Archives of American Art (AAA)

Kate Haw, Director

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art is the world’s largest and most important resource for the study of art in America. It serves scholars, students, journalists, biographers, and the interested public from its headquarters in Washington, DC, its research center in New York City, and through its vast online resources available worldwide.

Founded in 1954, the Archives of American Art fosters advanced research through the accumulation and dissemination of primary sources that document more than two hundred years of our nation’s artists and art communities. Unequaled in historical depth and breadth, the Archives is a catalyst for scholarship through its collecting, exhibition, and publication programs, including the Archives of American Art Journal, the longest-running scholarly journal in the field of American art. An international leader in the digitizing of archival collections, the Archives makes more than 2 million digital images freely available online. The Archives’ oral history collection includes more than 2,200 audio interviews, the largest accumulation of in-depth, first-person accounts of the American art world.

Some of the notable twentieth-century collections available at the Archives are the records of the Leo Castelli Gallery, Holly Solomon Gallery, Macbeth Gallery, Downtown Gallery, and Betty Parsons Gallery; the Walt Kuhn papers, which include records of the 1913 Armory Show; the Edward Bruce and Holger Cahill papers, with documentation on New Deal art programs; and personal papers of Rockwell Kent, Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, and Arthur Dove. Significant nineteenth-century material includes the William Page, Jervis McEntee, George Catlin, and Hiram Powers papers, and extensive microfilmed collections of the correspondence of Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Asher B. Durand, John Kensett, Mary Cassatt, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

The holdings of the Archives are described on the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS). The SIRIS database is available on the Archives’ website at www.aaa.si.edu. More than 160 collections are available online. Microfilm copies of many of the collections are available at the Archives’ offices, through interlibrary loan, and at affiliated research centers at the Boston Public Library, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Huntington Library, and the de Young Museum.

In addition to its primary research center at the Victor Building 750 9th Street, NW (at H), Suite 2200, Washington, DC 20001 the Archives maintains a New York Research Center at 300 Park Avenue South, Suite 300, New York, New York 10010. (212) 399-5015.

Research Staff

KIRWIN, Liza, Deputy Director, 750 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20560-0937. B.A. (1979) Johns Hopkins University; M.L.S. (1984) Catholic University of America; Ph.D. (1999), University of Maryland, College Park. Research specialties: American art in the 1980s, the studio craft movement, oral history, personal papers and organizational records. Contact: kirwinL@si.edu.

LEDDY, Annette, New York Collector. B.A., M.A., University of California, Berkeley; Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles. Research specialties: Contemporary American art; Art and Literature; Surrealism in Latin America.

QUINN, Kelly, Terra Foundation Project Manager for Online Scholarly and Educational Initiatives, 750 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20560-0937, A.B.(1991) Trinity College; M.A.(1997) with Certificates (2005) and (2007) University of Maryland, College Park; Ph.D.(2007), University of Maryland, College Park. Research Specialties: African American visual culture, 20th century American social and cultural history, women’s history, architecture and urbanism, public scholarship and digital humanities. Contact: quinnk@si.edu.

SAVIG, Mary, Curator of Manuscripts, 750 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20560-0937. B.A. (2006) University of Wisconsin, Madison; M.A.(2008) The George Washington University; Ph.D. in progress, University of Maryland-College Park. Research Specialties: Contemporary craft, feminist art movements, material culture, digital humanities. Contact: Savigm@si.edu.

SHAPIRO, Emily, Managing Editor, Archives of American Art Journal, 750 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20560-0937. B.A. (1995) Kenyon College; M.A. (2001) and Ph.D. (2003) Stanford University. Research specialties: pre-1945 American art and visual culture, genre and still-life painting, art and labor.

STIEBER, Jason, National Collector. B.A. (1995) University of Southern California; M.L.S (2004) University of Maryland, College Park. Research Specialties: Oral history, personal papers and organizational records. Contact: stieberj@si.edu.