Smithsonian American Art Museum
Luce Foundation Center for American Art
July 1, 2006 – Permanent
The Luce Foundation Center for American Art is the first visible art storage and study center in Washington that showcases more than 3,000 artworks from the museum's permanent collection: paintings densely hung on screens; sculptures, contemporary crafts, and art objects arranged on shelves; and portrait miniatures, bronze medals, and contemporary jewelry in drawers that slide open with the touch of a button. The space allows the museum to display five times the number of paintings and sculptures on public view.
Highlights include:
- selected objects from the Rosenak Collection of American Folk Art
- a selection of Presidential Inaugural medals
- in-depth collections of paintings by the African American modernist William H. Johnson
- paintings by 19th-century artists Albert Pinkham Ryder and Henry Ossawa Tanner
- John Gellatly's European collection of decorative arts
