Can You Name Five Women Artists?

In 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts first launched its #5womenartists social media campaign to ask followers, “Can you name five women artists?” It was posted to bring attention to the under-representation of women in the arts. Since then, the National Sporting Library & Museum has continued to grow its fine art […]

Timeless: Jack Boul (1927–2024)

Washington, DC, artist Jack Boul, perhaps, will be most remembered for his pastoral landscape paintings of cows, but his subject matter was much more diverse over his long career. He was born in Brooklyn in 1927, grew up in the South Bronx, and met his wife Vivian of 72 years while working at the Jewish […]

Imp. Bonfire and the American Hackney

In 1893, the American Hackney Horse Society (AHHS), established just two years prior in 1891, published an ambitious project—the first American Hackney Stud Book (a first edition of which is held in the National Sporting Library & Museum’s collections and is available on online.) As noted in the volume, the focus of the founders of […]

Remembering Clarice Smith

There are people you meet in your life who change you. Clarice Smith was one of those people. We first crossed paths at the Piedmont Environmental Council 40th Anniversary Benefit Art Show, which we hosted in the National Sporting Library & Museum (NSLM)’s Founders’ Room in 2012. I hung the eclectic exhibition of numerous artists […]

Last Chance! “Survival of the Fittest” Exhibition

“I am disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to see the exhibition before it closed,” is a sentiment I hear more often than I would like to admit. So this is your friendly reminder that in just a few weeks, on January 14, 2024, one of the best exhibitions we have ever had closes […]

“Zillah” in the Western World

You can you usually tell which artwork is among my favorites based on what greets visitors when they enter an exhibition at the National Sporting Library & Museum. Zillah by Charles Hamilton is currently on view at the entrance of Identity & Restraint: Art of the Dog Collar, flanked by two pierce-work brass dog collars. […]

Endurance: 40 (+ 1) Years of the American Academy of Equine Art

On September 12, 1980, Alexander Mackay-Smith wrote in an editorial in The Chronicle of the Horse: There is presently no comparable organization for promoting the work of American artists whose subject matter is flat racing, steeplechasing, point-to-points, foxhunting, horse shows, combined training events, polo, and the like. The 77-year-old sporting and sporting art scholar and […]

A Sportsman’s Artist: Franklin Brooke Voss

Franklin Brooke Voss counted among his patrons a “Who’s Who” of some of the most successful and affluent people in the United States in the early-to mid-20th century, including the likes of John Hay Whitney, J. Watson Webb, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Alfred Vanderbilt, Walter Jeffords, F. Ambrose Clark, and Emily T. duPont. These patrons, however, […]

Nice Things: Installing Walter Matia’s Outdoor Sculptures

You may have noticed seven new large sculptures by Walter T. Matia (American, born 1953) installed along the pathway and in front of the Museum building last month. The striking animal bronzes are the outdoor portion of the exhibition, Field Notes | Walter Matia, and will be on view through January 9, 2022. We speculate […]

Never Have I Ever: Shot Sporting Clays

A frequent question I receive in my work is in which country sports I participate. Some people are surprised to learn that I have not focused on any of the disciplines myself, learning about them by observing, reading, and asking lots of questions of experts. I have not been riding since I was 8 years […]