BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: The Automobile and American Art

DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: The Automobile and American Art:

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Description of Pictures: The Automobile and American Art
September 18, 2020 – Indefinitely
What could be more American than the car? From drive-ins to road trips on the open highway—cars are an essential part of American culture.
Since the birth of the automobile, cars have also been a central theme in American art, from the paintings of William H. Johnson, which highlight the perils of driving in segregated America, to the large fiberglass sculptures of Luis Jiménez, which evoke lowrider car culture. Some artists, such as sculptor David Smith, incorporated techniques they learned working on auto assembly lines into their art. Others, including Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe, used their cars as mobile studios.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection includes hundreds of artworks featuring cars. Albert H. Small’s prolific collection of model cars, a gift to the museum, provides a unique lens through which to explore these works and the role of the automobile in American art.
A selection of 100 model cars is on display on the third floor, near SAAM’s Luce Foundation Center for American Art.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. AUTOM_201015_06.JPG: Preamble, 1987 Mike Wilkins In a show of ingenuity, Mike Wilkins used a collection of vanity license plates to phonetically spell out the preamble of the US Constitution, combining letters and numbers in a way often used by drivers to convey messages about themselves or their cars on vanity plates. All fifty states and the District of Columbia are represented with plates, which are in alphabetical order by state name. Though most of the plates make no sense on their own, together they re-create text from one of the greatest documents in American history. This work puts a fun twist on the phrase, "the United States."
2. AUTOM_201015_14.JPG: The Automobile and American Art What do you collect? Collectors are driven by their own unique passions, from American art to model cars. Often a collection begins with one special object. Share an image of a favorite work in SAAM's collection that might inspire a collection of your own, using #atSAAM .
3. AUTOM_201015_52.JPG: "For what you really collect is always yourself." -- Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher (1929-2007)
4. AUTOM_201015_64.JPG: The Automobile and American Art What could be more American than the car? From drive-ins to road trips on the open highway -- cars are an essential part of American culture. Since the birth of the automobile, cars have also been a central theme in American art, from the paintings of William H. Johnson, which highlights the perils of driving in segregated America, to the large fiberglass sculptures of Luis Jimenez, which evoke lowrider car culture. Some artists, such as sculptor David Smith, incorporated techniques they learned working on auto assembly lines into their art. Others, including Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe, used their cars as mobile studios. The Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection includes hundreds of artworks featuring cars. Albert H. Small's prolific collection of model cars, a gift to the museum, provides a unique lens through which to explore these works and the role of the automobile in American art.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages here that have content directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]
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- ...More (List all 87 pages)...
Sort of Related Pages: Still more pages here that have content somewhat related to this one:
- 2019_DC_SIPG_Orchids: DC -- Smithsonian Gardens & USBG -- Orchid Show @ Donald Reynolds Center (55 photos from 2019)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) Donald Reynolds Center (Everything)] [(Smithsonian) Donald Reynolds Center (Non-Events)] [Museums (Art)]
2020 photos: Well, that was a year, wasn't it? The COVID-19 pandemic cut off most events here in DC after March 11 and then the BLM protests started followed by the child president trying to steal the election in November. Trump's handling of the pandemic has been a series of disastrous missteps and lies, encouraging his minions to not wear masks and increasing the deaths here. As the chant goes -- Hey, hey, POTUS-A; how many folks did you kill today? Number of photos taken this year: about 246,000, the fewest number of photos I had taken in any year since 2007.
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].