Visual Arts Preview

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
October 4, 2013 – July 13, 2014
Dancing the Dream
From the late 19th century to today, dance
has captured this nation’s culture in motion.
Dancing the Dream will showcase generations
of performers, choreographers and impresarios.
The show will include images of performers
from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,
to Michael Jackson, Savion Glover, George
Balanchine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Beyoncé,
Isadora Duncan, Agnes de Mille and Lady
Gaga. Dance has drawn from the boundless
commotion of cultures to represent the rhythm
and beat of American life. This exhibition will
explore the relationship between the art of
dance and the evolution of a modern American
identity.
AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
October 4, 2013 – December 8, 2013
A Measure of the Earth: The Cole-Ware
Collection of American Baskets
The 105 baskets on display in A Measure of
the Earth were made between 1983 and 2011
and demonstrate the endurance of indigenous,
African, and European basket weaving traditions
in the United States, presenting an encyclopedic
view of this medium. The sixty-three
weavers represented have crafted their baskets
almost entirely from un-dyed native materials,
such as grasses, trees, vines, and bark. The
forms, from baskets for eggs, harvest, and
market to those for sewing, laundry, and fishing
creels, reveal the central role basketry has
played in the everyday life of Americans.

AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
October 4, 2013 – December 8, 2013
Infinite Place: The Ceramic Art of
Wayne Higby
Wayne Higby (b. 1943) is one of the most
innovative second generation artists to come
out of the post-World War II American ceramic
studio movement. His vision of the American
landscape appears in work ranging from vessel
forms and sculpture to architectural installations
that have brought him national and international
recognition. Infinite Place is his first
major retrospective exhibition, exploring the
forms, techniques, and firing processes used
throughout Higby’s career, focusing specifically
on his groundbreaking work in raku earthenware
as well as his later production in porcelain,
centered around the Western landscape
and imagery that has long inspired his work.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
October 6 – March 2, 2014
Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium
from Greek Collections
In 324 Emperor Constantine the Great moved
the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome
some thousand miles to the east, near the site of
the ancient Greek city of Byzantium. Renamed
Constantinople (now Istanbul), the city became
the largest and wealthiest in the Christian world
and remained the dominant power in the eastern
Mediterranean for over 1,000 years. In the
National Gallery’s first exhibition of Byzantine
art, masterpieces from Greek collections will
be on view, among them mosaics, icons, manuscripts,
jewelry, and ceramics, revealing the rich
and multifaceted culture of Byzantium. Divided
into five thematic sections, the exhibition explores
the coexistence of paganism and Christianity,
secular works of art used in the home,
and the intellectual life of Byzantine scholars.

PHILLIPS COLLECTION
October 12, 2013 – January 26, 2014
Van Gogh Repetitions
This exhibition takes a fresh look at the artistic
process of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), one
of history’s most revered painters. While recognized
for the intensity and speed with which
he often produced paintings during his 10-year
career, what is less well known is the deliberate
and methodical process he brought to recurring
subjects and themes. The exhibit features
around 30 paintings, which display alongside
related drawings and technical photographs to
go beneath the surface of some of the artist’s
most renowned works and examine the ways in
which he created nearly identical compositions.
The exhibition is organized by The Phillips
Collection and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
PHILLIPS COLLECTION
October 17, 2013 – February 9, 2014
Intersections: John F. Simon Jr.
Inspired by the progression of movement in the
natural world, Simon’s four-part installation in
the Phillips house stairwell incorporates drawing,
software, and computer-generated fabrication.
The works, evoking meandering lines,
steep curves, and improvisation, engage with
Wassily Kandinsky’s Succession (1935) in the
Phillips’ permanent collection. This is part of
the Intersections project at the Phillips, a series
of contemporary art project that explores the intriguing
intersections between old and new traditions,
modern and contemporary art practices,
and museum spaces and artistic interventions,
often activating spaces that are not typical exhibition
areas with art produced specifically for
those locations.
FREER – SACKLER GALLERY
October 19, 2013 – January 26, 2014
Yoga: The Art of Transformation
Through masterpieces of Indian sculpture and
painting, Yoga: The Art of Transformation explores
yoga’s goals, its Hindu as well as Buddhist,
Jain, and Sufi manifestations, its means
of transforming body and consciousness, and
its profound philosophical foundations. The
first exhibition to present this leitmotif of Indian
visual culture, it also examines the roles
that yogis and yoginis played in Indian society
over two thousand years. The exhibit includes
more than 120 works dating from the third to
the early twentieth century. Temple sculptures,
devotional icons, illustrated manuscripts, and
court paintings—as well as colonial and early
modern photographs, books, and films—illuminate
yoga’s central tenets and its obscured
histories.

CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART
November 2, 2013 – February 23, 2014
Mia Feuer: An Unkindness
Mia Feuer’s upcoming project at the Corcoran
is a haunting vision of nature consumed, transformed,
and twisted by human need. Inspired
by the artist’s experiences in the oil-producing
landscapes of the Canadian tar sands, the Arctic
Circle, and the Suez Canal, An Unkindness
explores the relationships between human infrastructure
and the natural world. For the past
several years, Feuer has traveled around the
world to places where oil is extracted from the
earth and created work that responds to the social
and environmental effects of that process.
In the exhibition, Feuer merges imagery from
the oil sands with her own experiences growing
up in Canada and her research into ecological
systems worldwide. The result is a series of
immersive installations that are at once topical
and deeply personal, including a synthetic black
skating rink open to the public in the museum’s
Rotunda.
(E)MERGE ART FAIR
October 3 – 6, 2013
Taking place at the Rubell Family’s Capitol
Skyline Hotel, the (e)merge Art Fair returns
for a third year to connect emerging-art professionals
from around the globe with collectors,
curators and cultural decision makers in D.C.,
featuring participating galleries in hotel rooms
on designated floors and a vetted selection of
works by unrepresented artists throughout the
hotel’s public areas and grounds. Featuring an
international roster of 80 exhibitors presenting
works by 150 artists from 30 countries, exhibitors
will show new works in painting, sculpture,
video, performance, installation, and other media.
The public is welcome to view a carefully
curated selection of emerging art, exhibited on
three levels inside the hotel and throughout the
hotel’s grounds and public spaces. There is also
an extensive line-up of special projects and performances,
including live music, video, design
and culinary arts, as well as engaging panel
discussions with curators, gallerists, collectors,
artists and other art world innovators.