“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 […]

Aquarelles: Early Watercolors by Ellen Emmet Rand

A few weeks ago, I got an intriguing email from William Harris, a co-conspirator in the “rewilding” of American portrait painter Ellen Gertrude Emmet Rand (American, 1878-1941): I hope this finds you doing well. I thought immediately of you when I came across this slender volume from the 1890s, “Out of Town Aquarelles,” watercolor plates […]

Filling the Gaps: Women’s History Month and Museum Collections

One of the most awkward and thought-provoking moments I have ever experienced at the National Sporting Library & Museum was in my early years as the George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator when the Museum first opened. It was in 2012, and I was a young and enthusiastic curator of a fine art collection which had […]

Recorded, Remembered, and Revered

I was excited to write about the addition to the National Sporting Library & Museum’s permanent collection of a painting by Henry Stull (American, 1851–1913), one of a generous gift of 16 works in 2020, currently on view in the Museum. I thought it would be a straightforward blog post announcing the work and sharing […]

When opportunity knocks…

The old adage goes, “Opportunity knocks but once,” but sometimes it’s twice. Two-weekends ago we had the second opportunity to showcase the National Sporting Library & Museum at the Washington Winter Show (WWS). Each year they invite a museum to exhibit at American University’s Katzen Center in Washington, DC, during their charity antique show in […]

Origins of the “Thrill of the ‘Chace”

Thrill of the ‘Chace: Steeplechase in Art, the recently opened exhibition and accompanying catalogue, explore the birth, growth, and evolution of jump racing and depictions of the sport by artists through to the present day. On numerous occasions, I have been questioned about and flat out accused of an egregious typo in the title. “Chace” […]