The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation's first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character and imagination of the American people throughout three centuries.

The museum's historic Greek Revival building in the heart of Washington's new downtown cultural district has been meticulously renovated with expanded permanent collection galleries and innovative new public spaces. The museum shares its main building with the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery; both museums share a joint main entrance at Eighth and F streets N.W. Collectively, the two museums and their activities are known as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the home to one of the largest collections of American art in the world. Its holdings -- more than 41,000 works -- tell the stories of America through the visual arts and represent the most inclusive collection of American art of any museum today. Artworks in the collection reveal key aspects of America's rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today. More than 7,000 American artists are represented in the collection, including major masters such as John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney, Lee Friedlander, Nam June Paik, Martin Puryear and Robert Rauschenberg. In recent years, the museum has strengthened its commitment to contemporary art through curatorial appointments, endowments, acquisitions and an annual artist award.

The museum has been a leader in identifying significant aspects of American visual culture and actively collecting and exhibiting works of art before many other major public collections. The museum has the largest collection of New Deal art and the finest collections of contemporary craft, and American impressionist paintings and masterpieces from the Gilded Age. Other pioneering collections include historic and contemporary folk art; work by African American and Latino artists; photography from its origins in the 19th century to contemporary works; images of western expansion; and realist art from the first half of the 20th century.