Archives
of American Art
Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection Archive
Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum
National Air and Space Archives
National Anthropological Archives
National Museum of the American Indian Archives
Peale Family Papers, National Portrait Gallery
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Smithsonian American Art Museum Slide and Photo Archives
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Smithsonian Institution Archives
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Smithsonian Photographic Services
Affiliated Organization: National Gallery of Art
Letter from painter Joseph Lindon Smith (1863-1950) to his parents, illustrating
the vast quantities of fruits he is consuming in Venice. September 8,
1894. Joseph Lindon Smith papers.
Archives
of American Art
P.O. Box 37012
Victor Building, Suite 2200
MRC 937
Washington, DC 20013-7012
202.275.1961
www.aaa.si.edu/askus
www.aaa.si.edu
Hours
Washington
Center
(using original records)
Monday – Friday
9:30am to 4:30pm
Closed one hour for lunch
Appointment Required
(using
microfilm)
Monday – Friday
9am to 5pm
Appointment Recommended
Metro Stop: Gallery Place
The
Archives of American Art is dedicated to the collection, preservation,
and study of papers and other primary records of the history of the visual
arts in America. Its collections, comprising fifteen million items,
are
the world's largest single source for such information. The collections
include correspondence, journals, business papers, and other documentation
of artists, dealers, critics, art historians, and art institutions from
the eighteenth century to the present. They also include some three
thousand
oral history interviews, five hundred thousand graphic images, and seventy
five thousand works of art on paper. Microfilm copies of many of the
collections
are also available through interlibrary loan.
In addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, the Archives
maintains two regional reference centers in New York and Los Angeles,
and has unrestricted microfilm available at the Fine Arts Department
of the Boston Public Library, the American Art Study Center of the M.
H. deYoung Museum in San Francisco, and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort
Worth, Texas. The Archives publishes the Archives of American Art
Journal and sponsors symposia and lectures on art history subjects.
Highlights: Among the over five thousand collections are the records of the 1913
Armory Show, the first major exhibition of modern art held in the United States;
and galleries such as Macbeth, Downtown, Betty Parsons, Kraushaar, and Jacques
Seligmann. Extensive collections of personal papers include those of Romare Bearden,
Cecilia Beaux, Joseph Cornell, Thomas Cole, John Kensett, Lee Krasner, Reginald
Marsh, Elizabeth McCausland, Louise Nevelson, and Jackson Pollock.