation; the Arts and Cultural Affairs Office of Orange County, Fla.; CNL Financial Group; Bright House Networks; Lockheed Martin; and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. The exhibition’s tour is supported in part by the C. F. Foundation, Atlanta.
Passing Time: The Art of William Christenberry
William Christenberry (b. 1936) looks for the spirit of Southern culture in the landscape and architecture of rural Alabama. Drawing upon his formal training, family traditions and a lasting relationship with his native home in Hale County, Christenberry has spent the last fifty years creating a remarkable body of work that is an exploration of all aspects of life and experience. This exhibition, not a retrospective but a survey of past and present work, includes fifty-three photographs, drawings, paintings, sculptures and building constructions. Though his work is inspired by the American South, Christenberry's overall themes are universal, touching on family, culture, nature and the spiritual. His artworks are poetic assessments of a sense of place, landscape, aging, memory and the passing of time.
The exhibition travels to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia (May 14, 2008 – September 28, 2008) and the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, Tennessee (March 14, 2009 – June 14, 2009).
Passing Time: The Art of William Christenberry is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition's tour is supported in part by the C. F. Foundation, Atlanta and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund.
Over the Top: American Posters from World War I
Over the Top: American Posters from World War I features fifty-nine war bond posters, focusing on the four Liberty Loan campaigns, the War Savings Stamp program, the Victory Loan and support for the Red Cross. These persuasive images, with bold graphics and concise commands, encouraged citizens to support the troops, contribute to the Red Cross and buy bonds to finance America's participation in the war. The posters, selected from the collection of Thomas and Edward Pulling, are a fascinating window into the American experience in the early twentieth century.
The exhibition will be on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts (November 8, 2008 – January 25, 2009).
Over the Top: American Posters from World War I is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition's tour is supported in part by the C.F. Foundation, Atlanta and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund.
Modern Masters from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Modern Masters from the Smithsonian American Art Museum features forty-three key paintings and sculptures by thirty-one of the most celebrated artists who came to maturity in the 1950s. Through three broadly-conceived themes that span two decades of creative genius —"Significant Gestures," "Optics and Order" and "New Images of Man"—Modern Masters examines the complex and heterogeneous nature of American abstract art in the mid-twentieth century. Featured artists include Jim Dine, David Driskell, Sam Francis, Philip Guston, Grace Hartigan, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Louise Nevelson, Anne Truitt and Esteban Vicente.
The exhibition debuts at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami (November 29 – March 1, 2009); the exhibition then travels to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (June 14, 2009 – September 6, 2009), the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia (November 13, 2010 – February 5, 2011), the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, Tennesee (March 19, 2011 – June 19, 2011) and the Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (October 7, 2011 – January 1, 2012).
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is grateful to our generous contributors for their support of Modern Masters from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund provided support for the publication. The C. F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the museum's traveling exhibition program Treasures to Go. Members of the Smithsonian Council for American Art contribute to the museum's national programs.
Obata’s Yosemite
In 1927, Chiura Obata (1885–1975) visited Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada, where he made approximately 100 drawings in pencil, watercolor and sumi ink. Between 1928 and 1930, while Obata was in Tokyo, he transformed these California landscape watercolors and sketches into a limited-edition portfolio titled World Landscape Series. The final intricate woodblock prints—some required more than 150 separate working proofs—resemble Obata's watercolors, with lines like brush strokes and areas of delicately layered color. They are characterized by a distinctive merging of Japanese and Western printmaking styles and techniques. Obata’s Yosemite features twenty-seven prints and watercolors and a series of twenty progressive proofs.
After closing in Washington, D.C., the exhibition travels to the Wichita Falls Museum of Art in Wichita Falls, Texas (June 27, 2008 – August 22, 2008).
Obata’s Yosemite is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition's tour is supported in part by the C.F. Foundation, Atlanta and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund.
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Pictured
first
:
Alma Thomas, Red Sunset, Old Pond Concerto, 1972, acrylic on canvas, 68 1/2 x 52 1/4 in. (175.0 x 134.5 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Woodward Foundation
Pictured
second
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Barbara Bosworth, National Champion Valley Oak, California, 1994, 1994, gelatin silver print on paper, 9 1/2 x 23 1/8 in. (24.1 x 58.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Haluk Soykan and Elisa Frederickson
Pictured
third
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Lincoln's inaugural ball, March 6, 1865, Illustration from Illustrated London News, April 8, 1865, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Pictured
fourth
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Georgia O'Keeffe, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie's II, 1930, oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 36 1/4 in., Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, gift of The Burnett Foundation © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Pictured
fifth
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Mandara, 2006, designed and made by Lino Tagliapietra, blown glass with multiple incalmi, crisscrossed canes, Pilchuck ’96 technique; cut. Courtesy of Lino Tagliapietra, Inc. Photo by Russell Johnson
Pictured
sixth
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John La Farge, Water Lily in Sunlight, ca. 1883, watercolor on paper, sheet: 8 1/4 x 8 1/4 in. (21.0 x 20.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
Pictured
seventh
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Frank Gohlke, Grain elevator and lightning flash, Lamesa, Texas, 1975, gelatin silver print ©
1975 Frank Gohlke. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
Pictured
eighth
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Stuart Davis, Impression of the New York World's Fair (mural study, Communications Building, World's Fair, Flushing, New York), 1938, gouache on paperboard, sheet: 14 3/4 x 22 1/8 in. (37.5 x 55.9 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the United States Information Agency through the General Services Administration
Pictured
ninth
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Mary Van Cline, The Listening Point, 1999, photosensitive cast glass and black pate de verre, 25 1/2 x 20 5/16 x 4 in. (64.8 x 51.6 x 10.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the James Renwick Alliance
Pictured
tenth
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William T. Wiley, Portrait of Radon, 1982, watercolor and felt-tipped pen and ink on paper, sheet: 22 1/4 x 29 7/8 in. (56.5 x 75.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase
Pictured
eleventh
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Eastman Johnson, The Girl I Left Behind Me, 1870-1875, oil on canvas, 42 x 34 7/8 in. (106.7 x 88.7 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible in part by Mrs. Alexander Hamilton Rice in memory of her husband and by Ralph Cross Johnson
Pictured
twelfth
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Sean Scully, Day, 2005, aquatint, sugarlift, and spitbite on paper, plate: 14 7/8 x 18 in. (37.8 x 45.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist
Pictured
thirteenth
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Elihu Vedder, (Illustration for Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám) The Cup of Death, 1883-1884, chalk, pencil and ink on paper, sheet: 19 3/8 x 14 7/8 in. (49.1 x 37.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase and gift from Elizabeth W. Henderson in memory of her husband Francis Tracy Henderson
Pictured
#tombcount#th
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Earl Cunningham, Blue Sail Fleet Returns, after 1949, oil on fiberboard, 16 1/2 x 36 1/4 in. (41.8 x 92.1 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Mennello
Pictured
#tombcount#th
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William Christenberry, Alabama Wall I, 1985, metal and tempera on wood, 45 3/8 x 50 1/2 in. (115.3 x 128.3 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase
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#tombcount#th
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Sidney H. Riesenberg, Over the Top for You, 1918, 30 x 20 in. (76.2 x 50.8 cm), Lent by Thomas L. and Edward L. Pulling
Pictured
#tombcount#th
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Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park, No. 6, 1968, oil on canvas, 92 x 72 in. (233.7 x 182.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Arthur J. Levin in memory of his beloved wife Edith
Pictured
bottom
:
Chiura Obata, Clouds, Upper Lyell Trail, along Lyell Fork, 1930, color woodcut on paper, image: 10 7/8 x 15 5/8 in. (27.6 x 39.8 cm)
, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Obata Family