Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Archives of American Art

Artist Matt Mullican wearing glasses and a black jacket with his hands folded in front of his body, standing in front of six artworks, with his body partially hiding them.

Artist Matt Mullican to Present Lecture "Mirrors and Melted Telephones" on April 27

The Archives of American Art presents the Holt/Smithson Foundation 2026 Lecture with artist Matt Mullican.

Claudia Schiffer sitting at a table

What Does a 1990s Supermodel's Swimsuit Calendar Tell Us About Archives?

Connections between Colin de Land, the gallery space Four Walls, and Claudia Schiffer demonstrate how archival collections are interrelated

Painting sketch featuring a cardboard box in various shades of red, pink, orange, and blue, beside a small green can or jar with red and blue marks inside of it. Both objects are sitting on a green surface with a dark background, and various colors of pai

New Collections: Robert Bechtle Papers and Tom Wudl Papers

Two collections of California artists are now part of the Archives of American Art

Grayscale image of Robert Hughes sitting on the sloping curve of a building examining something in his hands, with a modernist church in the background.

New Collections: Robert Hughes Papers

The personal papers of art critic Robert Hughes offer insights into his seminal series "The Shock of the New"

Baseball cards with faces of artists superimposed on them fanned out on a desk above a blue box with text that reads ARTBALL, an image of a batter, catcher, and umpire, with a red circle that says set 1.

What If Major League Baseball Fielded a Team and the Players Were Duchamp, Calder, Marisol, O’Keeffe and Pollock?

A collection of artist baseball cards, “Artball, from the artist Don Celender, arrive in the collections just in time for the World Series

Color image of white erasers in blue and white sleeves in front of a green and white mug full of pencils with a phone and jar of pens in the background next to a color image of a computer and microfilm scanner with images of scans on the screen.

The Tools We Use

For American Archives Month, Archives of American Art Staff are sharing tools, both analog and digital, they use to make collections accessible

LEFT: Grayscale photographic contact sheet with images of Connie Zehr and assistants constructing a work of art. RIGHT: Page from a wire-bound sketchbook with a sample square of liquid polyester and notes made in pencil.

New Collections: Connie Zehr Papers and Cherie Raciti Papers

Gerald and Bente Buck West Coast Collector Matthew Simms reflects on two new collections of women artists now at the Archives of American Art.

Composite image of four archival items: a photograph of a woman with her arms and legs crossed over each other, a red document with black text, a document with mineral samples and handwritten notations in ink, and an image of foil rubbings of a carpet.

How Playing With Failure Led Students to Archival Exploration

An assignment created in the Teaching with Primary Sources workshop proved that playing with failure and be fruitful, fascinating, and fun

Categories
Archive