Smithsonian Stationery

One minor but characteristic addition to Steinberg’s pictorial repertory came in 1967, when he was appointed artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, a place he called a “philosophical institution.” It was hoped that he would “find many subjects in Washington and especially the Smithsonian to inspire creativity.”⁵³ What Steinberg found was surely not what the institution had in mind: “The Smithsonian’s stationery was very beautiful, with perfect steel engravings on various qualities of paper, each one more deluxe than the next. I did many drawings on these sheets of paper, using the letterhead in various ways.”⁵⁴ The “various ways” recontextualized the old engraving of the Smithsonian buildings. Steinberg’s transformative imagination shifted the plane of perception, turning that letterhead into, among many other things, a still-life element, thought balloon, and bottle label.⁵⁵