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Featured Exhibition
Pushing the Envelope: Mail Art from the Archives of American Art
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.
Collections on View
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Organized by Curator of Manuscripts Mary Savig, the exhibition revisits a 1977 exhibition at Los Angeles’ Woman’s Building, a feminist art school, gallery, and community space founded by Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and Arlene Raven in 1971. The Archives, which holds the Woman’s Building papers in its collections, will reconsider this exhibition by showing responses from the 1977 show alongside new submissions by both original participating artists as well as a new generation of diverse artists. Approximately 75 works will be on view.What is Feminist Art? is now on view at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in Washington, D.C.
News
Nov. 30, 2020
The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution is pleased to announce the launch of the Pandemic Oral History Project, a series of 85 newly conducted interviews of American artists and art world figures living and working through the seismic events of 2020.
Nov. 17, 2020
The Fall 2019 issue of the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art Journal has been awarded first prize in the category of magazines/scholarly journals in the American Alliance of Museums’ 29th annual Museum Publications Design Competition. This competition recognizes and encourages superior execution and ingenuity in the graphic design of museum publications and is the only national, juried competition of its kind.
On the Blog
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In the latest entry in our Conversations Across Collections series, national collector Josh T Franco chronicles the art and activism of Juan Sánchez.
