The Smithsonian American Art Museum will exhibit Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen, June 21-January 6, 2019. Conceptual artist Paglen “blurs the lines between art, science, and investigative journalism to construct unfamiliar and at times unsettling ways to see and interpret the world around us.” In Paglen's photographs, the infrastructure of surveillance is apparent. This mid-career survey is the first exhibition to present his early photographic series alongside his recent sculptural objects and new work with artificial intelligence. The exhibition is organized by John Jacob, SAAM’s McEvoy Family Curator for Photography, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is presenting Diane Arbus, thru September 30.An American photographer, Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was known for her focus on people who were often seen by the public as unattractive.
This is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on a box of ten photographs by Arbus, using an eleventh print set that Arbus assembled specially for Bea Feitler. It was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1986, and is the only one of the portfolios completed and sold by Arbus that is publicly held.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exhibiting George Catlin's American Buffalo, thru August 5.In his illustrated essay and commentary on Catlin’s paintings, Adam Duncan Harris, the Petersen Curator of Art and Research at the National Museum of Wildlife Art and guest curator of the exhibition, explores the artist’s representation of the close relationship between Native Americans and the buffalo.This exhibition traveled to seven cities across the U.S. in 2014–2015.
Image below:George Catlin, Buffalo Bull, Grazing on the Prairie, 1832-1833
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exhibiting Do Ho Suh: Almost Home, thru August 5. Born in Korea in 1962, Suh moved to the U.S. in 1991 and now spends his time between New York, London, and Seoul. His large-scale fabric sculptures “attempt to form a physical manifestation of memory and reckon with ideas of personal history, cultural traditions, and belief systems in the contemporary world.” The exhibition features a major installation of the artist’s brightly-hued Hub sculptures along with a group of semi-transparent replicas of household objects called Specimens. Almost Home transforms SAAM’s galleries into an immersive passageway of conjoined rooms that visitors can experience from the inside. The show was organized by Sarah Newman, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art.
Image below: Do Ho Suh, Hub-01, Ground Floor, Union Wharf, 23 Wenlock Road, London N1 7SB, UK; Hub, Main Entrance, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA; Hub, 3rd Floor, Union Wharf, 23 Wenlock Road, London N1 7ST, UK, 2016, polyester fabric and stainless steel armature. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong
The Renwick Gallery of The American Art Museum is exhibiting No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, thru September 16.The exhibition “takes over the entire Renwick Gallery building, bringing alive the maker culture of Burning Man through artworks, room-sized installations, jewelry, costumes and ephemera that transport visitors to the gathering’s famed desert location, the “playa.” Immersive works by individual artists and collectives highlight the ingenuity and creative spirit of this cultural movement. Photographs and archival documents drawn from the Burning Man Archives at the Nevada Museum of Art and their exhibition City of Dust: The Evolution of Burning Man trace Burning Man’s growth and its bohemian, counterculture roots.”
Image below:FoldHaus, Shrumen Lumen, 2016, corrugated plastic, steel, and aluminum; Photo by Rene Smith Visit https://americanart.si.edu
