“Dear PoP,
The other day I was walking w/ my kids & some friends in the Melvin Hazen tributary of Rock Creek Park (at Tilden & Reno). My 5 yr old spotted this bug and we all came over to check it out. We’d never seen a bug so big and blue in the park! Then, as we got closer to take pics, we realized it wasn’t real! Somebody made a gorgeous wire bug and glued it to the rock. It made my day! Awesome idea for urban art. :) “
Every now and then I pass some drawings on newspaper boxes that stop me dead in my tracks. This is one of them.
The old Obama poster above Logan Hardware on P St, NW is looking absolutely psychedelic.
Stendhal No. 1, Corcoran Gallery, 2011, by Kerry Skarbakka on view this weekend at Irvine Contemporary. Image courtesy Irvine Contemporary. Copyright Kerry Skarbakka.
An Evening With Mary Lynn Kotz
Local art history author Mary Lynn Kotz will speak at the JCC art gallery this Thursday in conjunction with the gallery’s ongoing exhibition Blueprints. The show focuses on the Cyanotypes (cyan-colored photographic prints) of José Betancourt and Susan Weil, the latter of whom studied and collaborated with Robert Rauschenberg in the 1950s. Kotz, who has written extensively on Rauschenberg, will discuss the two artists’ relationship.
Where: The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the DC JCC (Metro: Dupont Circle)
When: July 21 at 7 p.m. Reception to follow lecture.
How Much: $5 for the public; free for members and students. Tickets can be purchased online.
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Fun street art or graffiti?
The Science + Fiction gallery at “Possible Worlds.” Photo by Beth Shook.
Mexican art has a complicated history with Surrealism. For decades, diverse bodies of work were pigeonholed with labels like “fantastic” and pointed to as evidence for some inherent “magical” or “marvelous” quality of the region. Thankfully, Possible Worlds: Photography and Fiction in Mexican Contemporary Art, the new exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas, subverts such expectations by focusing on the universality of myth and imagined worlds.
The exhibition, which runs through August, is about challenging the limits of photography, and how a documentary medium can portray imagination much in the same way painting and sculpture do. Works by nine artists are organized thematically, with each of the museum’s five galleries assigned a theme: Fables + Myths, Science + Fiction, Erasure, Apocalypse and Ordinary Worlds. The structure allows the viewer to draw contrasts between individual artists while still recognizing their broader shared interests. Unfortunately, the classifications occasionally oversimplify the artists’ narratives and obscure some of the questions they raise. Katya Brailovsky’s grainy, high-contrast color prints of isolated characters may deal with the existential drama that the Science + Fiction wall text alludes to, but the link with the theme as a whole seems tenuous.
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Detail from Daniela Edburg, La tormenta, 2010, Digital print. On view this week at the Art Museum of the Americas. Image courtesy the AMA.
E8: Sculpture
Transformer’s eighth annual “Exercises for Emerging Artists” culminates in three week-long exhibitions of site-specific work by the emerging sculptors Oreen Cohen, Lindsay Rowinski and Sean Lundgren. First up is Cohen — you may recall the “sketchbook” incorporating a dead bird from her last Transformer appearance. Here her sculptures explore the link between terrain, war and collective memory by way of two contested sites: Israel and Bull Run in Virginia. Cohen’s work will be on view until July 16.
Where: Transformer (Metro: Dupont Circle or U Street-Cardozo)
When: E8 on view from July 7 to Aug. 13. Opening reception for Oreen Cohen: Running Drill on July 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.
How Much: Free
Possible Worlds: Photography and Fiction in Mexican Contemporary Art
The Mexican Cultural Institute, a cultural arm of the Embassy of Mexico, has been quite active this year in promoting the visual arts of Mexico around the city. Their latest project, which opens tomorrow evening, is a collaboration with the Art Museum of the Americas. Curated by art historian Marisol Argüelles, Possible Worlds brings together the work of nine Mexican photographers who depart from the documentary approach to explore dream worlds, myths, utopias and dystopias. The museum has begun posting short bios of the artists on their new blog.
Where: Art Museum of the Americas (Metro: Farragut West)
When: July 7 to Aug. 28. Gallery talk with curator on July 7 at 5:30 p.m. with the opening reception to follow. RSVP required.
How Much: Free
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I’m a huge fan of almost all of the official fire box art conversions I’ve seen around town. But there is something about this unofficial one that I found to be particularly beautiful. I think it’s partly because of the cool way it seems to have aged. It’s from Logan Circle.
Photo by PoPville flickr user sciascia
This week, I take a break from museum and gallery highlights to round up some recent D.C. art headlines. For this week’s exhibition openings and closings, scroll to the bottom.
> The latest addition to the Senator William A. Clark family collection at the Corcoran Gallery of Art will be an oil painting by Claude Monet that has not been displayed in public since 1925. The work, referred to as Nympheas 1907, was bequeathed by Clark’s daughter Huguette M. Clark, who passed away last month at the age of 104. The painting is part of Monet’s famed “Water Lilies” series and is estimated to be worth at least $25 million. Corcoran chairman Harry Hopper called the work “spectacular” and promised to find it a “happy home” in the museum. It’s not clear if and when Nympheas will be on view. The New York Times obituary refers to the enigmatic heiress as “the last link to New York’s Gilded Age” and is definitely worth a read.
> For the past couple of months, “Missing Person” flyers for the detained Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei have become ubiquitous in some areas of the city, notably in Columbia Heights and near the Chinese Embassy in Glover Park. Now that Weiwei has been released on bail, we can be somewhat confident that his next appearance in Washington will be a happier occasion. A year from now, the Hirshhorn Museum plans to host a large retrospective titled Ai Weiwei: According to What?, which will be on tour from the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. The exhibition will include around 25 works in different mediums executed by the artist over the past decade.
> As of yesterday, the National Building Museum has begun charging an admissions fee. Citing the negative impact of the recession on arts institutions, particularly non-profit museums, the NBD director Chase W. Rynd justified the decision as a last resort in a changing landscape. He wrote in a press release, “Those who wait too long to realize this truth or dismiss it entirely are likely to become casualties of the era.” Entrance will now cost $8 for adults and $5 for children, students and seniors. It will continue to be free for members and — during the summer — for active-duty military personnel and their families.
> The current director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art will be leaving Washington to take over as director of the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design. According to the Associated Press, John W. Smith, who has served as AAA director for five years, led a project that involved digitizing 1.5 million objects from the Archives collection. The move to RISD will take place this September.
> Speaking of departures, this news has been out for nearly a month, but it’s still worth mentioning. After five years in their space on 14th Street NW (just south of P), Irvine Contemporary is moving out at the end of the summer to an as yet unspecified new location due to “unmanageable increases in rent.” The gallery has been a dynamic force in the Logan Circle contemporary art scene, offering new exhibitions almost monthly, and it’s a shame to see them go. According to owner and director Martin Irvine, although a new space hasn’t yet been announced, future shows are being planned for temporary spaces around the U Street area. Irvine now has on view the first of two Artist Tribute Exhibitions, which also celebrate the gallery’s 10th anniversary. The shows will close on Aug. 27.
Opening: Mexico Through the Lens of National Geographic at the Mexican Cultural Institute; Mads Gamdrup: Renunciation at the Corcoran Gallery of Art; Art Deck-O: DC Playing Card Originals at Touchstone Gallery. Closing: Drawing at Marsha Mateyka Gallery.
I found this wild “knit graffiti” outside the Renwick by the White House. My question is – did they bring the tricycle themselves or was the tricycle already there?
