May
01

May 1, 1970

May 1, 1970 The Archives of American Art formally joins the Smithsonian Institution, with regional branch offices in New York, Detroit, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.,  and field offices in Boston and Santa Fe. The Archives was founded in 1954 in Detroit as an independent research institution committed to encouraging and aiding scholarship in the visual arts in this country from the 18th century to the present.

The photograph shows Deputy Director Garnett McCoy, right, and Curator Arthur Breton on the balcony of the old Patent Office Building (now the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture), the Archives of American Art headquarters. The Archives exists to assist writers, scholars and researchers by assembling and preserving the records of the nation’s artists, dealers, critics, galleries and museums.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives

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Posted: 1 May 2012
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