Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Lincoln Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum with Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii by Nam June Paik in the background
Interactive fullscreen map
Established	1829[1]
Location	8th and F Streets NW, Washington, D.C.[2]
Coordinates	38°53′52″N 77°1′24″W / 38.89778°N 77.02333°W / 38.89778; -77.02333
Type	Art museum
Visitors	1.1 million (2022) [3]
Director	Stephanie Stebich[4][5][6][7]
Public transit access	Gallery Place-Chinatown
Website	americanart.si.edu

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 one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the United States. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the museum's collection. Most exhibitions are held in the museum's main building, the Old Patent Office Building (shared with the National Portrait Gallery), while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.

The museum provides electronic resources to schools and the public through its national education program. It maintains seven online research databases with more than 500,000 records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that document more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide. Since 1951, the museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program; as of 2013, more than 2.5 million visitors have seen the exhibitions.