DC Artswatch: GALA, NMAAHC, Stable, NGA
By • October 22, 2020 0 1128
GALA In-Person Show
GALA Hispanic Theatre, 3333 14th St. NW, will open its 45th anniversary season on Oct. 29 with in-person performances of Lope de Vega’s Golden Age comedy “El perro de hortelano (The Dog in the Manger)” in Spanish with English surtitles. Only 25 tickets — nine percent of capacity — will be available per performance and masks will be required. Tickets are $25, $30 and $45; $20 on Community Night (Oct. 29); and $50 on the Noche de GALA (Oct. 30). The production runs through Nov. 22.
New NMAAHC Director
Kevin Young, director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, was named director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, succeeding Lonnie Bunch III, the museum’s founding director and now Smithsonian secretary. Spencer Crew is currently serving as interim director. Poetry editor of the New Yorker, Young has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and an MFA from Brown. A faculty member and library curator at Emory before joining the Schomburg in 2016, he starts at NMAAHC on Jan. 11.
Stable Founders Step Down
Artists Tim Doud, Linn Meyers and Caitlin Teal Price have stepped down — Doud in June and the other two last month — from the board of one-year-old Stable, the studio community they founded at 336 Randolph Place NE. Washington City Paper reported that, on Sept. 16, “several artists launched a social media campaign accusing STABLE of fostering a hostile work environment, namely for Black artists and artists of color.” Exacerbated by the pandemic, the tensions apparently dated back to Black History Month and built during the Black Lives Matter protests in June.
Guston Exhibition Postponed
The exhibition “Philip Guston Now,” due to open at the National Gallery of Art in June, then in 2021, was postponed to 2024 (or possibly earlier, reported the Washington Post). “We feel it is necessary to reframe our programming … and bring in additional perspectives and voices,” wrote NGA Director Kaywin Feldman and the directors of London’s Tate Modern and the Museums of Fine Arts in Boston and Houston in a joint statement. The move was widely criticized by the art community. Works by Guston (1913-1980) include images of Ku Klux Klansmen and lynchings.
