From “Side by Side” at The Phillips Collection - Peter Paul Rubens. The Finding of Erichthonius, 1632-33. Oil on canvas. Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio. R.T. Miller, Jr. Fund, 1944. - Click to enlarge
The Phillips Collection will exhibit Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Phillips, September 11-January 16, 2011. The exhibition will feature twenty-five works from the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College along with selections from the Phillips’s permanent collection. The show will create “new artistic conversations and provocative juxtapositions.” The works to be shown from the Allen Museum will include paintings by artists in the modernist tradition, including Paul Cézanne, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Claude Monet, and Mark Rothko, plus works by Hendrick ter Brugghen, Peter Paul Rubens, Joseph Mallord William Turner, and others. The exhibition was organized by The Phillips Collection and the Allen Memorial Art Museum.
The Phillips Collection will present the Bob Tublin Trio in a performance of contemporary jazz on September 2. The Collection will present Painting Music: Musicians from Oberlin’s Conservatory on September 30. The string quartet concert will complement the exhibition titled Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Phillips, which is described above. Oberlin students will perform both standard repertoire and contemporary music in the Phillips’s Music Room.
The Phillips Collection is exhibiting Pousette-Dart: Predominantly White Paintings through September 12. Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–1992) created the paintings between 1949 and 1954, a period when he was short of funds to buy materials and developed a series of paintings that could be produced nearly without paint. The exhibition displays some 20 paintings and also includes some of the artist’s wire sculptures created with found objects.
The Phillips Collection is exhibiting Robert Ryman: Variations and Improvisations through September 12. The contemporary painter is known for square, white-on-white paintings, and the exhibition features some 25 small-scale works that are representative of his career. Ryman focuses on the material qualities of his paintings, “turning the paint and the methods of application into the subject of his work.”
The Phillips Collection’s Intersections series is presenting an installation by Kate Shepherd, through September 5. Her work plays “on the architectural details of a former dining room in the original house of The Phillips Collection as well as the ways in which paintings have been displayed in the room over the years.” A contemporary artist, her paintings are built from multiple wooden panels joined together at barely-visible seams; they are coated with gloss enamel and then painted over to suggest recognizable structures and patterns.
Simply Beautiful: Photographs From National Geographic(NG) will be on display in the museum in Washington, September 3-February 6, 2011. The photographs were selected from the NG’s archives to explore the subject of “what creates beauty in a photograph.” The possibilities include elements such as light, palette, composition and more. The point is made that “photographs give us visual proof that the world is grander than we imagined, that there is beauty, often overlooked, in nearly everything.” The exhibition is based on the new National Geographic Book, Simply Beautiful Photographs and will be part of FotoWeek DC 2010, a celebration of photography which will be on display in Washington, November 6–13. Visithttp://events.nationalgeographic.com/events/exhibits/2010/09/03/simply-beautiful/
PLEASE NOTE: An article and brief video about The National Geographic Museumexhibition titled Da Vinci – The Genius, which is on display through September 12, is at the end of this page.
A photo from The National Geographic Exhibition titled "Simply Beautiful" - Dinaric Alps, Bosnia, A young man takes a break from work on his family’s farm to smile at the camera (p. 63, James P. Blair) - Click to enlarge
Norman Rockwell, “First Trip to the Beauty Shop” 1972, oil on canvas - Collection of George Lucas - Licensed by Norman Rockwell Licensing, Niles, IL - Click to enlarge
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exhibiting Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, through January 2, 2011. The esteemed filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have long admired Rockwell and have collected his works. Fifty-seven major Rockwell paintings and drawings are being shown from the Lucas and Spielberg collections. The exhibition was organized by Virginia M. Mecklenburg, senior curator. Visithttp://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/rockwell/
Norman Rockwell, about 1950, Norman Rockwell Museum, Licensed by Norman Rockwell Licensing, Niles, IL - Click to enlarge
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exhibiting John Gossage: The Pond, through January 17, 2011. The installation celebrates the recent gift to the museum of the photographic series and the re-issue of “one of the most influential photography books of the past three decades.” Washington artist John Gossage (b. 1946) photographed a small, unnamed pond between Washington and Baltimore between 1981 and 1985 and published his book The Pond in 1985. The title was intended to recall Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond, but Gossage “advocated a more all-embracing view of the landscape, exploring the less idealized spaces that border America's cities and suburbs.” The museum acquired the complete portfolio of The Pond in 2007, and this exhibition marks the first time the complete series of fifty-three gelatin silver prints has been on public display. Toby Jurovics, curator of photography, is the curator of the installation. The Pond will be reissued in September and co-published by the museum. Visit www.americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/gossage/
The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with the cooperation of the Japanese American Citizens League, San Francisco Chapter, is exhibiting The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 through January 30, 2011. Delphine Hirasuna, a San Francisco-based author, curated the exhibition based on her book titled The Art of Gaman, and the exhibition is presented under the honorary patronage of The Honorable Norman Y. Mineta, a former Congressman, Secretary of Transportation, and Regent of the Smithsonian, who was interned as a child at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Visit http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/gaman/
From John Gossage: Untitled, from “The Pond,” 1985 - Gelatin silver print - Smithsonian American Art Museum - Gift of anonymous donors - Click to enlarge
Frank E. Cummings III, “On the Edge Naturally,” 1960 - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur & Charles Bresler - Click to enlarge
The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum will exhibit A Revolution in Wood: The Bresler Collection, September 24-January 30, 2011. The exhibition will celebrate the gift of sixty-six pieces of turned and carved wood to the museum by the noted collectors, Fleur and Charles Bresler. There will be works on display by pioneers in the field, including David Ellsworth, William Hunter, Mark and Melvin Lindquist, Edward Moulthrop, and Rude Osolnik. There will be more recent works by Ron Fleming, Michelle Holzapfel, Hugh McKay, Norm Sartorius, Mark Sfirri, and others whose works employ new techniques such as multi-axis turning, the incorporation of “secondary materials,” and a focus on carving. A 5-minute film will be shown continuously in the exhibition galleries, featuring interviews with Fleur Bresler; artists David Ellsworth and Mark Sfirri; and Kenneth R. Trapp, former curator-in-charge at the Renwick Gallery. Nicholas R. Bell, who is curator at the Renwick Gallery, is organizing the exhibition. Visit http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/bresler/
Derek A. Bencomo, “Hana Valley, First View from the ‘Peaks and Valleys Series,’” 1997, milowood, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur and Charles Bresler in honor of Kenneth R. Trapp, curator-in-charge of the Renwick Gallery (1995-2003) - Click to enlarge
The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery is presenting Americans Now, through July 10, 2011. The exhibition is drawn from the gallery’s permanent collection and features individuals prominent in sports, entertainment and other fields of endeavor during the last 10 years. It reflects the variety of media the gallery is now collecting and addresses the museum’s new policy of accepting living subjects into the collection. Thus, there are images of Chuck Close, Michael Eisner, LL Cool J, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Willie Nelson, President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Martha Stewart and others.
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is exhibiting From FDR to Obama: Presidents on Time, through September 6. Time magazine, since its founding in 1923, has devoted a cover to all incumbent presidents from Warren Harding to Barack Obama, with the exception of Herbert Hoover. Beginning with President Franklin Roosevelt, the exhibition explores the modern presidency through the covers of the magazine. Historian James Barber curated the exhibition. .
The National Portrait Gallery is exhibiting New Arrivals, through November 14. Nearly thirty works spanning more than two centuries of American history and culture are displayed. The exhibition includes George Linen’s portrait of 19th-century statesman Daniel Webster, a self-portrait by William Beckman; Henry Casselli’s sketches of astronauts Bob Crippen, John Young and John Glenn and photographs of singers Enrico Caruso, Lena Horne and Selena, plus broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, and sportscaster Red Auerbach with Bob Cousy.
Elisabetta Gut - L'uccello di fuoco (Da Stravinsky) (The Firebird (From Stravinsky)), 1985 Description: Paper cutout, wood, and collage - 8 1/2 x 11 x 2 1/4 in. - National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. - Gift of H.G. Spencer in honor of Lorraine Grace - Click to enlarge
The National Museum of Women in the Arts will exhibit Books Without Words: The Visual Poetry of Elisabetta Gut, September 10-January 16, 2011. The exhibition will present 22 artists’ books, collage-poems, book-objects and object-poems by contemporary Italian artist Elisabetta Gut. It has been said that “Her visual poetry is inspired by her dreams, memories, and love for music and poetry.”
Elisabetta Gut - Libro-nido (Nest-book), 1982 Description: Found bird nest, paper, string, and sealing wax - 6 3/4 x 7 x 1 in. - On loan from the artist - National Museum of Women in the Arts - Click to enlarge
June Wayne - Secretary to a Publisher (from "The Dorothy Series" 1975 - 79), 1976 - National Museum of Women in the Arts - Gift of the artist - Click to enlarge
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), in collaboration with the Savannah College of Art and Design, is exhibiting JuYeon Kim: The In-Between through September 13. Ms. Kim, who is a native of Gwang-Ju, Korea, created two new sculpture installations and numerous scroll drawings for the exhibition. She was inspired by the 8th-century Tibetan Buddhist text popularly known in Western cultures as The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The NMWA is exhibiting June Wayne's "Dorothy Series," 1975-79 through September 13. The lithographs were created in a hyper-realist style using photographs, documents, and scrapbook memorabilia. The works narrate the life of the artist’s mother, Dorothy, who died at age 60 after overcoming many obstacles as a working woman and having raised June as a single parent. The exhibition was created in collaboration with Ed Hamilton of Hamilton Press.
The NMWA is exhibiting The Collaborative Print: Works from SOLO Impression, through September 13. The show highlights the special relationship printers have with artists. Judith Solodkin founded SOLO Impression. Inc. in New York City in 1975 and began publishing and printing lithographs, woodcuts, letter-press prints, and artists’ books. She was the first woman to graduate from an educational institution founded in 1960 by artist June Wayne, whose work is described in the preceding article.
The NMWA is exhibiting Women to Watch 2010: Body of Work: New Perspectives on Figure Painting, through September 12. The 17 works in the biennial exhibition reflect many styles and approaches, but “all highlight figure painters' embrace of the slow, subtle, and singular set of processes involved in painting people.” The artists whose works are featured are Mequitta Ahuja (Texas); Hannah Barrett (Massachusetts); Julie Farstad (Greater Kansas City); Nikki Hemphill (Arkansas); Jennifer Levonian (Pennsylvania); Kate Longmaid (Vermont); Ann-Marie Manker (Georgia); and Rose Wylie (United Kingdom).
From SOLO Impression: Françoise Gilot - Genetic Patterns, 1991 - National Museum of Women in the Arts Museum purchase: Members' Acquisition Fund - Click to enlarge
Arcimboldo, 1526–1593: Nature and Fantasy - National Gallery of Art, Washington East Building September 19–January 9, 2011 - Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Spring, 1573, oil on canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris, Département des Peintures - Photo credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY, Louvre, Paris, France - Click to enlarge
The National Gallery of Art will exhibit Arcimboldo, 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy in the East Building, September 19-January 9, 2011. The show will feature 16 examples of the fantastic composite heads painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The unusual heads, which will be shown for the first time in the U.S., are composed of plants, animals, and other objects. Context for the exhibition of Arcimboldo’s inventions will be provided by the inclusion of drawings by Leonardo and Dürer, small bronzes, illustrated books and manuscripts, and ceramics. They “will provide a context for Arcimboldo’s inventions, revealing his debt to established traditions of physiognomic and nature studies.” The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Visit www.nga.gov
NOTE: WETA Television Channel 26 will air a National Gallery of Art film titled Arcimboldo: Nature and Fantasy at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 5.
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting Edvard Munch: Master Prints, through October 31. The esteemed artist (1865-1944), who was the most influential of the modern Norwegian artists, focused on themes of love, attraction, alienation and death. The exhibition features nearly 60 of his most important prints, focusing on his stylistic approach to each of his major themes and the numerous variations he made of them over his lifetime.
For “From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection exhibition” - Pablo Picasso - Madame Picasso, 1923 - oil on linen - Chester Dale Collection - Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The National Gallery of Art is presenting From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, through July 31, 2011. Chester Dale was a successful businessman, collector and president of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art from 1955 until his death in 1962. Some 81 of the finest French and American paintings shown explore “the collector’s passion and talent for acquiring great art as well as his tastes in modern art.”
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting German Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, 1580–1900, through November 28. Wolfgang Ratjen (1943–1997) collected the finest German watercolors and drawings over three decades, and the exhibition displays 120 major works from the 17th-century baroque, the 18th-century rococo, early 19th-century romanticism, and late 19th-century realism. The curator is Andrew Robison, who is the A. W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art.
From the German Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, 1580–1900 exhibition: Johann Esaias Nilson, German, 1721 - 1788 - An Elegant Company Playing Board Games, 1756 - Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund - Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, 1953-1997, through September 6. Ginsberg (1926–1997) purchased a small Kodak camera in 1953 and made many intimate photos of himself, his friends and his lovers. His photos from the 1950s to the 1990s form a portrait of the Beat and counterculture generation. The exhibition explores all facets of his work in photography. The curator is Sarah Greenough of the National Gallery of Art department of photographs.
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting American Modernism: The Shein Collection, through January 2, 2011. The Edward and Deborah Shein Collection is noted for its quality and strict focus on early American modernism. The exhibition explores the birth of modernism a hundred years ago through 20 paintings, sculptures, and drawings by the first-generation of the American avant-garde. The curators are Nancy Anderson and Charles Brock of the National Gallery of Art’s Department of American and British Paintings.
From American Modernism: The Shein Collection exhibition: Alfred H. Maurer - Still Life with Doily and Roll, c. 1928-1932 - Collection of Deborah and Ed Shein - Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting In the Tower: Mark Rothko, the second in a series of exhibitions focusing on contemporary art and its roots, through January 2, 2011. The show offers “a rare look” at the black-on-black paintings the artist made in 1964 in connection with his work on a chapel for the Menil Collection in Houston. The exhibition was curated by Harry Cooper, curator of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery.
The Katzen Arts Center at American University is exhibiting Norse Soul—the Legacy of Edvard Munch, Social Democracy, Old Myths, Anarchy, and Death Longings, through October 17. The exhibition features contemporary Norwegian art from the 1930’s until today, represented through a selection of works taken from: Arne Ekeland (1908-94), Marianne Heske (b. 1946), Bjarne Melgaard (b. 1967) and Marthe Thorshaug (b. 1977). Dag Aak Sveniar curated the exhibition, which is presented in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition titled Edvard Munch: Master Prints, which will be on display July 31-October 31.
The Katzen Arts Center will exhibit BG Muhn: Love Affair of Empress, through October 17. The exhibition features BG Muhn’s first installation work in a series of invented “portraits” of mythical Chinese empresses. He uses “techniques ranging from deadpan official Chinese portrait style to a face composed of hundreds of houseflies glued to the canvas…..as a metaphor to reveal the dark side of human nature.”
The Katzen Arts Center is exhibiting Luciano Penay: Time, News, Paintings, and Natural Forms, through October 17. The show features large-scale collages created by Professor Emeritus Luciano Penay, who taught art at American University for many years.
The Katzen Arts Center is exhibiting RE-VISION: American University Alumni, through October 24. The exhibition was curated by Art Department faculty members Tim Doud and Zoe Charlton and Museum Director and Curator Jack Rasmussen.
The Katzen Arts Center is exhibitin a series of new works by Washington sculptor Alan Binstock for the Sylvia Berlin Katzen Sculpture Garden, through October 24. The sculptures integrate steel and glass to create monumental forms.
- From “Norse Soul—the Legacy of Edvard Munch, Social Democracy, Old Myths, Anarchy, and Death Longings” Clockwise from top: Arne Ekeland's "Outside the Factory" - Marthe Thorshaug's "Legenden om Ygg/The Legend of Ygg, 2009 - Technique: HDV 1080i /stereo sound" and Marianne Heske's "Voyage Pittoresque," 1983/84 - Video installation - Courtesy of the Katzen Arts Center - Click to enlarge
From LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition: Adam Reed Tucker’s Willis Tower - Click to enlarge
Woodrow Wilson House is exhibiting The Art of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson: American Impressionist, through April 10, 2011. The exhibition celebrates the 150th anniversary of the First Lady’s birth and is the first major retrospective of her works in nearly 20 years. Eighteen impressionist landscapes painted by the first Mrs. Wilson are being shown, including five works which have not been on public display since her lifetime, plus four works recently acquired by Woodrow Wilson House, and five recently-restored works. The paintings, ranging from1902-1913, were made in various places where she lived, and they serve, in part, as a record of her life as a wife, mother, reformer, and First Lady. She was one of the few female artists who were influenced by the American impressionist movement of the era, and her work incorporates the themes, brushwork, color, and interest in plein-air painting and other hallmarks of the impressionist school.
The National Building Museum (NBM) is exhibiting LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition, a selection of LEGO® models created by Adam Reed Tucker, through September 5, 2011. Tucker, who is an architect, rekindled his childhood interest in LEGO® bricks and began experimenting with them as a medium for his art in 2003. As a result, he created 15 large-scale artistic models of some of the world’s most famous structures, including the Empire State Building, St. Louis' Gateway Arch, Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece Fallingwater and the NBM, using only LEGO bricks. Visit www.nbm.org/exhibitions-collections/exhibitions/lego-architecture.html
“Landscape with Forest Clearing” by First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson, undated. Woodrow Wilson House, a National Trust Historic Site, Washington, DC - Click to enlarge
"From Spencer Finch, “Taxonomy of Clouds, (detail), 2006. One of seventeen digital inkjet prints, 6X6 in. each. Courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago." - click to enlarge
The Corcoran Gallery of Art has extended the display of Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration through September 26, 2010. The ground-breaking American portraitist has advanced the art of printmaking for some thirty years, and the exhibition is the first to explore his extraordinary work. More than 100 of Close’s finished works, proofs, and objects are being shown.
This Fall, The Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design will launch a new contemporary program titled NOW at the Corcoran. The program will feature “a series of one- and two-artist exhibitions that present new work addressing issues central to the local, national, and global communities of Washington, DC and that respond to the collection, history, and architecture of the Corcoran.” NOW at the Corcoran will begin with Spencer Finch: My Business, with the Cloud, September 11–January 23, 2011. The Brooklyn-based artist’s sculptural installations, photographs, and drawings “seek to capture the elusive space between perception and the outside world, probing the intersections of science, nature, and memory.” His exhibition at the Corcoran will focus on the subject of clouds, and he has created a site-specific sculpture for the Corcoran’s Rotunda that alludes to a moment in 1863 at Vermont and L Streets, where the poet Walt Whitman watched for President Lincoln to ride by on horseback. Sarah Newman, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran, commented that “It explores the individual, changeable nature of experience and, ultimately, how such experiences become part of our collective history.” To read more about the American artist, who is now based in Brooklyn, New York, visit www.spencerfinch.com/
Chuck Close, Self-Portrait/White Ink, 1978. Crown Point Press, Oakland, California, printer (Patrick Foy). Chuck Close, publisher. Courtesy of the artist. The Corcoran Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the Washington DCJCC will exhibit Memory of a time I did not know, the works on paper of Miriam Mörsel Nathan, September 15-December 17. The artist searches pre-World War II photos for details about her family members. She then pieces together bits of information from family documents, notes on photographs and oral histories to reveal “an elusive story of personal history and ascribed memory, acknowledging what she does not know about the people in these images.” The exhibition will include a series of monotypes and screen prints based on a photo of her aunt Greta, plus a series featuring her Uncle Josef’s wedding, with a video chronicling images from the wedding; and her personal version of a pre-war “family album.” The exhibition will be accompanied by panel discussions, film screenings, literary, musical and theatrical events. Curator Steven Cushner commented that “Miriam Mörsel Nathan has been able to take her particular experience and transform it into a language that speaks to all of us. This is the magic of all good art – to create a bridge that can connect the personal and private, with the universal and communal.”
From The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the Washington DCJCC exhibition of works by Miriam Mörsel Nathan - Zdenka - 2009 - Photo of artwork by Gregory Staley - Click to enlarge
The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art is presenting Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art, through November 28. The exhibition traces the story of a beautiful coiled basket on two continents, demonstrating the lasting contribution of African peoples and cultures to American life in the southeastern U.S. Some 200 objects are displayed, including baskets made in Africa and the American South, African sculptures, and paintings from the Charleston, South Carolina renaissance, plus historic photos and videos.
From Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall (production still) two-channel video installation: Courtesy of the Artist and Frith Street Gallery, London - Click to enlarge
The Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery of Art will exhibit the first major U.S. exhibition of internationally-renowned contemporary artist Fiona Tan, September 25-January 16, 2011. Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall will include video installations and photographs, integrating archival film footage and photographs, location shooting and the spoken word. Her works “question the relationship among images, narrative and memory.” Carol Huh, curator of contemporary art and organizer of exhibitions at the Freer and Sackler galleries has commented that "The exhibition is largely autobiographical……..Through Tan's works, we gain a sense of her own personal journey through the world." Tan’s video installation, Rise and Fall (2009), was commissioned for this exhibition and filmed in Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands. The video focuses on an older and younger woman. Ms. Tan was born in Indonesia to a Chinese-Indonesian father and Australian-Scottish mother. The exhibition is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery. The Sackler Gallery will be the only U.S. venue for the exhibition.
The Sackler Gallery is exhibiting Gods of Angkor: Bronzes from the National Museum of Cambodia, through January 23, 2011. The exhibition of 36 works of art reveals the history of bronze sculpture and casting in Cambodia. There are works dating from the prehistoric period to the post-Angkorian period (third century BCE to sixteenth century CE).
The Sackler Gallery is exhibiting Perspectives: Hai Bo, through February 27, 2011 as part of the gallery's Perspectives series of contemporary Asian art. Hai Bo (born 1962, Changchun, China) was trained as a painter but took up photography in the 1980s. The exhibition is comprised of five large-scale photographs from his Northern Series.
Guanyin of the Water Moon - China, Northern Song dynasty, 968 Hanging scroll mounted on panel; ink and color on silk Purchase Image Credit: Freer Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The Freer Gallery of Art is exhibiting Chinamania: Whistler and the Victorian Craze for Blue and White, through August 2011. In 1863, American expatriate painter James McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903) purchased a number of pieces of blue-and-white porcelain, which was manufactured in China during the late 17th century for a European market, from shops in London, Amsterdam and Paris. Lee Glazer, curator of American art and organizer of the exhibition commented that "Although Whistler disdained popular taste, it was his interest in blue and white - along with his knack for self-promotion - that helped catapult blue and white into the English mainstream……...He was so successful that soon he could no longer afford the very pots that he had helped to popularize." The exhibition features 23 works of art, including eight wash drawings of Kangxi porcelain produced by Whistler for a collector's catalog, plus related examples of blue and white from the Freer Gallery's The Peacock Room, and several paintings, pastels and etchings by Whistler that reflect his interest in Chinese porcelain. Chinamania will coincide in March 2011 with exhibition of The Peacock Room Comes to America, which will feature the reinstallation of the legendary room as it looked in 1908 after American collector Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919) purchased it and had it reassembled in his mansion in Detroit. Freer purchased more than 200 ceramics to adorn The Peacock Room during his trips to Asia.
The Freer Gallery of Art is presenting Masterpieces of Chinese Painting, an exquisite selection of 27 rarely-exhibited, light-sensitive works by well-known Chinese artists from the late 10th to the early 18th century, through November 28. Joseph Chang, associate curator of Chinese art and curator of the exhibition, has commented that "These paintings are masterpieces. Some represent the earliest dated work or only surviving format by some of the most famous artists in Chinese history." The paintings are arranged chronologically, according to the different schools of Chinese painting, and “portray traditional Chinese motifs, such as Buddhist subjects, human figures, landscapes, animals, flowers and ink bamboo.”
The Freer Gallery of Art is exhibiting Cornucopia: Ceramics from Southern Japan now through January 9, 2011. Interest in the design and uses of ceramics, combined with new technology, fostered an era of “diverse and accomplished ceramic production” in Japan around the year 1600. The center of production was the island of Kyushu in southern Japan.
From Chinamania: Morning Glories - James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) U.S. 1876. Drawing: chalk and pastel on brown paper— Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
From “ColorForms” at the Hirshhorn: Paul Sharits, "Shutter Interface," (1975). From the Hirshhorn's Collection. Click to enlarge
The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden will present Guillermo Kuitca: Everything, Paintings and Works on Paper, 1980-2008, October 21-January 16, 2011. The retrospective exhibition will be the last stop of a national tour and launches a year of exhibitions at the Hirshhorn featuring the work of Latin American artists. The contemporary Argentinean artist’s primary medium is painting, and the exhibition will feature more than 45 canvases and 25 works on paper which span his career. The artist’s work “is characterized by recurring imagery, most notably spatial and mapping systems such as seating charts, architectural plans, road maps and numerical sequences, as well as theater sets, beds and baggage-claim carousels.” The Hirshhorn exhibition is coordinated by associate curator Evelyn Hankins.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Walker Art Center are presenting Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, the first U.S. retrospective of the artist’s work in nearly 30 Years, through September 12. Klein (1928-1962) had a very brief career, from 1954 to 1962, but his work is said to have “marked a key transition in twentieth-century art.” Some 200 works are shown and feature examples from all of his major series. The exhibition was co-curated by the Hirshhorn’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator Kerry Brougher and Philippe Vergne, Director of the Dia Art Foundation and formerly the chief curator and deputy director at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
The Hirshhorn is displaying ColorForms, an exhibition which focuses on the diverse ways that contemporary artists, using an array of new media, “deploy abstract form to explore color’s evocative possibilities, from the purely optical to the metaphysical,” through January 2, 2011. The works shown are from the museum’s collections and the National Gallery of Art and date from the post-war era to the present. They include works in various media, e.g. an architectural light installation by James Turrell, Paul Sharits’ four-film projection, a linear yarn sculpture by Fred Sandback, and paintings by Mark Rothko. Visit http://hirshhorn.si.edu
From Art by the Yard at The Textile Museum: Paper Dolls (detail), ca. 1967. Jacqueline Groag. Manufactured by Jonelle, Ltd. Jill A. Wiltse and H. Kirk Brown III Collection of British Textiles - Click to enlarge
The Textile Museum is exhibiting Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain, through September 12. The exhibition showcases the work of three women designers who radically changed the art of textile design after World War II: Lucienne Day (1917- 2010), Jacqueline Groag (1903-1985) and Marian Mahler (1911-1983). They incorporated strong colors and motifs inspired by Alexander Calder, Joan Miró and others in creating elegant but affordable product lines. In addition to textiles themselves, the exhibition displays preliminary drawings and collages, ceramics and period furniture drawn from the Jill A. Wiltse and H. Kirk Brown, III Collection of British Textiles.
Matthew Mann: The Cinecitta Chapel - The Immaculate Arson of Nacotchtank (detail), 2009, oil on canvas, 72 x 78 inches - Courtesy of Flashpoint - Click to enlarge
The Gallery at Flashpoint is exhibiting Matthew Mann: The Cinecitta Chapel, through September 4. In The Cinecitta Chapel, painter Matthew Mann combines 14th-century imagery with the cowboy archetype in a contemporary adaptation of Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. In his surreal and oftentimes humorous paintings, he “interprets American-ness through the lens of Italian quattrocento painting and the gunslinger as defined by foreign-born filmmakers and writers.”
The Gallery at Flashpoint in downtown DC will exhibit Patrick McDonough: reck room, September 10-October 9. Mr. McDonough will assemble mementos of the American residential recreation room “in an exhibition that investigates the role of play, domesticity and interaction in both contemporary art and life.” The exhibition will feature a custom-made and fully-functional foosball-and-ping-pong hybrid game table as the centerpiece, and there will also be “etched mirrors that reference beer advertisement taxonomy, custom-designed rugs and a Coors Light slideshow.”
The Capitol Hill Art League (CHAL), a program of the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW), will display their first juried exhibition of the season, titled Walk on the Wild Side, September 11-29. The exhibit will honor the late artist and Capitol Hill resident Wally Szyndler. To read more about Mr. Szyndler, visit www.capitolgourds.com The show’s juror, Kris Swanson, is a bronze sculptor, and the founder/director of the Corner Store, a gallery/theater space where the work of actors, playwrights, musicians, filmmakers, artists, authors, and chefs are showcased. Her bronze sculptures are included in many collections around the country as well as DC.
The National Geographic Museumis exhibiting Da Vinci – The Genius, an exhibition detailing the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci in Italy in the 15th century, through September 12, except that the Military Machines section of the exhibit will close on August 22.There are 67 full-scale models of inventions built according to Da Vinci’s precise designs and notes, which he wrote in his own secret code.Where possible, each invention was recreated by Italian artisans using techniques and materials available to Da Vinci.There are designs for flying machines, including wings, a parachute, a portable bridge, military designs, such as one for a tank, musical instruments, anatomical studies and optical studies, including one for which he created an eight-sided mirror.He also designed what he called an ideal city, with buildings above streets and streets above waterways.. In addition to reproductions of his inventions, there are reproductions of some of Da Vinci’s most famous paintings, including the Mona Lisa. The section titled Secrets of Mona Lisa includes images showcasing the work of French engineer optician Pascal Cotte, who designed a camera which enabled him to find out how the Mona Lisa looked when she was first painted. The exhibition was made available by Grande Exhibitions, Fondazione Anthropos of Italy and Pascal Cotte. Visit www.nationalgeographic.com/museum
PLEASE SEE OUR HISTORY/MUSEUMS COLUMN FOR INFORMATION ABOUT OTHER EXHIBITIONS AT THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
To see a very brief video about the exhibition, with narration, click on the arrow in the image at left.
