What are you looking for in the Archives?
Collections on View
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Mail art (alternatively called “correspondence art” or “postal art”) emerged as a form of artistic practice in which an international network of participants use the mail to make art and share it with others regarding culture and communications, creatively sidestepping the art market and, in many instances, eluding government censors.Pushing the Envelope: Mail Art from the Archives of American Art is now on view at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in Washington, D.C.
News
Oct. 24, 2018
The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, today announced it has received a $5 million gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation to create an endowment to process and digitize material on art and artists from historically underrepresented groups in the Archives’ collections and the American canon, making them broadly available online. African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and women are typically underrepresented in U.S. museum collections.
On the Blog
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December 11, 2018What Makes it Art? or: Why Keep a Letter?
Guest author Anne Evenhaugen shares the backstory of a letter from Ray Johnson to critic Arthur C. Danto and why he kept it.