Few interior views of the revolutionary 1913 Armory Show remain, but the Archives of American Art holds one of the most comprehensive collections of related documents, from organizers’ letters to critical response. Courtesy of Wikimedia

Posters advertised a heady guest list for the 1913 Armory Show held in New York City, including, Matisse, Brancusi, van Gogh and Cézanne. It would have been a once-in-a-lifetime gathering had it been true and not just a little bit of ornery fun on the part of organizers (unfortunately, van Gogh died in 1890 and Cézanne in 1906).  Even without them, the show, which celebrates its 100th anniversary February 17th through March 15th, managed to make history.

“Going to the Armory Show is kind of like going to a sideshow,” explains Mary Savig, a specialist from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. Organized by artists Walt Kuhn, Walter Pach and Arthur B. Davies the show, which featured some 1,250 works of art from both European and American artists, is seen as the moment modern art took center stage in the United States.

Can you spot the woman in Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2? Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Everything from Impressionism to Cubism was included, sometimes to comical effect. Critics weren’t quite sure what to do with the radical new vision of art on view, particularly when it came to French artist Marcel Duchamp’s enigmatic Nude Descending A Staircase. Audiences and critics alike became obsessed with what they thought must be an optical illusion or some sort of visual trick. Savig says, “There was this rhetoric in the newspapers formed around the idea that you would go and you would look for this woman in the painting and was she there? People couldn’t figure it out.” One critic in Chicago even held a very serious lecture trying to highlight precisely where the figure of the woman could be delineated. (For more about Duchamp and his painting, check out Megan Gambino’s document deep dive with materials from the Armory Show)

The New York Tribune declared it a “Remarkable Affair, Despite Some Freakish Absurdities.”

Other reactions were less kind. The International News Service published a cartoon by Frederick Opper that purported to explain art from the exhibition in four panels, including the room featuring “work by ‘nuttists,’ ‘dope-ists,’ topsy-turvists,’ ‘inside-outists’ and ‘toodle-doodle-ists,’ whom police are now trying to locate” and a dotted line which showed the “route taken by Old Masters after seeing advanced art exhibits.”

Critics had a grand time riffing the Cubist works on display at the Armory Show. Courtesy of the Archives of American Art

“That was also to the credit of the organizers of the show,” says Savig, “because they really wanted it to be sensational. They were really hoping to get these headlines that would grab people in to see for themselves what kind of unimaginable artwork was on exhibit.”

The show’s custom pins and buttons borrowed from revolutionary imagery to convey a spirit of freshness. Courtesy of the Archives of American Art

Savig, who curated the exhibit, “The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913,” set to open at the Montclair Art Museum on Feb. 17, 2013, says that the show was also a personal mission on the part of the organizers. “[Kuhn] wanted American art to be equal to or eventually surpass the European works in the show. He really wanted. . .to show how avant-garde Europe was. But also, to show, hopefully, that Americans could also be at that level.”

Along with her colleague Kelly Quinn, who created an interactive, online timeline about the planning and execution of the Armory Show, Savig relied on the Archives of American Art’s extensive materials to get the behind-the-scenes stories. Kuhn’s letters back home to his wife, Vera, for example, detail his time spent scouring Europe for material to take back for the show. Writings from artists who volunteered at the show exclaiming over the inspiring works of art offer a personal testimony as to the impact the show had on the course of American art. And tiny details like a letter from a rabbi who lost his umbrella while attending the show, reveal, says Savig, the wide appeal of the show and the audience the exhibit was able to attract.

One example of the kind of passion the show could encourage comes from artist Manierre Dawson, who desperately wanted to buy some of the art on view. “There’s these really sweet pieces of his father saying that he can’t buy the Picasso because it would be outrageous to hang above the mantle and that really it would be better for him to spend his money elsewhere,” says Quinn. “But he had saved his money and he ends up buying a Duchamp drawing. He kind of consoles himself and says, it’s almost as big and almost as good as Nude Descending a Staircase.”

The show traveled to Chicago and Boston after New York. Despite requests from Baltimore, Des Moines and Seattle, the organizers only completed a three-city tour before getting back to their own art. But that was enough to accomplish the goal Kuhn and the others had set out for themselves: to revolutionize art in America.

Edouard Manet’s 1865-1866 depiction of a bull fight was included in the show. Courtesy of Wikimedia

Also on view, Paul Cézanne’s Bathers, 1877-1878. With big names like his included in the show, critics knew they were dealing with serious stuff, even if they didn’t quite understand it. Courtesy of Wikimedia

One of the many American artists whose work appeared in the Armory Show, George Bellows was known for his realist paintings, including his 1909 Both Members of This Club. Courtesy of Wikimedia

Artist Dorr Bothwell’s sketch of visitors at the San Francisco Art Museum in 1942 during World War II.

Imagine walking in the footsteps of an artist visiting an art gallery. Are you feeling inspiration or intimidation? And what would you think if you happened upon an unguarded guard bored and asleep at his post?

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, which collects the sketchbooks, letters, financial records and other ephemera documenting the lives of American artists, answers some of these questions in its new show, “A Day at the Museum,” which opened recently at the Lawrence A Fleischman Gallery.

Curator Mary Savig says that the multifaceted exhibit sheds light not only on the lives of the artists, but also on museums themselves—how they’ve evolved over time, as well as their roles as artistic incubators, educating and opening minds to art, history and culture. But before you dash away, alarmed by the didactic, consider some of the tales revealed here.

In one oral history interview, Conceptual artist Eleanor Antin recalls her childhood visits to the Museum of Modern Art in the 1940s. “I used to pick one picture. I’d look around seriously and I’d pick one picture that I would just study,” she says. “I’d look at other things, too, but I’d spend much of my time that day in front of that picture. I remember those [pictures] in great detail, because I really looked at them very deeply and with great pleasure.”

Sculptor Lee Bontecou also visited New York City museums in her youth. She tells the story of being stunned by a Van Gogh exhibit that she saw with her mother at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Both of us were bowled over. It was incredible,” she says in her oral history recording. “We both just held hands and went through the whole thing.”

Pioneering light artist Dan Flavin, who worked at the American Museum of Natural History in the 1960s, wrote to an art curator saying the museum’s exhibits inspired the early designs of his art. And it was collage artist Romare Bearden who visited Italy’s Museo Della Conservatori in the 1950s and found all of its guards fast asleep. “Anyone could have walked away with the whole museum,” he wrote to a mentor.

One document reveals that New York’s American Museum of Natural History, now one of the world’s most respected museums, was a bit more carnival than cultural when it opened. Painter Jervis McEntee wrote in his diary after a visit in 1877 that he enjoyed seeing a fat woman and a tattooed man.

“In a lot of ways, museum-going has changed,” Savig says, “so we want to show people the things that are the same or why things are different.”

The exhibit collects not only letters by famous artists, but diary entries, sketches from museum visits, and photos of the famous and digerati visiting museums. Other recorded stories delight us with the memories of special visits. In total, around 50 documents and recordings from the past two centuries are featured.

The main goal, Savig says, is to show how the range and depth of American art reflect the variety of experiences a person, artist or otherwise, might have at a museum: “Some people have fun going to see exhibitions with their children or their parents, and some people are just there to study, because they’re students, some people are guards. We really wanted to show a variety of experiences at museums, because that’s what our visitors will have.”

Savig encourages visitors to share their experiences, too.

“A Day at the Museum”—the museum exhibit about visiting museum exhibits—is open until June 2, 2013. The exhibit has its own hash tag, #DayAtTheMuseum, and a Flickr page on which museum-goers can post photos their trips to museums around the world. Check out some of the shared photos below.

Visitors at the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC. © Glyn Lowe Photoworks.

People and paintings in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. © Laurent Yokel.

Mixed reviews of a statue in Berlin’s Mitte Museum. © Mahoroba Foto.

A T-rex invades the Natural History Museum. © Tim Aldworth

A woman and her daughter study a painting by Vincent Van Gogh at Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands. © Huub Louppen

Arturo Rodríguez made this Van Gogh-inspired card for Helen L. Kohen, ca. 1980-1999. From Handmade Holiday Cards from 20th-Century Artists.

Friday, November 23: ZooLights 

It’s that time of year at last, when we get to see all of our favorite Zoo creatures as giant, light-up sculptures! That’s right, folks, ZooLights is back at the National Zoo. So yeah, you can go and enjoy the wildlife and educational extras (and you should) but the real show starts at night when dazzling greens, yellows and reds bring the Zoo to life. The show attracts 100,000 visitors each year. And new this year, the Conservation Carousel done in the grand tradition of old-fashioned carousels with handcrafted representations of the Zoo’s animal icons. Model trains, snowless tubing and plenty of photo opportunities, ZooLights entertains young and old. Admission is free. Parking $9 FONZ members,
$16 nonmembers. Begins Friday 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. National Zoo.

Saturday, November 24: Booksigning with Mary Savig, Handmade Holiday Cards

Author Mary Savig will be signing her book, Handmade Holiday Cards from 20th-Century Artists. With 190 reproductions of holiday cards straight from the Archives of American Art’s collections, the book is an historical tour of commonplace commercial graphic design. From the Mondrian-inspired abstractions to Japanese prints, the collection provides an alternative take on holiday greetings with designs by famous artist, including Josef Albers, John Lennon and Yoko Ono and Robert Motherwell. Talk with the author about her research process and maybe get some ideas for your own holiday card. Free. 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. The Castle.

Sunday, November 25: Metaphysical Baseball

David Stinson will be at the American History Museum signing copies of his book, Deadball, A Metaphysical Baseball Novel, about a minor league player possessed by visions of baseball greats gone by. Driven to the point of obsession, he begins traveling the country to see for himself the vanished stadiums and places that made baseball history. A novel thriller, the book also incorporates plenty of baseball history that fans will appreciate and enjoy. Free. 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. American History Museum.

The “Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon” exhibit maps out a web of relatedness between Bacon and well-known artists, celebrities and historical figures. Photo by Kat J. McAlpine.

According to the theory of the six degrees of separation, she is connected to Albert Einstein, Cézanne, Eleanor Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, Frida Kahlo and President Ulysses S. Grant.

But who is Peggy Bacon?

Bacon (1895-1997) was a New York artist and talented caricaturist of celebrities and artists, however, her name is by no means well known. The Archives of American Art specialists, who created the “Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon” exhibit, do not expect people to know who Peggy Bacon is—in fact, that’s  the point.

While the original concept of the six degrees of separation dates back to Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who developed a radio telegraph system, the term became commonplace in 1990 when playwright John Guare debuted his production, “Six Degrees of Separation.” The play was based on the idea that no more than six acquaintances separate any two people.

Playing off the popular celebrity trivia game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” in which players try to prove that any actor or actress can be linked to Kevin Bacon in fewer than six steps of film roles, the “Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon” exhibit creators hoped to show how a relatively unknown but well-connected artist was linked through archival documents to many of art and society’s most influential people.

“We wanted it to be surprising,” says Mary Savig, the exhibit’s curator and an archives specialist at Archives of American Art. “We chose Peggy Bacon because we knew nobody would know who she is.”

On display June 27, 2012, through November 4, 2012, in the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, demonstrates how artists inform and inspire each other. “They don’t just work alone in their studios,” Savig said.

The exhibit is also intended to demonstrate the “shrinking world theory.”

The advent of radio technology, telecommunications and most recently, social media, has vastly increased the connectedness among the world’s inhabitants. In fact, Savig says, a study conducted last year by Facebook and the University of Milan demonstrated that social media has reduced the average degree of relatedness between each person on Earth to a mere 4.74 degrees.

The woman at the heart of it all, Peggy Bacon, photographed circa 1920. Photo by Soichi Sunami, courtesy the Archives of American Art.

“These documents show exactly how people are personally connected,” Savig says, pointing to a layout of correspondence and photographs connecting Bacon to artists like Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Janice Lowry, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Archival letters and materials provide paper trails to document each of the connections in Bacon’s web of six degrees.

The incredible ability to present such detailed documentation stems from the concerns of former Director of the Detroit Institute of Art E.P. Richardson and art collector Lawrence A. Fleischman. Richardson and Fleischman founded the Archives in 1954 in Detroit as an effort to address the lack of archival material documenting American art and artists. The Archives of American Art became a part of the Smithsonian Institution in 1970, and today holds more than 16 million items in the world’s largest collection of primary resources relating to the history of American art.

The Archives’ fastidious documentation and research of their collection is what allowed for the success of “Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon.”

In fact, on the exhibit’s opening day, a member of the public was shocked to find her former babysitter incorporated into Bacon’s web of relatedness.

“The woman pointed to the picture of Mary Chapin Carpenter and said, ‘She used to babysit me,’” Savig explains. Carpenter, a folk and country music singer, is bubbled into Bacon’s web as a sixth-degree connection.

Carpenter is included on the web for her connection to Joseph Cornell, who was the inspiration for her 1996 song “Ideas Are Like Stars.” Cornell is connected to Ad Reinhardt for their shared Christmas Eve birthdays and the fact that both artists’ works were displayed in art dealer Peggy Guggenheim’s 1943 Collages exhibit. Reinhardt described in a memoir how in 1938 he listened to loud jazz music carrying through the walls of the neighboring studio to his, occupied by Stuart Davis.  Davis was represented by art dealer Edith Halpert who represented his work at The Downtown Gallery for close to four decades. Halpert opened her gallery in 1926 at which time she displayed the works of Japanese-born Yasuo Kuniyoshi. And Kuniyoshi developed a friendship with Peggy Bacon while the two attended classes together at the Art Students League.

The visitor’s relationship with Carpenter drives home the entire point of the exhibit, Savig says. “We all really can connect to Bacon.”

Search through the letters, photos and more from the exhibit here. Or, join the circle and become her friend on Facebook.

How much is the Hope Diamond worth? Ask Smithsonian.

Our inquisitive readers are rising to the challenge we gave them last month. The questions are pouring in and we’re ready for more. Do you have any questions for our curators? Submit your questions here.

How much is the Hope Diamond worth? — Marjorie Mathews, Silver Spring, Maryland

That’s the most popular question we get, but we don’t really satisfy people by giving them a number. There are a number of answers, but the best one is that we honestly don’t know. It’s a little bit like Liz Taylor’s jewels being sold in December—all kinds of people guessed at what they would sell for, but everybody I know was way off. Only when those pieces were opened up to bidding at a public auction could you find out what their values were. When they were sold, then at least for that day and that night you could say, well, they were worth that much. The Hope Diamond is kind of the same way, but more so. There’s simply nothing else like it. So how do you put a value on the history, on the fact it’s been here on display for over 50 years and a few hundred million people have seen it, and on that fact it’s a rare blue diamond on top of everything else? You don’t. – Jeffrey E. Post, mineralogist, National Museum of Natural History

What’s the worst impact of ocean acidification so far?- Nancy Schaefer, Virginia Beach, Virginia

The impacts of ocean acidification are really just starting to be felt, but two big reports that came out in 2011 show that it could have very serious effects on coral reefs. These studies did not measure the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but rather its effect of making the ocean more acidic when it dissolves in the ocean. Places where large amounts of carbon dioxide seep into the water from the sea floor provide a natural experiment and show us how ocean waters might look, say, 50 or 100 years from now. Both studies showed branching, lacy, delicate coral forms are likely to disappear, and with them that kind of three-dimensional complexity so many species depend on. Also, other species that build a stony skeleton or shell, such as oysters or mussels, are likely to be affected. This happens because acidification makes carbonate ions, which these species need for their skeletons, less abundant.

Nancy Knowlton, marine biologist
National Museum of Natural History

Art and artifacts from ancient South Pacific and Pacific Northwest tribes have similarities in form and function. Is it possible that early Hawaiians caught part of the Kuroshio Current of the North Pacific Gyre to end up along the northwest coast of America from northern California to Alaska? — April Amy Croan, Maple Valley, Washington

Those similarities have given rise to various theories, including trans-Pacific navigation, independent drifts of floating artifacts, inadvertent crossings by ships that have lost their rudders or rigging, or whales harpooned in one area that died or were captured in a distant place. Some connections are well-known, like feather garment fragments found in an archaeological site in Southeast Alaska that appear to have been brought there by whaling ships that had stopped in the Hawaiian Islands, a regular route for 19th-century whalers. Before the period of European contact, the greatest similarities are with the southwest Pacific, not Hawaii. The Kushiro current would have facilitated Asian coastal contacts with northwestern North America, but would not have helped Hawaiians. The problem of identification is one of context, form and dating. Most of the reported similarities are either out of their original context (which can’t be reconstructed), or their form is not specific enough to relate to another area’s style, or the date of creation cannot be established. To date there is no acceptable proof for South Pacific-Northwest Coast historical connections that predates the European whaling era, except for links that follow the coastal region of the North Pacific into Alaska.

William Fitzhugh, archeologist
Natural History Museum

The Art of Video Games exhibit opens at the American Art Museum on March 16.

We know you’ve got enough “looking forward to 2012″ lists under your belt by now; our Who to Follow post alone will keep you pretty busy. But we can’t resist sneaking in just one more. Here’s our guide to the exhibitions we’re most excited for this year. Mark your calendars now so you’ll have no excuse to say you’re bored later.

A new look at Monticello: Founding father Thomas Jefferson called slavery an “abominable crime”. . . but owned more than 600 slaves who sustained his plantation, Monticello. “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” opened on January 27 in the American History Museum‘s National Museum of African American History and Culture Gallery, and focuses on the long-overlooked history of slave life at the third president’s Virginia home. Be sure to keep up with the latest news from Monticello on Twitter at @TJMonticello.

Happy birthday, Jackson Pollock: If he were alive today, Jackson Pollock would have turned 100 on January 28. To honor the stormy life and revolutionary work of the modern art icon, the Archives of American Art presents Pollock’s personal family photos, letters, and writings in “Art Memories Arrested in Space, a centennial tribute to Jackson Pollock” at the Reynolds Center through May 15.

Game on: Can video games be art? To answer that question, the American Art Museum‘s upcoming exhibit, “The Art of Video Games,” pulls together the most arresting graphics and innovative designs in the gaming world, on view March 16 through September 30. Even if you forgot to vote for your favorite game, don’t miss out on GameFest, which kicks off the exhibit with three days packed with open play, panel talks with artists and designers, and live-action gaming. To tide you over til March, follow curator Chris Melissinos at @CMelissinos for updates and teasers.

Hokusai: In anticipation of the Cherry Blossom Centennial, the Sackler Gallery presents a study of Katsushika Hosukai, Japan’s most famous artist (yes, that’s his Great Wave that has probably graced every college dorm wall in America). “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,” his most acclaimed woodblock print series, was first published in 1830 when Hokusai was in his 70s and goes on view on March 24 through June 17. The gallery has set up an interactive website with more information on Hokusai’s life and artistic technique.

Ai Weiwei: The controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, arrested last year, brings a new installation, “Fragments,” to the Sackler Gallery beginning May 12. Using antique wood salvaged from Qing Dynasty temples, Ai worked with skilled traditional carpenters to create what he calls an “irrational structure” that both affirms and defies centuries of architectural traditions. In October, the Hirshhorn gets in on the action with an exhibit of 25 of Ai’s recent works entitled “Ai Weiwei: According to What?” For an English translation of Ai’s Twitter, follow @aiwwenglish.

Now that you’ve probably burned through the lists of historians, innovators, and food-writers to follow this year, we’re bringing it back home to the Smithsonian. As always, the Mall is cooking up some fascinating, crazy, and sometimes grotesque stuff for 2012. Bookmark these people and projects to keep up with this year:

Nicholas Pyenson: Pyenson studies and curates fossils of marine mammals. Get a feel for what is going on inside his lab and follow his team into the field—fresh from an expedition in Chile—at his blog, Pyenson Lab.

Postal Museum: Time for a pop quiz: A “hamper dumper” is:

a) machine in postal processing

b) bin of misprint stamps

c) failed mail vehicle

d) philatelic tool.

If you know the answer, you should be following the Postal Museum (@postalmuseum) for their daily #PostalQuiz and other philatelic factoids.

Biodiversity Heritage Library: As part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium, the Smithsonian Libraries collects and digitizes biodiversity research for open online access—essentially, a bio-wiki. Check out @biodivlibrary for the species of the day: plants that eat worms, albino penguins and other bizarre creatures you never knew existed.

Archives of American Art Pinterest: The American Art Pinterest lets you browse the archives and “pin” the images you like to your virtual board. Mix and match from collections like “facial hair of note” and “ain’t no party like an artist’s party.”

Book Dragon: The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program’s Book Dragon is the pet project of former APA Media Arts Consultant Terry Hong, featuring reviews of “books for the multi-cultural reader.” Hong highlights literature for kids and adults alike that speaks to the Asian American experience. Follow her at @SIBookDragon.

Smithsonian Vids: For a moving view of the Institution, follow @SmithsonianVids. Meet a scientist studying frog-eating bats, or get a video tour of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings from Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

Smithsonian Marine Station: This Natural History Museum field station, located in Fort Pierce, Florida, tweets news updates and photos from the field (er, coral reef) @SmithsonianSMS. Plus, there’s #followfriday trivia every week.

Field Book Project: Also, from the Natural History Museum and the Smithsonian Institution Archives check out this blog, where researchers post updates on their initiative to compile an online database of field books and journals documenting biodiversity research. Besides progress updates, you’ll also find excerpts of century-old field notes from explorers, birdwatchers and scientists (including lots of fun, old-timey sketches) and learn a lot more than you ever thought there was to know about indices.

Encyclopedia of Life: Take your best shot and enter the picture in the Smithsonian’s Encyclopedia of Life Flickr photo contest. The bi-weekly contest could be (and has been) any theme from “backyard life” to “sexual dimorphism.” Even if you don’t enter, be sure to browse the entries for gems like this.

And of course, if you’re not following them already, the museums are always Tweeting up a storm. Here’s the checklist:

American Indian Museum: @SmithsonianNMAI

National Portrait Gallery: @npg

American Art Museum: @americanart

Anacostia Community Museum: @anacostiamuseum

American History Museum: @amhistorymuseum

Air and Space Museum: @airandspace

Museum of Natural History: @NMNH

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: @hirshhorn

Freer and Sackler Galleries: @FreerSackler

Museum of African Art: @NMAfA

National Zoo: @NationalZoo

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: @cooperhewitt

Smithsonian: @Smithsonian

Artist Guy Maccoy at work on a mural at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the WPA's Art Work for Public Buildings Project. Photo courtesy Archives of American Art

Wikipedia, the most widely used encyclopedia on the world, consistently ranks among the web’s top sites and garners instant recognition among nearly all internet users. A related project—Wikimedia Commons, a source of free-use, public domain photos, video and other multimedia available to anyone—is less widely known, but essential for supplying multimedia content for Wikipedia articles.

Earlier this month, the Wikimedia Foundation (the umbrella organization for both of these wiki projects, as well as several others) began a landmark collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution when the Archives of American Art donated a trove of 285 WPA-era photographs to the Commons database.

“We’ve been interested in Wikipedia for years, but we didn’t really know how big the Foundation was and the efforts of the Commons until Sarah Stierch came on,” says Sara Snyder, an IT specialist at the Archives of American Art. Stierch became the Smithsonian’s first “Wikipedian-in-Residence” this summer at the Archives, as part of Wikimedia’s “GLAM” Project (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) that strives to increase the flow of information between these institutions and Wikimedia.

“She really opened our eyes to how many opportunities there are, not just editing articles, but being able to donate or share content on the Wikimedia platform through the Commons,” Snyder says.

The Archives team started out by trying to find a batch of photos without any intellectual property restrictions that would be appropriate for a donation. “The first thing we thought of was, ‘well, what do we have that’s public domain?’” says Stierch. “This collection was a clear candidate, because first of all, it’s really engaging, and it’s all created by the government, so its clearly in the public domain,” says Snyder.

The images donated are all part of the Archives’ collection of Works Progress Administration (WPA) photography, and this is the first time they are available to the public in a high-resolution, digitized format. The WPA was a Great Depression-era government program intended to provide relief for the unemployed. In addition to completing infrastructure and education projects, the WPA commissioned artists to produce paintings, murals and sculptures. Many of the photographs in the donation detail these activities, while others were creative assignments for exhibitions and photo murals.

“The different types of people and artists featured, it’s really remarkable,” says Stierch. “We’ve got photographs of works being created—showing the techniques of how to make a lithograph, how to make stained glass, how they sketch these giant murals. It’s a really varied collection of photographs, showing all different processes of art creation, documenting some of the most important as well as some of the lesser-known artists of the 20th century.”

As a collection of multimedia intended for unrestricted use, the Wikimedia Foundation anticipates these photos being used for anything from education to artistic inspiration.

“We hope that art students will look at these photographs and find inspiration in them. We hope that they’re going to be utilized in Wikimedia projects, whether its Wikipedia articles on these artists or anything else,” Stierch says. “If someone can find some educational or aesthetic or special value in these photographs, and I know they will, that’s what we hope comes out of it.”

Stierch and Snyder both envision this donation as the beginning of a long-lasting collaboration between the Wikimedia Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. “There are 19 units of the Smithsonian, and a lot of those have photographs or images in their collections that are in the public domian, everything from dinosaur bones to WPA paintings,” Stierch says. “It all comes down to what is valuable for the public to be able to learn from.”

Christmas card made to look like a tax return form by artist Boris Artzybasheff. W. Langdon Kihn papers, 1904-1990. Image courtesy of the Archives of American Art.

It’s that time of year, again, the deadline for filing your federal and state income tax returns. And if you’ve procrastinated until the absolute last day—extended from April 15 until April 18 because of the Emancipation Day holiday as celebrated in Washington, D.C.— you still have some time. You are also in good company. Filing taxes is probably one of the few remaining equalizers that exists in society; everyone has to do it— including the rich, the famous, and the rich and famous. But the way we do it—before time or at the last minute; happily or begrudingly—cuts across all sections the population.

The Archives of American Art boasts over 6,000 different collections, many of which include the financial papers and tax returns of U.S. artists.  But what can looking at the tax returns of artists tell us about them, and possibly ourselves? Curatorial Archives Specialist Mary Savig shares some of what she learned.

Where did this collection come from?

Normally when we acquire papers, we do get a lot of tax material included in them. The gamut of collections usually runs between personal letters, tax returns, financial records and sketch books. It really ranges, but we do tend to have a lot of financial material.

What can looking at an artist’s tax returns tell us about him or her?

You learn what their studio conditions were like, what they were making on their art at the time and what they were spending their money on. So, tax returns can reveal information about their level of success at the time and whether or not they were charitable with their money.

Did you find anything interesting?

We have a great tax return from the artist Mitchell Siporin, who was a muralist during the Works Progress Administration (WPA). We have a lot of WPA artists in our collections, but what’s notable about these tax returns it that their only source of income during the Great Depression was from the federal government. It’s just a financial record, but it is poignant to show that if they had not been supported by the WPA, they probably wouldn’t have been able to remain artists and they would’ve had to find work doing other things. So the fact that the federal government was able to support their art was really great because it allowed them to flourish after the depression as well.

The collection seems fairly mundane. Was that surprising?

I think what’s so great about some of these financial records is that they’re pretty mundane. Tax returns are kind of a burden that we share with artists, so it show that artists can also be relatable —they also have to do their taxes.It’s the irksome tasks that we all have to do which kind of bring us together, so we can understand kind of their work, too.

Since many of the financial records in the archives contain personal material, there aren’t any plans for a public display, however; they collections are open to researchers who may find the information useful to their scholarship.

Happy filing!

The More You Know- Anyone who has ever visited the Air and Space Museum, probably leaves with lots of questions; the most popular of which has to be “How did you get an airplane inside the building?”  Well, wonder in silence no more, because the Air and Space Museum is here to help. “Ask an Expert,” is a weekly series, held Wednesdays at noon, where a museum expert speaks for 10-15 minutes on a given topic and then answers questions.  If you can’t make it in person, don’t worry, you can always watch the videos online.

The Revolution Will Be… Airmailed? - These days, everyone is talking about revolution, as change is happening in countries around the world. But what happens after the revolution? Well, after the Mexican revolution of 1910, airmail was used to “promote a progressive national image worldwide.” See how they did it in the bilingual online exhibit “Mexico Via Airmail.” So, the next time you find yourself in conversation about current events, you can add a little historical context.

Math Made Interesting- For the child who dreams of becoming an astronomer when s/he grows up (and the parents/adults who want to encourage those dreams), NASA introduces “Space Math @ NASA,” online math and science problems designed to challenge the mind and the imagination. Perfect for students in (at least) grades three and higher.

Art History- In honor of Black History Month, the Archives of American Art presents its digitized collection of papers on African American art in the 20th century, with a particular focus on artists from the Harlem Renaissance.  Read the papers of influential artists like: Palmer C. Hayden, William H. Johnson, Charles Henry Alston, Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, online for free.

Renaissance Man Solomon G. Brown in 1891. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Archives.

Business Plan—Calling all business execs and start-up ventures. Get in at the bottom on this deal. The National Museum of American History is planning a new exhibition on the history of business and innovation and is looking for your help. The museum has launched a site, American Enterprise, so that anybody with a good idea can log in and help plan the exhibit. Curators will blog about research trips and artifact collecting and you can offer tips on anything from artifacts to topics and even test ideas. The exhibit is slated to go on view in 2014.

Renaissance Man— In honor of Black History Month, The Bigger Picture remembers Solomon G. Brown, the first African-American to work at the Smithsonian. Brown, born a free man in 1829, worked at the institution for more than 50 years, serving in a variety of capacities, including: building exhibit cases, moving and cleaning furniture, and helping prepare maps and drawings for lectures. Learn more about Brown’s life and work at the Smithsonian, including his close relationship with the second Smithsonian Secretary, Spencer F. Baird, in the first in a series of related posts this month.

What Goes Up— What happens when you drop 200 paper planes from “the edge of space?” Well, that’s what Project Space Planes is trying to find out. The team dropped the planes, each containing a memory card with a message for the person who finds it, back in January. They are hoping to see a) whether the memory cards are tough enough to survive the journey and, b) how far the planes travel. Check out their site for more information and updates on the project. Thanks to the team over at The Daily Planet for the heads up.

Artists on Art— The Archives of American Art has made available excerpts from its oral history interviews with artists like: Robert Bechtle, Judy Chicago, Dennis Oppenheim and Joan Snyder. Hear their thoughts on photography, controversy, public vs. studio art and changes in their work. In addition to the podcasts, summaries of each interview, as well as transcripts of the conversations are available online.

The first commercial Christmas card was sent in 1843 by Henry Cole, a philanthropist who wrote hundreds of cards by hand. Courtesy of Pushing the Envelope

Total Eclipse of the Moon—Early yesterday morning (or late Monday night for those on the west coast), an astronomical event took place that only happens once in a blue moon. Well, okay, it wasn’t a blue moon, but it was a total lunar eclipse. This was the first lunar eclipse to fall on the winter solstice since 1638. By the time this happens again in 2094, most of us will be long gone. The AirSpace blog has more information on how lunar eclipses form and what they look like in case you happened to miss out.

Christmas Sweater Archives—I have certainly seen some festive holiday sweaters around the Mall this winter; my personal favorite (worn by ATM’s own Beth Py-Lieberman!) featured chiming jingle bells, appliqued gingerbread men, Christmas trees and red bows. The Archives of American Art has done their own archival roundup of holiday knitwear donned by poets, painters and explorers.

Winter Wonderland—The Bigger Picture blog has a slideshow honoring the onslaught of cold the Washington area has received in recent weeks. The pictures are from the Smithsonian Institution Archives and include snowflake art, icy expeditions, and the Smithsonian covered in snow in the early 1900s. The post also has links to snowflake templates for cutting your own winter decorations.

Solstice—If you thought the weather here was cold, SIRIS has posted photos of Alaska Natives buckling down for the dead of winter from the archives of scientist Leuman M. Waugh, who visited the area in the early 20th century. The photos are likely to make you want a fur-lined winter parka to brave the icy chill. Another post on SIRIS shows images of winter landscape paintings from the National Art Inventories.

Birth of the Christmas Card—Pushing the Envelope has published a guest post by Skidmore College professor Catherine Golden that reveals the first Christmas card ever, from 1843. The card depicts a merry gathering of people eating and drinking, and reads, “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year To You.” Read about the history of the holiday card, as well as Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which Golden writes was arguably more popular for its philanthropic message than even the author’s expert prose.

Poinsettia Video—Recently, Around the Mall brought you the true story of the Poinsettia, which involved Joel Poinsett and his idea to create a national museum. Watch Monty Holmes, a horticulturist at Smithsonian Gardens, talk more about the history of this holiday plant.

The "Godmother of Punk" performs at a benefit for the Archives of American Art in 2008. Courtesy of the Archives of American Art

First Aircraft Moved to New Hangar: This week, AirSpace reports that the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver was the first aircraft to move into the Udvar-Hazy Center’s new Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. Designed in 1938 and manufactured in 1942, the scout bomber flew in World War II. The Air and Space Museum’s plane is one of only a handful still in existence. The plane is scheduled to be restored over the course of the coming year, along with several other aircraft that will soon move into the new hangar. Later in 2011, the mezzanine level of the hangar will open so that visitors can see the aircraft refurbishment in action.

Patti Smith Wins National Book Award: Singer Patti Smith, perhaps best known as the “Godmother of Punk,” just won the National Book Award for her memoir, Just Kids, which chronicles her friendship with photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe. The Archives of American Art blog has a sound clip of Smith reading at a 2008 benefit, or your can hear her on NPR.

Twain Galore: It seems that in addition to Around the Mall’s post honoring Mark Twain’s would-be 175th birthday, a couple other blogs around the Smithsonian have paid their own tributes to the 19th century American author. Face to Face has posted some of their favorite Twain quotes as well as Edwin Larson’s 1935 portrait of the writer. The Smithsonian Libraries blog has a list of further reading straight from the Smithsonian’s collections.

Flamingo-Keeping: Now on the Smithsonian Science homepage, a video from the National Zoo features footage of the Zoo’s 61-bird flock of flaming pink Caribbean flamingos. Sara Hallager, flamingo keeper, says the birds are extraordinarily social animals (their squawks can be heard in the background). She discusses how she and the other keepers prevent inbred chicks during mating season by putting different colored bands on the flamingos’ feet to keep track of who’s who.

National Museum of “Dad-Trolling”? The web comic XKCD has proposed a new Smithsonian museum that specializes in enabling fathers to tell little white lies to their children. Click on various parts of the museum’s floorplan and see what waits inside the “Hall of Misunderstood Science,” “Regrettable Pranks: An Interactive Experience” or the “Rotunda of Uncomfortable Topics,” among others.

Lunchroom Buddies, New York City, from the portfolio Walker Evans: Selected Photographs (1931) by Walker Evans. Gift of Lee and Maria Friedlander. Image courtesy of the American Art Museum.

American photographer Walker Evans is perhaps best remembered for his images of America in the 1930s. Born on November 3 in 1903, Evans initially aspired to become a writer and studied French literature, but by 1928, he changed course and took up photography. Starting off as an advertising photographer, Evans worked for the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal organization whose photography program set out to document rural America during the Great Depression.

Traveling throughout the southeastern United States, Evans created a body of work that captured the suffering of communities of people who were hardest-hit by the nation’s economic troubles. “Here are the records of the age before an imminent collapse,” wrote friend and critic Lincoln Kirstein. “His pictures exist to testify to the symptoms of waste and selfishness that caused the ruin and to salvage whatever was splendid for the future reference of the survivors.”

Evans’ works have since joined the collections of major museums across the country, including the Smithsonian. And what better day could there be to dive into the Smithsonian’s wealth of online goodies to get to know Evans a little better?

Evans, like many artists, was fairly guarded about revealing much about himself, preferring to cultivate an enigmatic image of himself. However, courtesy of the Archives of American Art, you can get to know the artist on a more personal level by way of this 1971 interview done exclusively for the Smithsonian. Of particular interest are his reminisces of his early years just as Evans was beginning to pursue photography. “My poor father,” Evans recalls, “had a conventional attitude toward the arts and all that decided that all I wanted to do was to be naughty and get hold of girls through photography, that kind of thing. He had no idea that I was serious about it. And respectable, educated people didn’t. That was a world you wouldn’t go into. Of course that made it all the more interesting, the fact that it was perverse, for me.”

And if you would like to see examples of Evans’s non-FSA work, like the above image, the American Art Museum has a number of online offerings.

For those of you interested in seeing more photography from the Farm Security Administration, which encouraged the work of other masters such as Dorothea Lange, check out this online collection from the Library of Congress.

Jared French, Monroe Wheeler, Paul Cadmus and George Tooker on Fire Island, 1945. Photographer unknown. From the William Christopher papers, 1946-1972. Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution.

The modern gay rights movement in America was jump-started in June 1969 when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a New York gay bar, and met with massive resistance from the patrons therein. The days of rioting that followed was a major rallying cry to all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons to stand up for their civil rights and take pride in being different from the others. But these communities of people simply didn’t spring up out of nowhere to demand their due. They have always been a part of our nation’s cultural fabric, but, for fear of social persecution or legal prosecution, gays have long felt the need to live under the radar. Living in times of extreme social intolerance, these people have had to mask parts of their identity in self-defense, but sometimes these hidden lives play out on the page. For the new show Lost and Found (opening on Saturday), the Archives of American Art has unearthed a trove of letters, photographs and other ephemera that illustrates the gay experience in America and brings to light social enclaves and romantic relationships that provided support to people rejected by society at large.

“It’s within artistic communities that gays and lesbians were first able to express themselves in American culture,” says Archives of American Art manuscripts curator Liza Kirwin. “Because it’s a bohemian milieu, they were allowed certain broader parameters to express who they were within an artistic community. And I think that’s pretty provable going back to the 19th century that gays and lesbians within the artistic community—both the visual arts and performing arts—were accepted within that group to a point. More so there than within the broader culture.”

But divining who was involved in homosexual relationships—especially before the late 1960s— is a bit of a trick. Even in personal correspondence, the language of love may be suggestive, but not explicit. “Part of it is knowing the surrounding context of these artists’ lives,” Kirwin says. “You already know that they’re gay or lesbian, so you go to their papers and you find evidence of it that way. If you didn’t really know, and you just went to the papers, you wouldn’t necessarily know that they were gay.”

Such is the case of Appalachian Spring composer Aaron Copland, who was a private man disinclined to discuss or write about his personal life. In the summer of 1928, he made the acquaintance of painter and lithographer Prentiss Taylor and the two struck up a correspondence in November of that year. Copland’s initial letters express a warm cordiality befitting good friends. But by spring 1929, cordiality evolved into romance. “It’s always a dangerous business to write the kind of letter I sent you,” Copland wrote in March 1929. “Now that I know how you took it, I don’t regret having sent it.”

In addition to one letter from April 1929 on display, you can see a selection of Copland’s letters to Taylor online. It’s genuinely heartwarming to read through the progression of their relationship, especially since it makes you wonder if the art of the love letter—be it authored by a gay or straight person—is alive in the digital age. Somehow love texting or love tweeting seems inherently trite, and email too impersonal for the occasion. But if you want to see it done well, read the writings between people who—without public displays of affection as an option—made such beautiful use of the written word.

Lost and Found complements the National Portrait Gallery’s LGBT-themed exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. Both shows are open from October 30, 2010 through February 13, 2011. You can preview some of the Lost and Found artifacts in our online gallery.