1967

January-April, first artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution. “I spent perhaps the strangest three months of my life. It was as though I’d emigrated to a place where normally no one emigrates.” Official Washington social life and government bureaucracy irritated him. “It was against this world that the hippie revolution of nudity, and especially of violence, took place.”

During these months, he makes drawings on Smithsonian stationery, adding imagery that recontextualizes the steel-engraved buildings on the letterhead. For a luncheon in his honor on February 27, he prepares two pages of “Remarks” in his false calligraphy, undercutting what he perceived as the pomposity of the event.

Two drawings on Smithsonian Institution stationery, 1967. Ink on paper, 10 ½ x 8 in. Washington, DC, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Gift of the artist. (1967. Smithsonian 1974.14.31 [1] and 1967.Smithsonian 1974.14.13

Two drawings on Smithsonian Institution stationery, 1967. Ink on paper, 10 ½ x 8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Gift of the artist.

"Remarks prepared by Mr. Saul Steinberg for a luncheon given in his honor at the Smithsonian Institution on February 27, 1967." Washington, DC, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

While in Washington, makes four drawings for backdrops for a Seattle Opera Company traveling production of Igor Stravinsky’s camera opera, The Soldier’s Tale. He supervises the enlargement of the drawings.

Steinberg’s four drawings for backdrops for the Seattle Opera Company’s production of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, 1967. Mixed media, 14 ½ x 23 in. each. The Saul Steinberg Foundation. — Steinberg’s four drawings for backdrops for the Seattle Opera Company’s production of Stravinsky’s *The Soldier’s Tale*, 1967. Mixed media, 14 ½ x 23 in. each. The Saul Steinberg Foundation.

March 10-April 30, “Steinberg: ‘The Americans.’ Aquarelles, Dessins et Collages 1955–1967” at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. Six of the eight monumental panels from The Americans, his collage-murals for the 1958 US Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair, are reassembled and exhibited along with nearly 50 drawings of the previous decade. Two of the panels accompany the show when it travels to the Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

Installation shot of “Steinberg: ‘The Americans.’ Aquarelles, Dessins et Collages 1955–1967” at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, March 1967.

Contributes 27 drawings to My Search for Absolutes, the posthumously published credo of philosopher-theologian Paul Tillich.

Biography, 1965. Ink, watercolor, and pencil on paper, 22 x 15 in. The Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation. — *Biography*, 1965. Ink, watercolor, and pencil on paper, 22 x 15 in. The Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation.

Untitled, 1965. Ink on paper, 27 7/8 x 4 3/8 in. The Saul Steinberg Foundation. — *Untitled*, 1965. Ink on paper, 27 7/8 x 4 3/8 in. The Saul Steinberg Foundation.

August 3, purchases three more lots to extend his Amagansett property.

August 12-30, with Sigrid, trip to California, Washington, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota.

August 30, death of Ad Reinhardt, who had become a close friend.

Incontro con Saul Steinberg: L’essenza totemica (Encounter with Saul Steinberg: The Totemic Character), a film made for Italian television (RAI), with ST interviewed by Sergio Zavoli. Film is shot in his Washington Square Village apartment.

Three frames from the 1967 TV film, Incontro con Saul Steinberg: L’essenza totemica, produced by RAI.

As his opposition to the Vietnam war grows, contributes a lithograph entitled Thirteen Colonies, or Vietnam, to Portfolio 9—lithographs by nine artists sold to raise money for anti-war campaigns. Will continue to donate art and design posters for anti-war efforts.