The Latest
Karen Silve at Susan Calloway Fine Arts Gallery
Abstract artist's Karen Silve's recent travels to Beijing inspired her latest exhibition at Susan Calloway Fine Arts Gallery through June 3, 2017.
Beijing Trees: Strength, Wisdom and Renewal pays homage to ancient traditions of the Chinese, and the wisdom of centuries as evidenced by the way they nurtured their trees. Each branch was thoughtfully pruned every year, keeping them healthy. The trunk, or strength of the tree, had everything to do with its foundation. The top of the trees had new life every year. Depending on the structure due to the consistent pruning, the more blossoms there would be. All of this resonated with Silve. A state of renewal built on strength and wisdom became the direction of her new body of work.
Susan Calloway Fine Arts Gallery is located at 1643 Wisconsin Avenue in Georgeotwn.
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CAG Summer Concerts in the Park Starts May 21
The Citizens Association of Georgetown is once again hosting its annual Summer Concerts in the Parks Series.
Concerts in the Parks is Georgetown’s favorite summer Concerts series, free and open to the public in beautiful Volta and Rose Parks. These family-friendly events take place on Sunday evenings throughout the summer and feature great music, fun family activities and edible treats – even food trucks!
The dates for the 2017 Concert Series are:
Sunday, May 21st in Volta Park - 5:30 to 7:00 pm
Sunday, June 18th (Father's Day) in Volta Park - 5:30 to 7:00 pm
Sunday, July 9th in Rose Park - 5:30 to 7:00 pm
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Eighteenth-Century French Painting at NGA
(Photo by: nga.gov)
Joseph Ducreux, Le Discret, c. 1791, oil on aluminum, transferred from canvas, Spencer Museum of Art
The National Gallery of Art (NGA) is hosting an exhibition highlighting smaller museum collections of eighteenth-century French paintings. The show, in the west building, main floor, runs from May 21 through August 20, 2017
When Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, arrived in the United States in 1815, he brought with him his exquisite collection of eighteenth-century French paintings. Put on public view, the works caused a sensation, and a new American taste for French art was born. Over the decades, appreciation of French eighteenth-century art has fluctuated between preference for the alluring decorative canvases of rococo artists such as François Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard to admiration for the sober neoclassicism championed by Jacques Louis David and his pupils.
This exhibition brings together sixty-eight paintings that represent some of the best and most unusual examples of French art of that era held by American museums and tells their stories on a national stage.
For more information, visit National Gallery of Art.
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House of Sweden Hosts Carina Bergfeldt: 'Where the Children Sleep' May 23
On May 23 from 6:30 - 9:00 pm, House of Sweden hosts an artist's talk with Carina Bergfeldt about her photo exhibition Where Children Sleep, now on display. An enigmatic and yet vivid reflection of the experiences of young humans in an inhumane world. Today over 65 million people are fleeing from conflicts in their home countries. We would like to invite you to a conversation with Carina Bergfeldt – she is a well-known award winning Swedish journalist who has been traveling together with photographer Magnus Wennman and talked with the kids fleeing from wars and searching for peace and safety.
Carina Bergfeldt has provided the original text for the photo exhibition Where the Children Sleep. Carina has won awards for her journalism, for her story telling and her writing style as she captured the agony of oppressed and injured refugees and other targeted groups.
Currently she is the Washington based U.S. Correspondent for Swedish Television, before her position here she has spent ten years covering conflicts and other important stories from all around the world for Sweden’s largest daily newspaper, Aftonbladet.
Tickets are free. Register here.
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'Markus Lüpertz: Threads of History' at Hirshhorn
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is celebrating the pioneering early works of Markus Lüpertz from May 24 through September 10, 2017.
One of the most influential contemporary German artists, Lüpertz is internationally recognized as a leading figure in Neo-Expressionism, a movement that emerged as a major force in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Markus Lüpertz: Threads of History focuses on the early years of the artist’s mature practice, reflecting his unique reconsideration of painting through the lenses of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, and, more broadly, German postwar culture. Lüpertz, like many artists who came of age in the shadow of World War II, grappled with how he should engage with this recent past and, in particular, what he should paint. The artworks from this seminal period reveal how Lüpertz deftly challenged the limits of painting as he struggled to reconcile the weight of history with his desire to be what he has described as “a painter without responsibilities.”
Featuring large-scale works—such as the 40-foot long Westwall (Siegfried Line), on view for the first time in the US—this exhibition brings more than thirty paintings to the National Mall in a striking exploration of one artist’s response to a uniquely charged cultural moment.
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Joan Belmar at Addison/Ripley Fine Art
Through May 27th, Addison/Ripley Fine Art is hosting an exhibition of recent work by Chilean born artist Joan Belmar. Cartographer, political commentator, musicologist, passionate observer, Joan Belmar exemplifies these skills in addition to his proven mastery art. That cosmology comes together in his 3rd exhibition at A/R in bold 2 & 3-D compositions which strongly align with current events.
Joan Belmar came to Washington, D.C. in 1999, and was granted permanent residency in the U.S. based on extraordinary artistic merit in 2003, and became a citizen in 2010. He was a Mayor’s Award Finalist in 2007 as an outstanding emerging artist in Washington, D.C. The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities awarded him an artist fellowship grant in 2009, and in 2011, the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County gave him an Individual Artist Grant. The Maryland Arts Council awarded Belmar Individual Artist grants in Visual Arts: Painting, in 2010 and 2013. Additionally, He was one of eight finalists for the 2013 Bethesda Painting Awards. In 2016, he was recognized as, FIRST AWARD, for Original Artwork. Biennial of Drawing, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.
Addison/Ripley Fine Art is located at 1670 Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown.
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Arturo Sandoval Live at Blues Alley!
Legendary jazz musician Arturo Sandoval will be performing at Blues Alley May 18 through May 21.
Granted political asylum in July 1990 and US citizenship in 1999, Sandoval and his family now call Miami, Florida home. A protégé of the legendary jazz master Dizzy Gillespie, Sandoval was born in Artemisa, a small town in the outskirts of Havana, Cuba, on November 6, 1949, just two years after Gillespie became the first musician to bring Latin influences into American Jazz. Sandoval began studying classical trumpet at the age of twelve, but it didn’t take him long to catch the excitement of the jazz world. He has since evolved into one of the World’s most acknowledged guardians of jazz trumpet and flugel horn, as well as a renowned classical artist, pianist and composer.
Arturo Sandoval is fluent in at least four musical languages. He can burn through an Afro-Cuban groove, tear up a bebop tune, soar over a Mozart concerto and sooth you with a luscious ballad; with equal power and grace.
Buy tickets here.
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Frédéric Bazille and the Birth of Impressionism at National Gallery of Art
Through July 9, 2017, The National Gallery of Art is hosting an exhibition of the birth of Impresionist Art in the East Building, Concourse 1.
A scion of a Protestant upper-middle-class family from Montpellier in southern France, Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) seemed destined for a career in medicine. In 1862 he traveled to Paris, ostensibly to pursue his medical studies, though he also enrolled as a student in the studio of the painter Charles Gleyre. It was there that he met fellow artists Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, even sharing studio space with both Monet and Renoir at times. He soon became part of a dynamic circle of avant-garde artists and writers that included Édouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Émile Zola, and Zacharie Astruc. Like his friends, Bazille created paintings inspired by contemporary life that challenged the aesthetic conventions of the day and helped to lay the groundwork of impressionism. Unfortunately, Bazille was killed in battle during the Franco-Prussian War, just prior to his 29th birthday, bringing his promising career to an abrupt and tragic end.
Because of the brevity of his career, the limited size of his extant body of work, and his absence from the impressionist exhibitions mounted after his death, Bazille remains a relatively unknown and underappreciated figure. This exhibition is the first major presentation of Bazille’s work in America in a quarter-century and brings together some 74 paintings (and two sketchbooks) from private and public collections in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Paintings by Bazille are exhibited alongside key works by the predecessors who inspired him—including Théodore Rousseau and Gustave Courbet—and by the contemporaries, such as Manet and Monet, with whom he was closely associated. Such juxtapositions underscore the extent to which Bazille actively engaged with the most significant pictorial issues of his era: the revival of the still-life form, realist landscapes, open-air figural painting, and the modern nude. Drawing inspiration from the vibrant cultural life of Paris, as well as the sun-drenched environs of his native Languedoc region to which he returned again and again, Bazille crafted a style of painting that was distinctly his own.
In preparation for the exhibition, an extensive campaign of restoration and technical study was carried out. With the help of the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France (C2RMF) and the laboratories at the National Gallery of Art and other American museums, nearly half of Bazille’s known works have been x-rayed, leading to the discovery of a dozen erstwhile compositions hidden beneath the current paint surface—most notably, Young Woman at the Piano, Bazille’s first submission to the Paris Salon, which until now had been presumed lost or destroyed. This research has shed new light on Bazille’s artistic practice and the true extent of his oeuvre.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Musée Fabre, Montpellier; and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Passes: Admission is always free and passes are not required.
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2017 Contemporaries Bash May 19
The Phillips Collection invites you to the 2017 Contemporaries Bash: Berlin Underground.
Inspired by Berlin’s pulsing underground nightlife, the Bash brings the German capital’s decadent club scene to Dock 5 in one sensational night of cocktails, music, food, fashion, and dancing.
The Bash is a sell-out event that attracts the city's most dynamic young professionals. Come connect with The Phillips Collection's community of art-lovers, creative thinkers, and philanthropists. Proceeds benefit the museum's award-winning education programs.
This event takes place at Dock 5 at Union Market May 19, 2017 at 1309 Fifth Street, NE, Washington, DC
Featuring: Premium open bar and outdoor biergarten by Denizens Brewing, Co.
Savory and sweet bites inspired by Berlin's street food scene
DJ, photo booths, art installations, and more!
MUST BE 21 OR OLDER · BLACK TIE OR COCKTAIL ATTIRE · FREE PARKING
RSVP to the Contemporaries Facebook event here and share with your friends. Further engage on social media with #Bash2017 or #BerlinUnderground.
For more information, please contact contemporaries@phillipscollection.org.
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Jacob Lawrence's Toussaint L’Ouverture Series at The Phillips Collection
Now throught April 23, 2017, visit The Philips Collection to see15 rarely seen silkscreen prints created by American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917–2001) between 1986 and 1997.
The series portrays the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture (1742–1803), the former slave turned leader of Haiti’s independence movement. L’Ouverture led the fight to liberate Saint-Domingue from French colonial rule and to emancipate the slaves during the 1791 Haitian Revolution, the first successful campaign to abolish slavery in modern history. Lawrence had explored the same subject more than 40 years earlier—when he was only 20 years old—in a series of paintings of the same title (now in the Amistad Research Center, New Orleans). The celebrated paintings, which were featured prominently at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1939, laid the groundwork for Lawrence’s lifelong interest in the human quest for freedom and social justice.
While he based these later prints on the earlier 11 x 19-inch paintings, Lawrence distilled the story to 15 works from the original 41 panels and significantly expanded their scale. He worked closely with DC-based master printmaker Lou Stovall to translate the colors and fluid movement of the original tempera paint to each composition. In the print series, the narrative follows L’Ouverture from his birth to his rise as the commander of the revolutionary army to his eventual capture by Napoleon’s men. In the original painted series, Lawrence continued the story through the death of L’Ouverture as a prisoner of war in 1803, just one year before Haiti declared independence with the crowning of Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines. In highlighting the life of the courageous leader Toussaint L’Ouverture, Lawrence invites us to reflect on Haiti’s transformation from an enslaved French colony to the first black Western republic. At the same time, the series reminds us of the country’s ongoing struggle to overcome poverty and political instability.
Since acquiring 30 panels of Lawrence’s epic Migration Series (1940–41) in 1942, the Phillips has been dedicated to sharing the life and legacy of the artist and his work. The Phillips is excited to present this exhibition—on loan from the collection of Di and Lou Stovall—while The Migration Series is on view at the Seattle Art Museum for an exhibition celebrating the 100th anniversary of Lawrence’s birth. Learn more about The Migration Series—including video interviews with Lou Stovall discussing working with Jacob Lawrence—on the Phillips’s online resource LawrenceMigration.PhillipsCollection.org.
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