Archives of American Art Blog

In Full Bloom: Springtime in Washington

Page 15 of Mollie Garfield Album, 1882-1883. Mollie Garfield (Mary Garfield Stanley-Brown) papers regarding President James Garfield, 1874-1883. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

While spring officially arrives on March 21, for the thousands of tourists and native Washingtonians who flock annually to the Tidal Basin, it is the National Cherry Blossom Festival (currently through April 11) which truly ushers in the season in the Nation’s capital.

This small watercolor by the artist William Henry Holmes (1846-1933) forms part of a memorial scrapbook presented to Mollie Garfield after the assassination of her father, President James Garfield.  And, though it marks a sad occasion, Holmes's lifelike rendering exemplifies re-birth and the bloom of spring.

More on Mollie Garfield , William Henry Holmes, and cherry blossoms:

Cherry blossoms: Washington, DC Metro Area Flickr pool

• Mollie Garfield (Mary Garfield Stanley-Brown) papers regarding President James Garfield, 1874-1883
• William Henry Holmes artists' files, 1879-1932 
• Cherry blossom slideshow from the Smithsonian's Collections Search Center
  

Elizabeth Botten works in the Reference Services Department at the Archives of American Art.

A Young Artist's View of Tanforan

Tanforan, circa 1942-1944. Kay Sekimachi Stocksdale, artist. Bob Stocksdale and Kay Sekimachi papers, 1937-2004. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The fiber artist Kay Sekimachi was 16 years old when she painted this watercolor of Tanforan Assembly Center, a horse racetrack at the base of San Bruno Mountain, California, where some 7,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were detained in 1942 and housed in barracks and horse stalls (in one of which the famous racehorse Seabiscuit was once stabled).

Arts and crafts made by Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps are currently on view in The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 at the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery.

In a 2001 oral history interview with Kay Sekimachi for the Archives of American art, Sekimachi talks about art instruction at Tanforan.

Jenifer Dismukes is managing editor of the Archives of American Art Journal.