About the museum
The story of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., holds one of the largest collections of American art in the world. It shares the Old Patent Office Building, a Greek Revival landmark, with the National Portrait Gallery.
Its collection runs from colonial times to today, with Winslow Homer, Albert Bierstadt, Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper.
The collection
SAAM's collection of about 44,000 works, the first federal art collection, was begun in 1829. It traces American art from colonial portraits to contemporary art and folk art.
Its highlights include Albert Bierstadt's Among the Sierra Nevada, California, Edward Hopper's Cape Cod Morning, Georgia O'Keeffe, Thomas Moran's landscapes of the West and Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway.
At ArtLogia you can order 40 of its paintings as hand-painted reproductions, by 28 artists led by Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole and Robert Seldon Duncanson.
- paintings to order
- 40
- artists
- 28
- art movements
- 7
- years covered
- 1765–1936
The building
The Old Patent Office Building, begun in 1836, is one of Washington's oldest public buildings; Walt Whitman worked there as a nurse when it was a Civil War hospital. Foster + Partners covered its courtyard with an undulating glass roof in 2007.
Masterpieces to see
Planning a visit
Entry is free; the glass-covered Kogod Courtyard between the two museums is a fine place to rest.
