Smithsonian American Art Museum

Profil

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation's first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character and imagination of the American people throughout three centuries. The American Art Museum is the home to one of the largest and most inclusive collections of American art in the world. Its artworks reveal key aspects of America's rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the collection, including major masters, such as John Singleton Copley , Gilbert Stuart , Winslow Homer , John Singer Sargent , Childe Hassam , Mary Cassatt , Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper , Jacob Lawrence , Helen Frankenthaler , Christo and Jeanne-Claude , David Hockney , Jenny Holzer , Lee Friedlander , Nam June Paik , Martin Puryear , and Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein . In recent years, the museum has strengthened its commitment to contemporary art through curatorial appointments, endowments, awards, acquisitions and commissions.
The museum has been a leader in identifying significant aspects of American visual culture and actively collecting and exhibiting works of art before many other major public collections. The museum has the largest collection of New Deal art and the finest collections of contemporary craft, American impressionist paintings and masterpieces from the Gilded Age. Other pioneering collections include historic and contemporary folk art; work by African American and Latino artists; photography from its origins in the 19th century to contemporary works; images of western expansion; and realist art from the first half of the 20th century.