Existing comment:
ARTISTIC INNOVATION:
The Smithsonian's first art gallery was in the Castle. Among the early acquisitions and exhibitions were paintings of Native Americans by John Mix Stanley and George Catlin. These early collections were predecessors to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which together with the National Portrait Gallery, occupies the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture today.
Other Smithsonian art museums grew in disparate ways. Charles Lang Freer donated his collection of Asian art and works by James McNeill Whistler to the Smithsonian, along with funds to construct the Freer Gallery of Art. The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the National Museum of African Art were originally private institutions, transferred to the Smithsonian. In 1974, the Hirshhorn Museum opened, giving the Smithsonian a world-class venue for contemporary art. Its founding collection came from Latvian American Joseph Hirshhorn, who considered his gift "a small repayment for what this nation has done for me and others like me who arrived here as immigrants." Today, art can be found all across the Smithsonian: a testament to our broad founding vision. Photo credits Top: Smithsonian American Art Museum, © Nam June Paik. |