Suggesting some changes in DC: SAAM

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has an inconsistent collection of American art. Its exhibition program often seems to have been determined by focus group -- what other explanation could there be for a production that inexplicably pairs Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams? The museum takes shows from too many second-tier venues that circulate exhibitions not up to best-of-the-best standards. (For example, I think that there's room for a thorough, illuminating Aaron Douglas retrospective, but the small, scattered show recently at SAAM wasn't it.) The museum's interest in contemporary art seems limited to a drive-by annual award, the Lucelia. Most damningly, collection-building seems not to be a prime concern. Or capability. [Photo]

Instead, survival is: The Smithsonian's last undersecretary for art, Ned Rifkin, even commissioned a blue-ribbon panel that issued a report that found SAAM boss Betsy Broun to be an ineffective director and all but begged her to resign. She ignored it.

SAAM features a confusing program in an historic building in the heart of Washington's artsy, crowded Seventh Street neighborhood. If any museum of American art is well-positioned to re-define the field during a period of increasing globalization - of art and everything else - it is SAAM. Instead it inexplicably lurches through mediocrity, from John Alexander to Barbara Bosworth to Ruth Duckworth, with a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture dropped in for good measure.

The Smithsonian should eliminate SAAM as a distinct entity, merging it into the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. (It's not immediately clear whether the terms of Joseph Hirshhorn's gift to the nation would allow such a clear merger, but surely something along those lines could be finessed.)

Hirshhorn and SAAM curators would have to make some fascinating choices. What year would be the 'line of demarcation' between the two buildings, or would work from all periods be shown in both buildings? Would special exhibitions be shown in both facilities? Both institutions have office-space issues that would have to be addressed. And ideally any plan would include changes to the Hirshhorn's Bunshaft building that would open up the office-filled fourth floor for art.

There are parts of both collections that would seem not to fit well within a new, consolidated museum: SAAM's folk art collections are exhilarating, but would they fit better at the SI's Renwick Gallery? The National Gallery of Art might well be interested in some long-term loans. (Of course, many of SAAM's American landscapes would fit beautifully in a new museum, and could help make clear the relationship between the American landscape tradition and, say, abex or light-and-space.)

In the end, a combined Hirshhorn/SAAM could be a Walker or SFMOMA-style museum with almost a Walker- or SFMOMA-sized budget. (Today the Hirshhorn and SAAM have combined budgets in the low $20 million range. Precise figures are difficult to come to because Smithsonian museums share some costs and because SI budgeting is labyrinthine.) The result could be a powerhouse museum of modern and contemporary art with a distinctly American twist, a museum whose collection would make it clear how American modernism and post-war art are indebted to previous American art. It's a story that few American museums tell. Washington is a good place to try.