Staff Voices

Elizabeth Botten, curator of the exhibition Artists and Their Models, considers a group of reference photographs used by Violet Oakley in the making of the Dante Window.

Rihoko Ueno, archivist and co-curator of the exhibition Monuments Men: On the Front Line to Save Europe’s Art, 1942–1946, on view through April 20, 2104, examines Monument Man Walter Horn’s connection to the recovery of the Imperial Regalia of the Holy Roman Empire, and a cache of gold coins.

Rihoko Ueno, co-curator of the exhibition Monuments Men: On the Front Line to Save Europe’s Art, 1942–1946, examines the conditions inside mines throughout Germany and Austria where the Nazis stored caches of looted artwork and artifacts. She will be participating in a Twitter chat on March 11 at 2:30 p.m. ET.

Deputy Director Liza Kirwin explores an illustrated letter—currently on view in the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery—both elegiac and hopeful.

Kelly Quinn, the Terra Foundation Project Manager for Online Scholarly and Educational Initiatives, introduces a new series, Tip of the Hat, which takes a light-hearted look at artists and their headgear.

Archivist Rihoko Ueno, who recently processed holdings and curated an exhibit related to the Monuments Men at the Archives of American Art, examines how the actions of Rose Valland and James J. Rorimer saved valuable works of art in World War II.

The dog days of summer—those sweltering days of August, when the air hits you like a blast furnace—are upon us. To lighten our spirits in this oppressively hot month, the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art has selected 31 photographs of artists with their dogs for the 31 days of August for our Flickr site.

The Archives of American Art recently received as a bequest the personal papers of Jock Truman, an art dealer who served for many years as director of the Betty Parsons Gallery. Truman’s papers, approximately 3.5 linear feet of correspondence, photographs, biographical material, artwork, and printed material, arrived in two suitcases. This was an unusually personal mode of delivery for material that normally arrives in pasteboard boxes and manila envelopes, and my curiosity about this new acquisition was instantly piqued.

Reference specialist Elizabeth Botten investigates Rockwell Kent and a whale of a scarf tale.