The Arts and Industries Building is the second oldest of the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Initially named the National Museum, it was built to provide the Smithsonian with its first proper facility for public display of its growing collections. The building, designed by architects Adolf Cluss and Paul Schulze, opened in 1881, hosting an inaugural ball for President James A. Garfield. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971. After being closed since 2004 for repair and renovation, the building reopened in 2021 with a special exhibition, Futures.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the United States. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the museum's collection. Most exhibitions are held in the museum's main building, the Old Patent Office Building, while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.
Elizabeth Catlett, born as Alice Elizabeth Catlett, also known as Elizabeth Catlett Mora was an American and Mexican sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in the 20th century, which often focused on the female experience. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., to parents working in education, and was the grandchild of formerly enslaved people. It was difficult for a black woman at this time to pursue a career as a working artist. Catlett devoted much of her career to teaching. However, a fellowship awarded to her in 1946 allowed her to travel to Mexico City, where she settled and worked with the Taller de Gráfica Popular for twenty years and became head of the sculpture department for the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. In the 1950s, her main means of artistic expression shifted from print to sculpture, though she never gave up the former.
Sam Gilliam was an American abstract painter, sculptor, and arts educator. Born in Mississippi, and raised in Kentucky, Gilliam spent his entire adult life in Washington, D.C., eventually being described as the "dean" of the city's arts community. Originally associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington-area artists that developed a form of abstract art from color field painting in the 1950s and 1960s, Gilliam moved beyond the group's core aesthetics of flat fields of color in the mid-60s by introducing both process and sculptural elements to his paintings.
Marco Polo di Suvero, better known as Mark di Suvero, is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient.
The Embassy of Australia in Washington, D.C. is the diplomatic mission of the Commonwealth of Australia to the United States. The chancery is located at 1601 Massachusetts Avenue NW on Scott Circle, at the beginning of Embassy Row. The current ambassador is former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Deputy Head of Mission is Paul Myler. The embassy employs more than 250 people.
Barbara Ernst Prey is an American artist who specializes in the art of watercolor. In 2008 Prey was appointed to the National Council on the Arts, the advisory body of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2015, MASS MoCA commissioned Barbara Prey to create the world's largest known watercolor painting for its new Building 6, which opened in Spring 2017. She has worked in oil painting and illustration, the latter of which she contributed to The New Yorker for a decade. She currently works and lives in Long Island, New York, Maine and Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Margaret A Boozer is an American ceramist and sculpture artist, best known for her clay and ceramic compositions, or landscapes, that focus on the individuality, history, and geology of the clay used as subject matters.
Mary Beth Edelson was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists". Edelson was a printmaker, book artist, collage artist, painter, photographer, performance artist, and author. Her works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Ellen Powell Tiberino (1937-1992) was an African American artist who was figurative and expressionist in her pastels, oils, pencil drawings and sculptures. Her works were infused with the experiences and history of Black people, women in particular, whom she most often painted in dark and haunting hues. She was a prolific artist, working against time as she battled cancer for the last 14 years of her life.
Lia Cook is an American fiber artist noted for her work combining weaving with photography, painting, and digital technology. She lives and works in Berkeley, California, and is known for her weavings which expanded the traditional boundaries of textile arts. She has been a professor at California College of the Arts since 1976.
Ethel V. Ashton was an American artist who primarily worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was both a subject of noted artist Alice Neel and a portraitist of Neel. Her early works reflect the influence of Ashcan realism focused primarily on portrait painting. She was commissioned to work on the Works Progress Administration's post office mural project and has works hanging in the permanent collections of several prominent museums. By the mid-1950s she worked with abstract concepts and through the end of the civil rights era, her works synthesize both abstract and realism. She also served as the librarian of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1957 into the early 1970s.
Beulah Ruth Bettersworth (1894–1968) was an artist and muralist in the early 20th century. She was most known for her still lifes and street scenes. Her painting Christopher Street, Greenwich Village was selected for the White House by President Franklin Roosevelt and is now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She won national competitions to complete post office murals for the post offices in Indianola and Columbus, Mississippi.
Enid Bell Palanchian, known professionally as Enid Bell in her early career and later on as Enid Bell Palanchian, was an American sculptor, illustrator and teacher born in London, England.
Elyn Zimmerman is an American sculptor known for her emphasis on large scale, site specific projects and environmental art. Along with these works, Zimmerman has exhibited drawings and photographs since graduating with an MFA in painting and photography at University of California, Los Angeles in 1972. Her teachers included Robert Heineken, Robert Irwin, and Richard Diebenkorn.
Lilian Thomas Burwell is a Washington, DC sculptor and painter whose shaped paintings often blur the line between the two disciplines. Her artwork uses abstraction to create a personal response to the natural world.
Gyöngy Laky is an American sculptor living and working in San Francisco, California. Her work has been exhibited in the U.S., Europe, Asia and South America. She gained recognition early in her career for her linear sculptures constructed in the architectural methods of textile arts. “Laky’s art manifests architectonic sensibility. She is as much an engineer as she is an artist in the conventional sense.” She is also known for her site-specific, outdoor, temporary installations.
Barbara J. Bullock is an African American painter, collagist, printmaker, soft sculptor and arts instructor. Her works capture African motifs, African and African American culture, spirits, dancing and jazz in abstract and figural forms. She creates three-dimensional collages, portraits, altars and masks in vibrant colors, patterns and shapes. Bullock produces artworks in series with a common theme and style.
Lila Oliver Asher was an American artist and printmaker. She is best known for her printmaking, primarily with linocut and woodcut, and her subjects spanned from religious themes, myths, musicians, and mothers. Asher also explored a variety of mediums including watercolor, sculpture, drawing, portraiture, wrought iron, murals, stained glass windows, and published book about her experiences as an artist in World War II. She explored these themes and mediums over the expanse of her long career as they connected with her experiences in life.
Joyce Wellman is an American artist who specializes in painting and printmaking. Born in Brooklyn, she attended community college before earning a degree at the City College of New York. She would later earn two master's degree, one in education and one in art. She initially focused on printmaking, but later turned her focus to painting. She briefly worked as a teacher before spending a few years on sabbatical. During that time she worked on her art portfolio, receiving help by artists including Valerie Maynard.
