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Curatorial Office
The Curatorial Office of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) organizes and oversees the museum's exhibitions and acquisitions programs. It also researches, conserves, and displays the national collection.
Curators
SAAM curators have broad expertise, and their research interests encompass the full range of American art from the past to the present.
Eleanor Jones Harvey—nineteenth and early twentieth century art, landscape painting, southwestern and Texas art
George Gurney—sculpture, art of the American West
Virginia Mecklenburg—twentieth-century art, the Ash Can School, and New Deal art
Joann Moser—graphic arts
William Truettner—eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painting, art of the American West
Toby Jurovics—photography
Joanna Marsh—contemporary
John Hanhardt—media arts
Exhibitions and Publications
Extensive research by the Smithsonian American Art Museum curatorial staff has produced large-scale exhibitions with catalogues such as Metropolitan Lives: The Ash Can Artists and Their New York (1896–1917), Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype, Posters American Style, Edward Hopper: The Watercolors, and Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory, as well as smaller shows that draw from the museum's collection. Many of these exhibitions are represented on our Web site in virtual form. The museum also organizes traveling exhibitions.
Conservation Lab
The museum's Conservation Laboratory is responsible for the treatment of works in the museum's collection. Conservators specialize in painting, paper, and three-dimensional objects. The lab is equipped with hot table, ultraviolet and infrared viewing systems, stereomicroscopes, suction table for stain removal, sink for washing works of art on paper, spray booth, fume hood, and other specialized tools for the treatment of works of art. The conservation staff also monitors hygrothermographs that measure temperature and humidity in the galleries, as well as other tools that measure visual spectrum and ultraviolet light.
Ann Creager—paintings
Helen Ingalls—objects
Kate Maynor—works on paper, photographs
Hugh Shockey—objects
Luce Foundation Center for American Art
Lunder Conservation Center
For further information about the Curatorial Office, contact Debbie Earle, Curatorial Management Assistant, at SAAMCurator@si.edu
Pictured: Jack Levine, Art Gallery, about 1942, lithograph, 10 1/4 x 8 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Baum in memory of Edith Gregor Halpert