Doodle dandy: with a few deft strokes, Saul Steinberg turned institutional letterhead into signature works of whimsy.(The Object at Hand)

IN 1967, then-Secretary of the Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley invited Saul Steinberg to serve as the Institution's first and only artist-in-residence. The Romanian-born Steinberg, schooled in philosophy in Bucharest and architecture in Italy, had come to the United States in 1941 and quickly established himself as a graphic artist who merged Cubism, Surrealism and sly humor, particularly in elegant, imaginative drawings and covers for the New Yorker magazine. His style was at once simple and antic, serious and slapstick, metaphoric and mischievous.

In 1946, Steinberg was included in the now legendary "Fourteen Americans" show at the Museum of Modern Art, in the company …