The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...

located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

building that was opened in 1859 on Pennsylvania Avenue and originally housed the Corcoran Gallery of Art (now one block from the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C., NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. preside ...

and across the street from the Old Executive Office Building). When it was built in 1859, it was known as "the American

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

History

The Renwick Gallery building was originally built to be Washington, D.C.'s first art

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical History (derived ) is the systematic study and th ...

and to house

William Wilson Corcoran William Wilson Corcoran (December 27, 1798 – February 24, 1888) was an American banker, philanthropist, and art collector. He founded the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Early life Corcoran was born on December 27, 1798, in Georgetown in the ...

's collection of American and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

an art. The building was designed by James Renwick, Jr. and finally completed in 1874. It is located at 1661 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Renwick designed it after the Louvre's Tuileries addition. At the time of its construction, it was known as "the American Louvre". The building was near completion when the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polic ...

broke out and was seized by the U.S. Army in August 1861 as a temporary military warehouse for the records and uniforms for the Quarter Master General's Corps. In 1864, General Montgomery C. Meigs converted the building into his headquarters office. On May 10, 1869, the building was returned to Corcoran, and, on January 19, 1874, the Corcoran Gallery of Art opened to the public. The gallery quickly outgrew the space and relocated to a new building nearby in 1897. Starting in 1899, the building housed the federal Court of Claims. By the 1950s, in need of more space, the Court of Claims proposed to demolish the building, however, it was saved from demolition by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1963. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of the Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley, proposed that the building be turned over to the Smithsonian."Architectural History of the Renwick Gallery"
In 1965, President Johnson signed an executive order transferring the Renwick building to the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

for use as a " gallery of

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...

craft A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale pr ...

and

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

." After a renovation under the direction of

Lloyd E. Herman Lloyd Eldred Herman (1936-2023) was an American arts administrator, curator, writer, museum planner and acknowledged expert on contemporary craft. He was known for being the founding Director of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art ...

it opened in 1972 as the home of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's contemporary craft program. The Renwick Gallery is now a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, housing the museum's collection of decorative art and crafts.

Closure for 2013–2015 renovation

Renwick Gallery closed December 9, 2013, in order to permit a major renovation of the historic structure. The building was slightly damaged during the 2011 Washington D.C. earthquake, and the construction process required reworking of the original infrastructure. The museum reopened on November 13, 2015 with an exhibition entitled Wonder featuring site-specific installation by nine artists. The architectural renovation was led by Westlake Reed Leskosky, a Cleveland, Ohio–based architecture and engineering firm and construction was overseen by Consigli Construction Co. of Milford, Massachusetts. Fundraising for the renovation began in 2013, and was completed in June 2014 when local financier and philanthropist David Rubenstein donated $5.4 million toward the project. Smithsonian officials renamed the gallery's Grand Salon in Rubenstein's honor. The renovation included replacing all

HVAC Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. ...

, electrical, plumbing, and fire-suppression systems; upgrades to security, phone, and data systems (including

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio w ...

installation throughout the building); restoring the original window configuration; restoring two vaulted ceilings on the second floor; reconfiguring the basement for staff offices and workshops; and adding LED lighting throughout the building. The Renwick's Grand Salon was also renovated to create a more contemporary event space. Applied Minds was chosen to create potential concepts for the Grand Salon. The four other firms which competed for the renovation job and made it to the final round but were not selected were Marlon Blackwell Architect, Studio Odile Decq,

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, and Westlake Reed Leskosky (now DLR Group).

Reopening

The Renwick Gallery opened its doors after renovation on Friday, November 13, 2015. Admission is free. The gallery is open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The first-floor gallery typically featured temporary exhibits that rotated about twice a year. One commentator said, the crafts displayed "are high art, not everyday objects." Historically, the second floor ''Grand Salon'' has been one of the most famous art-filled rooms in Washington. For much of the museum's history, it was hung with 70 paintings by 51 American artists, most of them artworks created between 1840 and 1930, including landscapes, sentimental portraits, and classical themes, as well as portraits of tribal Native Americans by George Catlin. Since November 2015, the paintings are no longer on display, and the formal curtains, red carpeting, and red velvet furniture have all been removed. A number of the paintings were moved to the

Exhibitions

In 2012, the Renwick Gallery hosted an exhibition called "40 Under 40: Craft Futures", which featured 40 artists in "boundary-pushing interpretations of glass, fiber, ceramic, wood and other materials challenge the traditional process-oriented notion of the craft medium by incorporating performance, interactivity and politics." The gallery's visitors have almost doubled due to the popularity of the "Wonder" exhibition. In November 2015, "Wonder" opened in celebration of the completion of a two-year renovation of the Renwick Gallery. The exhibition featured nine major contemporary artists invited to install site-specific works on the theme of wonder in the nine exhibition spaces of the gallery. The artists chosen were Jennifer Angus, Chakaia Booker,

Gabriel Dawe Gabriel Dawe (born 1973) is a Mexican-born artist living in Dallas, Texas, whose work is based on investigations of the visible spectrum of light. He has gained renown for his large-scale Plexus series of installations of sewing thread, though he al ...

Tara Donovan Tara Donovan (born 1969 in Flushing, Queens, in New York City)) is an American sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her large-scale installations, sculptures, drawings, and prints utilize everyday objects to explore the transformati ...

, Patrick Dougherty,

Janet Echelman Janet Echelman (born March 19, 1966) is an American sculptor and fiber artist. Her sculptures have been displayed as public art, often as site-specific installations. Works include: ''1.26'', which has been exhibited on five continents; ''Her ...

, John Grade, Maya Lin, and Leo Villareal. The artists were given freedom to create their installations. Angus' piece, "In the Midnight Garden," featured over 5,000 bugs – beetles, moths, and cicadas – in various patterns in a pink room. Booker's "Anonymous Donor" was made up of old tires and stainless steel. Dawe's "Plexus A1" weaved a rainbow into the middle of one of the Renwick's rooms. Donovan made her installation out of thousands of index cards. Dougherty made his installation, "Shindig," out of willow branches. Echelman based her piece off of images from the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditi ...

that showed the impact of waves during the 2011 Japan tsunami. Grade reassembled a mold of a hemlock tree over a century year old. The piece is called "Middle Fork." Lin chose to map out the

Chesapeake Bay The Chesapeake Bay ( ) is the largest estuary in the United States. The Bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula (including the parts: the ...

using marbles. Villareal's LED chandelier hangs from the top of the Renwick ceiling. Since January 2016, over 176,000 people have visited the gallery. The "Wonder" exhibition is popular on social media, and the Renwick has been tagged over 20,000 times on

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

by users. Wonder closed after eight months and drew 732,000 viewers. It was criticized for being inconsistent with the Renwick's commitment to American craft. The Renwick Craft Invitational is a biennial assessment of contemporary fine craft. The 2016 exhibition featured works by Steven Young Lee,

Kristen Morgin Kristen L. Morgin (born 1968) is an American visual artist working primarily in sculpture. She is best known for her works made of unfired clay that use trompe-l'œil to appear as wood, paper, or metal and suggest decay. Biography Kristen Morgin ...

, Jennifer Trask, and Norwood Viviano. ''Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018'' featured works by

Tanya Aguiñiga Tanya Aguiñiga (born 1978, in San Diego, California) is a Los Angeles–based artist, designer, and activist. Early life and education Although she was born in the United States, Aguiñiga spent her childhood living in Tijuana, Mexico. Fr ...

Sharif Bey Sharif Bey (born 1974, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an African American artist, ceramicist and professor. He produces both functional pottery and ceramic and mixed- media sculpture, using a variety of forms and textures. His body of work r ...

, Dustin Farnsworth, and

Stephanie Syjuco Stephanie Syjuco (born 1974, in Manila, Philippines), is a Filipino-American conceptual artist and educator. She currently lives and works in San Francisco Career Syjuco's artwork explores the friction between the authentic and the counterfei ...

. Since 2011, the Renwick has hosted a quarterly "Handi-hour," a crafting-themed happy hour event, inspired by the DIY movement. In addition to craft activities for patrons, the 21+ event features craft beers selected by Greg Engert of the ChurchKey restaurant and pub in Washington, D.C. In 2019 the Renwick hosted an

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory Modality (human–computer interaction), modalities, including visual, Hearing, auditory, hap ...

exhibition by glass artist Ginny Ruffner and digital collaborator Grant Kirkpatrick titled ''Reforestation of the Imagination''.

Notable artists in the collection

A number of well-known, critically acclaimed artists had works in the Renwick Gallery's collection, as of the November 2015 reopening most are no longer on display. Among them are: *

Margaret Boozer Margaret A Boozer (born 1966) is an American ceramist and sculpture artist, best known for her clay and ceramic compositions, or landscapes, that focus on the individuality, history, and geology of the clay used as subject matters. Education Boo ...

's ''Eight Red Bowls'' Maryland terra cotta and pine sculpture. * Wendell Castle's ''Ghost Clock'' cloaks time with trompe l'oeil. * Dale Chihuly's famous glass globules float in their sandbox sanctuaries. * Arline Fisch's silver ''Body Ornament''
Larry Fuente
s ''Game Fish'' made from a mounted sailfish and game accessories, such as dice, poker chips, domino tiles, Scrabble letters, yo-yos, badminton shuttlecocks and Ping-Pong balls. * Sam Maloof's furniture * Maria Martinez * Albert Paley * Ginny Ruffner's ''Reforestation of the Imagination'' (with Grant Kirkpatrick), an augmented reality exhibition. * Judith Schaechter's ''A Little Torcher'', a stained-glass creation depicting pyromania. * Kim Schmahmann's 1993–1999 ''Bureau of Bureaucracy'', which is a "wooden cabinet full of cupboards to nowhere, bottomless drawers, drawers within drawers, hidden compartments, and more, a wonderful metaphor for the labyrinthine workings of government".

References

External links

Smithsonian American Art Museum's official Web site
{{authority control National Historic Landmarks in Washington, D.C. Members of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington James Renwick Jr. buildings Contemporary crafts museums in the United States Art museums and galleries in Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution museums Art museums established in 1972 1972 establishments in Washington, D.C. Art galleries established in 1972 Decorative arts museums in the United States Downtown (Washington, D.C.)