Arts

Peter Murray • February 23, 2015

Piero di Cosimo’s paintings never reached the canon of High Renaissance art inhabited by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and even Giorgione works. Yet his pieces, a myriad of which are on exhibit now at the National Gallery, show a fun-loving, eccentric artist bounding from style to style all while demonstrating the aristocratic tastes of that period in which both whimsical mythology and devout adoration were sought after for personal consumption.

Piero’s birth, in 1462, proceeded Michelangelo’s and preceded Leonardo’s by about a decade each, respectively. Like other artists of the era, the Florentine Piero was given biographical treatment by the one and only Giorgio Vasari in his “Lives of the Artists” writings, which chronicled with debatable veracity of exactly that. Vasari, Piero’s only biographer, painted a picture of bizarre, even outlandish man in his writings.

He wrote that Piero suffered from such bad pyrophobia that he subsisted solely on eggs that he boiled (fifty at a time) with the glue he worked with. According to Vasari, Piero lived “more like a beast than a man” with regard to cleanliness, preferred animals to humans and had a propensity for seeing beauty in the lowliest street scene.

Vasari’s passages on Piero ring truest and with most relevance for today when he writes that Piero “changed his style almost from one work to the next.” That much is apparent in the National Gallery’s six-gallery-spanning retrospective “Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence.”

Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are greeted by Piero’s “Madonna and Child Enthroned with Sts. Peter, John the Baptist, Dominic, and Nicholas of Bari,” a painting clearly influenced by colleague Fillipino Lippi (and the International Gothic Style) but with the High Renaissance in mind. Piero uses Lippi’s bright palette and fanciful adornments in dressing the figures, whose sharp contours flatten the painting. There is balance though, which carries through in three paintings in the predella where scenes involving St. John the Baptist, St. Dominic and St. Nicholas of Bari are neatly arranged with figures, slopes and vegetation that create a sense of balance.

“The Finding of Vulcan on Lemnos” continues the Lippi-esque style in the next gallery, but with pagan subjects, flirtatiousness, nudity and highly detailed deptictions of flowers, birds and plants. In “Vulcan and Aeolus,” Piero shows a naturalist tendency again, including, most notably, a giraffe but also a number of birds and smaller mammals in a pagan scene. (The giraffe was given to Florence’s leader Lorenzo de’ Medici as a gift from the Sultan of Egypt but met an untimely death after hitting its head on a low palace entrance.)

Nature runs wild in a subsequent piece, “The Hunt,” depicting lions, tigers and bears (oh my!), not to mention satyrs, deer, beavers and the men who have ignited a fire in the woods in order to slay all of these animals. The organized chaos of Piero’s “Hunt” comes to a serene end in “The Return from the Hunt,” where women take stock of animal carcasses and even nurse a bear cub that’s been separated from its mother. Oddly enough, the set was a wedding gift for

In the epic “Perseus Freeing Andromeda” Piero is near-Boschian in constructing the peculiar sea monster sent by Poseidon to capture Andromeda, the daughter of Ethiopian king Cepheus. Piero doesn’t quite nail human skin tone in th work, as Andromeda and other figures meant to be black appear sickly more than anything else. But Flemish inspiration leads to incredibly detailed illustrations of water, landscape and architecture in the background. (Details in the background of “The Visitation of Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony Abbot,” too.)

Piero’s devotional tondi come as a surprise then when juxtaposed with his fanciful, mythological works. Traditionally, a tondo is a circular piece of art given to a bride upon marriage. Piero’s works in the medium vary in style with Piero giving some a Flemish attention to detail and others the forms of a Leonardo painting. Nonetheless, all of the works are rife with devotion and matronly emotion showing, perhaps, a more devout artist than his mythology suggests. “Mary Adoring the Child” and “Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels” stand out the most in this regard.

The National Gallery’s retrospective makes clear that Piero di Cosimo, despite and maybe even because of his eccentricities, was a masterful painter. Had he stuck with and built one style or streamlined his subjects more effectively, maybe he would be considered a master today. But then the National Gallery’s exhibit wouldn’t be so much fun.

Ari Post • February 6, 2015

El Greco was foremost an artist of the Spanish Renaissance, whose painted icons are among the most recognizable works in all of art history. With even the slightest familiarity of the artist’s work, his paintings become as instantly attributable as a Jackson Pollock. Not much work of the 16th century survives in the realm of intellectual pop culture, yet El Greco endured centuries of obscurity to achieve a sudden transcendence in the early 20th century, and his legacy seems all but fated for the ages.

For sake of candor, I will not feign any deeper knowledge of Renaissance art than a vague canonical familiarity with the masters—certainly no more than a middling history buff. In El Greco’s era, all subject matter in art was effectively predetermined, relegated by church and the nobility to biblical scenes, portraiture and what amounts to political propaganda. So the real issue of El Greco in our time is not what he painted, but how he painted—not what his work showed, but what it revealed. What brought this work suddenly into the limelight some 300 years later, and why are their impressions so deeply affecting and seemingly permanent?

At the National Gallery through February 16, a 400th anniversary celebration of El Greco features ten works by the groundbreaking genius of figure painting, which offers a rare opportunity to see the accumulation, breadth and development of his career.

Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541 – 1614), universally known as El Greco, was born on the Greek island of Crete, where he achieved mastery as a painter of Byzantine icons by age 26. Moving to Venice, he absorbed the lessons of High Renaissance masters, notably Titian and Tintoretto, before departing for Rome in 1570. There, he studied the work of Michelangelo and encountered the style known as mannerism, which rejected the logic and naturalism of Renaissance art. He relocated to Spain in 1576 and spent the rest of his life in Toledo, where he finally received the major commissions that had eluded him in Italy. Unlike the Italian mannerists, who aimed at elegant artifice, El Greco used their dramatically elongated figures and ambiguous treatment of space for expressive ends. Integrating these diverse influences, he developed a unique style that, from a historical perspective, captures the religious fervor of Counter-Reformation Spain.

But this is not what attracted artists like, Cezanne, Degas, Modigliani, Picasso, Giacometti, and so many others well throughout the 20th century, who ensured El Greco’s place in history. I would suggest that it was his figural obsession which, though couched in biblical allusion, exists almost unfettered by religious fervor. This resonated with the agnostic spirituality of turn-of-the-century artistic innovation, as well as its defiance of narrative conventions.

In paintings like “Saint Ildefonso,” “The Repentant Saint Peter,” and especially “Saint Jerome,” there is a physical agony to the figures, as the bodies crane and twist as if sculpted from crude clay. They contain a strong sense of yearning, doubt, distortion and chaos that found its id among the industrial age, and again amidst the new social consciousness brought about by Einstein’s age of relativity.

The painting, “Laocoön,” is strangely a modern masterpiece, painted three centuries too soon. The figures pose dramatically in a relaxed state of heightened physicality, like Degas’ dancers, and float in narrative and moral ambiguity, like Picasso’s “Family of Saltimbanques.” In a mere impression of a horse and clouds in the background, many brush strokes exist on their own terms, defining nothing but the space of the canvas. It is hardly abstraction, but it is certainly a broad step away from reality and into the realm of painterly suggestion.

Not much work from the 16th century can be absorbed purely on its own terms, in the way that art of the last 150 years strives for self-actualization and is made to be understood for its own sake (which is itself but a reflection of our intellectual era). El Greco was perhaps the first artist to recognize his medium as its own religion. He was an innovator of expression in light, the human figure, and paint itself. His work conveys deep spirituality, like the Byzantine icons of his youth, but they are independently alive in their sheer force of expression.

Perhaps El Greco’s rediscovery in the late 19th century was no more than a fluke, but it may just be that the Gods of paint rescued him from a long trial in purgatory. At the very least, he is most deserving of our time and consideration, and the paintings remain beautiful.

El Greco in the National Gallery of Art and Washington-Area Collections: A 400th Anniversary Celebration, is on view at the National Gallery of Art through February 16. For more information visit www.nga.gov

Gary Tischler • November 6, 2014

The photographer Alfred Wertheimer passed away on Oct. 19 in New York.

Elvis Presley lives on and on in the photographs of Wertheimer, who captured the budding king of rock and roll in 1956 with close to 3,000 images, taken over a period of a week in which he stayed in close proximity to Presley, traveling to New York, on the Steve Allen Show, on a train to Memphis, in Richmond for a concert, in hotels, at a diner, in the spotlight, and away from it, and finally at home, with his parents and friends.

Those pictures—before Elvis became irretrievably a legend—are as fresh as the other day. You can hear things in them, see the energy, and the charisma, and the response, and more than that they’re a kind of portrait of the life and times, his life and times, and for some of us who were unbelievably young then, our life and times.

The rest of the story is the music, which is permanent, for always and the rest of the days, never lost, always new.

John Lennon once famously said, “Before Elvis, there was nothing.”

Wertheimer, who was the son of German immigrants who escaped from Nazi Germany, was a free-lancer in 1956, struggling to get assignments, place photos, a 26-year-old not far removed from Elvis who was 21 then, fresh as a dangerous daisy. The thing was: Wertheimer was not exactly a rock-and-roll baby at the time. Asked to take on the assignment of shooting Elvis for more than a week, his first response was, “Who’s Elvis Presley?”

You can’t tell by the pictures, which he kept even after he moved on to other work over the years. One of them found its way onto the cover jacket of “Last Train to Memphis,” part one of the two-part definitive biography (Part two is “Careless Love”) by Peter Guralnick, who also wrote a biography about the troubled, bluesy balladeer of rock-pop Sam Cooke. That image—Elvis in an empty hall, hunched intently over a piano—was spotted by Chris Murray in 1995, who was intrigued. In the mid-90s, he found Wertheimer in New York, alive and well, putting together his Elvis collection. Govinda showed some of those images in a small, but compact, and evocative exhibition back then.

That first show evolved into another show at Govinda, and then an even bigger exhibition, co-sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, which turned into a national tour. “Elvis at 21, New York to Memphis” had a lengthy stay at the National Portrait Gallery in 2010. It’s where we saw Wertheimer at the NPG, regaling visitors and critics with stories of shooting Elvis, a bearded man happy in his task of overseeing a party at Georgetown sculptor John Dreyfuss’s Halcyon House, watching as notables (Murray, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a host of others) danced away to rock-a-billy music.

Thousands saw the exhibition, with Wertheimer’s photographs enlarged into almost noise-and-atmosphere-filled examples of drama and action—in them, you can hear the trains, smell the diner food of the day’s special, hear the splash of water at a swimming pool, listen to the preternatural screaming of totally gone girls of the time, hear the whispering and murmuring, and the rustle of skirt against slacks that resulted in a now famous series of images, called “The Kiss.”

In his foreword to the book, Murray writes, “These photographs of Elvis Presley are without a doubt the most important and compelling images ever taken of the greatest rock-and-roll icon of all time. No other photographer has ever come closer to catching Elvis Presley’s magic than Alfred Wertheimer.”

In a tribute to Wertheimer on the Govinda web site, Murray describes the man as “thoughtful, truthful, imaginative, clever, supportive, tender, magnanimous, funny, talented and true friend.”

In the photographs of Elvis and his one-week milieu of traveling, you find the something—Elvis, to be sure, pouting, the great wavy mass of black hair, the intense look, even in repose, asleep, he’s a sight to see, the pelvis in action, mom and son, the mother and child revolution, reading an Archie comic book and a newspaper, the big, cocky smile, running in a field toward home in Memphis.

The pictures are so fresh, they seem not landlocked in 1956, but more like a vivid dream of your own life and memories.

The rest is music in our ears—“Love me tender, love me true,” “Jail House Rock” and “I wanna be your Teddy Bear,” jangled, back-of-a-truck stuff rock-and-roll forever true.

The image of him then, securely fixed into the forever, thanks to Alfred Wertheimer.

Robert Devaney • October 23, 2014

The Corcoran Gallery of Art died this weekend at the age of 145. Founded in 1869 by Georgetowner William Wilson Corcoran, the gallery was one of the oldest art museums in the United States. Through bad business decisions, the institution could not sustain itself and was divided between the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. The gallery’s last day was Sept. 28.

“We are all art widows now,” said Corcoran curator emerita Linda Crocker Simmons, an organizer of the requiem for the gallery.

Former staffers of the gallery — many dressed in Victorian funereal garb — met Sept. 27 to hold a mock memorial service at the Flagg Building on 17th Street and to celebrate what was once a vibrant beacon of the visual arts, especially American, and then proceeded to Oak Hill Cemetery on R Street in Georgetown, where Corcoran was buried in 1888.

As they reunited with old friends, mourners walked through the museum and were read a honor roll of names of those involved with the Corcoran. With names of artists and of those at the gallery, the service began to evoke a personal feeling — and also showed how those works of art in the room with Peale’s “George Washington” and Bierstadt’s “The Last of the Buffalo” shall no longer be together as once they were. The Flagg Building will be renovated. The tears of former Corcoran staffers were real.

A white funeral wreath — reading, “Rest in Peace, Corcoran Gallery of Art” — greeted visitors walking up the steps with the Canova Lions sculptures on a beautiful, warm Saturday afternoon.

“We are left with a gorgeous building, but it is now no longer the Corcoran, but a cenotaph, a memorial to something that is not there, an empty tomb,” said former Corcoran director Michael Botwinick in statement, read by Carolyn Campbell, one of the funeral’s organizers and a former public relations head for the Corcoran.

As Botwinick praised the art collection, the artists and students and those who worked at the Corcoran, he observed: “If there is one thing that surprised me in the last two years, it has been the deafening silence. Except for that circle that rallied to help people understand what was at stake, the voices of the larger community of patrons, colleagues, politicians and community leaders have been absent from the conversation. And that silence has now rendered this building mute.”

After taking in the grand hall and rooms one last time, mourners left for their cars to follow the hearse in a funeral procession to Oak Hill Cemetery, where that white wreath was carried in a procession and placed in front of Corcoran’s mausoleum. There was another chance for staffers to reminisce, as they stood for a time in the sunny peace of the Victorian cemetery.

Storytellers recalled the time Robert Mapplethorpe was smoking a joint in the downstairs gallery featuring his first museum exhibition while his friend’s photo collection was on view in the upper five galleries — and then there was the book signing where Andy Warhol used lipstick to kiss each book with an impression of his lips. He had to leave to catch a plane and told a disappointed staffer on the end of the line to use his lipstick and kiss the book herself.

On the hillside, bagpiper Tim Carey played “Going Home” by Dvorak, and those remaining left for the Jackson Art Center, one block away on R Street. The center with working artists had prepared afternoon refreshments, and it seemed a most apropos ending to the day.

Gary Tischler •

Melisssa Chiu walked up to the podium gingerly.

“I’ve only been here two weeks,” said the new director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. “People were asking me if I really wanted to do a talk and that maybe I should get settled in first before I tackled something like that.”

Chiu looked fresh and undaunted as she faced an enthusiastic audience at the Georgetowner’s monthly Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the George Town Club Oct. 9.

“Maybe it’s because I was born in Australia, but I thought it seemed like a good idea, to see for myself, and to present myself and a little bit of what’s happening at the Hirshhorn.”

Chiu succeeds director Richard Kashalek, who resigned a year ago. His tenure included the controversial Seasonal Inflatable Structure project.

“I think the Hirshhorn is an exciting opportunity,” said Chiu, who made a stellar reputation as director and senior vice president for global arts and cultural programs at the Asia Society Museum in New York since 2004 before being named the Hirshhorn director. “It’s an ideal place to explore contemporary art, and global art and modern art in relation to technology.”

“The way art is made, the way it’s communicated, the kind of art that is made is changing rapidly, every day, it’s truly a global kind of thing, and that’s what I’ve done at the Asia Society Museum,” she said. “What happens in China is as important as what happens here, and that kind of environment—when people not only talk about art on their iPad, but make art on a tablet—is very is very conducive to practicing cultural diplomacy.”

She talked about mounting an exhibition around the time of the Olympics which were held in Beijing. “It was focused on the art of the Chinese Cultural Revolution,” she said. “Now, that for a long time was a subject that was simply not dealt with in China—we had talked with artists whose work was hidden away during that time. “ Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that officialdom in China had decreed that that period would not be mentioned, Chiu’s exhibition—“Art and China’s Revolution”, was hugely successful.

“I think art in China has always been between antiquity and modern art,” she said. “I think contemporary art—not just contemporary Chinese art—is about having direct relationships with contemporary artists.”

“My parents were Australian and Chinese, and I grew up in Australia,” she said. “So, I think I come by globalism naturally.”

She is known to be a great fundraiser, networker and innovator, which is probably a boon for the sometimes troubled Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She comes loaded with charm, a self-deprecating sense of humor, global experience, an appreciation of the opportunities that are inherent in a rapidly changing world. “It’s not just about sculpture and painting, it’s about the opportunities technology presents in ways of making new art, it’s about sharing those experiences. Today, you can learn about what’s going on in China or Pakistan, in a second, and I think a museum like the Hirshhorn can be a leader in recognizing those opportunities.” She recalled that she grew up in Australia when the Internet didn’t have a name. “Now, look where we are,” she said,

“Art historians are looking at contemporary art with a broader social, political and cultural trajectory and context,” she said. “The Hirshhorn has always had an impressive collection—I love the sculpture garden, and we need to build on what’s there, what the site and the building offer in terms of displaying art, the kind of art that fits here, we’re going to be building broader public programs like our After Hours events, we’re looking to the young audience of what they call millennials, we should have exhibitions that look to the future, and be leaders of conversations about innovation.

“Basically, we have a culture that is constantly being shared through our technological tools, and that makes for exciting possibilities, for challenging art,” she said, pointing to the upcoming exhibition “Days of Endless Time,” which includes 14 installations.

“Right now though, I’m looking for a house and schools,” Chiu, who has a four-year-old daughter, said. “My trustees tell me that I must move to Georgetown.” [gallery ids="101882,136808" nav="thumbs"]

Paulina Phelps • February 20, 2014

Mayor Vincent Gray announced Feb. 3 that the partnership of Georgetown-based Eastbanc and the Institute of Contemporary Expression has secured plans to redevelop the historic Franklin School. The space will be transformed into a venue that will be part exhibition and performance space.

The renovation of the 1869 building at 13th and K Streets, NW, will offer Washingtonians as well as visitors a center to showcase contemporary works and performances of artists from all over the world. The man behind this vision is the institute’s founder, Dani Levinas, who is a local art collector and joined with developer, Eastbanc, Inc.

The destination will also feature a ground-floor restaurant by celebrity chef Jose Andres as well as an arts bookstore. A flexible art space where easy transitions between installations can occur has been something many D.C. art organizations have been seeking. The space was backed by the Logan Circle advisory neighborhood commission last December, beating out three other bids, including a boutique hotel, office building, or technology campus (a work space for tech entrepreneurs).

According to the local ANC vice chair Walt Cain, the criteria the commission had for the proposal was that it engaged as many people as possible and allowed the community the greatest access to the Franklin School.

The transformation of taking a historic space and redeveloping it into a contemporary space requires a number of considerations that need to be made in regards to its construction. For instance, making sure the technology is least invasive as possible as well as making sure the building is up to load-bearing capabilities. The building has fallen from its once pristine condition and has been closed since 2008.

Before renovations begin on the building the city estimates that it will cost at least $30 million to stabilize the building. The bidding process for Eastbanc, Inc., and ICE’s vision began last April and will continue.

In addition to this new modern art museum, Eastbanc plans to partner with the National Park Service to revive the adjacent Franklin Park, also under renovation.

Ari Post • January 29, 2014

In the summer of 1858, a young James
McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) left Paris
and set off on a walking tour of the
Rhineland, in what would be one of the
most important experiences of his early career.
His goals were to visit Amsterdam—the home of
Rembrandt, an early and lasting influence—and
to make his mark on the artistic world. “Off the
Beaten Path: Early Works by James McNeill
Whistler,” on view through September 28 at
the Freer Gallery of Art, explores the artwork
that the young Whistler created on his journey
and its lasting importance to his subsequent
masterworks.

He never made it to the Netherlands that
summer. However, Whistler created numerous
drawings, etchings and watercolors of the country
life and towns he encountered along the
way. These charmingly casual depictions of
kitchens, innkeepers, doorways and shopkeepers
reflect Whistler’s enthusiasm for his craft as a
young artist. He filled his notebooks with quick,
impromptu sketches, some of which were later
turned into watercolors and etchings in a series
that Whistler referred to as his “French Set.”

A wonderfully infectious dimension to these
drawings is their ability to bridge the expanse of
time between now and the 150 years since their
making. These studies and observations of architecture,
atmosphere, people and places – feverish
sketches that explore the streets, alcoves and
dark cloistered rooms of Europe and the people
who occupy them – show a wide-eyed young
Whistler intoxicated by the romance of the Old
World.

There is at least one major distinction among
these collective
drawings that
separates them
from other artists
– their sheer virtuosity.
It is not
difficult to see
the magnitude of
the young artist’s
abilities, who
would later gain
unprecedented
i n t e r n a t i o n a l
renown. There
are small gestures
and compositions
among
these studies that
are remarkably
powerful.

In one drawing,
a man sits in
a dark room with
his back to the artist in front of a single window
raked with light, like a study for a lost Vemeer.
The exposed beams of the ceiling and the
provencal farmer’s table finish the rough scene
with a dreamy, bohemian dankness that predates
the maudlin allure of Parisian artist Toulouse
Lautrec.

These early works reveal traces of Whistler’s
later, signature style. Recurring motifs, such as
doorways and stylistic choices, including dense
cross-hatching, appear in etchings created nearly
30 years after his journey.

To allow visitors to follow these visual connections
as Whistler’s style matured, the exhibit
includes a selection of etchings from the Venice
(1879-1880) and Amsterdam (1889) sets, groups
of etchings that were published and exhibited
together.

The exhibition is also accompanied by an
online gallery of the exhibition’s objects, a map
showing Whistler’s journey and digital scans of
archival documents from his travels.
Sometimes, it takes a keen eye to recognize
a blossoming artist. With Whistler, however,
it is easy to see that he was destined for greatness.
The Freer Gallery of Art has perhaps the
most impressive collection of the artist’s mature
work, and this exhibition supplements the collection,
offering remarkable insight into the
history, influences, development and mastery of
Whistler’s craft and artistic vision.

For more information visit www.asia.si.edu [gallery ids="101615,146759" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post • November 7, 2013

Sir Alfred James Munnings (1878 – 1959) is regarded as among the true masters of equine art. His paintings of foxhunting, racing and equestrian society are benchmarks of the genre, exemplified by the artist’s unparalleled ability to capture otherwise ethereal moments of untamed grace. Animal, nature and man come together on his canvases in tenuous harmony, evincing both the grand theatricality and quiet naturalism of equestrian life.

Through Sept. 15, “Munnings: Out in the Open,” a retrospective of the artist’s work at the National Sporting Library and Museum in Middleburg, Va., finds new and rarely traveled terrain in the artist’s long and fruitful career. It exposes a man who kept himself well concealed behind a sweeping talent and gregarious character, the dedication and commitment that drove him to success, and the recurring solace he found in the transcendental expanses of the English countryside.

Though long since deceased, Munnings was drawn back into public attention in 1996 with the publication of “Summer in February,” by novelist Jonathan Smith. The book focuses on Munnings, introducing him to modern audiences at both ends of his life: as a successful, respected but conflicted man in the twilight of his career who harbors a dark personal secret, and as a brash, young Bohemian painter finding his voice and falling in love in an artist’s colony by an English fishing village.

This distressing secret, as many now know, was the suicide of his first wife Florence in 1914. Following her death, Munnings immediately abolished her from his personal history, excluding her even from his extensive three-volume autobiography.
All of this, of course, makes for a lyrically cinematic tale. And as it goes, “Summer in February” was adapted to a movie (with the excellent Dominic Cooper in the title role) that was released in the U.K. last June, and was screened in conjunction with this exhibit as part of a fundraiser at the NSLM last April before its release.

However, “Out in the Open” goes beyond the narrative limitations of a movie or a novel, offering audiences a three-dimensional portrait of the artist as told through the perspective of his paintings, which are more revealing and vulnerable than anything he or anyone ever wrote about him.

“We wanted to take advantage of the film and this recent popularity, but we also wanted to mount a real retrospective,” says Claudia Pfeiffer, head curator of the museum. “Munnings is such an important artist, especially for our museum—he was one of the few sporting artists who crossed over to a broader cultural and critical recognition.”

The time Munnings spent in the artist’s colony in the fishing village of Lamorna—where the book’s story is derived and where he and Florence spent so much time together—is where the exhibit begins, but it expands far deeper into the artist’s career, covering his work through the early 1950s. Still, that undeniable energy between his personal and professional life helped steer the development of the exhibit to focus on Munnings’ “passion paintings.”

“He made a healthy living off of equestrian commissions,” says Pfeiffer, “But we developed this exhibit around the paintings he pursued for his own passion, because that offers a better understanding of who he was as a man and an artist.”

Even the title of the show is a double entendre, referring both to the open-air painting style to which he was so devoted, and to the revealing of Munnings’ true character, which in many ways he concealed from his friends and patrons throughout his life.
Among the show’s highlights are two portraits of Florence on horseback and two portraits of his second wife Violet. These paintings alone show what a remarkable and dynamic range he had—both in color, tone and technique, as well as in the communication of mood and atmospheric texture to influence a scene. His creativity in fact feels forged by these relationships.
Florence is painted with an almost divine softness, first wistfully as she rides through the forest flecked with light through the eaves, and then in a harrowing portrait surrounded by grey skies and riding aside in black riding attire, which seems to foretell her sad fate just a few months later. This ephemeral portrayal, seemingly despite Munnings’ best painterly efforts, betrays the closeted fear he must have felt toward her afflicted spirit, as if at any moment she could—and ultimately did—disappear forever.

Then Violet. She holds the reigns of her horse firmly, standing in line with the creature with her foot turned out and her other hand on her waist, unquestionably in control of her time and place—a portrait of a 20th century woman. Indeed, Violet managed Munnings’ practical affairs, from money to property, sheltering the artist from mundane aspects of his life that always affected him negatively. Even in his clear affection towards her, in a garden portrait where she darns a pair of stockings, Munnings conveys a sense in her expression that she was a woman of great consequence and determination.

Out in the Open gives the audience a crisp and beautifully rendered biography of one of the last great painters of the classical European tradition. It not only broadens Munnings’ growing place in art and popular history, but amplifies it, validating the narrative of his life while clearing the fog of rumor and lore, and proving that nothing gets into the essence of an artist’s character like the artwork itself. Here, Munnings is brought magnificently to life on his own terms, using the very work that defined him. [gallery ids="118833,118838" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • October 21, 2013

In many ways, even though there is still no such thing as an actual, physical place called the National Women’s History Museum, it’s been something of a banner year for NWHM supporters, who number in the hundreds of thousands.

You could see it in the spring when legislation to create a federal commission to determine the feasibility of constructing a National Women’s History Museum was introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, introducing a companion bill in the Senate. The hope is through successful lobbying for the legislation and private funding that a museum will rise and come to fruition hopefully within five to seven years, and that women would be the principal designers and architects.

You could see it in May, when Joan Bradley Wages, president and CEO of the National Women’s History Museum, and Steven Knapp, president of the George Washington University, signed a memorandum of agreement to collaborate on public programs that will engage the local community on topics of historical relevance to women, called “Initiating Change/Adapting to Change.” The first program took place Oct. 2 with a lecture focusing on the hot topic issue of women in the military, a forum on “A New Order: Change for Women in the U.S. Military,” with Leisa Meyer of the College of William and Mary and retired USAF Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught, president of the board of directors of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, Inc., moderated by journalist and columnist Eleanor Clift.

An even more vivid manifestation of the identity and effectiveness of the NWHM will take place Wednesday, Oct. 9, with the Third Annual NWH’s presentation of its 2013 Living Legacy Awards, the de Pizan Honors ceremony at the Mead Center for American Theatre at Arena Stage. The event and gala, chaired by former Senator and past president of the Red Cross Elizabeth Hanford Dole, a former de Pizan recipient, and former Virginia First Lady Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson.

The honors are named after Christine de Pizan, a 15th-century Western woman and author of “The Book of the City of Ladies,” written in 1405, which was written to combat existing ideas about women’s nature, making her the first woman to chronicle women’s history at a time when women appeared to have no documented place in history. The honors were created in 2011 to recognize women of historic achievement.

This year’s award recipients are Washington native and renowned mezzo soprano Denyce Graves, breast cancer pioneer radiologist Etta D. Pisano, environmental preservationist Sally Jewell, and Tony Award-winning actress and television legend Phylicia Rashad.

To get a full sense of the spirit of and the hope for the National Women’s History Museum, you might want to check out Wages, who has since the beginning of the creation of the museum as an organizational institution in 1996 has been its most tireless and public face. Wages, as head of the NWHM, is its most vocal and visible supporter. Smart and charming, she brought her lobbying experience in Washington with her Alabama background, an admitted stubbornness, to the mission of helping to create a museum that highlighted the achievements and the cause of women, many of them forgotten .

“Officially, the NWHM has existed since 1996,” said Wages, a former lobbyist and public relations executive. “But before that, a group of women, headed by our founder Karen Staser, were brought together, sitting and talking together where we lived and we had all noticed the absence of not just a women’s museum, but statues, dedicated spaces, things like that, which celebrated the achievements of women. I know we have women’s history month, gender studies and the like, where you certainly find out just how forgotten women are in the annals of historical achievement.”

One of the first things—at the beginning—was getting the statue of women’s suffragettes moved from a crypt into the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. That was in 1997, and it was the first success of the NWHM, of which Wages is a founding board member. “That statue—it’s pretty powerful—wasn’t being seen by anyone,” Wages said. “We worked with other women’s group. Now, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony can be seen my millions every year.” Then, House Speaker Newt Gingrich took time out from the big budget negotiations that year to attend the congressional ceremony honoring the women.”

“I probably didn’t know what I was getting into, or the difficulties involved in this, but I do have a certain stubbornness,” Wages said. “We, all of us are committed to this, to have a women’s museum on the Mall.”

Past recipients of the de Pizan honors include poet Maya Angelou, photographer Annie Leibovitz, Yahoo president Marissa Mayer, broadcaster Cathy Hughes, medical pioneer Helen Greiner and actress Meryl Streep.

Legendary documentary producer Ken Burns will receive the Henry Blackwell award. “Dr. Pisano, Denyce Graves, Phylicia Rashad, Sally Jewell and Ken Burns, each represent the type of world-changing accomplishments that carry on de Pizan’s groundbreaking work of documenting and highlighting women’s achievements,” Wages said.

What would a National Women’s History Museum look like? It’s hard to say, but a part of what the institution and organization does is “to research, collects and exhibit the contribution of women to the social, cultural, economic and political life of our nation in a context of world history,” per its mission statement.

The results of that mission—while not yet in a physical building—makes itself felt on the NWHM’s website in an archive of exhibitions that reveal a range of diversity and subject matters to enrich all. Some of the subjects have included the role and progress of African-American women, women publishers, printers and journalists, a century’s history of women entrepreneurship, women reform leaders, women in industry, women who ran for president, women in World War II, an exhibition entitled “Daring Dames,” women in early film, spies in American history, women in motherhood, early Jewish American women and more. These are the kinds of exhibition that could easily fill a museum, just for starters. And Wages, no question, will be there when that happens.
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