Quicktake: Rodarte

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York City
Now – 3/14/2010
Founded in 2005 by Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the fashion house Rodarte is widely acclaimed for its daring and conceptual collections. This special installation offers a glimpse into the Mulleavys’ unique process and inspiration at an important point in their career; recently Rodarte was awarded the 2009 Womenswear Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and was named a 2009 fashion design finalist for Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Awards. This is the second in a series of “Quicktake” installations aimed at showing the public vital up-and-coming design from around the world.

 

Graphic Masters III: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum
Now – 8/8/2020
This exhibition is the third in a series of special installations that celebrate the extraordinary variety and accomplishment of American artists’ works on paper. These watercolors, pastels and drawings from the 1960s to the 1990s reveal the central importance of works on paper for American artists, both as studies for creations in other media and as finished works of art. Rarely seen artworks from the museum’s permanent collection by artists such as Robert Arneson, Jennifer Bartlett, Philip Guston, Luis Jiménez and Wayne Thiebaud are featured in the exhibition.

 

Graphic Masters III: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum
Now – 8/8/2020
This exhibition is the third in a series of special installations that celebrate the extraordinary variety and accomplishment of American artists’ works on paper. These watercolors, pastels and drawings from the 1960s to the 1990s reveal the central importance of works on paper for American artists, both as studies for creations in other media and as finished works of art. Rarely seen artworks from the museum’s permanent collection by artists such as Robert Arneson, Jennifer Bartlett, Philip Guston, Luis Jiménez and Wayne Thiebaud are featured in the exhibition.

 

One Life: Echoes of Elvis

National Portrait Gallery
Now – 8/29/2010
This exhibition marks the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth. Although Elvis died more than 30 years ago, the world remains fascinated with his image and music. His records have continued to sell by the millions, and public interest in his music, career and life has yet to subside. Artists such as Ralph Wolfe Cowan, Red Grooms, Robert Arneson and others have created mythical, spiritual and earthly images of the man whose legacy includes multiple superlative moments in music, entertainment, life and the afterlife. To this day, both the historical Elvis and the fantasy-based vision of Elvis are the subject of poetry, literature, music, film and the visual arts.

 

Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America

S. Dillon Ripley Center’s International Gallery
Now – 4/25/2010
Rare artifacts and photographs from more than 400 communities will be on view to explore the role of Catholic sisters in American life. From the time they first arrived in America nearly 300 years ago, sisters built schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages, homeless shelters and many other enduring social institutions. As nurses, teachers and social workers, they entered professional ranks decades earlier than most other women. They shared common experiences of immigration and migration and endured the same national crises as other Americans. Despite being considered “weak women” by some, these sisters have made a lasting contribution to American life.

 

Cornucopia: Ceramics from Southern Japan

Freer Gallery of Art
Now - 1/9/2011
In 1600 Japan, a heightened fascination with the design and uses of ceramics launched an era of extraordinarily diverse ceramic production. The island of Kyushu was the center for this efflorescence, which included stoneware coated in muted glazes and porcelain ornamented with cobalt blue or multicolored enamels. Hundreds of kilns produced vessels for the domestic market (with a focus on utensils for dining and for the tea ceremony) and for export to Europe and Southeast Asia. This exhibition illuminates the engaging variety of local styles of glazing and decoration invented by Kyushu potters over three centuries.

 

Black Box: Phoebe Greenberg

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Now - 4/14/2010
This exhibition is inspired by the lavish cinematic tableaux associated with Peter Greenaway and responds to the endless appetites of pre-economic crash consumerism. It is a film that brings a part dream, part morality tale scenario to life. The themes continue to resonate during this time of global struggle to regain economic equilibrium. In 2008, the 12-minute film was awarded Best Short Film in Cannes.

 

Moving Perspectives: Yeondoo Jung

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Now - 3/14/2010
This exhibition features two new video works, including a multi-screen installation in which anonymous strangers are filmed recalling moments in their lives. As stories of past loves, youthful ambitions, hardship and lifelong secrets are shared, a team of stagehands reconstructs the settings for these memories. Jung’s videos suggest that reality, filtered through nostalgia and the passage of time, exists somewhere between truth and imagination.

 

Moving Beyond the Earth

National Air and Space Museum
Now – New Permanent
Get a first hands feel for the history of human spaceflight during the space shuttle and space station era. Immerse yourself in the story and technology of human spaceflight. Visitors will see the Earth as it is viewed from the space station, learn what it feels like to orbit in the shuttle and quiz themselves to learn if they are “flight ready” for a space journey. See a 12-foot-tall space shuttle model and other launch vehicles, astronaut gear and other historic spaceflight artifacts.

 

Nature’s Best 2009 Photography Awards: Windland Smith Rice International Awards

National Museum of Natural History
Now – 05/02/2010
This exhibition features winners in 19 categories from the 2009 Nature’s Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards, including the Grand Prize, Conservation Photographer of the Year, Youth Photographer of the Year and selected Highly Honored images. The annual awards honor the best amateur and professional nature photographers from around the world.

 

Holidays On Display

National Museum of American History
Now – November 2010
This exhibit examines the art, industry and history of commercial holiday displays that enchanted the public from the 1920s to the 1960s. The exhibition focuses on the craftsmanship and creative effort involved in holiday displays and the memories they created. “Holidays on Display” examines the subject from the viewpoints of artists, producers and the public for whom the displays were made. For many Americans, department store displays stand out as an enjoyable memory and an integral component of civic, social life.

 

Children at Play in Chinese Painting

Freer Gallery of Art
Now – 5/23/10
Children at play in fragrant gardens or at work in lush fields have been a recurring theme in Chinese art over the past two millennia. This exhibition displays objects and paintings that depict children playing in urban and rural settings, the common childhood delights of catching butterflies and skipping rope, boys herding oxen and romping in fields are all lovingly depicted in engaging scenes throughout the centuries.

 

A Song for the Horse Nation

George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian, New York City
Now – 7/07/11
From its reintroduction to the North American continent in the 16th century by the Spanish conquistadors, Native peoples quickly adapted the horse into their culture, becoming among the best horsemen in the world. This exhibition pays homage to this enduring relationship with approximately 100 works from the museum’s collection, including objects such as shirts, saddles, buffalo robes and bags. The exhibition also addresses the decimation of the herds by the U.S. Army as Native peoples were forced onto reservations.

 

Directions – John Gerrard

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Now – 3/28/10
This exhibition features works by Irish artist John Gerrard (b. 1974, Dublin) who photographed farms and oil fields in 360 degrees and then used computer simulations to create a cinematic movement around the sites. With new technologies offering artists opportunities to create works with dimensions no one has seen before, Gerrard uses customized 3-D gaming software to re-imagine landscape art. A former student of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gerrard is inspired by the look, the history and politics of the Dust Bowl region. He creates contemplative, vivid scenes of farms and oil fields that raise questions about the effect of human progress on the environment.

 

Portraiture Now: Communities

National Portrait Gallery
Now – 7/5/10
How is community defined today? Through new electronic networking, our connections are increasingly widespread; yet, we are still drawn to the idea of small communities and face-to-face interaction. Three artists, Rose Frantzen, Jim Torok, and Rebecca Westcott, explore the idea of community in portraits of friends, neighbors and family.

 

The African Presence in Mexico

Anacostia Community Museum
Now – 7/4/10
This traveling exhibition looks at the history, culture and art of Afro-Mexicans, beginning in the colonial era and continuing to present day. Highlights of the exhibition include Spanish colonial "casta" paintings (paintings used to delineate racial categories); artifacts related to the traditions and popular culture of the Afro-Mexicans; and dozens of paintings, masks, photography and other works of art.

 

Yinka Shonibare MBE

National Museum of African Art
Now – 3/7/10
On display will be the most comprehensive exhibition of works— including dramatic sculptural tableaux, paintings, photographs, and film—by this internationally renowned Nigerian, London-based artist to date.

 

IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americans

National Museum of the American Indian
Now – 5/30/10
A discussion of the cultural integration and diffusion of African American and American Indian people, especially those of blended heritage, this exhibition will also engage visitors on the dynamics of race, community, culture and creativity and will address the human desire to belong.

 

Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009

The National Portrait Gallery
Now – 8/22/10
The National Portrait Gallery invited artists working in the figurative arts to submit portraits of people close to them. Submissions were entered in every type of visual-arts media, including paintings, photographs, film, video and digital animation. The juried competition will result in an exhibition of approximately 49 of the finalists’ works. Visitors to the exhibition and the museum’s Web site can vote on the people’s choice award through Jan. 18, 2010. A fully illustrated publication will accompany the exhibition. Brandon Brame Fortune, curator of painting and sculpture, is the competition director and curator of the exhibition.

  

Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort

National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC
Now – 8/8/10
Brian Jungen (Dunne-za First Nations/Swiss/Canadian), widely regarded as a foremost Native artist of his generation, transforms the familiar and banal into exquisite objects that reference themes of globalization, pop culture, museums and the commodification of Indian imagery. His works have included a pod of whales made from plastic chairs, totem poles made from golf bags and a massive basketball court made from 224 sewing tables. “Strange Comfort” will feature Jungen’s iconic works, as well as major pieces never before seen in the United States.

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