Visual Arts

Ari Post • March 13, 2014

National Portrait Gallery

Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction

April 18, 2014 – January 11, 2015

Portraiture in the 20th century was a difficult terrain for artists to traverse. It was a time when many members of the artistic community agreed that abstraction was the new artistic language and figurative work had little more to offer the world in terms of progress and innovation. “Face Value” is a group exhibit of artists who helped reinvent portraiture for their era and demonstrated the enduring value of exploring the face and figure. Pulling a collection of work from the mid-1940s through the 1970s, the exhibit features artists such as Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenburg, Chuck Close, Jamie Wyeth, Andy Warhol and more, highlighting those who pushed the boundaries of portrait traditions, invigorated and challenged by new modes of abstraction and the roiling currents of their time.

American Art Museum

Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget

May 2 – August 3, 2014

Ralph Fasanella’s parents were among three million Italians who immigrated to America in the early 20th century, searching for a better life for their families. Growing up in the working class neighborhoods of New York City, Fasanella (1914 – 1997) worked as a truck driver, union organizer, gas station owner and ice delivery man before turning to painting in the 1940s. Though untrained as an artist, he developed a style that reflected his working class and immigrant roots, celebrating the common man and tackling complex issues of postwar America in colorful and infectiously exuberant paintings of urban life. “Lest We Forget” celebrates the 100th birthday of this quintessential American artist, bringing together paintings spanning his 52-year career. Don’t miss this one!

The Kreeger Museum

K@20: Kreeger Museum 20th Anniversary Exhibition

February 20 – July 31, 2014

As a longtime champion of local and regional artists, it is fitting that the Kreeger’s 20th anniversary exhibition should highlight Washington area artists. “K@20” features 14 artists from all walks of life who have played a large part in shaping this city’s unique and remarkable arts scene. Showcasing a broad spectrum of mediums, subject matter, and styles by renowned artists such as Sam Gilliam, Gene Davis, Jeff Spaulding, Yuriko Yamaguchi, Tom Green, Ledelle Moe and Michael Platt, the selection of artworks offers a fresh perspective on the collective strength of Washington’s art community.

Freer and Sackler Galleries

Bountiful Waters: Aquatic Life in Japanese Art

March 8 – September 14, 2014

If there is one thing that Japan is known for in America, it is its sushi and seafood culture that is second to none in the world. Indeed, since prehistoric times, the waters that surround the islands of the small and powerful nation have informed its culture and sustained its inhabitants. Flowing from mountain ranges to form rivers and lakes and feeding into the ocean, the plants and animals that live in and around the waters continue to be a major source of a revenue and a primary dietary source for its population. “Bountiful Waters” features a selection of prints, paintings, illustrated books and ceramics that depict Japanese appreciation for the beauty and variety of fish and other species. The highlight will be the public debut of the “large fish” series of twenty woodblock prints by renowned Japanese artist Hiroshige (1797 – 1858).

The Phillips Collection

Made in the USA: American Masters from the Phillips Collection

March 1 – August 31, 2014

The Phillips Collection’s private collection of American masterworks is finally coming home, after a years-long worldwide tour. The exhibit tells the story of American art from the late 19th century, when it was entirely dismissed by the prominent European art communities, through post-war American art in the 1950s and 60s, when it came into its own as a significant international force of artistic progress and innovation. The exhibit will be a landmark artistic experience, featuring over 200 works by over 100 artists, and taking up most of the museum’s gallery space. Artists range from early American progressives such as Arthur Dove and John Marin, to Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis and Richard Deibenkorn. Don’t miss it.

Art Museum of the Americas

Territories and Subjectivities: Contemporary Art from Argentina

March 27 – Summer 2014

Identities of boundaries and belonging are formed through cultural affiliation and familiarity, and so in many ways the idea of territory is quite subjective. For instance, most of us born in the United States will proudly bond with any fellow citizen over this mutual belonging, while a native Texan and Oregonian might have bitterly conflicting ideas of politics and cultural history. “Territories and Subjectivities” will examine the very notion of territory as something that we define for ourselves, not as an inherent condition of the world. Featuring contemporary artists from each of Argentina’s 23 provinces, this exhibit will present a panorama of modern-day Argentinian identity, revealing interweaving and conflicting notions of cultural ownership and identity within a single country that reflects the juxtaposition between any nation’s singularity and clashes of regional identity.

National Sporting Library and Museum

Foxcroft School: The Art of Women and the Sporting Life

March 15 – August 24, 2014

In conjunction with Foxcroft School’s Centennial Celebration, “Foxcroft School” is an exhibition focusing on women as sporting enthusiasts, sporting artists and sporting art collectors. The exhibition is comprised of loans from alumnae of the prestigious Middleburg college-preparatory school for girls and their relatives. Approximately thirty paintings and sculptures will provide a picture of the collecting interests of these remarkable women and their role in 20th century sporting life and art.

Corcoran Gallery of Art

Jennifer Steinkamp and Jimmy Johnson: Loop

March 15 – April 20, 2014

Drawing on the architecture of the Corcoran’s rotunda, “Loop” is a site-specific visual and music installation created by media artist Jennifer Steinkamp and electronic composer Jimmy Johnson. Originally commissioned in 2000 for the Corcoran’s 46th Biennial Exhibition, the artists use a high functioning graphics computer to create electronic visual patterns that enhance the space with rows of undulating multicolored digital rope and projections. Music plays along with the moving images. It will be an immersive and completely unique exhibit.

National Gallery of Art

Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In

May 4 – November 30, 2014

While no artist could be farther from the abstract, post-modern and pop art movements that define American art in the 20th century, Andrew Wyeth (1917 – 2009) is one of our era’s great painters, who created a quiet shift in the tectonic plates of the American landscape. A painter of formal virtuosity and stamina like almost no other of his lifetime, he used both Renaissance traditions (like egg tempera) and new world techniques to create some of the most indelible images of our time, largely centered around farms and quiet landscapes of his hometown in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. “Looking Out, Looking In” will present an exhibit of over 50 of Wyeth’s paintings, drawings and tempera paintings focused around the artist’s frequent use of windows as symbol, subject matter, framing device and inspiration.
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Ari Post • February 27, 2014

Thanksgiving came and went, and the Christmas lights went up faster than you can say “Black Friday.” The season is upon us—the season of parades, of family, of thanks, beauty and giving. It is a season marked by visual splendor, from Christmas lights and snowy mountaintops, to gingerbread houses, parade floats and the glitzy intrigue of wrapping paper.

There is a traceable line between the spirit of the holiday season and the ethos of visual art, both of which build upon and reflect a collective understanding of our shared experiences, almost regardless of religion in this day and age. They carry with them an innate lineage unseen in almost all other objects or experiences that pull at our nostalgic heartstrings while moving steadily into the future.

Washington is abuzz with activities and events through the end of the year. If you are among the many households with family coming to town for the holidays, there are going to be plenty of options to keep your restless out-of-towners distracted. For those so visually predisposed, there are two unique and interesting museum exhibits which are both complimentary and starkly contrasting, and which hover beyond the radar of most visitors to the city so accustomed to the prevalence of the Smithsonian and National Gallery. The offerings at The Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts will please any audience, while taking them around the city for a true taste of the holidays in Washington.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is exhibiting “Wanderer,” an exhibit of travel prints, drawings and original printing plates by Ellen Day Hale (1855–1940), on view through January 5, which demonstrate the artist’s passion for travel and her mastery of printmaking. Hale achieved acclaim as a renowned portrait painter and printmaker, training in the ateliers of Boston artists and then traveling to Paris in the early 1880s to study painting. While abroad, Hale published accounts of her studies and the Parisian art world, encouraging female artists in Boston and inspiring them to travel.

Throughout her career, Hale took multiple trips throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, recording crumbling ruins, scenic land and cityscapes, and local people at work, embracing the spontaneity and intimate scale of printmaking to capture her impressions of the many local cultures she experienced. This collection is an inspiring travelogue to any journeyer who might be resting their boots in the District over the holidays. www.NMWA.org.

In sharp contrast to Hale, contemporary artist Mia Feuer’s current installation at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, “An Unkindness,” is a haunting vision of our world 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, the project explores the relationships between human infrastructure and the natural world. Feuer merges imagery from the oil sands with research into ecological systems worldwide, creating a series of immersive and interactive installations that are at once topical and deeply personal. The exhibit highlight includes a synthetic black skating rink open to the public in the museum’s Rotunda, which contrasts our own gleeful pleasure against the ominous natural symbolism, which is especially thought-provoking around the holidays. For skating rink hours and more information, visit www.Corcoran.org/Exhibitions.
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Ari Post • January 27, 2014

On May 12, 2008, an earthquake devastated the Sichuan province of central China, and more than 5,000 children lost their lives when the region’s shoddily constructed schoolhouses collapsed. After the catastrophe the state-controlled media tried to scuttle the incidents, detaining and threatening parents and volunteers who questioned the authorities and unfit building codes. Officials ordered the Chinese news media to stop reporting on school collapses, and parents were urged to accept money in exchange for their silence. Many of the schools were quickly reconstructed.

When Chinese artist Ai Weiwei visited the stricken region shortly after the earthquake, he saw the devastated schoolhouses, mounds of backpacks and twisted brambles of steel rebar scattered about the wreckage. The first thing he did was write about it in his blog (which had an extensive readership until Chinese authorities shut it down in 2009).

The next thing he did was to recruit volunteers through the Internet for his Citizens’ Investigation project, which compiled a list of the children who died in the earthquake. He gathered their names, birth years, genders and class, and displayed them along the walls of his Shanghai studio (now demolished) like a war memorial. At the Hirshhorn Museum, a replication of this wall faces the entrance to “Ai Weiwei: According To What?” a retrospective of the artist’s work, through February 24.

This wall is at once a statement of remembrance and protest, asking us with each name to confront the significance of an individual life and to weigh its loss, while defying his government’s mishandling and disregard of the situation. In all his work, Weiwei goes to great lengths to organize and document, to find a harmony in structure that reveals a feeling of truth in personal identity.

Weiwei’s work also has a way of confronting us with environments, filtering them through prismatic lenses and binding us all—his self, included—to the state of our modern times. Another piece in the exhibit brought about by the Sichuan earthquake events is a meticulously neat display of thousands of corroded steel rebar lengths laid out across the entire floor of a large gallery; the rebar was recovered in twisted heaps from the rubble of the schoolhouses, and the artist hired craftsmen to straighten them back out.

Consumed with the appropriating and rearranging of historical backgrounds and life experiences, Weiwei strives through his work to maintain a sincere, deeply rooted relationship with his surroundings, which is difficult when born into an upended society. Raised amidst the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s, Weiwei’s family was among the many antisocialists exiled to northwest China. Eventually returning to Beijing, Weiwei entered film school before moving to the US in 1981, where he studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York and documented his daily experiences with photographs, hundreds of which are woven through “According To What?”

This personal visual record traces his early search for identity, which would soon consume him in an altogether different way. After his return to China in 1993, all remnants of his past had been wiped out by development, and a sense of excavating has emerged in his work as he uncovers and readapts lost artifacts of his cultural heritage.

“Kippe” is a perfect brick of tightly stacked scrap wood, nearly six feet tall, made out of dismantled pieces of Qing Dynasty temples and framed within a set of gymnast’s parallel bars, a ubiquitous schoolyard amusement from Weiwei’s childhood. “Colored Vases” is a collection of 16 Han Dynasty vessels, ranging in age between 206 BCE – 220 CE, which Weiwei dipped in neon hues of industrial paint; the only remnants of their original ornate patterns gasp through streaks of Kermit-the-frog green and frosted periwinkle.

All of Weiwei’s physical artworks—which exclude his trail of viral and online photojournalism, conceptual projects, architecture, writings and his prolific Twitter account—have the gravity and permanence of monuments. They defy China’s cultural patterns of paving over pasts and intentional forgetting, as with the Sichuan earthquake. Weiwei decries his country’s push toward cultural uniformity with the grit and snarl of egoistic proclamations, dealing directly and often abrasively with the values of free speech and expression (as evidenced by photographs documenting his unique employment of a certain four-letter word at the site of various Chinese and US landmarks).

Weiwei was initially acclaimed by his government and awarded the opportunity to work on significant projects in his country (including designing the Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium from the 2008 Chinese Olympics). But since 2009, as a result of his heated political activism, the Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, detained him, kept him under house arrest, beaten him, confiscated his passport and demolished his studio.

There really is no clean end to this story. Weiwei is currently embroiled in murky charges of tax evasion by the Chinese authorities, and he is forbidden to leave the country for alleged suspicion of this and other crimes, from pornography to money laundering. He is currently working to prove his innocence.

But even ignoring all of this, Ai Weiwei is still a landmark contemporary artist. He distills monumental issues of our era by engaging the perspective of the individual, without losing focus on larger, more challenging implications. He stays aware of an ever-broadening network of global affairs, and uses an extensive web of media to empower his audience to understand and question their surroundings. And in an age where a government can all but cover up the deaths of 5,000 children, that means something.

Ari Post • January 26, 2014

Occasionally, a work of art comes along that cuts right through the static noise of the modern scene. It reflects the burden and balance of history and unveils for a moment the tragic beauty of human nature. Time falls by its side, as the past and present collide before it with startling immediacy, free from distortions, interferences and distractions. It is transcendent without need of religion, it is celestial while inextricably bound to the dirt of this earth. “The Dying Gaul” is one of these rare and consummate masterworks.

An ancient Roman marble sculpture created during the first or second century A.D., “The Dying Gaul” is a Gallic warrior, shown in his final moments of life, fallen from a mortal wound to his chest with his weapons and armor by his side. Long recognized as one of the renowned works from antiquity, it has not left Rome since 1797, when Napoleonic forces took the sculpture to Paris and had it displayed in the Louvre until 1816. Now on display in the rotunda of the National Gallery in coordination with the Embassy of Italy, this brief but historic exhibit is a gesture of cultural connectivity, in celebration of the ties that bind the United States and Italy, as well as the considerable influence that Italy’s history has had in shaping this country’s identity.

There is so much history with a work like this, from its discovery in the gardens of an Italian villa in the 1620s to the early misconceptions that it was a Roman gladiator or a Greek herald. It is, in fact, a Roman copy of a Greek bronze, originally created in the third century B.C. in Asia Minor to commemorate the victory of the king of Pergamon over the invading Gauls. They were evidently brought to Rome, where they would have reminded Romans of their own conquest of Gaul.

Not that this is really that important when standing before the dying soldier. Experiencing the force of this work makes the whole of Western art history feel at once totally dismissible and densely concentrated into a single, present moment.
The warrior hunches over with his head down, legs fallen out underneath him. The cut of the marble informs the figure, as the striated veins and mineral impurities of the stone are like kicked-up dust caking the soldier’s bare back. Slight cracks in the sculpture mimic battle scars.

The musculature is almost devastating. Visible are the seizures and contractions of a body broken, the forearms bulging, biceps in spasm, legs heavy, ribs constricting, chest sliced open and heaving, the warrior growing more faint with each breath. The body, held up by the wide back and shoulders, is full of vitality and life that it will never again experience. The Gaul is exhausted but determinedly strong, living in the prime of his life until the moment death takes him.

His head hangs wearily, as exquisitely carved as the rest of him. However, even hoisted above us on a pedestal the face is obscured by shadow. And though photographed in proper lighting on the surrounding panels for all to see, it feels inappropriate to hunch over and steal a look into the soldier’s eyes, as if to do so is a public exploitation of human suffering.
I think it is meant to be this way. In much the same way that we cannot stare coolly into the face of a crying friend, we see here the glimpse that the Gaul offers us—not the full brunt of his pain, but a sorrow that he obscures in search for solace and privacy amidst the chaos of his final moments. It is frankly a suggestion of something eternal that we can only ever realize in our hearts and minds. It is important to recognize that not everything can be shown, and it is often just as important to understand those things that can never be fully expressed to round out the sensation of being human.

To exhibit the Gaul in the rotunda of the National Gallery is a strangely Roman affectation, reminiscent of the political ethos of the ancient empire that originally put him on display. As an image of a vanquished enemy, the sculpture embodies courage in defeat, self-possession in the face of death and the recognition of nobility even in opposition. In the context of Washington, it fits in the gallery’s vaulted dome with its black marble columns like a brutalized political dissident on display, meant to impress and influence rather than inspire or enlighten. It distracts slightly from the ability to admire this as a work of art and shifts focus instead on its cultural and political poignancy. It would have been nice to view it in a more intimate gallery setting, unencumbered by the noise and distractions of gathering tour groups and the flow of visitors through the museum entrance. This, however, is probably how the Gaul felt on the battlefield.

Nevertheless, as the year comes to an end and the robes of winter wrap heavily around us, it is a beautiful experience to stand before a single work of art that lets us consider all that has passed by us, all that is yet to come, all that we are and all that we will never have the chance to be. Time and life are fickle and finite, but there is no discernable limit to the human spirit. ?

“The Dying Gaul” is on view at the National Gallery of Art through March 16. For more information, visit www.nga.gov.

Robert Devaney • January 17, 2014

“Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex on the Flight of Birds,” possibly one of the world’s most famous notebooks, goes on view Friday, Sept. 13, at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum for a 40-day exhibit, ending Oct. 22.

Made up of 18 folios (two-sided pages) and written in the artist’s famous “mirror” script, the collection of notes and sketches foreshadows devices and principles of mechanical flight by exploring bird flight and behavior. The Renaissance genius created the notebook between 1505 and 1506, when he also painted his masterpiece, the “Mona Lisa.”

In a gesture of an eternal return, so to speak, the exhibit is at the entrance to the Wright Brothers exhibit, where their famous flyer resides. While the precious and protected book cannot be touched or photographed, video screens on the second-floor wall allow the curious to see the pages come to life.

“The opportunity to exhibit ‘Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex on the Flight of Birds’ is an extraordinary privilege for the museum,” said Gen. J.R. “Jack” Dailey, director of the museum. “It allows us to trace the history of flight by sharing the work of a visionary whose genius transcends time, from the 16th century to today’s icons of aviation and space exploration.”

Claudio Bisogniero, Italian ambassador to the United States, was on hand for debut of the rare document and said during the Sept. 12 presentation, “ ‘Volare’ has always represented mankind’s dream to overcome nature’s boundaries. Those who love to fly – let me admit that my own passion for flight goes back over 25 years – know full well how exhilarating it is to embrace that dream.

“In words attributed to Leonardo himself and I quote: ‘Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. For there, you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

“Centuries ago, Leonardo had grasped not only the spirit of flight, but also some of the key principles that later enabled mankind to fly, as you can see in this wonderful museum.

“It is our hope that the celebrations of the ‘Year of Italian Culture in the United States’ – including this exhibit on Leonardo – will continue to bear fruit for many more years to come: a true legacy through culture, innovation and discovery.”

The exhibit runs through Oct. 22 and then heads to New York.
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Ari Post •

Freer – Sackler
Aug. 24 – Feb. 9, 2014
Charles Freer and the Arts of Japan
Between 1895 and 1911, Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919) visited Japan five times, establishing himself among Japanese collectors as a formidable and respected peer. Paintings currently on display in the Japanese galleries reflect the evolution of Freer’s understanding of Japanese art, as well as the diversity and quality of his acquisitions. At the time of his death, Freer bequeathed some 600 Japanese paintings to the Freer Gallery of Art. Today that number has more than doubled, but the prototype for collecting has continued to honor his sensibilities. These works are exhibited with a nod to the 90th anniversary of the opening of the Freer Gallery in 1923.

Aug. 24 – Feb. 9, 2014
Korean Style in Japanese Ceramics
Korean ceramics arriving in Japan as trade goods in the 15th and 16th centuries captured attention for the quality of their form, glaze, and decoration, far surpassing what Japanese kilns could produce. Korean bowls in particular were coveted for use as tea bowls. Even after Japanese pottery-making skills improved, neither potters nor customers forgot their profound admiration for Korean stoneware ceramic styles. Focusing on tea bowls, this exhibition offers a selection of Japanese vessels inspired by Korean models, spanning the 17th through 19th century.

Sept. 28 – September, 28, 2014
Off the Beaten Path: Early Works by James McNeill Whistler
In the summer of 1858, 24-year-old Whistler traveled with a friend from Paris through the Rhineland. Their goal was to reach Amsterdam and view “The Night Watch” and other paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn—but they soon ran out of money and were forced to return to Paris. Their excursion through the countryside, where they drew portraits in exchange for food and lodging, resulted in a body of work that for years served as source material for the artist. The drawings, etchings, and watercolors on view not only document Whistler’s adventures, but they also shaped his selection of subject matter and his approach to composition, light and shadow, and perspective.

National Gallery of Art
Sept. 1 – January 5, 2014
Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press
The exhibition features 125 working proofs and edition prints produced between 1972 and 2010 at Crown Point Press in San Francisco, one of the most influential printmaking studios of the last half-century. The stages of intaglio printmaking reveal the printmaking process in very particular ways. They are used to monitor and steer a print’s evolution, prompting evaluation and approval, revision, or rejection. Each proof compels a decision: yes, no, maybe. Among the twenty-five artists represented are those with long ties to Crown Point Press—Richard Diebenkorn, John Cage, Chuck Close, and Sol LeWitt—as well as those whose association is more recent, such as Mamma Andersson and Amy Sillman.

Sept. 1 – Jan. 5, 2014
Northern Mannerist Prints from the Kainen Collection
Ruth Cole Kainen was one of the most important collectors of prints and drawings in recent decades, and bequeathed major works to the National Gallery of Art. This exhibition?the first of three to focus on central aspects of her bequest?presents some 50 works that embody the sophisticated imagery, extraordinary stylization, and virtuoso technique of the flourishing printmaking industry in the northern Netherlands in the late 16th century. Included are exquisite interpretations by the finest engravers of the powerful works of Goltzius and the leading Netherlandish painters Cornelis van Haarlem, Abraham Bloemaert and Bartholomaeus Spranger.

Sept. 15 – Jan. 20, 2014
Tell it with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gauden’s Shaw Memorial
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Wagner, this exhibit celebrates its magisterial Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, honoring Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first regiments of African-American soldiers during the Civil War. The exhibition features daguerreotype and tintype portraits of the soldiers, the people who recruited them, including Frederick Douglass, Charles Lenox Remond and Sojourner Truth as well as the women who nursed, taught and guided them, such as Clara Barton, Charlotte Forten, and Harriet Tubman. Letters, a recruiting poster, and the Medal of Honor awarded to the first African-American soldier who earned this distinction are also displayed, as is work by 20th- and 21st-century artists who have reflected on the continuing importance of the 54th Massachusetts, the Battle of Fort Wagner and the Shaw Memorial.

American University
Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
Opening Sept. 3
Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots
This exhibition of contemporary art addresses ecological issues, brought over from the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. The show is a multifaceted, “multi-seasonal” interactive art venture focused on art and agriculture that comprises several elements and a series of public programs. It will also incorporate broad community involvement across the county and region, with a goal to visually and spatially engage the public in a discussion around topics related to food, agriculture, urban farming and livability, and to expose the investigations artists are making in these areas. The exhibit is in collaboration with the Arlington Arts Center, which presents its half of Green Acres through Oct. 13.

Donald Rothfeld Collection of
Contemporary Israeli Art
This is the first exhibition of Donald Rothfeld’s extraordinary gift of Israeli Art to the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in honor of H.E. Ambassador Michael B Oren. Selections from the extensive collection chronicle Israel’s history and include the work of numerous prominent and emerging Israeli artists, including Uri Aran, Yael Bartana, Tsibi Geva, Moshe Kupferman, Siglat Landau, Elad Lassry, and Michal Rovner. The exhibition is sponsored by American University’s Center for Israel Studies.

Patrick Mcdonough:
Brightveridiansentinelevents
The exhibition, sponsored by the Office of Sustainability, examines the relationship between sustainability, aesthetics, and free time, a timely and important topic in the face of environmental flux and increased interest in alternative energy, technologies, and economies. Utilizing both the interior gallery space and outdoor sculpture garden, McDonough presents discrete objects, performance documentation, and solar sculptures that blend wit and insight, playfulness, and provocation.

Kreeger Museum
Sept. 3 – Dec. 28
Mindy Weisel: Not Neutral
This exhibition is comprised of three significant bodies of work by artist Weisel that parallel one another in large-scale human and environmental tragedies: “Paintings of the Holocaust” (c. 1980), “Survival of Beauty” (2010) and “After Tohoku” (2012). Within each series of work, the artist explores deep emotion through color, gestural marks, surface tension and composition. These works are a profound expression of the triumph of beauty, reconciliation, and healing over human tragedy, loss and destruction.

Art Museum of the
Americas
Sept. 4 – Oct. 18
Brasil, Meu Brasil: Contrastes da
Modernidade (Brazil, My Brazil: Contrasts of Modernity)
This exhibition of 14 paintings by Brazilian artist Marília Bulhões promotes a constructive vision of South America’s future through local and hemispheric cultural exchange. It also offers a contemporary view of the artist’s relationship to her country’s people, natural beauty, modernity and troubles. These elements contrast with other vital components of the Brazilian culture in Bulhões’ work, such as the slums and the challenges of deforestation in the Amazon, examining these coexisting, although seemingly incompatible, worlds. With an abstract and minimalist approach, Bulhões assembles a distinct mosaic of present-day Brazil, subtly revealing intricate contrasts while weaving a sense of cultural unity. The artist also explores the concept of the nation based on its kaleidoscope of identities. She portrays Brazil, one of the most demographically varied nations of the Americas, as a unique melting pot of cultures.
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Ari Post •

2014 is a promising year for the
fine arts in Washington,
with exhibitions of
European master Edgar Degas and American
master Andrew Wyeth on the horizon, both at
the National Gallery of Art. A show of 16thcentury
Japanese tea jars at the Sackler will open
a unique window of history onto our longtime
adoration of this popular and ritualistic drink.
But while we wait for spring to usher in the first
major exhibitions of the year, there is a great deal
to keep die-hard devotees of museums and galleries
happy through the winter. Here are a few
things to see in the coming months:

**A New Era at the Textile Museum**
The new year marks an exciting chapter for
the Textile Museum, which begins its move to a
new museum space on the George Washington
University campus. Though the old S Street location
is no longer open for regular visiting hours,
as the nearly 20,000-piece collection is being
made travel-ready, programs will continue to be
offered at multiple venues during the transition.
One upcoming event is a curator-led tour of
“Workt by Hand: Hidden Labor and Historical
Quilts” at the National Museum of Women in
the Arts on Friday, Jan. 24. Quilts have long
been burdened by conflicting interpretations
– revered as nostalgic emblems of the past,
dismissed as women’s work, yet hailed as examples
of American ingenuity. This exhibition,
which showcases 35 18th- through 20th-century
quilts from the Brooklyn Museum, examines
quilts through the lens of contemporary feminist
theory, revealing the medium’s shifting cultural
status. Tickets are $20 for members, $25
for nonmembers. To register, call 202-667-0441,
ext. 64.

The first in a series of free Rug and Textile
Appreciation Mornings begins on Saturday, Jan.
25. History professor Katrin Schultheiss will
discuss the complexity of gender roles in textile
production in the 19th century, when certain fabrics
were deemed worthy of male craftsmanship
and others were regarded as “simple” enough
for women to produce. Reservations are not
required.

**New Editions at Adamson Gallery**
Opening with a public reception on Saturday,
Jan. 18, 6-8 p.m., Adamson Gallery will show
new editions of master photographic prints from
a number of internationally acclaimed artists,
including Marc Babej, Chuck Close, Roberto
Longo and Gary Simmons. Close’s portrait series
of Brad Pitt, for example, shows the iconic actor
in a new and uncomfortably close perspective,
exposing every nook, cranny, wrinkle and
pockmark on his face. The result is a fascinating
examination of the nature of exposure,
privacy and identity, particularly for those who
live their lives in the public eye. The exhibition
runs through Mar. 29, by appointment. For more
information, call 202-232-0707 or email [Info@
AdamsonGallery.com](mailto:info@Adamsgallery.com).

**The Shenandoah Comes to Susan
Calloway Fine Arts**
Painter Ed Cooper reflects the subtleties
of early morning and late afternoon light and
color in his plein-air landscapes, capturing the
interplay of sun and shade on trees, water and
grass. With an opening reception on Friday, Jan.
17, 6-8 p.m., “Ed Cooper: New Landscapes,”
on view at Susan Calloway Fine Arts through
Feb. 15, explores the regional Shenandoah
and Chesapeake landscapes through the tip of
Cooper’s reliably breathtaking paintbrush. A
wanderer, Cooper carries as constant companions
a pochade box for quick oil sketches and
an easel for more elaborate paintings. “While
wandering I am constantly looking for scenes
or objects that evoke an emotional response in
me – something I just have to paint,” he says. For
more information, visit [www.CallowayArt.com](http://www.CallowayArt.com).

**Goodbye to Heiner Contemporary**
After three prolific years in Georgetown,
Heiner Contemporary has moved to Farmington,
Conn. While there will be no brick-and-mortar
space for some time, the gallery will maintain
an active online presence and continue to
offer comprehensive art advisory services. In
Connecticut, Heiner Contemporary will showcase
work through pop-up exhibitions, participation
in art fairs and via Artsy.net. Over the past
few years, Heiner has brought an unforgettable
body of contemporary artwork to Washington,
and given Georgetown’s Book Hill neighborhood
a vibrant shot of life. We wish them prosperity
and success in all future endeavors. [gallery ids="118500,118503" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • November 25, 2013

Friday, November 22, will be day of remembering all over Washington, D.C., and the country and the world, but especially here in a city full of venues and cultural institution which will dedicate themselves to commemorating and remembering the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

Among the numerous screenings, talks, exhibitions and the like, the screening of a 50-year-old movie about Kennedy, his legacy and his death and funeral with a talk by its producer might not seem like such a big deal.

But the 3 p.m. screening of “John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums,” and an introduction and discussion by its producer George Stevens, Jr., is a big deal. The film—a documentary written and directed by Bruce Herschensohn, produced by Stevens and created in the immediate aftermath of the assassination for the U.S. Information Agency—has not been seen in years. An expertly restored version of the film, narrated by Gregory Peck, is now available as a DVD.

“I hadn’t seen it myself for a number of years,” said Stevens, a noted film and television director, producer of the Kennedy Center Honors and founder of the American Film Institute, “The negative was lost, God only knows how. The prints from an inter-positive negative, I think—which I did see—were smudged, cracked, awful. I didn’t think it could ever be restored properly, but the people at Warner Brothers who restored “Giant,” which was directed by my father George Stevens, did a remarkable job of restoration. When I saw it, it was an amazing experience for me.”

Stevens, who was then head of the film department of the USIA, proposed the project to its director Edward R. Murrow. “At the time, we had never made a feature length film before,” Stevens said. “We used 35-millimeter color film in filming the funeral and the internment and the lighting of the eternal flame, and I still recall how vivid the colors were, how real everything seemed, even today. We did not have color television yet at time. Looking at it for the first time in a long time, I was amazed how energizing the color was.”

The structure of the film began with the inauguration speech, went to the somber days of the funeral, and went back and forth among the administration’s major achievements, including the creation of the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress, the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. space initiative, the Cuban missile crisis, and efforts at world peace with the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and back to the funeral. All through the film, you see the president and his family, mostly, the president in crowds, the president on his trip to his ancestral homeland in Ireland and the president in Costa Rica among cheering crowds.

The narration by the familiar (to an older generation) voice of Peck seems in spots old-fashioned, with the imagery rooted firmly in its time and places. It has a grieving, but also idealistic tone and feel to it, a documentary made by a wounded heart clasping hope for a permanent legacy to its bosom. It is a documentary in the sense that everything in it is real—and therefore powerful and moving—but it is a documentary which embraced the president’s pragmatic idealism, fueled by grief and dashed dreams.

“We sent camera crews to 14 countries to capture the world’s reaction,” Stevens said. “By law, we were not supposed to be allowed to screen for American public consumption, since the agency created material for overseas consumption. But the congress passed a special law allowing this film to be distributed in the United States in 1964. There was a screening at the State Department, which the New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther attended, and he praised the film in the highest terms.”

“I don’t what the box office results were, but I think it did very well and it was popular,” Stevens said.

“You know that it is a film very much of its times,” he said. “But Kennedy, he seems so real in it, he speaks very much to us still. I have my own feelings about what might have happened and I think the country as a whole would have been better for that. He had a quality. He inspired men and women to do, not just to dream, to change the world through action.”

That ability to inspire on the part of Kennedy—and his much-lauded humor– comes through in the film, he might as well be alive so vivid are the scenes of his speech at the inauguration, after entering in the wake of top-hatted Ike and Nixon, his reception in Costa Rica, the gladness of it all, and the sheer happiness on display among the crowds all over Ireland.

What makes the film truly powerful—you can scrutinize it all you want for flaws or cinematic style, but no matter—is its artlessness. It is not seamless, the language is often culturally and socially anachronistic, things move too swiftly in the funeral procession of the mighty led by Charles De Gaulle. But it’s not presenting art. Viewed from this distance by people who were alive then and have echoes in their heads about the day of drums, it’s almost shattering to see Caroline—now the U.S. Ambassador to Japan—along with Jackie, Ted and Robert, and, John, Jr., saluting. Viewing this is knowing the rest of the story, which is the story of our lives.

On Friday, Nov. 22, there will be noon and 3 p.m screenings of the film at the American History Museum; George Stevens will speak at the 3 p.m. showing.

Robert Devaney • November 18, 2013

You may have already viewed President George Washington’s proclamation that created the first federal Thanksgiving Day in 1789. This piece of American history was on a national tour by Christie’s and stopped at the Jefferson Hotel Nov. 4. It is now on the auction block at Christie’s New York at Rockefeller Plaza. If you are in midtown Manhattan, you still have time to see it and make a bid.

Here are some details from Christie’s: “On Nov. 14, in a special single-lot evening sale, Christie’s New York is honored to offer a proclamation signed by George Washington on October 3, 1789, establishing the first federal Thanksgiving Day, called for the last Thursday of November (estimate: $8 to12 million). This sale, which follows a national tour, offers a unique opportunity to acquire a foundational document in the history of our great national tradition of Thanksgiving.”

Here are excerpts from President Washington’s proclamation:

“• By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation…

• …both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer…

• Now therefore do I recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being…That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks–for… the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed–for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted–for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge…”

Marie Loiseau • November 15, 2013

Artist’s Proof, a gallery with a unique compilation of artists and styles, opened Oct. 19 in Cady’s Alley.

The gallery is dedicated mostly to contemporary art, but it really does not cater to a particular style. Instead, its main focus is the stories shared by the artists.

Gallery owner Peggy Sparks, who knows each artist personally, places the utmost emphasis on the stories behind the works. She will lead gallery guests through the space, passionately explaining the personal journey of each artist. ”It’s not just art on white walls,” says Sparks. ”It’s a conversation.”

The pieces within Artist’s Proof range from geometric to chaotic and black and white to explosively colorful. There are two-dimensional works on canvas and three-dimensional wooden and bronze pieces. The place currently carries works by a variety of international artists, including Jean-Francois Debongnie, Hunter Hogan, and Fred BergerCardi.

Before settling in Washington, D.C., a year ago, Sparks took time to visit the major art cities of the United States, spending extra time in Boulder, Colo. She’s worked internationally in cities such as Shanghai, Dubai, and her homeland of Singapore.

Sparks has worked in the art world for the past ten years. She didn’t expect to end in this industry, having originally studied linguistics. But when she took a job in an art gallery upon graduating college, she ”starting falling in love with the works.”

Since her move to Washington, D.C., Sparks has worked on the gallery opening.

”This is the fastest I could get it open,” she says, adding that she is concerned more about the guest’s in-gallery experience, rather than the amount of pieces a guest ends up purchasing. Her first and most important goal, she says, is for ”people to leave the gallery with their hearts filled.”

Sparks plans to hold an event on Dec. 8, she says, tentatively called ”Lazy Sunday.” Mosey on over to Artist’s Proof, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., that day, for art appreciation and adult beverages.