Randuwa II: Smithsonian American Art Museum: Artist to Artist Pairings

Saturday, July 11, 2026

Smithsonian American Art Museum: Artist to Artist Pairings

While most of the museum space dedicated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum was closed, there were a couple of pleasant exceptions. One was this corridor in which two works of art were hung in "conversation" with one another. It's a wonderful idea. A chance to ask the viewer with a modicum of information to enter themselves into a dialogue with the Art and, in a way, the Artists themselves. I love this sort of thing!

Here are 4 of the pairings for your consideration. I've included both images of the two works, and an excerpt from the wall placard that provides some of the context for the selection.

The pairings are:

#1 - Alma Thomas and Felrath Hines.
#2 - Fritz Scholder and Allan Houser
#3 - Grace Hartigan and Frank O'Hara
#4 - Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

Of the artists I know well the works of Alma Thomas a local celeb of Abstract Expressionism. Her paintings are easily recognizable and I have had the pleasure of discovering them beyond the local Museums in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. I was introduced to Frits Scholder's ouvre at the National Museum of the American Indian which hosted a retrospective of his work "Indian/Not Indian" back in 2009. I bought a T-shirt. Both Grace Hartigan and Frank O'Hara ran with a group of NYC based artist, writers, poets that were very influential in the mid to latter half of the 20th century. Grace left New York in 1960 around the height of their influence for Baltimore. She set up her studio there and for many years was Director of the Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art). I have friend who applied there and met her. That's 2-degrees of separation, if you keeping track, which is 3-degrees of separation from Frank O'Hara. An American original, and longtime beloved poet of moi. Finally, I had no freaking idea that Thomas Hart Benton (a leader in the Regionalism Art Movement) who railed against the East Coast elitist art establishment with their bias against all things Realism knew, let alone "mentored" Jackson Pollock who what the very definition of this east coast artist cabal! How bizarre is that? God, I love art!

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