EVENT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/smithsonian-black-art
February 16th 6pm - February 17th 10pm EST, Virtual, Free

We invite you to join us for a two-part program covering Black and African American art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum / National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

The SAAM-NPG has one of the world’s largest collections of American art and this is an online/virtual version of our popular in-person tours we lead at the museum.

Each program will focus on art produced by Black / African American artists.

Part One: Artists Born Before 1900:

Joshua Johnson
Edmonia Lewis
Henry Ossawa Tanner
Laura Wheeler Waring
Horace Pippin
Alma Thomas
Augusta Savage
Etc.

Part Two: Artists Born Since 1900:

Richmond Barthe
William H. Johnson
James Hampton
Romare Bearden
Earle Wilton Richardson
Gordon Parks
Eldzier Cortor
Jacob Lawrence
Mickalene Thomas
Amy Sherald
Kehinde Wiley

Etc.

We’ll also cover a handful of noteworthy art works portraying Black / African Americans by other artists including: Eastman Johnson, Winslow Homer, John Sloan, Georgia O’Keeffe, Betsy Graves Reyneau, etc.

Colin Powell Portrait at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery with Robert Kelleman

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) 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. The museum has more than 7,000 artists represented in the collection. Most exhibitions take place in the museum's main building, the old Patent Office Building (shared with the National Portrait Gallery), while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.

The museum provides electronic resources to schools and the public through its national education program. It maintains seven online research databases with more than 500,000 records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that document more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide. Since 1951, the museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program; as of 2013, more than 2.5 million visitors have seen the exhibitions.

The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is a historic art museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Founded in 1962 and opened to the public in 1968, it is part of the Smithsonian Institution. The National Portrait Gallery had three curatorial divisions: painting and sculpture, prints and drawings, and photography. Its collections focus on images of famous and important Americans. It is the only major museum in the United States dedicated solely to portraiture.

The museum is housed in the historic Old Patent Office Building, as is the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The building is located just south of Chinatown in downtown Washington. Constructed between 1836 and 1867, the building has a sandstone and marble façade, and porticoes modeled after the Parthenon.

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Your host for this program is Robert Kelleman, the founder/director of the non-profit community organizations Washington, DC History & Culture and Dallas-Texas History & Culture.