Patti Smith. The Patti Smith. The godmother of punk. Beat poet. Artist. Musician. Rock journalist. Ex-girlfriend of some of art and music’s most talented men. Subject of a documentary which just premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Recent inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In short, quite possibly the coolest woman alive. About a month ago, she and her band put on a rousing rock show at the 9:30 club. This Friday, Patti visited D.C. by herself, and treated an intimate crowd in the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium at the Smithsonian’s Archive’s of American Art to something a little different.

Touted as “an evening of spoken word and song,” this weekend’s show was something much more special. As it turned out, it was in promotion of a new book the Archives are publishing, With Love, a collection of letters between artists and their loved ones. Patti Smith read from a selection of letters from the book, sang songs, shared her thoughts on art and communication and love, and even read a love letter of her own, from photographer Robert Mapplethorpe when the two were living in the Chelsea Hotel. This was the first of this type of event for the Archives — which usually features scholars, artists and curators — but they hope to make it the first of many. Based on what we saw, that would be a very good thing.

The evening wouldn’t have resonated half as much with anyone else at the helm. Patti Smith is so honest and free and true to her feelings and ideas, that whether she was sharing her own stories and songs or reading the longings of others, they rang with reality and emotion. She took the stage by herself — no roadies, no backups — in her standard attire (lose black suit, white shirt, lose black tie, wild long lose hair, black cowboy boots, round silver framed reading glasses), and said, “I felt I should be able to do something at the Smithsonian, being a Smith.” She began reading the letters, altering her voice to fit the stories to make them more casual, or lusty, or longing.