Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano - The Flight into Egypt , c. 1664 - black and red chalk - National Gallery of Art, Washington, Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Purchased as the Gift of Diane A. Nixon, 2007 - Click to enlarge
The National Gallery of Art is presenting Italian Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection: 1525–1835, through November 27. The exhibition is comprised of 65 drawings ranging from the late Renaissance to the height of the neoclassical movement. They were assembled by the European private collector Wolfgang Ratjen (1943−1997) and acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 2007. Works are shown by Giulio Romano, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Domenico Tintoretto, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Canaletto. The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
The National Gallery of Art is presenting Gothic Spirit of John Taylor Arms, through November 27. Some 55 prints, drawings, and etching plates by Arms (1887–1953) are being shown. The artist was born in Washington, DC, but later lived in New York and abroad. He gave up his career as an architect to become a printmaker. He traveled and studied for many years, rendering architecture as he toured England, France, Italy and other countries. The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting 20 works by contemporary artist Nam June Paik (1923–2006) through October 2. The Paik exhibition is being shown in two galleries and includes closed-circuit video works, a variety of previously unseen works on paper, and a short film about the artist. The centerpiece of the show is One Candle, Candle Projection (1988/2000), which will be exhibited in the self-contained space of the I.M. Pei-designed tower.
John Taylor Arms - From the Ponte Vecchio, Florence, 1925 - etching and aquatint in black on wove paper plate - Promised Gift of David F. Wright - Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The National Gallery of Art will exhibit The Pastrana Tapestries, which are Gothic Tapestries from Spain that have been recently restored, September 18-January 8. The tapestries have been the property of the Collegiate Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Pastrana, Spain, which is 50 miles east of Madrid, since the 17th century . Only one of the four taspestries has traveled previously to the U.S. Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington has commented that "these tapestries depict one of the many events that would lead to the European voyages of exploration across the Atlantic." The monumental tapestries, which measure 12 by 36 feet, were woven in the late 1400s and depict Afonso V's conquest in 1471 of two Moroccan cities located near the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. They were woven in wool and silk threads by Flemish weavers in Tournai, Belgium and depict vivid and colorful images of knights, ships, and military paraphernalia amid a backdrop of maritime and urban landscapes.
The National Gallery of Art will exhibit Andy Warhol's Headline, September 25-January 2, 2012. The exhibition will be the first to fully examine the works that Andy Warhol (1928–1987) created on the theme of news headlines. The show will define and present some 80 works, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, film, video, and television, that were based largely on the tabloid news. They reveal the artist's “career-long obsession with the sensational side of contemporary media.” Warhol scoured newspapers for stories and images, some of which he made into works of art. His source materials will be presented to show how he “cropped, altered, obscured, and reoriented the original texts and images, underscoring his role as both editor and author.” Warhol's headline works reflect the shift from printed page to television as the technological means used by the media to present the news changed. The exhibition will include “three Screen Tests, which show the sitters reading the newspaper, and will show for the first time the artist's 1974 video diary of Factory superstar Brigid Berlin reading the news.” Also, an outtake from an episode of Andy Warhol's T.V. will be shown for the first time.
Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, 1831–1833, oil on canvas, Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection - Click to enlarge
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting A New Look: Samuel F.B. Morse's "Gallery of the Louvre," through July 8, 2012. Morse (1791-1872) was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts. His newly-conserved painting titled Gallery of the Louvre was painted in Paris and New York between 1831 and 1833. The painting is on loan to The National Gallery from the Terra Foundation of American Art. The painting is described as a "gallery picture," which is a genre which was first popularized in the 17th century, and it is the only major example in the history of American art. Morse depicted “his own imaginative installation of masterworks from the Louvre's Salon Carré with copyists and instructors in the foreground.” The object of the painting was “to inspire and inform American audiences by emphasizing the importance of instruction and learning from masterpieces.” The painter also invented the Morse code and the telegraph.
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting Publishing Modernism: The Bauhaus in Print in the East Building, Ground Floor, Study Center, through October 28. The Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1919 when Walter Gropius merged the city's fine art academy and its school of applied arts. The school was open for only 14 years but had a lasting impression on modern design and art education. The Bauhaus publications played a vital in spreading its influence. The exhibition is drawn from the rare book collection of the National Gallery of Art Library and highlights the works published by the Bauhaus. It also illustrates how changes in Bauhaus printing activities reflect the evolution of the school. The growth of the school can be seen along with its leading role in the advancement of modernism. The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Publications of the Bauhaus: Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919-1923, Weimar; Munich, 1923, National Gallery of Art Library, David K. E. Bruce Fund - Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The Capitoline Venus, 2nd century AD, marble (probably Parian), as installed in the Capitoline Museum. Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali di Roma Capitale—Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy. Photo by Araldo de Luca - Click to enlarge
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting the famed Capitoline Venus, which is one of the best-preserved sculptures to survive from Roman antiquity, through September 5. The exhibition marks only the second time the statue has left Rome since 1752. Napoleon seized the statue in 1797, and it was returned in 1816 when he fell from power. The Capitoline Venus is about six feet six inches tall and it “derives from the celebrated Aphrodite of Cnidos created by the renowned classical Greek sculptor Praxiteles around 360 BC.” The Statue had been buried beneath a large garden, where it was found in the remains of an ancient building which was unearthed in Rome in the 1670s…...according to a 17th-century account. The nose, some fingers, and one hand had been broken off. The Capitoline Museum is located on the Capitoline Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome. Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington has commented that "The Venus will feel right at home in our West Building Rotunda, which was designed by John Russell Pope and was based on the Pantheon in Rome. The Gallery has a long and rich relationship with the people and culture of Italy." Preceding the official opening, Mayor Alemanno of Rome and Mayor Vincent C. Gray of Washington signed a proclamation signifying the newly-formed sister city relationship of the two world-capital cities.
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting the Declaration of Independence: The Stone Copy through September 5. In 1820, John Quincy Adams, who was at the time Secretary of State, commissioned a Washington engraver, William J. Stone, to create a facsimile version of the original Declaration of Independence on copperplate, complete with signatures, to become the official representation of the treasured document. Copies were to be made because the original Declaration which was signed on July 4, 1776 was suffering the effects of time and exposure. Creation of the copperplate took more than three years. Two hundred copies of the engraving were distributed to surviving signers, government officials, and others, and the image of the Declaration of Independence was accepted into the popular consciousness. Only 31 copies of the Stone facsimile survive, and a Stone facsimile is now on view in the National Gallery of Art near American artist Gilbert Stuart's portraits of Declaration of Independence signers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
The Stone Copy of the Declaration of Independence - Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
Hildreth Meière at the Puhl & Wagner Factory, 1928; Berlin, Germany - Courtesy of the National Building Museum - Click to enlarge
Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meière is on display at the National Building Museum, through November 27. The exhibition is the first major retrospective of the twentieth century Art Deco muralist, mosaicist, painter, and decorative artist (1892–1961). Her major existing works include the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, the Nebraska State Capitol, St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York, and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. Catherine C. Brawer, the curator of the show, assembled the exhibition's materials, which represent 25 of Hildreth Meière's most important commissions.
The National Building Museum (NBM) is exhibiting LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition, a selection of LEGO® models created by Adam Reed Tucker, through September 5. 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.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design in partnership with Transformer, an artist-centered non-profit visual arts organization, will present transformers, an exhibition featuring new works by Corcoran College alumni, August 31-October 2. The exhibition will showcase work by 15 alumni who graduated between 2002–2010: Reuben Bresslar, Breck Brunson, Jessica Cebra, Natalie W. Cheung, Cynthia Connolly, Jennifer De Palma, Nilay Lawson, Hatnim Lee, Marissa Long, Maki Maruyama, Solomon Sanchez, Mica Scalin, Zach Storm, Tang, and Jason Zimmerman. Concurrently, Transformer will present a companion exhibition, transformers: the next generation, at its project space at 1404 P Street, NW. The show will highlight new works by five selected 2011 artist graduates of the Corcoran: Forest Allread, Pavlos Karalis, Sarah Robbins, Aris Slater, and Victoria Shaheen. To read more about transformers, visit https://getinvolved.corcoran.org/transformers
Chris Martin, Here Comes the Sun…, 2004-2007. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. Photo: Jason Mandella. Click to enlarge
The Corcoran Gallery of Art and the College of Art + Design is presenting Chris Martin: Painting Big, Martin’s first one-artist museum exhibition and the first exhibition of his work in Washington, D.C., through October 23. The exhibition includes large-scale paintings commissioned for the Corcoran’s Atrium, a focused selection of his work from the past nine years, and in the Corcoran’s Rotunda, a dense assemblage of small paintings from the last 25 years. Martin’s paintings are abstract and are “a direct response to the physical world around him.” They incorporate found objects and collage into “their abstract geometries and rhythmic patterns. Martin is originally from Washington, D.C. and grew up visiting the Corcoran. The NOW at the Corcoran series is dedicated to showcasing the work of emerging and mid-career artists. It is curated by Sarah Newman, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran. Visit www.corcoran.org/martin
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is exhibiting Recent Photography Acquisitions through August 28. The exhibition showcases significant and recent donations to the Photography and Media Arts collection made by local collectors and longtime supporters of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design. There are works on display by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Leonard Freed, Judith Joy Ross, Sebastiao Salgado, Alex Webb, and others. Photographs donated by Sharon Keim, who founded the Washington Center for Photography, are also being shown, including works by William Abranowicz, Wynn Bullock, Barbara Crane, Abe Frajndlich, Peter Goin, Kenneth Josephson, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, John Ward, Brett Weston, and Minor White. Ms. Keim donated limited-edition artists’ books to the collection and her personal collection of photography books to the Corcoran Library. Books by Ken Ashton, William Eggleston, and Robert Frank are being displayed.
The Phillips Collection will exhibit Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Partyand European Masterworks, September 2-December 31. Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s iconic painting will be on display in its original location in the first gallery which founder Duncan Phillips opened to the public. Other early acquisitions by Bonnard, Cézanne, Monet, and van Gogh, will also be on display.
The Phillips Collection will recreate and exhibit The Klee Room, the first room dedicated exclusively to Paul Klee’s work by a museum, September 29-December 31. Duncan Phillips almost continuously displayed Klee’s works together in a single gallery for more than 40 years beginning in 1942.
The Phillips Collection is exhibiting works by Morris Louis, through October 9. In the 1960s, the colorist tradition of the Phillips “found new expression in the Washington Color School and the pure stains of Morris Louis.” Morris’ work Seal is being showcased with four drawings and three classic paintings.
The Phillips Collection is showcasing Will Ryman’s The Roses, through January 5, 2012. Colossal fiberglass and stainless steel rose blossoms are displayed on the Phillips’ lawn at the corner of 21st and Q streets. The structure draws inspiration from nature’s cycles and transforms in the changing light of the fall and winter.
The Phillips Collection is exhibiting Kandinsky and the Harmony of Silence: Painting with White Border, through September 4. Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was inspired to create the painting during a visit to Moscow in 1912. He made many drawings, watercolors, and oil studies over a five-month period before finishing his masterpiece in 1913. More than ten of his preparatory studies will be shown with Painting with White Border, including the Phillips’ Sketch I for Painting with White Border. The exhibition, complemented by an in-depth conservation study of the painting, offers insight into Kandinsky’s creative process.
The Phillips Collection is presenting Stella Sounds: The Scarlatti K Series, through September 4. The ground-breaking exhibition presents eight recent sculptures from Frank Stella’s Scarlatti Kirkpatrick Series, which was inspired by the 18th-century Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti’s harpsichord sonatas. The works are said to be “at the crossroads of painting, drawing, and sculpture. Complementing the exhibition, The Collection will present harpsichordist Steven Silverman, who will perform Scarlatti sonatas on June 30. Curator Elsa Smithgall will introduce Mr. Silverman. Visit www.phillipscollection.org/music
The Phillips Collection is presenting Left Behind: Selected Gifts from the Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, through October 2. The exhibition features photographs of “unpopulated spaces in which a human presence is not evident but implied” and “honors recent gifts from the Tony and Heather Podesta Collection to the Phillips.”
The Phillips Collection is presenting Pulse, Tayo Heuser, through October 31, as part of Intersections, a new series of contemporary art projects that explores the intersections “between old and new traditions, modern and contemporary art practices, and museum spaces and artistic interventions.” Tayo Heuser translates Mark Rothko's paintings into large-scale wall-mounted sculptures of colored forms drawn in ink - designed to rise along the Goh Annex stairwell. He created the work in response to the architecture of the stairwell and the paintings in the museum's Rothko Room.
The Phillips Collection is exhibiting 90 Years of New: Anniversary Reading Room through December 31. Photographs, letters, and other archival materials reveal how museum founder Duncan Phillips shaped what he called “an intimate museum combined with an experiment station.”
From "Made in Chicago: The Koffler Collection" - Don Baum - Chinatown 1980 - wood mixed media, crushed metal cans, rulers cut, glued and assembled - Smithsonian American Art Museum - Gift of the S.W. and B.M. Koffler Foundation - Click to enlarge
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exhibiting Made in Chicago: The Koffler Collection, through January 2, 2012. The show features 26 paintings, sculpture and works on paper which were created by Chicago artists from 1960 to 1980, including works by Roger Brown, Leon Golub, Theodore Halkin, Vera Klement, Ellen Lanyon, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, Barry Tinsley and Ray Yoshida. The artworks are from the S.W. and B.M. Koffler Foundation collection and were given to the Museum in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Samuel and Blanche Koffler. They formed the foundation in 1971 to purchase works by local artists. Many of the artworks in the installation reflect "the well-known Chicago taste for figurative art". Franz Schulze, a Chicago-based art critic, and acting chief curator George Gurney, organized the exhibition.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exhibiting To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America, through September 5. Artist George Ault (1891-1948) created some of the most original paintings of America in the 1940s. The exhibition features 47 of his paintings, plus works by 22 other painters including Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. The exhibition was curated by Alexander Nemerov, the Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. .
Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America: Paul Sample - Movies-Canton Island, 1943 - Oil on canvas - Army Art Center, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C. - Click to enlarge
Albert Bierstadt , Giant Redwood Trees of California, about 1874, oil on canvas, Collections of Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Mass., Gift of Zenas Crane - Courtesy of The American Art Museum - Click to enlarge
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exhibiting The Great American Hall of Wonders, through January 8, 2012. The exhibition examines the nineteenth-century American belief that the people of the U.S. shared “a special genius for innovation.” The 162 objects featured in support of this idea include paintings and drawings by John James Audubon, Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Thomas Moran, and Charles Willson Peale. In addition, sculptures, prints, survey photographs, zoological and botanical illustrations, patent models, and engineering diagrams are being shown. The exhibition explores six subjects that helped shape America during the 19th century. American beliefs about abundant natural resources for fueling the nation’s progress were personified by the buffalo, giant sequoias, and Niagara Falls. Technological improvements cited include the clock, the gun, and the railroad. Successful experiments of the past are also considered, as well as the ones that failed. The American Art Museum is housed in an historic building which was authorized for construction as a Patent Office by President Andrew Jackson on July 4, 1836. Thus, from the beginning in 1840 to 1932, the building celebrated “American invention, technical ingenuity, and the scientific advancements that the patent process represents.” The building eventually became known as the “temple of invention.” The government’s historical, scientific, and art collections were housed on the third floor.
The exhibition was organized by Claire Perry, an independent curator who specializes in nineteenth-century American cultural history.
For the "Hall of Wonders" - Theodore R. Davis, Patent-Office, Washington, DC—Examiners at Work, 1869, hand-colored wood engraving on paper, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC - Click to enlarge
The Ripley Center, near the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall, is exhibiting Artists at Work, through October 2. The juried exhibition features two- and three-dimensional works by members of the Smithsonian community, including staff, research fellows, volunteers, interns, and contractors. The exhibition features works in all media and disciplines, including painting, sculpture, photography, video, weaving, metalwork, and ceramics.
From Capital Portraits: Miss Ethel Mary Crocker (Countess de Limur) by Giovanni Boldini - Oil on canvas - 1906 - Private collection - Photograph by Alex Jamison Photography - Click to enlarge
The National Portrait Gallery, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, is exhibiting Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter, through October 14. The exhibition features the work of seven artists from across the country and offers “provocative artistic responses to the Asian experience in America and the meaning of being Asian American.” The artists represented are Cindy Hwang, New York Hye Yeon Nam, Atlanta and New York Shizu Saldamando, Los Angeles Roger Shimomura, Lawrence, Kansas Satomi Shirai, New York Tam Tran, Memphis, Tennessee Hong Chun Zhang, Lawrence, Kansas
The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery is exhibiting Capital Portraits: Treasures from Washington Private Collections, through September 5. This exhibition presents portraits from private Washington, D.C. collections. Many of them have never before been publicly displayed. The exhibition includes a wide range of styles, images and themes. Works are being shown by John Singleton Copley, Mary Cassatt, Andy Warhol and Kehinde Wiley and date from 1750 to the present. This exhibition demonstrates how portraiture is ingrained in the private sphere of people’s lives and offers an insider peek to the public. The curators for the exhibition are Carolyn Kinder Carr, deputy director and chief curator of the gallery, and Ellen Miles, curator of paintings and sculpture.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exhibiting a 150th Commemoration of the Civil War: The Death of Ellsworth through March 18, 2012. There are four alcove exhibitions—one for each year of the Civil War. The first exhibit recounts the death of Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, who was a friend of President Lincoln, in Alexandria, Va. He was the first Union officer to be killed in the war and was an inspiration for Northern soldiers going into battle. The exhibition includes the weapon with which Francis E. Brownell killed Ellsworth’s assailant, plus other mementoes, including portraits of Ellsworth and Lincoln. James Barber, National Portrait Gallery historian, curated the exhibition.
Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth by Mathew Brady Studio - Glass plate collodion negative - National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Frederick Hill Meserve Collection - Click to enlarge
Abraham Lincoln by John Henry Brown - Watercolor on ivory - 1860 - National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution - Click to enlarge
The National Portrait Galleryis exhibiting Mementos: Painted and Photographic Miniatures, 1750–1920, through May 13, 2012.Miniature paintings were usually created as “love tokens or personal mementoes” during the 18th and early 19th centuries.When photographic processes emerged by the 1840s, small photo portraits came on the scene.There was a great revival of miniature portraits, often painted by women, in the later 19th century. The installation features miniatures from the museum's collection and will include portraits of John Paul Jones, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and Samuel Clemens by artists including John Singleton Copley, William Dunlap, George Caleb Bingham, Eulabee Dix, and Lucy May Stanton.
James Smithson by Henri-Joseph Johns - Gouache on ivory - 1816 - National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Museum of American History - Conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women's Committee - Click to enlarge
Ronald Reagan RR07 - Aaron Shikler (born 22 Mar 1922) - 1980 - Oil on paper - National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine - Click to enlarge
The National Portrait Gallery is exhibiting One Life: Ronald Reagan, through May 28, 2012. The exhibition commemorates the centennial of this "consequential" and "transformational" president, as he was described by President Barack Obama.
The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery is exhibiting Recent Acquisitions through November 13. The exhibition features 35 objects that span centuries of American history and culture, focusing on a diverse group of journalists, artists, and leaders who have shaped our society. The works include a rare engraving of Christopher Columbus that may be one of the most authentic images of him in existence.
The Textile Museum is exhibiting GREEN: the Color and the Cause, through September 11. The exhibition celebrates green "both as a color and as a cause, exploring the techniques people have devised to create green textiles, the meanings this color has held in cultures across time and place, and the ways that contemporary textile artists and designers are responding to concerns about the environment.” Some 25 textiles from the museum’s collection are displayed, plus a section of work by contemporary artists and designers.
The Textile Museum and The George Washington University announced an affiliation in July whereby The Museum will move to the University’s Foggy Bottom campus to become a cornerstone of a new museum scheduled to open in mid-2014. The new museum will serve an increased audience in a space of approximately 35,000 square feet. The university will also construct a state-of-the-art collection and conservation center on its Northern Virginia campus that will safeguard the museum’s collection and offer greater access for public study and conservation research.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is exhibiting Pressing Ideas: Fifty Years of Women's Lithographs from Tamarind, through October 2. The exhibition brings together “a conversation among women artists who helped to uncover an artistic medium that had essentially lain dormant for decades and to revive the concept of working collaboratively.” Seventy-five works by 42 artists, including Elaine de Kooning, Louise Nevelson, Margo Humphrey, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, and Kiki Smith, are featured. The exhibition explores the breadth of experimentation in lithography and women’s contributions to a workshop that stretches the creative boundaries. Tamarind Lithography Workshop was founded in Los Angeles in 1960.
The NMWA is exhibiting The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back, through October 2. The Guerrilla Girls are a group of anonymous artist-activists who “critique the sexism and racism pervading contemporary culture.” They create posters, books, and live performances in which they wear gorilla masks. The exhibition features posters and ephemera including works from two portfolios which were donated to NMWA's collection by Baltimore-based collector Steven Scott.
The NMWA is exhibiting Susan Swartz: Seasons of the Soul, through October 2. The exhibition features thirteen large-scale works by the Utah-based artist, whose abstract landscapes “articulate her awe of the natural world and a rallying cry for its preservation.” She is an environmentalist, philanthropist, and producer of award-winning documentaries. She began painting “as a source of healing during her protracted battle with environmentally-bred illnesses.”
The Smithsonian National History Museum is exhibiting Nature's Best 2010 Photography Awards: Windland Smith Rice International Awards, through September 25. Winners in various categories include the Grand Prize, Conservation Photographer of the Year, Youth Photographer of the Year, and selected Highly Honored images. The annual awards honor the world’s best amateur and professional nature photographers and are dedicated to the memory of nature photographer and conservation advocate, Windland Smith Rice.
The National Museum of African Art is exhibiting African Mosaic: Celebrating a Decade of Collecting, now through the end of 2011. The exhibition showcases museum purchases and gifts and provides a glimpse into the collecting opportunities and decisions that exist for art museums. The exhibition includes a monumental sculpture of Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture by contemporary Senegalese artist Ousmane Sow, plus more than 100 traditional, contemporary, modern and popular works.
Ibrahima Sall - b. 1939, Senegal - Portrait of a woman - After 1967 - Paint on glass - Gift of the Wil and Irene Petty Collection, 2008-5-6 - Photograph by Franko Khoury - National Museum of African Art Smithsonian Institution - Click to enlarge
Henrique Oliveira - January 10, 2010 - The National Museum of African Art - Click to enlarge
The National Museum of African Art is exhibiting Artists in Dialogue II: Sandile Zulu and Henrique Oliveira, through December 4. In the ongoing series of which the exhibition is a part, two artists - at least one of whom is African - engage in an encounter and respond to the work of the other. The result is original, on-site works at the museum.
Sandile Zulu tending flames - courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art - Click to enlarge
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery will exhibit Power|Play: China's Empress Dowager, September 24-January 29. China’s Grand Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) allowed a young aristocratic photographer named Xunling to take elaborately- staged photos of her and her court in 1903. The goal was “to convey imperial authority, aesthetic refinement, and religious piety.” The Freer Gallery acquired the thirty-five glass plate negatives from the estate of the photographer's sister, and they comprise the only group of these intimate portraits held outside of the Palace Museum in Beijing. The negatives have been digitized to reveal in full detail The Empress Dowager. They will be displayed along with two original prints of Cixi that were presented as diplomatic gifts to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 and to his daughter Alice in 1905. Also, film clips will demonstrate “the evolution of the Empress Dowager as a character throughout the twentieth century—from a depraved tyrant to a long-suffering ruler.”
Portrait of Yinti, Prince Xun(1688-1755), and Wife - China, Qing dynasty, 2ndhalf 18thcentury Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk - Image credit: Arthur M. Sackler - Click to enlarge
The Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is exhibiting Family Matters: Portraits from the Qing Court, through January 16, 2013. The exhibition presents 16 portraits of imperial men and women, who were related by blood or marriage, plus rare jewelry and other objects that offer a look at their lives in the later half of China's Qing dynasty. It has been noted that “intricate liaisons and political ambitions shaped the history of the Qing dynasty from the early to mid-18th century. The portraits provide glimpses of a court often filled with intrigue.” The royal family members portrayed are shown dressed in the formal robes required for attendance at court or more casual attire for leisure times. The Sackler Gallery will present a second exhibition focused on the Qing court, September 24-January 29, 2012. China's Empress Dowager will feature a rare collection of photographs of Grand Empress Dowager Cixi, who was China's supreme leader for more than 45 years
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is exhibiting Ancient Iranian Ceramics, through July 16, 2012. Craftsmen developed distinctive pottery some 3,000 years ago in the area south of the Caspian Sea in what is now Iran. This small installation features some of the outstanding treasures in the Sackler Gallery's collection of ancient Iranian ceramics. The talents of ancient Iranian potters are being celebrated, and the high quality of their crafted works is showcased.
The Sackler Gallery is now exhibiting Reinventing the Wheel: Japanese Ceramics 1930–2000. The Sackler collection represents significant trends in Japanese ceramics since the 1930s, when traditional masters took on new roles as studio potters alongside artists in other media. Potters at regional kilns revived ancient technology for use in new vessel forms. In post-World War II, Kyoto ceramic artists abandoned conventional ideas of function to create sculptural forms. Today, potters “blend meticulous skill with daring reinterpretations of shapes and materials.” This installation includes the works of legendary potters as well as the works of today's young virtuosos.
The Sackler Gallery is exhibiting Perspectives: Hale Tenger, through November 6. The contemporary multimedia artist, who is from Turkey, creates videos and installations that “examine the tangible and intangible traces of events.” From 2005 to 2007, he filmed the façade of the St. George Hotel in Beirut—the site of the assassination of Rafik Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon—while it was being renovated. His images of gently flapping curtains, shifting light, and Seder Atesar's simple musical composition “evoke a historical moment with profound repercussions that still haunt this physical space.”
Portrait of Hongtaiji, Emperor Taizong (1592-1643), in Meditation - China, Qing dynasty, 18th–19th century - Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk - Image credit: Arthur M. Sackler - Click to enlarge
From "Seasons: Arts of Japan" - Spring landscape with blossoming cherries - Japan, Edo period, early 17th century - Ink, color, and gold on paper - Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The Freer Gallery of Art is exhibiting Seasons: Japanese Screens through January 22. The gallery’s collection of nearly two hundred screens comprises one of the most important collections of its type in the world. The screens range in date from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century and represent the major thematic and stylistic examples of the format. The Japanese screens include works featuring representations of daily life in “forms ranging from visual quotations from classical literature to celebratory depictions of bustling urban life of the seventeenth century.” Some of the paintings were created for placement on sliding door panels, and were salvaged and remounted when the panels were destroyed or dismantled.
The Freer Gallery of Art is exhibiting Chinese Flowers through January 8, 2012. The paintings “convey symbolism in paintings of Chinese plant life native to each season, such as wildflowers, garden flowers, aquatic flowers, and flowering trees.”
The Freer Gallery of Art is exhibiting Seasons: Arts of Japan, through March 4, 2012. Part of a rotating exhibition highlighting the gallery’s permanent collection, the focus of the exhibition is on the importance of the seasons in Chinese and Japanese art and culture. Visitors can see how “seasonal associations permeate Japanese poetry, art, and customs from springtime cherry blossoms to autumnal scarlet maples.”
The Freer Gallery of Art is exhibiting Seasons: Tea, through March 4, 2012. The exhibition explores the importance of the seasons in Chinese and Japanese art and culture. A dozen examples show how tea utensils embody changes in weather. Thus, rough stoneware conveys warmth, while porcelain is cool to the touch. Note: The Seasons exhibitions will be closed for object rotation August 8 - September 2.
From the Seasons: Tea exhibition: Freshwater jar - Japan, Bizen ware - Edo period, ca. 1625-50 - Stoneware with brown slip under accidental wood-ash glaze; lacquered wooden lid - Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
The Freer Gallery or Art will exhibit Sweet Silent Thought: Whistler’s Interiors, August 19-Summer 2012. The small exhibition will examine the recurring themes of reading, music, reverie and studio practice in aesthetic spaces depicted in the artist’s works. The artist’s works on paper from the late 1850s through the early 1890s will also be featured, highlighting his creative development from Realism to Aestheticism.
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."
From “Chinamania” - The Blue Girl: Purple and Blue - James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) United States, 1872-1876 Oil on canvas attached to wood - Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art - Click to enlarge
Room installation: Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room - James McNeill Whistler, 1834-1903 - 1876-1877 - Oil paint and gold leaf on canvas, leather, and wood - Gift of Charles Lang Freer - Click to enlarge
Chinamania coincides with exhibition of The Peacock Room,” a lavishly-decorated dining room - and work of art - designed by James McNeill Whistler, now through April 2013. The room has been reinstalled in the Freer Gallery of Art for the first time as it appeared in the home of museum-founder Charles Lang Freer in 1908 and includes more than 250 of his ceramics from China, Japan, Syria and Egypt. The room was originally created for London businessman Frederick Leyland and contained Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. When Freer purchased the room and installed it to his Detroit home, he displayed pots from the Near East and Asia in shades of green, gold and brown. He arranged the ceramics “to highlight tonal relationships among the vessels and other works of art in his collection - particularly his American paintings.” Whistler's painting titled The Princess in the Land of Porcelain remains over the fireplace, just as it had been in London when Whistler redecorated the room in 1876.
The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden will presents Andy Warhol: Shadows (1978-79), September 25-January 15, 2012. The monumental painting installation by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) will mark the first time all 102 canvases have been shown at once. The canvases will be installed edge-to-edge as Warhol intended, and “will extend nearly 450 linear feet around the outer perimeter of the museum's curved second-level galleries, offering the public a unique opportunity to view the work in its entirety.” Associate curator Evelyn Hankins is coordinating the presentation of Shadows, which was organized by Dia Art Foundation, which acquired the work in 1979.
The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden is exhibiting Directions: Grazia Toderi, through September 5. The contemporary Italian artist creates video projections that are mindful of frescoes of light. She was inspired in part by Giotto and other early 14th-century painters, but draws more heavily on her contemporary experiences, e.g., "distant views of cities glowing at night and the zero-gravity ballets of the U.S. space programs.” She manipulates her imagery with computer animation, and combines satellite and military footage with her own films and photographs “in an effort to visualize the infinite.”
67 Bows - Still from Nira Pereg's 67 Bows, 2006. Courtesy of the artist and Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv Click to enlarge
The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden is exhibiting Black Box: Nira Pereg, through November 27. The Black Box theater showcases rotating exhibitions of works by contemporary artists who use film or video as their creative medium. Nira Pereg is an Israeli artist who “creates documentary-based multimedia projects that transform reality into quasi-theatrical events.” She was inspired to film her 67 Bows (2006) by a visit to the Karlsruhe Zoo in Germany. She filmed a flock of flamingos, who reacted to her own movements and added a soundtrack, which evokes “a sense of suspense and heightened apprehension among viewers, who must question the relationship between what they see and what they hear.”
The Hirshhorn is exhibiting Fragments in Time and Space, through August 28. The exhibition uses the museum’s collection to demonstrate “the diverse ways in which artists have conceptualized, employed, and manipulated time and space.” Works are being shown which “encourage viewers to focus on and reconsider the way they perceive and experience the world — from a single moment in time to a vast idea of the infinite.” The exhibition includes works by Thomas Eakins, Douglas Gordon, On Kawara, Richard Long, Ed Ruscha, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Mark Tobey.
Wolfgang Staehle, “Niagara,” 2005. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 2008. Click to enlarge
The Washington Examiner will present their annual Arts on Foot festival in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of downtown DC on Saturday & Sunday, September 10 & 11 The festival, sponsored by the Wines of Argentina, will offer a preview of the upcoming performing and visual arts season. There will be an Arts Market showcasing over 120 exhibitors, interactive and cultural experiences, crafts theater, dance, music, film, cuisine…….and wine.
The 41st Annual Labor Day Art Show at Glen Echo Park will take place September 2-5. The show will feature works by more than 150 artists from the mid-Atlantic region, most of whom have a connection to the Park either as instructors, students, or resident artists. The exhibition will include photography, paintings, ceramics, jewelry, glass, textiles, and more. Most of the works will be for sale. In conjunction with the Park’s Labor Day Art Show, the Irish Inn at Glen Echo will present a weekend of Irish music and dancing, featuring some of the area’s finest performers, September 3-5. Also, the Park will have an Open House on September 3, and visitors can find out about the many classes and programs offered there. Artists can be seen at work in their studios, and there will be a free workshop, a scavenger hunt and more.
The Annual Alexandria Festival of the Arts will take place on Saturday & Sunday, September 10 & 11 on King Street, from Union to Washington Streets. Old Town becomes an open-air art gallery, where more than 200 juried artists from the U.S. and abroad will display and sell fine arts. The event will include hands-on projects, artist demos, and a sale of artist-made ceramic ice cream bowls, presented by The Art League and the Torpedo Factory Art Center.
"Catenary" from Susan Weil & Jose Betancourt: Blueprints - courtesy of the Washington DCJCC - Click to enlarge
The Gallery at Flashpoint’s Site Aperture Curator Danielle O’Steen will bring together artists Margaret Boozer, Mia Feuer, Talia Greene and Mariah Anne Johnson to create site-specific installations, September 30-November 5. The artists will create “works that respond directly to the gallery space. The exhibition challenges the confines of the white cube in order to reconsider the traditional gallery space and create a unique experience for viewers.” The artists work in divergent materials ranging from dirt and Styrofoam to wall paper and bed sheets.
Flashpoint is exhibiting a site-specific installation by Philadelphia-based artist Janell Olah titled you make me nostalgic for a place i’ve never known, through August 27. DC-based curator Amanda Jiron-Murphy worked with the artist to present the installation of Olah’s inflatable, kinetic sculptures. Olah’s hand-sewn fabric forms slowly inflate, deflate and are lit from within. The installation explores the Flashpoint Gallery space "through memory, mapping and systems.”
Flashpoint is exhibiting Nicole Herbert: Trace, through September 30. Trace is a site-specific work that occupies the entire Flashpoint incubator space, “reminding the viewer of overlooked areas and subtle architectural features.” The artist used drawing, three-dimensional sculptural forms and found objects “to activate the hallways, stairwells and offices at Flashpoint.”
The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the Washington DCJCC is presenting Susan Weil & Jose Betancourt: Blueprints, through September 9. The two artists have worked closely together to develop ways of printing and presenting a body of artwork based on the Cyanotype, also known as the photographic “Blueprint”. Their works “range from personal and autobiographical to formal constructions.” Ms. Weil, who is from New York City, also creates paintings and mixed media sculptures. Mr. Betancourt is Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He has been working with alternative photographic processes for 20 years and has given workshops on his techniques.
The Bronfman Gallery will present One Foot In America: The Artwork of Eugeen Van Mieghem, September 22-December 30. Van Mieghem (1875-1930) was a Belgian artist who was inspired by the docks of Antwerp and sketched and painted portraits of emigrants, many of whom were Jews waiting to board ships to take them to America to start a new life. Erwin Joos, curator of the Eugeen Van Mieghem Museum in Antwerp, will present a lecture about the exhibition on September 22.
A work by Mia Feuer - Image courtesy the artist - Click to enlarge
From the Zenith Gallery show titled "The Character of Chevy Chase" - Clockwise from top left, works by Carol Gellner Levin, Deborah Brisker Burk, Harmon Biddle, Joan Samworth, Lou Kaplan and Kim Abraham - Click to enlarge
Zenith Gallery on the upper level of the Chevy Chase Pavilion will exhibitVisual Voices: A Show of Zenith Artists – Past, Present & Future - profiled in the New Book “100 Artists of the Mid-Atlantic” by Ashley Rooney, September 21-October 29. Margery E. Goldberg is the owner of Zenith Gallery, as well as a curator, wood sculptor and activist. The show will spotlight artists with whom she has worked and collaborated over the years. They have all been recognized in Ashley Rooney's new book. The artists whose works will be shown area Alan Binstock, F. Lennox Campello, Joan Danziger, Julie Girardini, Margery E. Goldberg, Robert C. Jackson, Michael Janis, Joan Konkel, Anne Marchand,Donna McCullough, Davis Morton, Carol Newmyer, Marc Rubin, Barton Rubenstein, Sica, Ellen Sinel, Betsy Stewart, Cassie Taggert, Tim Tate, Erwin Timmers, Paul Martin Wolff and Joyce Zipperer.
Zenith Gallery in the Chevy Chase Pavilion is presenting a show titled The Character of Chevy Chase, through September 10. The show features artists from the Chevy Chase community who all work in more than one medium, including graphite, watercolor, oil, pastel on linen and canvas, glass, terracotta and bronze. All are active in their field as artists, teachers and career professionals. The featured artists include Kim Abraham, Harmon Biddle, Deborah Brisker Burk, Lou Kaplan, Carol Gellner Levin, Joan Samworth and Susan Turner Rapaport. The show was curated by Ms. Rapaport, who is Zenith's assistant director. Zenith’s gallery is on level 2 of the Pavilion, next to the Embassy Suites Hotel, and is open Wednesday-Saturday.
Three photographs by (c) Friederike Brandenburg - Courtesy of The Goethe-Institut Washington - Click to enlarge
... The Goethe-Institut Washington - The German Cultural Center - will exhibit Left Behind (Zurückgelassen) featuring photographs by Friederike Brandenburg, September 8-November 4. Her photos follow isolated traces of civilization in places otherwise presumed to represent a pristine, untouched state of nature. The focus is on objects discarded by human society, “with singular aesthetic qualities and sometimes an almost absurd presence. Brandenburg’s photographs visualize the paradoxical relationship between beauty and decay.”
The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) is presenting an exhibition by artist Laura Vernon-Russell, through September 1. The exhibit, curated by Bruce McKaig, features a series of silver gelatin prints “that focus on nature and the intricacies, mysteries and energies of the Earth…” Visit www.chaw.org
Virginia artist Chica Brunsvold is exhibiting watercolors and acrylics, including Zooillogicals®, improvisational florals and abstracts, at the Horticultural Center at Green Spring Gardens, a Fairfax County Park, through August 28. To read more about Ms. Brunsvold, visit www.chicabrunsvold.com
