August 18, 2026 - Volume II
Tom Ashcraft: Artist, current boy-band fan, Asheville, NC.
The Moon Rock. I love that a rock from the moon, collected in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew, the last crewed mission to the moon, is in the Air and Space Museum, and that millions of folks have touched it. Including me and maybe you.
On a side note, what a treasure the Smithsonian is, vast, free to the public, and one of the factors in my staying to set up a studio in DC after completing the Hogie House with the Jersey Devil Design Build group in the early 80’s. I could literally roam the museums, view, discover and research any historical object or idiosyncratic thing, and gather materials and/or talk to someone knowledgeable about it. That experience certainly shaped my practice and anchored my attention to the real world.
Who isn’t moved by a meridian of curiosity grounded in an institution whose mission statement is “The increase and diffusion of knowledge”?
A hand touching the Museum's lunar touchrock. Part of a photo series by Museum photographer Jim Preston.
Louis Jacobson, Photography and Visual Arts Critic, Washington City Paper, Washington, DC.
Steve Fitch (1949- ) has documented the American highway and the manmade sites that surround it, depicting western kitsch in a way that avoids cliché. Fitch’s finest photograph features a deserted, nighttime image of the Trail, an Art Deco drive-in movie theater in San Antonio. The vernacular fresco of a cowboy scene offers the perfect confluence of reality, fantasy, and art in the American West. The drive-in’s demolition, less than a decade after Fitch documented it, was, in retrospect, all but inevitable. So was what replaced it: a Walmart.
Steve Fitch, Drive-In Theatre, San Antonio, Texas, 1973, gelatin silver print, image: 9 1⁄2 x 11 1⁄8 in. (24.0 x 28.3 cm) sheet: 11 x 12 1⁄2 in. (27.9 x 31.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts
E. Brady Robinson, Photographer and Professor, Baltimore, MD.
Each fall, I bring students in Georgetown University's Senior Seminar in Art to the Hirshhorn Library and the National Gallery of Art Library, where librarians Anne Simmons and Jacqueline Protka introduce students to the libraries' holdings and share strategies for researching artists and art movements that inform their studio practice. These visits help fulfill the writing requirement for art majors and culminate in a final research paper that connects an artist, artwork, or movement to each student's creative practice, strengthening both their scholarship and senior exhibition.
The Hirshhorn Library and the National Gallery of Art Library
August 3, 2026 - Volume I
Franz Jantzen: Artist, Archivist, Washington, DC.
In 1955 Emmett Till, a 14-year old African-American, was lynched in Money, Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman. This River Site marker is the second of four markers placed at the site where his body was pulled out of the Tallahatchie River. The first was stolen, this one was riddled with bullet holes, and the third was similarly shot up, capturing media attention in 2019 when frat boys posed with rifles in front of it. When a fourth bullet-proof marker was installed, it became the focal point of a white supremacist rally.
This sign was put on display at Smithsonian’s Museum of American History in front of “The Abstract Flag,” meant to evoke the Star-Spangled Banner which had previously hung there. In 2026, the marker is no longer on view.
Defaced Emmett Till Historic Marker, National Museum of American History, not currently on view.
Wayson R. Jones, Artist, Washington, DC.
Whenever I'm in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, I pay a visit to Thornton Dial's The Beginning of Life in the Yellow Jungle (2003). I urge you to do likewise and consider the irrelevance of ideas like "outsider" and "painting versus sculpture."
Thornton Dial, Sr., The Beginning of Life in the Yellow Jungle, 2003, plastic soda bottles, doll, clothing, bedding, wire, found metal, rubber glove, turtle shell, artificial flowers, Splash Zone compound, enamel, and spray paint on canvas on wood, 75 x 112 x 13 inches, Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Teresa Oaxaca, Painter & Draftsman, Arlington, VA.
I return to Whistler’s Peacock Room whenever I need to remember that art can become an environment rather than simply an object. The luminous gold peacocks, deep blue-green walls, and exquisite ceramics create a space where painting, architecture, and craftsmanship exist in perfect harmony. It is one of the rare places where I lose track of time. Every artist and every lover of beauty should experience this room at least once.
James McNeill Whistler, The Peacock Room, 1923, porcelain collection, National Museum of Asian Art (Freer Gallery of Art).
Andy Yoder, Artist, Educator, Washington, DC.
For me, no other object in the Smithsonian can equal the emotional and historic power of the top hat Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theater the night of his assassination. It feels incredibly personal, as if he just set it down, and reminds me that the events of that evening are relatively recent. The tragedy of a president who suffered and died for his determination to hold the country together is deepened by comparison to the divisive efforts of the current administration. However, as a reminder of the great conflict our country survived, this relic also provides hope for the future.
Abraham Lincoln's Top Hat, National Museum of American History.