USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology professor Jon Pynoos has been chosen as one of four California representatives to serve as a councilor for the newly renovated Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Pynoos is one of 100 American business and community leaders invited to join the Smithsonian Council for American Art.

“We look to council members to help us meet the people who care to endorse and support our national art program, to suggest ways for us to reach a broader constituency through exhibitions and educational research and to extend this museum’s visibility across the nation,” said Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian.

Pynoos was raised in the world of art and architecture. His parents were avid art collectors. His father, civil engineer and builder Morris Pynoos, worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and AQ Jones, the former dean of the USC School of Architecture. His mother, Rita Pynoos, is a distinguished member of the Smithsonian American Art Commission.

The personal collection of Pynoos, a longtime supporter of California art and artists, contains works from painters Sandy Walker, Joe Goode, Norman Zammitt and David Hockney. While these artists were not necessarily born in the state, they either live there or depict it in their work.

“I am lucky enough to know many California artists personally,” said Pynoos, who hopes to help enhance California artists’ representation at the national level. He would like to see more exposure of Oakland-based Walker’s large American landscape paintings.

“He captures the essence of such places as Mount Shasta and the Grand Canyon through paintings full of color and feeling that combine abstraction and realism,” Pynoos said.

Among his private collection, Pynoos takes the most pride in his canes, which he has collected over the last 30 years and has displayed at several exhibits in Southern California.

“Canes represent a functional art form that can also be beautiful,” Pynoos said. “The American Art Museum has a wide variety of them. The artwork represented there is much more than just portraits and sculptures.”

Pynoos has been a professor of gerontology at the USC Davis School for more than 35 years. He is the director of the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence and has been a longtime advocate of universal design and home modification.

In his new role as a council member, Pynoos will play a vital part in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s nationwide outreach program. He will help the museum lay the groundwork for expanded national education and tour programs and use his existing relationships with California artists to promote the museum.

“Jon Pynoos is clearly an exemplary council member for his own professional and scientific accomplishments, for his connections to the arts community in California and for his outstanding personal qualities,” Broun said.