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Collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America. Smithsonian Institution.
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Recent posts
NOW OPEN! “Materials, Methods, Meanings: Craft in the Archives of American Art”
Craft is the practice of making objects through skilled engagement with materials, techniques, and processes. Over time, it has expanded from established practices in ceramics, glass, fiber, metal, and wood to embrace an increasingly diverse range of media. This exhibition explores how makers across craft disciplines have continually reshaped the field through inventive use of material, innovative approaches to sharing craft knowledge, and bold forms carrying social, cultural, and personal significance.
Drawn from the holdings at the Archives of American Art, “Materials, Methods, Meanings” brings together samples of materials used by craft makers, photographs, sketchbooks, writings, and other original sources that help us understand how craft objects come about. Largely focused on the postwar period, the items on view offer a glimpse into the breadth of the Archives’ craft collections, revealing what archival records can offer that objects alone cannot: evidence of a maker’s process, exchange, and intention.
“Materials, Methods, and Meanings: Craft in the Archives of American Art” is on view in our Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery through April 18, 2027. Plan your visit at the link in bio.
06 Nov 2026
Coming soon! The Archives of American Art is pleased to announce United States of Craft, a new podcast series that dives into the intricate stories of people, places, traditions, and innovations that have shaped what we think of as craft.
Hosted by Glenn Adamson and Sarah Archer, our first episodes will focus on Wisconsin, North Carolina, New York, New Mexico, and Hawai’i. Learn more about the makers in each state and handmade connections across the nation.
The first episode drops on November 11, 2026, wherever you get your podcasts.
Featured Voices:
All, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1. Oral history interview with Harvey K. Littleton, 2001 March 15.
2. Oral history interview with Roxanne Swentzell, 2011 November 8-9.
3. Oral history interview with Anni Albers, 1968 July 5.
4. Oral history interview with Garth Clark, 2009 November 16-21.
5. Oral history interview with Ruth Asawa and Albert Lanier, 2002 June 21-July 5.
The United States of Craft is brought to you with support from the Henry Luce Foundation.
26 Oct 2026
Our fiery pink Fall 2026 “Archives of American Art Journal" is hot off the press! 🔥 🩷
The new issue, featuring a studio photograph from the newly acquired Jackie Winsor papers on the cover, is printing as we speak. Be on the lookout for the Fall 2026 issue shipping to subscribers and available through our digital publishing partners in the coming weeks.
Learn more about the journal at the link in bio.
07 Oct 2026
Hot off the press! The Fall 2026 issue of the Archives of American Journal is now available in print and online.
The issue explores Palmer Hayden’s understudied early twentieth-century seascapes; the vexed artistic status of Walt Disney Company animation drawings made during the same period; and Eldzier Cortor’s relationship with the art market and its impact on his artistic and archival practices.
Selections from the projects featured in the Archives' recent exhibition Best Laid Plans offer a unique lens on the creative process through documentation of artists’ unrealized works.
The issue is rounded out by reflections on how archives and museums can better support the preservation and study of performance art.
Grab your copy at the link in bio.
05 Nov 2026
Feeling a little feline-groggy? Wake yourself up with more than 60 rare cat drawings, sketches, letters, journal pages, and photographs created by American artists from the 1880s to the 2010s! You can see them in “Artful Cats,” an exhibition from the @sitesexhibitions and the @archivesamerart! See bio to learn more.
#ArtfulCats
📷: Tamara Webster papers relating to Frederick Hammersley and Frederick Hammersley papers, Archives of American Art
05 Nov 2026
Happy Howl-a-ween from Max! 🎃
Max was the beloved pet of the American painter Joyce Pensato (1941–2019), known for her contemporary paintings featuring cartoon characters. Some of these paintings even featured Max, who was somewhat of a star in Pensato’s Brooklyn neighborhood.
Which one of Max’s looks is your favorite?
Images:
All, Joyce Pensato’s dog, Max, undated. Joyce Pensato papers. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
31 Oct 2026
Archival collections go on many journeys from being collected, preserved and organized, to being made accessible to researchers in our reading room. As we say goodbye to American Archives Month, we follow a box’s trip from storage shelf to researcher desk.
Manuscript Collections and microfilm may be consulted in our Washington, DC reading room by appointment. Our Terra Foundation Center for Digital Collections, thousands of browsable images, and nearly 2000 oral history interview transcripts are always available at the link in bio. Happy researching! #AmericanArchivesMonth
30 Oct 2026
The Archives of American Art remembers sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard, who passed away on October 27 at the age of 84. Born in 1942 in Deesen, Germany to a Polish mother and Ukranian father, von Rydingsvard immigrated to the United States with her family in 1950.
Known for her large-scale works von Rydingsvard worked especially in cedar, a soft wood with no grain, creating organic forms that might be related to tools or nature or pre-industrial history, but which were also deeply personal. In 2022, she was the recipient of the Archives of American Art Medal for her contributions to the field of American art.
In 2011, she sat for a wide-ranging oral history interview for the Archives. When asked about know when she is done with a piece, von Rydingsvard responded that it is easier with some pieces than others, that some assert themselves and she sometimes fears “overdo[ing]” work that is done: “. . .I’m also afraid of dispersing things in a way that there ends up being no relationship that has a meaning to me. . . it's all I can do to reach into something that I feel—something inside of me that I feel that I can get worthwhile messages from, without worrying about anybody else's insights or anybody else's eyes or anybody else's mind. So it's just me that I need to excite, and it's not easy. But, obviously, there's nothing I'd rather be doing.”
Learn more about Ursula von Rydingsvard in her own words in her oral history interview, available at the link in bio.
Image:
Ursula von Rydingsvard accepting the Archives of American Art Medal for her contributions to the field of American art, 2022. Photograph by Alexis Janai Brown.
01 Jan 1970
Our mission at the Archives of American Art is collecting, preserving, and making available to all the primary sources documenting the visual arts in the United States. Our collecting staff travels the country to meet with artists, their families or estates, and arts organizations bring their papers to Washington, DC to be preserved and made available for research.
When collections arrive, they are put in archival housing and processing archivists arrange, catalog and describe them, creating finding aids to go on our website so their contents are discoverable to researchers all over the world
Get curious and take a deep dive into how we process, arrange, and maintain collections at the link in bio. Search “Prescott Jones” at aaa.si.edu to read the online finding aid to the artist’s papers. #AmericanArchivesMonth
Image:
Prescott M. M. Jones, Vernon Smith, and Carl Saxild in Alaska, 1937. Prescott M. M. Jones papers. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
28 Oct 2026
Behind the re-imagined comics, onomatopoeias, and vibrant colors was pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.💥
Born #OnThisDay in New York, Lichtenstein worked for almost two decades as a realist and abstract expressionist painter before debuting what would become his signature style. Through oversized compositions based on popular advertisements and comic book illustrations, Lichtenstein became one of the founders of the American pop art movement.
Appropriating both the content and style of these lowbrow graphic traditions, Lichtenstein used brightly colored Ben-Day dots to render subjects best known from comics. The work represented everything that Abstract Expressionism was not and encouraged a change in what was traditionally considered American art.
💥 Roy Lichtenstein (detail) by Hans Namuth, 1985. Silver dye bleach print. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; this acquisition was made possible by a generous contribution from the James Smithson Society. © Hans Namuth Ltd.
💥 Roy Lichtenstein, age 9 months, June 1924. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers, circa 1901-2025, bulk 1950s-2018. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
💥 Pop art birthday cake for Roy Lichtenstein, Dorothy Lichtenstein, and Sydney Lewis, ca. 1971. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers, circa 1901-2025, bulk 1950s-2018. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
💥 Grace Sutton. Roy Lichtenstein with “Imperfect Painting” (1988),” ca.1988. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers, circa 1901-2025, bulk 1950s-2018. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Artwork © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.
💥 Roy Lichtenstein in his studio with “Reflections: Art” (1988), ca. 1988. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers, circa 1901-2025, bulk 1950s-2018. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Artwork © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. #RoyLichtenstein #PopArt #Portraitoftheday
27 Oct 2026
What does craft mean to you? Does process matter or what an object is made of?
Opening soon, “Materials, Methods, Meanings: Craft in the Archives of American Art” explores how makers across craft disciplines have continually reshaped the field through inventive use of material, innovative approaches to sharing craft knowledge, and bold forms carrying social, cultural, and personal significance.
Drawn from the craft holdings at the Archives of American Art, this exhibition brings together samples of materials used by craft makers, photographs, sketchbooks, writings, and other original sources that help us understand how craft objects come about. Largely focused on the postwar period, the items on view offer a glimpse into the breadth of the Archives’ craft collections, revealing what archival records can offer that objects alone cannot: evidence of a maker’s process, exchange, and intention.
“Materials, Methods, Meanings: Craft in the Archives of American Art” will be on view from November 6, 2026–April 16, 2027, in our Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery. Plan your visit at the link in bio.
Images:
All, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1. Otto Hagel. Marguerite Wildenhain showing the motion of hands making a pot, ca. 1945. Marguerite Wildenhain papers. © Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation.
2. Arline M. Fisch teaching a workshop, 1972. Arline M. Fisch papers.
3. Photograph of Lia Cook kneeling on Space Continuum I, 1973. Lia Cook papers.
22 Oct 2026
We are happy to announce that a finding aid is now online for the visionary painter, installation artist, and educator, Hung Liu (1948–2021).
Born in Changchun, China, Liu emigrated to the United States when she was 36 years old to study under Allan Kaprow at the University of California, San Diego. Liu is known for incorporating historical photographs and objects that reference Chinese people and history into her work, creating immersive paintings and installations that question the veracity of images and historical memory.
In her papers, researchers will find biographical materials, writings and notes, research and source material, sketches, exhibition files, teaching files, and photographic material.
Learn more about Hung Liu and read the finding aid to her papers at the link in bio.
This project received federal support from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. @smithsonianapa
Images:
All, Hung Liu papers. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1. Hung Liu at the Yungang Grottoes, ca. 1980.
2. Hung Liu. Sketch of “Spring Festival,” 2000.
3. Christine Eagon Photographic Arts. Hung Liu and her son Ling Chen Kelley at her studio, ca. 1995.
4. Allan Kaprow. Letter of support of Hung Liu’s request for her son to join her in the US, 7 Mar. 1986.
5. Photograph of “Dunhuang” by Hung Liu, ca. 1980.
21 Oct 2026
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