Anacostia Community Museum Archives
Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection Archive
National Air and Space Archives
National Anthropological Archives
National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Research & Scholars Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian Institution Archives
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Letter from painter Joseph Lindon Smith (1863-1950) to his parents, illustrating
the vast quantities of fruits he is consuming in Venice. September 8,
1894. Joseph Lindon Smith papers.
Mailing Address
Archives
of American Art
P.O. Box 37012
Victor Building, Suite 2200
MRC 937
Washington, DC 20013-7012
202.633.7950 reference
202.633.7940 general
www.aaa.si.edu/askus
www.aaa.si.edu
Hours
Washington
Center
(using original records)
Monday – Friday
9:30am to 4:30pm
Closed one hour for lunch
Appointment Required
(using
microfilm)
Monday – Friday
9am to 5pm
Metro
Stop: Gallery Place
The mission of the Archives of American Art is to illuminate scholarship of the history of art in America through collecting, preserving, and making available for study the documentation of this country's rich artistic legacy. Containing nearly 5,000 individual manuscript collections totaling over 16,000 linear and circa 4,000 oral histories, Archives is the world’s largest and most widely used resource on the history of art in America.
The Archives' Research Collections — spanning more than 200 years — include letters, diaries, and scrapbooks of artists, dealers, and collectors; manuscripts of critics and scholars; business and financial records of museums, galleries, and associations; photographs; works of art on paper; and oral history interviews. New collections and oral history interviews are added each year, increasing the richness and depth of the Archives' holdings; for a complete list see Collections and Interviews A-Z.
The Archives publishes the Archives of American Art Journal and curates exhibitions from its collections in the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in the Smithsonian’s Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture and its New York Research Center. Numerous internship, volunteer, and fellowship Opportunities are also available.
Researchers may access the collections by appointment at the Archives’ Research Centers in Washington, DC. Some original collections are also available in the Archives’ New York Research Center. Microfilm copies of many collections are available in both research centers, and at affiliated research centers nationwide, or through interlibrary loan. Researcher may also request reference services through the Ask Us form.
A growing number of entire collections have been digitized and are also available on the Archives' Web site as Collections Online. They can be viewed in the exact order and arrangement as the original files, and their descriptions searched by keyword.
Highlights: Among the over five thousand collections are the records of the 1913 Armory Show, the first major exhibition of modern art held in the United States and the records of major American art galleries, such as Macbeth, Downtown, and Betty Parsons. Extensive collections of personal papers include those of Romare Bearden, Rockwell Kent, Reginald Marsh, Elizabeth McCausland, and Jackson Pollock.