News

The Archives of American Art, the Lunder Institute, and the Cleveland Museum of Art invite early to mid-career academics to participate in a series of three workshops from 2019 through 2021 focused on teaching the history of American art through primary sources. Please apply by May 15, 2019.

The Dedalus Foundation Graduate Research Essay Prize at the Archives of American Art recognizes original research by a graduate student that engages in a substantial, meaningful way with the holdings of the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art and focuses on studies related to painting, sculpture, and the allied arts from 1940 to the present day.

For more information on how to apply, please visit the Essay Prize page.

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.

Michaela Rife, a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Toronto, has been awarded the 2018 Archives of American Art Graduate Research Essay Prize. This prize recognizes emerging scholars who advance the understanding of American art history through the innovative use of primary sources at the Archives of American Art.

In support of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, the Archives of American Art Journal is planning a special issue showcasing new approaches to feminism, American art, and its archives. We invite proposals for manuscripts that ask: What constitutes a feminist reading of an archive? In what ways do archives serve or challenge feminist art histories?

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art announced that it is the beneficiary of a major promised gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation: the expansive Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers comprising over 500 linear feet. The gift constitutes the most complete research resource anywhere on the art and life of the artist and his times, illuminating Lichtenstein’s wide-reaching influence and legacy. The foundation will support the digitization of the collection in collaboration with the Archives and will gift the papers in stages.

The Archives of American Art announced the digitization of 77 notebooks created by the multi-faceted artist Matt Mullican (b. 1951) that the artist gifted to the Archives from 2014 to 2017. Available on-line at the Archives’ website, the notebooks’ depth of content include hundreds of drawings and sketches, conceptual frameworks, notes, lists, calendars, travel logistics, and diary entries. It is the first major collection from a Pictures Generation artist to be donated to the Archives.