Weekly Arts Round Up, October 15, 2020
By • October 15, 2020 0 1216
This year’s Smithsonian Food History Weekend and a panel tomorrow on the legacy of John Lewis will take place online. In person, you can visit the Kreeger Museum and, soon, Planet Word. Click on the headings below for details.
American History Museum: Food History Weekend
Held online, the 2020 Smithsonian Food History Weekend will kick off on Oct. 15 at 6:30 p.m. with a free Gala from Home program featuring the voices of individuals working toward a more sustainable and equitable food system. The Oct. 16 programming begins at 11 a.m. and wraps up with “Last Call: Beer Futures” at 7 p.m., an hour of live music followed by a conversation among beer innovators. On Oct. 17, the topic of the first Deep Dish Dialogue is COVID-19 and hunger. The weekend ends with “Youth Empowerment Through Food With Chef Haile Thomas” at 3 p.m.
African American Museum: Online Panel
Michel Martin, weekend host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” will moderate a free online panel discussion, “The Legacy of John Lewis Through the Lens of the National Museum of African American History and Culture,” on Oct. 16 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Panelists will include: Cheryl Johnson, 36th Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives; Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III; Tammy Boyd of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, Rep. Lewis’s former legislative director; Linda Johnson Rice, former member of the museum’s advisory council; and Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63,” a member of the museum’s scholarly advisory committee.
Russian Chamber Art Society: Online Performance and Inteview
On Oct. 18 at 3 p.m., Vera Danchenko-Stern, the Russian Chamber Art Society’s founder and artistic director, will host the second installment of Russian Tea Time with Vera. This online session will feature the American premiere of Alexander Zhurbin’s “Tsvetaeva,” performed by RCAS in 2018, plus a recorded interview with the composer, pianist Genadi Zagor and mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wór. Tickets are $15.
DC Jewish Community Center: Online Film History Course
As part of JxJ, successor to the Washington Jewish Film and Music Festivals, film critic George Robinson will teach an online course, “Great Jewish Filmmakers,” on six Monday evenings from 7:30 to 9 p.m. starting Oct. 19 (last session on Nov. 23). Films to be discussed will include: Dziga Vertov’s “Man With a Movie Camera,” Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not to Be,” Chantal Akerman’s “No Home Movie,” Max Ophuls’s “Letter from an Unknown Woman” and works by Billy Wilder and Agniezska Holland. Tuition is $169. The deadline to register is Oct. 12.
National Portrait Gallery: Online Lecture
As part of the National Portrait Gallery’s Edgar P. Richardson Lecture Series, Nancy Ireson, deputy director for collections and exhibitions and Gund Family Chief Curator at Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation, will give a free online lecture, “Suzanne Valadon, An Artist on View,” on Oct. 20 at 5 p.m. Valadon, an artist’s model in 19th-century Paris, defied the odds to become a successful painter. Advance registration is required.
Library of Congress: Online Conversation and Film Prize
On Oct. 20 at 7 p.m., as part of the online awards ceremony for the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Prize for Film, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns will join Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis for a conversation about music, filmmaking, race and history. This year’s winning film will be announced at the ceremony, at which clips from the finalists — “After Antarctica,” “Beethoven in Beijing,” “Cured,” “Hold Your Fire,” “Punch 9 for Harold Washington” and “Storming Caesars Palace” — will be shown.
Politics and Prose: Online Conversation
Coming up on Oct. 21 at 4 p.m. in Politics and Prose bookstore’s P&P Live! series, David S. Reynolds, Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will converse online about his latest book, “Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times,” with Harold Holzer, director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, who served as chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. Admission is pay-what-you-can and purchasing the book is encouraged.
TWB Jeté Society: Online Interview and Happy Hour
As part of its Cocktails with the Company Series, the Washington Ballet’s Jeté Society of young professionals will present an online interview with TWB Stage Manager Suzi Kilbourne on Oct. 21 at 6:30 p.m., followed by a virtual happy hour. During the interview, Kilbourne will call out live cues to an excerpt from the Washington Ballet’s “Nutcracker.”
Choral Arts: Online Discussion
On Oct. 22 at 5 p.m., Scott Tucker, artistic director of the Choral Arts Society of Washington, and Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, conductor of the New Orchestra of Washington, will engage in an online discussion about the origins of Día de los Muertos, the history of the Brahms Requiem and the reasons why this German piece became part of a Mexican holiday celebration. This event is available at no charge to Choral Arts virtual subscribers and purchasers of tickets to the Choral Arts/NOW Día de los Muertos virtual performance on Oct. 31 at 7:30 p.m. Virtual subscriptions are $11.99 per month or $34.99 per quarter and single-device tickets to the performance are $15.
The Kreeger Museum, 2401 Foxhall Road NW, has reopened its galleries for mask-wearing visitors (masks not required for age 3 and under) registering for 50-minute sessions: Tuesday to Saturday, 10 to 10:50 a.m., 11 to 11:50 a.m., 2 to 2:50 p.m. and 3 to 3:50 p.m. Passes are free; a maximum of 15 will be admitted for each session. The Great Hall, Terrace Gallery and Lower Level Galleries — where “Traces,” the group exhibition of work by regional contemporary artists, is on view — are currently open. The museum’s sculpture garden is also open, but only to visitors exiting the building, from 10 a.m. to noon and from 2 to 4 p.m.
Aiming “to inspire a love of language in all its forms,” the Planet Word museum will open in the 1869 Franklin School, a National Historic Landmark designed by Adolf Cluss, on Oct. 22. Located at 925 13th St. NW, at the northeast corner of Franklin Park, the museum will feature immersive displays including a 22-foot-high word wall and a magical library. Hours are Thursday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with masks required and social distancing in effect. Free timed-entry passes are posted on Mondays on the museum’s website.
