work of five contemporary' artists. The film has been accepted 

 by PBS for national broadcast in 1996. 



African-American crafts were featured in an exhibition at 

 the Renwick Gallery called Uncommon Beauty in Common 

 Objects: The Legacy of African American Craft Art, April 7 

 through June 18. The exhibition, organized by the National 

 Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, 

 Ohio, was complemented by more than a dozen artists' talks 

 and demonstrations. 



Many of the museum's second floor galleries devoted to 

 19th-century art were reinstalled this year. Plans were com- 

 pleted tor the remaining second floor reinstallation, to be 

 ready in time for the 150th anniversary year. 



The National Museum of American Art continued to show 

 great strength in its acquisitions program, adding some 600 

 works, including major paintings by American modernists 

 Georgia O'Keeffe and Robert Motherwell, a 24-foot wide 

 sculpture by Louise Nevelson, important works by Latino art- 

 ists, and the Charles Isaacs Collection of 330 prime examples 

 of early American photography. The Renwick Gallery ac- 

 quired 60 new examples of 20th-century American crafts, 

 made possible by its support group, the James Renwick Alli- 

 ance. This year, the Alliance passed the half-million dollar 

 mark in gifts to the Renwick for acquisitions. Building on 

 the success of its rwo-year-old presence on America Online, 

 the museum's New Media Initiatives staff achieved a quan- 

 tum leap by making collection images and related texts avail- 

 able to Internet users around the world. Parallel effort 

 advanced design and production of a state-of-the-art multime- 

 dia CD-ROM to be marketed during the Smithsonian's 150th 

 anniversary year in 1996. 



The museum's introduction of a rich Gopher site on the 

 Internet in January was followed shortly by the April pre- 

 miere of a World Wide Web Internet Home Page that maxi- 

 mizes the site's ability to seamlessly combine texts and images 

 and transmit video and many other enhanced capabilities. The 

 web site contains an unsurpassed complement of resources 

 available electronically, including an extensive virtual tour of 

 "The White House Collection of American Crafts" exhibition 

 [http://www.nmaa. si. edu//whc/americancrafts], featuring vis- 

 its to craft artists' studios and the White House, made possi- 

 ble by a gift from MCI. This and another tour based on the 

 NMAA daguerreotype exhibition, "Secrets of the Dark Cham- 

 ber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype," inaugurated 

 the museum's plan for providing an online version of each 

 major exhibition organized. Myriad electronic "visitors" have 

 registered their delight with the online offerings, which have 

 been acknowledged and praised in the national press. In Sep- 

 tember senior staff participated in a retreat to consider the fu- 

 ture of electronic technology initiatives at the museum. 



The first new publication on the permanent collection in a 

 decade, National Museum of American Art, copublished with 

 Bulfinch, features 450 full-color illustrations and texts and in- 

 vites readers to explore a wide range of the museum's hold- 

 ings. The book is organized thematically to reflect the variety 



of concerns and aesthetic visions that have shaped American 

 art over the past three centuries. Three hundred objects for re- 

 photographed for the publication. The book is a companion 

 to the extensive collection CD-ROM to be issued in early 

 1996. Almost 80,000 Contributing Members of the Smithson- 

 ian received National Museum of American Art as the 

 Smithsonian's annual gift. 



Together with Hyperion Books for Children (a Disney affili- 

 ate), the museum published a new book edited by education 

 chief Nora Panzer. Celebrate America in Poetry and Art. joins 

 poems and visual art to illuminate the ethnic, economic, and 

 geographic diversity of the American experience. The 

 illustrations are all from the museum's collection; the poems 

 feature some of America's finest writers. The New Yorker's 

 Daniel Menaker praised the book saying, "The pages team 

 with creativity and variety." Celebrate America was selected for 

 the Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of Social 

 Studies 1995 list and was awarded a star of recognition by the 

 School Library Journal. Over 20,000 copies have been sold. 



Independent scholar Sidra Stich, former chief curator at the 

 Universiry Art Museum in Berkeley, California, was in resi- 

 dence as NMAA's Distinguished Scholar in American Art for 

 the 1994-1995 academic year. Professor Neil Harris, Preston 

 and Sterling Morton Professor of History, University of Chi- 

 cago was selected as Distinguished Scholar in American Art 

 for the 1995-1996 academic year. 



At the Renwick Gallery, Kenneth R. Trapp, formerly cura- 

 tor of decorative arts at the Oakland Museum, was appointed 

 curator-in-charge as of October 1 after the retirement of 21- 

 year-veteran Michael W. Monroe. Jeremy Adamson served as 

 acting curator-in-charge following Monroe's departure on 

 June 30. 



Outreach to District of Columbia schools by the Renwick 

 was significantly increased in a program supported by the 

 James Renwick Alliance. 



After the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the 

 White House, discussions began between the museum and 

 the National Park Service on how best to accommodate 

 Renwick access and proposed landscaping. 



In the business arena, the museum hired its first ever full- 

 time development officer in June and set up a Development 

 Department to handle membership and fundraising for spe- 

 cial exhibitions and their publications, education programs, 

 electronic outreach initiatives and special projects. The mu- 

 seum also launched a quarterly members' newslettet to keep 

 special constituents in closer touch with activities and behind- 

 the-scenes information. 



Product development and licensing activity saw ma|or 

 growth, with fees to the museum increased by 25 percent 

 over FY94 levels. For one project, the museum |Oined 

 forces with the National Portrait Gallery to create a 

 spectrum of new postcards from the collections at a great 

 saving. Summer Courtyard Grill food service was 

 expanded to twice weekly, in operation from May through 

 September. 



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