Fall Visual Arts Highlights

Surrealist sculpture at the Hirshhorn, five decades of a groundbreaking print studio at the National Gallery, a woman’s lens on mid-century America at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, modern art from the Phillips Collection’s Swiss counterparts — these are four of the most anticipated fall exhibitions at Washington’s art museums.

Surrealism is known primarily through painting, photography and film. But at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden this fall, audiences will get to experience its full force in three dimensions. “Marvelous Objects: Surrealist Sculpture from Paris to New York” (Oct. 29–Feb. 15) is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the sculpture of Surrealism.

Bringing together more than 100 works from across Europe and the United States, the Hirshhorn aims to reveal the breadth and depth of Surrealism’s greatest artists. Featuring masterpieces by Dalí, Miró, Giacometti, Duchamp, Man Ray and others, the exhibition will bring sculpture to the fore as a vital part of Surrealism, and one that has influenced artists well into the 21st century.

In an intriguing sidebar, the show will highlight the transition from Surrealism to the postwar sculptural era of metal constructions, displaying works by David Smith and Alexander Calder.

Running concurrently is a solo exhibition by a contemporary artist, “Shana Lutker: Le ‘NEW’ Monocle, Chapters 1–3.” This exhibition will focus on stage-set-like installations of sculptures based on historic fistfights involving Surrealist artists, in which the clashes of radical artistic ideas and ideologies led to physical violence.

Some of the most important and influential artists of the past half-century have conceived and produced limited editions of hand-printed works at Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited), the renowned Los Angeles artists’ workshop and publisher founded in 1966. Coinciding with Gemini’s 50th anniversary, the National Gallery of Art exhibition “The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L.” (Oct. 4–Feb. 7) will shed light on the history of the studio and the phenomena it has produced.

The National Gallery will showcase a number of innovative and exemplary projects in their entirety, including fully realized series created by David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claus Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and Frank Stella.

Esther Bubley (1921–1998) was a photojournalist renowned in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s for her revealing profiles of the United States, its peoples and its personalities. With a talent for creating probing and gently humorous images of the national psyche, she freelanced for publications such as Life magazine and Ladies Home Journal.

At the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Bubley’s work will receive a greatly deserved solo exhibition, “Esther Bubley Up Front” (Sept. 4–Jan. 17), which highlights her influence in the field of photojournalism, as well as the importance of a woman’s perspective to our understanding of America’s history.

Developing an interest in photography in high school, Bubley received her break in 1942 when she was hired as a darkroom assistant for Roy Stryker, the head of photography for the Office of War Information in Washington. After her first assignments documenting wartime in the nation’s capital, Bubley continued to work under Stryker at the Standard Oil Company.

One of Bubley’s landmark photographic series was a profile of the oil boomtown of Tomball, Texas. She immersed herself in the town, its people and its activities for six weeks. Her images of the community provide an intimate document of small-town America in the mid-20th century.

In a unique exhibition that focuses on, of all things, Swiss art collectors in the early 20th century, the Phillips Collection will exhibit more than 60 celebrated paintings. The development of Swiss collecting around this period — which could not have been more auspicious — found patrons looking beyond regional painters to broaden their definition of modern art. As a result, the pioneering patrons Rudolf Staechelin (1881–1946) and Karl Im Obersteg (1883–1969), both from Basel, championed the work of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and School of Paris artists.

What they ended up acquiring were staggering masterpieces, including van Gogh’s “The Garden of Daubigny”; Marc Chagall’s three monumental rabbi portraits from 1914; and a double-sided canvas by Picasso, “Woman at the Theater/The Absinthe Drinker.” Needless to say, they will all be at the Phillips.

This exhibition, “Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks from Switzerland, The Staechelin & Im Obersteg Collections” (Oct. 10–Jan. 10) marks the first occasion for these collections to be exhibited together in the United States. It is an intoxicating prospect that shouldn’t be missed.