Exhibitions

Luce Foundation Center for American Art

July 1, 2006 – Permanent
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Smithsonian American Art Museum
8th and G Streets, NW
Washington, DC

3rd & 4th Floors and 3rd Floor Mezzanine, West

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The Luce Foundation Center for American Art is the first visible art storage and study center in Washington that showcases more than 3,000 artworks from the museum's permanent collection: paintings densely hung on screens; sculptures, contemporary crafts, and art objects arranged on shelves; and portrait miniatures, bronze medals, and contemporary jewelry in drawers that slide open with the touch of a button. The space allows the museum to display five times the number of paintings and sculptures on public view.

Highlights include:

  • selected objects from the Rosenak Collection of American Folk Art
  • a selection of Presidential Inaugural medals
  • in-depth collections of paintings by the African American modernist William H. Johnson
  • paintings by 19th-century artists Albert Pinkham Ryder and Henry Ossawa Tanner
  • John Gellatly's European collection of decorative arts