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Untitled, from the series The Pond. John Gossage. Courtesy of the American Art Museum.

Celebrated photographer John Gossage first came to Washington, D.C., as a boy to attend Walden, an experimental school in the mid-1960s. His first book, published in 1985, was aptly titled The Pond, and explored marginal spaces in the modern landscape. It is widely considered one of the most important works of its kind, and features several photographs from the Washington D.C. area.

For the first time ever, the photographs from the book are featured in an exhibit, “The Pond,” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The show opens today and runs through January 17, 2011. Twenty-five years and 18 books after he produced The Pond, Gossage and I had a conversation about his first major work and whether or not Henry David Thoreau was onto something.

How does it feel to be revisiting The Pond after its original publication in 1985?

The Pond was actually my first major [mass] circulation book. I did one limited edition book with my gallery before that, but there were only 14 copies made, so this is the first one that really went out to a book-buying public. I have lived with it an awfully long time. Now, I’ve started looking at it again.

A contemporary artist’s job description is, if you have great ambition, make great work. But then you’re also obliged to set the context in which the work needs to be seen. The odd thing is, for the first edition I decided—since I wanted it to be emphatically a book—that the book was the original, instead of a catalog from the show. I never did a show of it. This is the first time I’ve ever seen it all up on the wall, which was really interesting for me. I actually sort of liked the show. I’m so used to [the photographs]. But it actually is a new way of looking at it.

How does it affect one’s perspective?

With books, you get a picture, and then you turn the page, it passes into memory and you get another picture. So you’re seeing one image at a time. To actually stand in a room and be able to scan multiple images is a very different experience. You see where you’re headed and where you’ve been at the same moment, because the book is a narrative. It’s actually about the proposition that there is such a thing as narrative landscape, which doesn’t really happen in literature, or it’s hard to pull off in literature, which is more character-driven. In photography, there is that possibility of being able to do that. So that’s what I wanted to experiment with, because I had not known of it being intently done before.

Photography books tag along on the literary model; you start at one point, and you end at another. With shows, no matter what intention you have, there are three rooms at the Smithsonian that contain the show. And with all intent, you want people to start at the start. But, there is absolutely no expectation on my part that at least half of the people will come in the right door. It doesn’t happen. You can’t herd people like that. I don’t herd like that. So they will see them in the order that they see them.

Speaking of literature, at the time you were taking these photos, what did you see as the connections between The Pond and the work of Henry David Thoreau?

Well, the reason I came to Washington was to go to a place called Walden School. So let’s put it this way: I’ve read Thoreau. Or else, you fail certain courses at a school called Walden.

One of the things I wanted to reference is Thoreau’s vision in Walden Pond of nature being a respite from the city, being this sort of philosophical escape from the 19th century. And it wasn’t quite true anymore. It’s a wonderful book. But what, in the late 20th century, could you say about going to the edge of town and looking at a pond? What does the pond look like now?

Which came first: the concept for The Pond, or the actual photos themselves?

The photos. I don’t work as a conceptualist. Let’s say the conceptual art model is that you have a project idea, or a set of concerns, and then you illustrate those concerns in whatever manner you see appropriate. For me, it has always been that the world suggests far more subtle and interesting variations than I could ever come up with. At a certain point in each project, you get an idea and you investigate it. But I always take my prompting from the work being done. And back then, I had some pictures and I thought, yes. And then I filled it out.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I’m tall and handsome.

To see for yourself, Gossage will be at the American Art Museum on October 14 at 7 p.m., for a conversation with museum-goers about the exhibit. His book will be re-issued with a new introduction written by the museum’s curator of photography and will be available for purchase in the museum store in September.

Painting of Tule Lake, by Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, who interned at Tule Lake in California. Collection of Hiroshi Sakai Estate and Family. Photo by Terry Heffernan.

Among the more than 120 works of art made by Japanese-American internees during World War II featured in the Renwick Gallery’s “The Art of Gaman” exhibit is an eerie painting of Tule Lake. In the background stands Castle Rock, its beauty in bold contrast to the austerity of the Northern California internment camp’s seemingly endless row of barracks.

Looking at the painting, one can’t help but wonder about the artist, his experience at the camp and the emotions engrained in the landscape. Fortunately, The Cats of Mirikitani, a 2006 documentary about the artist, 90-year-old Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, offers some insight. The Renwick Gallery is screening it Sunday, August 29, at 2 p.m.

Linda Hattendorf, a New York-based producer and director of documentaries, befriended Jimmy Mirikitani in 2001. Homeless, he worked on his art—drawings of cats, internment camps and atomic bombs— under the awning of a grocery store near Hattendorf’s SoHo apartment. After 9/11, the smoke and dust took a toll on the artist’s health and Hattendorf invited him into her home. She learned the man’s life story. He was born in Sacramento in 1920, raised in Hiroshima, Japan, and then returned to the United States at age 18 to pursue a career in art. Soon after, he was interned at Tule Lake. Eventually released, he ended up in New York City in the early 1950s, where he became a live-in cook for a resident of Park Avenue. When his employer passed away in the late 1980s, Mirikitani was left jobless and homeless. He sold his artwork to survive.

The Cats of Mirikitani tells the story of Jimmy Mirikitani and how, with the help of Hattendorf, he comes to terms with his past and lands on his feet, living in an assisted-living retirement center. The New York Times described the 2006 Audience Award Winner at the Tribeca Film Festival as “a brief but satisfying look at a defiantly self-sufficient life,” and New York Magazine declared it “a profoundly gripping film, with a cumulative impact that may well wipe you out.”

Hattendorf and co-producer Masa Yoshikawa will be in attendance at the Renwick Gallery on Sunday and partake in a question-and-answer session following the screening. Be sure to check out Mirikitani’s painting of Tule Lake and the rest of the “Art of Gaman” exhibit, open through January 30.

Dorothea Tanning sits with her late husband, Max Ernst. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Having outlived all of her contemporaries—including her late husband, the Dadaist and Surrealist painter Max Ernst—New York City-based artist, sculptor and writer Dorothea Tanning is 100 years old today.

“Artists can change and move on,” Tanning told the UK Observer in 2004, “and that’s much more interesting than being like Chagall, who painted the same damn thing all his life. Don’t you think?” Tanning’s artistic evolution has adhered to this spirited motto. Although she spent much of her life as a painter, she has participated in many other artistic forms over the years, earning recognition as a set designer, a sculptor and, most recently, a poet and writer.

Born to Swedish emigrés on August 25, 1910 in Galesburg, Illinois, Tanning’s first artistic impulse was towards the theater. At age five, she developed the ability to make herself weep while performing tragic poetry. It wasn’t long until Tanning began dabbling in the visual arts, and at age 15 she painted a naked woman with a flowing mane of leaves—much to her family’s chagrin.

After attending Galesburg’s Knox College, Tanning moved to Chicago and began frequenting the Art Institute of Chicago, where she drew inspiration from the paintings in the halls. She then moved to New York City, which she used as home base over the next several years, punctuated by stints in New Orleans, San Francisco, Sweden and France. In the late 1930s she visited an exhibit on Dadaism and Surrealism at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which inspired her to join the Surrealist movement. In 1941, she met gallery owner Julien Levy, who signed her to his roster of like-minded artists. One of the artists Levy happened to represent at the time was the German painter, Max Ernst.

Tanning met and married Ernst in 1946, becoming his fourth wife in a marriage lasting 30 years. The couple lived in Sedona, Arizona, and then in France for the majority of their marriage. When Ernst passed away in 1976, Tanning returned to New York City. She has lived there ever since.

Throughout her long life, the artist has never ceased producing art; not when she suffered a stroke, not even when, at age 88, she was forced to give up painting because it was too physically demanding (she had an accident and broke her wrist). Her oeuvre includes soft sculptures, torturous depictions of bodies intertwined, fantastical self portraits and absurd table scenes. Her last painting series (completed in 1997), titled Another Language of Flowers, was made up of large canvases with dreamlike imaginary flowers. The haunting, otherworldly quality of her canvases also appears in her written works, which include the memoir Birthday, an expanded autobiography entitled Between Lives, the poetic work A Table of Content, and her only novel, Chasm: A Weekend.

With a century of artistic accomplishments under her belt, Tanning maintains a wry sense of humor. “As for still being here,” she told Salon.com in 2002, “I can only apologize.”

Tanning’s pencil drawing, Fire, is in the collections of the American Art Museum, and a some of her correspondences are held at the Archives of American Art.

In 1895, Owney the dog went around the world in 132 days. Image courtesy of the National Postal Museum

Ask a Curator: Want to know what goes into creating all those exhibits at the Smithsonian museums? Want to connect with curators from museums abroad? Next Wednesday, September 1, museums around the world are teaming up for “Ask a Curator Day,” a Twitter-hosted forum for all those burning curatorial questions you’ve been holding back. Participating Smithsonian Museums include the Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art, the African Art Museum, the Hirshhorn and the National Postal Museum.

Waffle Week: Make no mistake about it—as their name would suggest, Belgian waffles are, indeed, Belgian in origin. The American stovetop waffle iron, however, has its roots a bit closer to home, in Troy, New York, where, on August 24, 1869, Cornelius Swarthout was awarded the first patent for the household appliance. The Smithsonian Libraries blog honors National Waffle Day with a short history of the waffle iron, a tragically under-celebrated milestone. Here’s how a restaurant in Albany, New York, is commemorating the occasion.

It Takes a Village. . . To feed the National Zoo’s 2,000 animals. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the Zoo’s commissary. Watch how Zoo nutritionists prepare food for all of the zoo’s animals, some 400 species, creating a diet of fresh produce uniquely tailored to each critter’s health requirements. (The Zoo’s commissary recalls the kitchen in my college dining hall.)

Carnival of the Blue: Kudos to the Ocean Portal Blog, which was featured on this month’s Carnival of the Blue, a monthly roundup of some of the best blogging about marine issues and environments on the Web. This roundup was hosted by Arthropoda, and includes posts on everything from jellyfish to dogfish, and from swimming with whale sharks to evading molluscan hordes.

Talk About Covering a Lot of Ground: There once was a dog named Owney, who traveled the world on a. . . steamship! According to Pushing the Envelope, the well-traveled pup, Owney (who began riding mail trains with US Railway Post Office clerks in the 1880s) was the participant in a 1895 publicity stunt. According to the post, “Owney visited Kobe, Japan, Hong Kong, and switched to the British steamer Port Phillip that carried him to Shanghai, Singapore, the Suez, Algiers and finally New York City.” Owney’s trip around the world took 132 days.

The Red Hat Society has donated its founder's original red hat and a purple boa to the American History Museum. Photo courtesy of the Museum.

“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple / With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.”

- “Warning,” a poem by Jenny Joseph

When Sue Ellen Cooper of Tucson, Arizona, first read this line of poetry, she connected with it. She had a bright red fedora of her own, which she had purchased at a local thrift shop, and appreciated the poem’s message: have fun growing old. Cooper gave a red hat and a copy of the poem to a friend for her birthday. She gave the same to other friends, and soon enough it became her signature gift.

A clan of red hatters formed and to cement their sisterhood, they gathered, in 1998, for a tea party in Fullerton, California. They even wore purple dresses to bring Jenny Joseph’s poem fully to life. The group formally became the Red Hat Society, with Cooper crowned its “Exalted Queen Mother.”

Since then, the society’s mission to create a network of women approaching 50 years of age and beyond that enjoy each other’s companionship and shared love of having fun has struck a chord with thousands of women. In just five years, more than 40,000 chapters have sprung up worldwide.

The Red Hat Society recently donated Cooper’s original red fedora and a purple-feather boa to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. ”We collect a lot of community-related objects. One of the things that is very interesting to us is that there are very few societies or organizations that actually are being started now that we can monitor and be involved with and know about. Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have started and they’re proceeding. The YWCA and YMCA are started and proceeding,” says Nancy Davis, curator of the museum’s division of home and community life.”But the Red Hat Society is in its nascent stages. We were interested in following up and finding out a little bit more about this group and understanding the way in which it functions.”

Davis plans on interviewing Sue Ellen Cooper in mid-September so that the museum has an oral history of how she turned this whimsical group of red hatters into a professional organization and how she envisions the Red Hat Society changing in the future. At this point, there is no set plan for displaying the hat and boa, which is fairly typical given that the museum is constantly collecting artifacts.

“We collect contemporary material that speaks to people’s interests today,” says Davis. The red fedora and purple boa join other items, everything from Lance Armstrong Live Strong bracelets to an Escaramuza outfit, that people are compelled to wear because they express an affinity for an organization or cause.