Smithsonian Museum of American Art
Lincoln Gallery
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 Location in Washington, D.C.
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| Established | 1829 |
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| Location | 8th & F Streets NW, Washington, D.C. |
| Coordinates | 38°53′49″N 77°01′22″W / 38.897°N 77.022689°WCoordinates: 38°53′49″N 77°01′22″W / 38.897°N 77.022689°W |
| Type | Art museum, Design/Textile Museum, Heritage Museum |
| Visitors | 1.2 million (2013) |
| Director | Stephanie Stebich (as of April 2017) |
| Curator |
Virginia M. Mecklenburg |
| Public transit access |
 Gallery Place-Chinatown
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| Website | americanart.si.edu |
Virginia M. Mecklenburg
Abraham Thomas
Nora Atkinson
Melissa Ho
Eleanor Jones Harvey
John P. Jacob
Karen Lemmey
Joanna Marsh
Sarah Newman
E. Carmen Ramos
William Truettner
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. The museum has more than 7,000 artists represented in the collection. Most exhibitions take place 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.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has had many names over the years—Smithsonian Art Collection, National Gallery of Art (not to be confused with the current National Gallery of Art), National Collection of Fine Arts, and National Museum of American Art. The museum adopted its current name in October 2000.
The collection, which was begun in 1829, was first on display in the original Smithsonian Building, now nicknamed the "Castle". The collection grew as the Smithsonian buildings grew, and the collection was housed in one or more Smithsonian buildings on the National Mall. By the 1920s, space had become critical: "Collections to the value of several millions of dollars are in storage or temporarily on exhibition and are crowding out important exhibits and producing a congested condition in the Natural History, Industrial Arts, and Smithsonian Buildings". In 1924, architect Charles A. Platt – who had designed the 1918 Freer Gallery for the Smithsonian – drew up preliminary plans for a National Gallery of Art to be built on the block next to the Natural History Museum. However, this building was never constructed.
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