Sara Mary Barnes Roby (1907 - 1986), born into a wealthy family in Pittsburgh, and herself a painter, believed that the best way to support the visual arts was to acquire and exhibit the works of living artists. To this end, she established the Sara Roby Foundation and began collecting American art in the mid-1950s. While the collection is strong in the work of realist painters like Reginald...

The Smithsonian Archives of American Art have an online exhibition of the papers of Russian-born artist Raphael Soyer, who was one of the "leading realist painters and printmakers, often depicting Depression-era transients, Manhattan streetscapes, shoppers, and women at work." The Smithsonian digitized the majority of Soyer's papers, and they now have 6050 images. The "More About this...