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It was announced yesterday that the Renwick Gallery will reopen after an extensive $30 million renovation on November 13, 2015. This is a lovely little art museum, part of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum, housing the craft and decorative arts collection. I didn't realize that the Renwick was the first American building specifically designed and built to showcase art - originally to display the art collection of William Corcoran. Despite its proximity to the White House, the Renwick is rarely crowded. The reopening exhibition will be Wonder, featuring nine contemporary artists who are creating site specific installations.
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Of course DC has lots of interesting and beautiful gardens, but many people don't think of visiting the Smithsonian as part of their garden tours. The gardens and landscaping there are wonderful; there's always something new blooming in them (in season, of course). Here's a primer, starting with the National Museum of Natural History and moving counter-clockwise around the Mall. The long, narrow space between the east side of NMNH and 9th St holds the Butterfly Habitat Garden, planted mostly with native forbs, grasses, shrubs, and trees (plus a few exotics) to demonstrate how homeowners can attract butterflies to their home gardens. On the south side, west of the Madison Drive entrance, and continuing around the west side and partway along the north side, is the Urban Bird habitat, also a mix of native and exotic plantings. Across 12th St. at National Museum of American History is the Victory Garden, planted with vegetable varieties that were available to Americans planing their victory gardens during WWII. The walled beds that encircle the museum are home to the Heirloom Garden, planted almost exclusively with heirloom cultivars of ornamentals. On the south side are some lovely crabapples (done blooming already, alas) and wisteria along the walls. Across the mall at the Freer (now closed for renovations [Jan 4, 2016 - Sometime in 2017]) is a small decorative garden in front and a delightful courtyard planted with Japanese maples. I'm not sure what will be there when the museum reopens in 2017. Next to this is the big one: the Enid A. Haupt Garden, bounded by the Freer, the Castle on the Mall side, the Arts and Industries Building to the east, and on the south by the Renwick Gates at Independence Ave. The centerpiece of the Haupt Garden is the formal parterre (currently planted with blue pansies and purple tulips), lined on either side with magnificent saucer magnolias. The area to the west, bounded by the entrance kiosks to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the S. Dillon Ripley Center, holds the Moongate Garden, with lovely pink granite hardscaping and a reflecting pool. It's a tranquil space, with only a few well-chosen woody plants and a few grasses. It's a good example of how a garden doesn't have to be entirely about plants. The area to the east of the parterre is called the Fountain Garden, and features more hardscaping and container plantings than in-ground plantings. Proceeding east from the Haupt on the north side, you'll find the Kathrine Dulin Folger Rose Garden, which is about to be renovated. Continuing east then heading south on the other side of Arts and Industries is the polar opposite of the Moongate Garden: the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden is full of antique benches, a fountain, lamposts, and a crazy variety of flowering and non-flowering plants. Really crazy: there must be several hundred different cultivars in there. East of the Ripley Garden is the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which is much more about the sculptures than the plants, but still a lovely, relaxing space. The actual sculpture garden is across Jefferson Drive from the Hirshhorn building. To the east of that is the Rodney Dangerfield of Smithsonian Gardens: the National Air and Space Museum. Next time you're there, take a walk all 'round the building, on both the sidewalk level and across the expansive terraces. The landscaping is gorgeous. As far as I know it doesn't have a theme like some of the others, but the combination of woody ornamentals with perennial and ever-changing annual forbs is magnificent, especially on the east side. Then there's the National Museum of the American Indian. Currently the north side is closed for construction, but along the south you'll find beds filled with plants that had specific uses for native American peoples. There's a small pond on the south east side, and a much larger pond on the east side. The area around the pond is planted mostly with native trees, shrubs, and forbs, suggesting an eastern US woodland. Also part of Smithsonian Gardens is a magnificent flower arrangement in the entry to the Sackler Museum, created and changed almost weekly by the incredibly talented Cheyenne Kim. And in NMAH there are cases with displays from the Smithsonian orchid collection. Off the Mall is the Kogod Courtyard (inside the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum). The plantings in the beds change seasonally. Over the holidays they held poinsettias and phalaenopsis orchids, which gave way in spring to hydrangeas and now have azaleas. Now is a great time of year to visit. And on May 6 SG is holding Garden Fest. Say hi if you stop by.
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The National Portrait Gallery has commissioned Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald to paint the museum's official portraits of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama. The two portraits will be unveiled at the museum in early 2018 and will be added to the Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection. Kehinde Wiley received wide acclaim for his touring exhibit "Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic," which appeared at the Brooklyn Museum, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Seattle Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Toledo Museum of Art, and Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Amy Sherald is from Baltimore and is probably best known to DC folks for her First Place painting at The Outwin 2016.
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Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018 November 9, 2018 - May 5, 2019 "Disrupting Craft presents the work of Tanya Aguiñiga, Sharif Bey, Dustin Farnsworth, and Stephanie Syjuco, four artists who challenge the conventional definitions of craft by imbuing it with a renewed sense of emotional purpose, inclusiveness, and activism. The four artists work in an expansive variety of media including ceramics, wood, and fibers. They all share a dedication to social justice and to interrogating cultural identities and established historical narratives. By exploiting the conceptual toolkits of craft, they develop responses to the contemporary political landscape while also analyzing and challenging their own cultural histories."
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Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes On view November 8, 2018 through January 27, 2019 "The largest US museum survey of this pioneering artist to date, Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes features more than thirty large-scale paintings that reveal the artist’s considerable influence in the field of contemporary art. One of the most inventive artists working today, von Heyl has earned international acclaim for continually rethinking the possibilities of contemporary painting. Her cerebral yet deeply visceral artworks upend longstanding assumptions about composition, beauty, and narrative. Drawing inspiration from a vast and surprising array of sources—including literature, pop culture, metaphysics, and personal history—von Heyl creates paintings that are seemingly familiar yet impossible to classify, offering, in her words, “a new image that stands for itself as fact.” In studios in New York and Marfa, Texas, von Heyl combines a rigorous, process-based practice that demands each painting develop through the act of painting, itself. The spellbinding results invite you to explore a unique visual language, exuberant and insistent. Organized in collaboration with the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, this major multinational exhibition highlights the artist’s groundbreaking artistic output since 2005, including recent works that point to new developments in her constantly evolving practice. Together, Snake Eyes shines an international spotlight on one of today’s most dynamic painters and demonstrates the vitality and limitless possibilities of painting."
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To kick-off the countdown of the upcoming grand opening of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) the museum will be projecting images from its collection on the building facade. Three nights only, Nov. 16, 17, 18 from 5:30pm to 9pm.
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For all you Burners out there: No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man "Each year in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, a city of more than 75,000 people rises out of the dust for a single week. During that time, enormous experimental art installations are erected and many are ritually burned to the ground. The thriving temporary metropolis known as Burning Man is a hotbed of artistic ingenuity, driving innovation through its principles of radical self-expression, decommodification, communal participation, and reverence for the handmade. Both a cultural movement and an annual event, Burning Man remains one of the most influential phenomenons in contemporary American art and culture. No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man brings the large-scale, participatory work from this desert gathering to the nation’s capital for the first time. The exhibition takes over the entire Renwick Gallery building and surrounding neighborhood, bringing alive the maker culture and creative spirit of this cultural movement."
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I have been wanting to see the Obama portraits for some time now, so I decided last week to head to the National Portrait Gallery. Despite the crowds gathered on the steps for a pre-Capitals hockey playoff game concert, the inside of the gallery was quite empty, and I didn't have to stand in long lines to see either of these two magnificent paintings. After viewing these portraits, I stumbled upon an extremely powerful exhibit, "UnSeen, Our Past in a New Light," featuring works by contemporary artists Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar. The installation addresses the under- and misrepresentation of certain minorities in American history and in art, and illuminates the unheralded contributions made by American minorities. The display, which runs through Jan. 6, 2019, is visually stunning and emotionally charged. I highly recommend seeing this moving exhibit. If you go, don't miss "Black Out, Silhouettes Then and Now," on display until March 10, 2019.
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"Americans" is a new long term exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened on Jan 18, 2018, and will run until 2022. "American Indian images, names, and stories infuse American history and contemporary life. The images are everywhere, from the Land O’Lakes butter maiden to the Cleveland Indians’ mascot, and from classic Westerns and cartoons to episodes of Seinfeld and South Park. American Indian names are everywhere too, from state, city, and street names to the Tomahawk missile. And the familiar historical events of Pocahontas’s life, the Trail of Tears, and the Battle of Little Bighorn remain popular reference points in everyday conversations. Americans highlights the ways in which American Indians have been part of the nation’s identity since before the country began. It will surround visitors with images, delve into the three stories, and invite them to begin a conversation about why this phenomenon exists. Pervasive, powerful, at times demeaning, the images, names, and stories reveal the deep connection between Americans and American Indians as well as how Indians have been embedded in unexpected ways in the history, pop culture, and identity of the United States." Washington Post review: The American Indian museum comes of age by tackling this country’s lies
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The National Museum of the American Indian is one of four stunning pieces of modern architecture within walking distance of each other on The Mall (the others being the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Air and Space Museum, the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum). This new exhibit will be running for four years! --- "Americans" (Tweaked) -
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist (born 1928) known for her interest in psychedelic color, repetition, and patterns, especially the polka-dot. Her best known works are mirrored rooms which explore infinite space, the rooms are typically cube shaped, clad with mirrors, water on the floor and flickering lights, and repeated objects (notably a polka-dot encrusted pumpkin). In 1977, Kusama checked herself into the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill where she eventually took up permanent residence and still lives and works today. In 2017, the Hirshhorn will be holding a major retrospective of her work, including 6 mirrored rooms (although their website doesn't currently have much info posted). More info from The City Paper. Kusama has a huge following and this will be a major, lines-around-the-block exhibition, which will garner international press coverage. Photo from the Kusama show at the Victoria Miro Gallery, London.
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Getting to this a little late, but if you are looking for FREE cultural events in DC this weekend, this week long immersive Māori program at Natural History looks pretty cool. Daily performances of the Kapa Haka at 1:00pm and 3:30pm. Other programing includes the carving of a 20 foot waka canoe and Tā moko – the art of Māori tattoo, along with 70 traditional Māori art pieces. A friend of mine took her kids and they loved it.
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Every year for at least twenty years now Smithsonian Gardens and the US Botanic Garden have teamed up to do an exhibition of orchids from their spectacular collections. The 2017 exhibition will be held at the Hirshhorn Gallery. It opens January 14 and runs through May 14. My understanding is that this is going to be more art show than science exhibit; I know that SG staff are really excited about it. The displays will be changing frequently: as plants finish blooming, they'll be replaced with new ones. Be aware that crowds are expected for the Yayoi Kusama exhibit starting in late February. I'm told that the lines for that shouldn't interfere with viewing Orchids: A Moment, but don't be surprised. Better yet, get your free timed entry tickets for the Kusama show so you can enjoy both.- 7 replies
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I have been remiss in not posting about this lovely exhibit at the Freer Sackler. The Art of the Qur'an is a quiet exhibit, and although I've seen a handful of advertisements, it deserves wider publicity. The exhibit features over 50 Qur'ans dating from the early eighth to the seventeenth century and tells the story of "how the Qur’an was transformed from an orally transmitted message into a fixed text, transcribed and illuminated by some of the most skilled artists of the Islamic world" This is a show where reading the wall text is important as they guide you through the various changes that have occurred to Qur'ans over the ages, such as the introduction of medallions and arabesques, to indicate emphasis of text. At the end of the show the Qur'an has been transformed into works of art, used by rulers as political currency. This is a show to set aside some time and slowly immerse yourself in the history of the Qur'an and the history of Islam. NY Times review
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I was going to post this as a reply to "Orchids: A Moment," but decided instead to make it a separate topic, as the Hirshhorn's "Gallery Talks" are important events, with regularly changing material. These are often referred to as "Friday Talks," as they're often (perhaps even usually) on Friday afternoons, but not always. One of these in particular which relates to the orchids exhibit is on Jan 27, 2017: "Orchid 101." I know a few people who are orchid enthusiasts, and you won't meet a hobby or a passion, anywhere with more devoted followers. To many, orchids are no different than dandelions; to orchid lovers, they are as important as fine wines, and the level of detail in which they show an interest is no different than memorizing the locations, boundaries, slopes, and micro-climates of Burgundian vineyards.
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I went to see the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Exhibition today, and stumbled upon a must for any sports fans at the National Portrait Gallery: "One Life: Babe Ruth" - a one-room exhibit featuring Babe Ruth from his days as a pitcher in the teens, up to his Farewell Address on Apr 27, 1947 at Yankee Stadium. Unless you're a Bambino fanatic, there will be things in this room that you've never before seen, including a 1930 cardboard box which was the package for a pair of Babe Ruth-brand underwear. I've seen many, many pictures of Ruth on the internet, but there's something about seeing them in person, some blown up to very large size, that makes the entire experience different. One takeaway for me was just how slender Ruth was during his Red Sox days - he always had a huge head, but it's almost as if Ruth was the first-ever bobble-head doll, for real. These don't have anything to do with the exhibition, but here are some other interesting webpages featuring photos of the Sultan of Swat: Jun 29, 2012 - "An American Icon: Extremely Rare Colour Photos of Babe Ruth Show the Bronx Bomber in a New Light" on dailymail.co.uk Jan 6, 2014 - "Babe Ruth: Color Photos of an Ailing Legend" by Ben Cosgrove on time.com Jul 11, 2014 - "Rare Photos of Babe Ruth" on si.com The exhibit is on the east (7th Street) side of the museum, on the first floor - unless you're a diehard fan, "One Life: Babe Ruth" isn't worth a special trip, but it's required viewing if you're already at the gallery.
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For those of you wanting to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - in particular, to see the Hope Diamond - there is some important information at this webpage: Dec 17, 2015 - "Hope Diamond Will Be Temporarily Off Display During Renovation" on newsdesk.si.edu Between now and June 30, 2016, the gallery (the newly renovated Harry Winston Gallery) is only open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays while renovations are being completed. Beginning July 1, 2016, it will be open on a permanent basis. While the Hope Diamond is beautiful, worth seeing, and one of the most famous diamonds in the world, I've never taken a visitor to the "gems and minerals" section of the museum when they haven't liked *something* - be it a ruby, or a piece of quartz, or meteorite - that they didn't like more than the Hope Diamond. The response is always something like, "Yeah, the Hope Diamond was great, but the <X> was *absolutely incredible*!" and <X> can be any of a dozen different things *just in that one section of the museum*. My hope is that the refurbished Harry Winston Gallery will play up the intrigue behind the diamond instead of the diamond itself, because the actual gem is (in my opinion) surpassed by numerous specimens in that area. Anyway, it's worth going out of your way to see.
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Opening this week, "She Who Tells a Story - Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World" is a timely exhibition featuring "more than 80 photographs challenging stereotypes surrounding the people, landscapes, and cultures of Iran and the Arab world." Artists include Shirin Neshat (who just had a large solo exhibit at the Hirshhorn), Lalla Essaydi (and her triptych Bullets Revisited #3), and featuring works from Boushra Almutawakel's The Hijab Series. The Washington Post calls it a "landmark exhibit": "Female Photographers Tell Important Stories in Landmark Exhibition" by Roger Catlin on washingtonpost.com
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This post reminded me, when visiting the Sackler be sure to look at the floral displays by Cheyenne Kim (SI horticulturalist) in the entrance kiosk. The displays are funded by a grant and change every week or two. They are always spectacular works of art. Kim was also doing the ones at the Freer, which is now closed for renovations. Many visitors to the Smithsonian don't really notice or think about the gardens, but they are an integral part of the experience. Smithsonian Gardens is a "unit" of the Smithsonian Institution, and the people there create and maintain displays inside the museums as well as outside. There are plantings all around the American History museum, a butterfly garden, a bird garden, the Victory Garden, the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden, the Enid A. Haupt Garden (and within that the fountain garden and the moongate garden), the rose garden (eek I've forgotten for whom it's named), extensive landscaping around Air and Space, and native plants at American Indian. Oh, and the Kogod Courtyard as well. Sometimes there is art displayed in the gardens, as in the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden, or the new urn created by D.B. Renfroe in the Haupt Garden. The Ripley Garden features urns, benches, lampposts, and a fountain. And of course the gardens themselves are works of art. Even in the winter there are interesting things to see in the gardens. Check out the medallions on the iron fences on the north side of Haupt, or the birch bark decorations on the Renwick Gates.
