Noted collectors of American crafts, Fleur and Charles Bresler, donated a collection of 66 pieces of turned and carved wood objects to the Smithsonian. This exhibition celebrates this fine gift, and the turned wood provides the revolutionary name of the exhibition's title. In 2002, Fleur Bresler invited Kenneth R. Trapp, then curator at the Renwick Gallery, to come to the Bresler's apartment to...

How does one build a better mousetrap? It's a recurring question that one might ask of many important objects and inventions. The folks at the Smithsonian American Art Museum are also quite curious about this subject, and they have created this online exhibition to look at a range of inventions patented in the nineteenth century. The remarkable models all come from the collection of Alan...

Sara Mary Barnes Roby (1907 - 1986), born into a wealthy family in Pittsburgh, and herself a painter, believed that the best way to support the visual arts was to acquire and exhibit the works of living artists. To this end, she established the Sara Roby Foundation and began collecting American art in the mid-1950s. While the collection is strong in the work of realist painters like Reginald...

American artist Ralph Fasanella is noted for his celebration of urban working life and the common man. Through his colorful and detailed works he critiqued many complex issues in postwar America. This beautiful and evocative online exhibit is designed to complement a lovely in situ exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Fasanella's story is fascinating; he started painting in his early...