Refreshing the Smithsonian

Art in America, Oct, 2006 by Lee Rosenbaum

Having just brought their 19th-century building into the 21st century, thanks to an extensive make-over, the newly reopened Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery are also trying to update their tradition-bound art collections.

"Most of what you see here is new," SAAM's longtime director Elizabeth Broun recently told me, as her sweeping gesture encompassed the entire Lincoln Gallery, which was the site of the 16th president's second inaugural ball. Interior walls that had subdivided the vast open space have been removed to accommodate the museum's growing collection of large-scale contemporary art. Broun said that acquisitions of contemporary work by such artists as David Hockney, Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Christo, Duane Hanson, Deborah Butterfield and Sean Scully "got seriously under way in 1998," two years before the museum's six-year shutdown for the $283-million renovation and reinstallation of the 19th-century Patent Office Building. Since 1968, it has shared that landmark Greek Revival structure with the National Portrait Gallery.

For many years, SAAM's collecting activity was hindered by what Broun called "overly zealous" strictures that ruled out most contemporary art acquisitions. She blamed this largely on "the mixed blessing of having Paul Manship [the Art Deco sculptor] chair our board from 1944 to 1964. On the one hand, he left us half of his estate. But the downside was he ... wanted to make sure, as he put it, that the 'taint of modernism should never infect the national collection.'"

The museum did boost its meager contemporary holdings during "one really terrific period when Adelyn Breeskin worked for us," Broun said. Formerly director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Breeskin was curator of contemporary painting and sculpture and then senior curatorial advisor at the art museum from 1967 to 1986. "She worked here until her 89th birthday." She approached such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Isamu Noguchi, and asked for gifts for the national collection. But when the Hirshhorn Museum opened in 1972, it became the Smithsonian's chief repository for contemporary work, which slowed SAAM's collecting momentum. The two museums' directors were made ex-officio members of each other's boards, "for the purpose of avoiding overlap in the collection," Broun noted.

That changed last year, when Ned Rifkin, who had recently been director of the Hirshhorn and is now the Smithsonian's under secretary for art, told Broun that he "felt the idea that we should avoid overlap no longer makes sense." Each can now freely pursue its own contemporary quarry, and the Hirshhorn has lent some of the finest recent art now on view at SAAM, including works by Jackson Pollock and Agnes Martin. But Broun also wants to carve out a niche that will distinguish SAAM from its sister institution by putting a stronger emphasis on new-media works. SAAM's two video walls by Nam June Paik are "emblematic of this direction," Broun said.

Meanwhile, the American Art Museum's cohabitant in the refurbished building is also trying to make up for lost time in collecting contemporary work. The NPG has wisely dropped the "10-years-dead" rule for its sitters. But because the primary criterion for NPG's acquisitions is the importance of the portrait subject, artistic quality sometimes gets shortchanged. Worthy new additions include Alex Katz's portrait of John Updike. But no art museum should have countenanced the NPG's permanent "Champions" display--dismally inept depictions of professional athletes. "Bravo" devoted to performing-arts stars, is not much better. Director Marc Pachter's acquisitions wish list includes scientists, colonial figures and former first ladies. A well-executed portrait of Hillary Rodham Clinton, painted in profile by Ginny Stanford, is the first likeness of a first lady directly commissioned by the NPG, and it is included in the inaugural display.