Eye Level is a blog produced by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The name Eye Level imparts a sense of clarity to which the blog aspires. The name refers to the physical experience of viewing art, but it also plays on the many roles and perspectives that make a museum a reality—roles that will come into focus here.
Editor reviews are provided by professional editors who evaluate a blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.
"My ten millionth grandfather was Jonathan Edwards," critic Dave Hickey told us last week as part of the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture Series at American Art. He added, "But I'm not going to give you any of that." What he did give us, instead,...
John Cunning's Manhattan Skyline
"What kind of highway signs did they have in Minnesota in 1934?" was just one of the questions Ann Prentice Wagner, guest curator of the exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists, needed to answer to place the...
Goblin Lanterns by Helen Hyde
For the ghostly and ghoulish among you, I found Helen Hyde's Goblin Lanterns of 1906. The artist, born in New York in 1868, moved with her family to San Francisco two years later, where her father prospered in a...
A Ruth Duckworth sculpture adorns my bookcase.
Earlier this week I was saddened to read in an email that sculptor Ruth Duckworth had passed away at ninety on October 18th. We are frequently confronted with obituaries of artists that signify the...
How long does it take to really see a work of art? Some visitors to American Art's Slow Art event this past Saturday had a go at answering that question and then discussed the artworks they had taken a long look at in the museum. A few really got all...
