The Latest

2019 Washington Winter Show Showcases Elegant Entertaining

From the first dinners at Mount Vernon to today’s casual cocktail parties, entertaining is woven throughout American lives. Creating beautiful spaces and experiences for our loved ones is the joy and fun of being a host. While the main elements of entertaining have remained the same for hundreds of years - styles, methods, and approaches have evolved and fashions have changed.

The 2019 Washington Winter Show will explore the ways we entertain, what has guided us in the past, and what inspires us today. Taking place Thursday, January 10 through Sunday, January 13 at American University’s Katzen Arts Center,  with the Preview Night Party on Thursday, January 10.

The Show highlights over 40 dealers from across the US and Europe. Events include the Luncheon, lectures, cocktail parties, and more!

Purchase tickets here.

LECTURE AND LUNCHEON- Friday, January 11, 2019 10:30 am The Friday Lecture and Luncheon will feature celebrated event designer and producer, Bronson van Wyck. He is celebrated for a style of entertaining that combines wit and sophistication with the gracious warmth of his Southern upbringing. 

Bronson is the author of “Born to Party, Forced to Work: 21st Century Entertaining” which will release in Fall 2019 from Phaidon. 

DESIGNER PANEL-Saturday, January 12, 2019 11:00 am Whitney Robinson, editor-in-chief of ELLE DECOR magazine, will moderate the Saturday Designer Panel. Panelists include Leanne Ford, star of HGTV’s “Restored by the Fords,” and celebrated interior designer’s Sarah Bartholomew and Eddie Ross. 

SATURDAY LECTURE-Saturday, January 12, 2019 4:30 pm William Allman, former White House curator, will present "'The President Requests the Pleasure': Entertaining at the White House.”

LOAN EXHIBIT The 2019 Loan Exhibit, “The Pleasure of Your Company: Elegant Entertaining with George and Martha Washington,” is presented by George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

CHARITIES The beneficiaries of the 2019 Show will be The Founders Board of St. John’s Community Services, the Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys, and THEARC.

DIRECTOR & CHAIRS Show Chairs: Marilouise Sibley Avery and Johanna Bayly Howe Honorary Chair: Her Excellency Maguy Maccario Doyle, Ambassador of Monaco to the United States and Canada Show Executive Director: Jonathan G. Willen

Click here to share your thoughts.

'Juggling the Middle Ages' Now at Dumbarton Oaks Museum

Through February 28, 2019, visit Dumbarton Oaks Museum and see how a humble juggler-turned-monk struggles to think of a gift worthy of the Virgin Mary, before delivering a heartfelt juggling performance in front of her statue. 

If this story seems familiar, that’s because over the centuries it has inspired films, books, even an opera, and has parallels in an iconic Christmas carol. Through all these adaptations, however, the heart of the tale is never lost. At its core, the endlessly relatable story, called Le Jongleur de Notre Dame or Our Lady’s Tumbler, affirms the importance of art.

Featuring more than 100 objects, Juggling the Middle Ages explores the influence of the medieval world by focusing on this single story with a long-lasting impact. The exhibit follows the tale from its rediscovery by scholars in the 1870s to its modern interpretations in children’s books, offering viewers a look at a vast range of objects, including stained glass windows, illuminated manuscripts, household objects, and vintage theater posters.

Why have the Middle Ages exerted such a great influence on modern European and American identities, as expressed in architecture, art, music, and other media? This exhibition allows viewers to consider the role of the Middle Ages in the fashioning of modernity—from films rooted in Arthurian legend, to Gothic Revival architecture—through the lens of one powerful tale.

For more information, click here.

Dumbarton Oaks Museum is located at 1703 32nd Street in Georgetown.

Click here to share your thoughts.

'Nordic Impressions' at The Phillips Collection

Opening October 12, 2018 at The Phillips Collection is art from Åland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, 1821–2018.  Nordic Impressions will be on view through January 13, 2019.

The exhibition celebrates the incredible artistic diversity of Nordic art, from idealized paintings of the distinctive Nordic light and untouched landscape to melancholic portraits in quiet interiors and mesmerizing video works that explore the human condition. While the question of what constitutes a distinctively Nordic art has been a constant debate, the art in the exhibition retains a certain mystique and focus on themes that have held a special place in Nordic culture for centuries: light and darkness, inner life and exterior space, the coalescence of nature and folklore, and women’s rights and social liberalism. 

Nordic Impressions demonstrates how Nordic artists have inspired each other across national boundaries while honoring deeply rooted cultural traditions.

The Phillips Collection is located at 1600 21st Street NW.

Click here to share your thoughts.

'Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project' at NGA

Starting September 12, 2018, on view at the National Gallery of Art is the recent acquisition of four large-scale photographs and one video from Dawoud Bey's most important series, "The Birmingham Project."

For more than 40 years photographer Dawoud Bey (b. 1953) has portrayed American youth and those from marginalized communities with an unusual degree of sensitivity and complexity. This deeply felt and conceptually rich monument to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963 coincides with the 55th anniversary of this tragedy. The exhibition focuses on Bey's representation of the past through the lens of the present, pushing the boundaries of portraiture and engaging ongoing national issues of racism, violence against African Americans, and terrorism in churches.

In four diptychs Bey pairs two life-size portraits representing the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and related violence in Birmingham that Sunday in 1963: one portrait of a young person the same age as one of the victims, and another of an adult 50 years older—the child's age had he or she survived. Alongside these photographs, the exhibition features Bey's video 9.15.63. This split-screen projection juxtaposes, on the right, a recreation of the drive to the 16th Street Baptist Church, shot from the window of a moving vehicle looking up at trees and the roofs of houses from the vantage point of a young child. On the left, slow pans move through everyday spaces—some familiar (a beauty parlor and barbershop), some politically charged (a lunch counter and schoolroom), as they might have appeared that Sunday morning. Devoid of people, these views poeticize the innocent, mundane existences ripped apart by violence.

A short film of approximately eight minutes is screened in the project room in the West Building and also will be available on the exhibition's webpage. Featuring an interview with Bey, the film will provide valuable context for understanding the series in light of Bey's broader interests in portraiture and American history. It explores how the artist became interested in the topic, how he arrived at the final formulation of his series in diptych portraits and a video, and what he learned on his repeated trips to Birmingham over seven years of research. Finally, the film addresses the links between Bey's work in Birmingham and his current long-term project on the Underground Railroad.

Click here to share your thoughts.