Smithsonian American Art Museum

I came immediately after finishing my Ph.D. in art history at the University of Virginia.

I was doing a fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum when I saw this wonderful opportunity for an assistant curator come through my email box.

And 10 years later, I'm still here.

Peter, your role as executive director is probably more easy to understand, but fraught with the difficulty of achieving it.

Oh, look at this.

A cultural visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of Art.

Oh, excuse me.

It's one wing.

It's a cool piece.

It's in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as it should, given that it says so much about She was also very involved in political activism in the late 1960s.

She was really involved in the civil rights movement.

And, you know, she worked with other black women artists like Adrian Piper, Howardina Pindell, who is also still alive in her 90s.

What's your thinking about that?

If you've ever been lucky enough to be in downtown Washington, D.C., and you see today what is now two Smithsonian museums that share a building, it's the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.

But it's this incredible uh greek neoclassical beautiful building with huge columns um and you know if you go inside there's these huge soaring um kind of atriums and stuff and it's just really a wonderful building i mean if and if you think back into 1830 right dc was this town with like dirt roads and you had the white house and you had congress right and like the third

coolest building that's right

It was almost three tons.

And it's actually Smithsonian American Art Museum right now.

But it was shipped to the United States for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.

So that was kind of her magnum opus in a lot of ways.

It's been an exciting few years.

You played a key role in the creation of the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, both of which opened in '68.

You helped your boss and the team of fellow art historians to transform the old patent office building into a proper home for the nation's art museum and portrait gallery.

And to be honest, today, you look forward to catching up with your old classmates and sharing what you've been up to.

A ver si aquí tienen los nombres.

Um, Asian art, uh, contemporary art, aviation and space flight, uh, African art, American history, a postal museum, uh, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, uh, the Smithsonian Zoo.

So basically, if it has to do with science and, and culture and art, it's there.

And it's just...

Yeah.

So his work was actually donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and it's been on display since 1970.

Um, so, uh, Harry Lohr basically paid the outstanding rent, and he took possession of the art display.

He was like, "It has to come here for the, uh, Smithsonian American Art Museum." So it's there if you wanna go see it.

Um-

I do have a question.

Now, I will say the James Hampton, the, the Throne of the Third Heaven is, is astounding and is, like, so...

I've never seen it in person, but I will say it is so incredibly American.