Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Falnama: The Book of Omens October 24 - January 24 Whether by consulting the position of the planets, casting horoscopes, or interpreting dreams, the art of divination was widely practiced throughout the Islamic world. The most splendid tools ever devised to foretell the future were illustrated texts known as the Falnama (Book of omens). Notable for their monumental size, brilliantly painted compositions, and unusual subject matter, the manuscripts, created in Safavid Iran and Ottoman Turkey in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, are the center piece of Falnama: The Book of Omens. The first exhibition devoted to these extraordinary manuscripts, Falnama: The Book of Omens sheds new light on their artistic, cultural, and religious significance. The exhibition comprises more than sixty works of art from international public and private collections and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
Sun from a Falnama, Probably Iran, Safavid period, 1580s
Art Museum of the Americas Bilateral Engagement Barbara Josephs Liotta October 15 - January 15 Sculpture
Adam Lister Gallery Wonderland Group Show December 10 - January 17 The work brought together for this show, reflects ideas about fantasy, escaping from reality, and the world of make-believe. We all physically exist in a world where people constantly go mad and don't make any sense. Everyday we deal with certain fears, anxieties, and complexities, leaving most of us to desire an alternate reality, or at least a glimpse into one. Drawing, painting, collage, photography, sculpture, and installation work by: Diana Adams, Jenny Drummey, Pat Gossage, Craig Hein, Adam Lister, Robbie Namy, Stephanie Rivers, Willie Wayne Smith
Bottle Blondes, Diana Adams
Addison Ripley Fine Art Watercolors Patricia Tobacco Forrester January 30 - March 6 Large scale watercolors of scenes from exotic locales, Northern California and Washington DC.
Addison Ripley Fine Art Paintings and Pastels Wolf Kahn December 10 - January 23 Born in Germany, Wolf Kahn has lived in the United States since 1940. He began his studies in art under abstract painter Hans Hofmann, becoming his assistant, after which he received a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Chicago. Kahn's career has continued to flourish. He has received such honors as a Fulbright Scholarship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Major Museums including the National Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts are just a few of the prestigious institutions around the country that have Kahn works in their permanent collections.
Wolf Kahn
Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery Blue Like Me Siona Benjamin September 29 - January 14 Siona Benjamin is a painter originally from the Bombay Jewish (Bene Israel) community; she now lives in the US. Her rich, colorful paintings reflect the experience of being Jewish in a predominantly Hindu and Muslim India. By combining the imagery of her past with her present in America, she makes a mosaic inspired by both Indian miniature paintings and Sephardic icons. This exhibition celebrates and reflects upon the intersections between cultural boundaries and personal identity, displaying vibrant canvases filled with numerous layers, characters and stories.
Arlington Arts Center Image/Project A national show of contemporary photography and video Juror: Taryn Simon November 20 - January 16 The show reflects the ways in which contemporary artists tend to approach photography and video. Many of the artists presented here use photography as either a means for documenting or presenting cross-disciplinary projects, or as a tool for inquiry into the way we perceive and live in the world. Morgan Ashcom (Free Union, VA) Leslie Awender (Topanga, CA) Jason Burch (Jersey City, NJ) Judith Connell (Falls Church, VA) Elizabeth Crisman (Baltimore, MD) David Hartwell and Josef Jacques (San Francisco, CA) Jason Havernaas (Brooklyn, NY) Linda Hesh (Alexandria, VA) Jaime Kennedy and Kelly Urquhart (Kent, OH) Alma Leiva (Miami, FL) Karen Ludlam (Brooklyn, NY) Jeroen Nelemans (Chicago, IL) Minou Norouzi (Los Angeles, CA) Nicholas O'Brien (Chicago, IL) Adam Pape (Chicago, IL) Laurie Rubin (Chicago, IL) Michael Wallace (Cleveland, OH)
Alexandria City Hall Our Town Group Show Juror - Chris Haggerty, Professor of Art and Art Therapy at Marymount University July 20 - January 8 Images & works about Alexandria, the diverse population that makes up the city, the varied daily activities of the city, and the historical events that define what Alexandria is today.
Del Ray Artisans New Work for a New Year Group Show January 8 - January 24
District of Columbia Arts Center Black Jurors: Renee Stout, Blake Kimbrough, and Marvin Bowser Curator: Amber Robles-Gordon Co-Curator: Daniel T. Brooking Judges: Teresia Bush and Eugene R. Vango November 20 - January 10 Black asks artists to think introspectively about the emotional and theoretical, the spiritual and cultural, the intellectual and physical aspects of their personal perceptions of blackness. Each artist's objective was to move beyond black as an absence of color and into the predominance of black as a physical and conceptual part of their creations
Fraser Gallery Winter Group Exhibit David FeBland Mike Fitts Tim O'Kane November 17 - January 9 New paintings
Floodplain, David FeBland
Freer Gallery of Art Cornucopia: Ceramics from Southern Japan through January 9, 2011 Comprises over 100 porcelain and stoneware vessels that vividly represent an era of highly diverse and accomplished ceramic production on the island of Kyushu in southern Japan
Children at Play in Chinese Painting November 18 - May 23 A collection of Chinese paintings, ceramics and slate carving depicting children at play from the past two millennia is the first exhibition to be organized on the theme in the United States. The exhibition includes 36 objects highlighting the effervescence of youth. Silken scrolls depict young school children teasing each other over lessons, rural boys flitting through idyllic nature scenes while herding oxen and urban toddlers jumping rope to the beat of a striking gong. The images are simple and amusing, yet revelatory of the important role children play in Chinese civic life.
Surface Beauty: American Art and Freer's Aesthetic Vision Dwight Tryon (1849-1903) and Thomas Dewin (1851-1938) When Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), the Detroit industrialist and founder of the Freer Gallery of Art, began to collect contemporary American paintings in the early 1890s, he concentrated on a small group of artists-most notably Dewing and Tryon-whose interest in surface beauty resonated with the work of Whistler, the expatriate American whose work had already attracted Freer's interest. By the turn of the century, Freer's focus would shift to Asia, but his interest in tonal, textured surfaces remained constant, allowing him to establish "points of contact" between his Asian and American collections. "Surface Beauty" includes 12 paintings and seven pieces of Pewabic pottery
Freer + Whistler: Points of Contact "Points of Contact" includes some 23 oil paintings, representing a choice selection from the more than 1,300 paintings, prints and drawings by Whistler in the Freer Gallery of Art. The works on view were chosen to exemplify both Freer's philosophy of collecting and Whistler's own self-conscious synthesis of Western and Asian artistic traditions. Highlights include a sequence of views of the Thames from Whistler's Chelsea residence in London.
Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen, James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903),United States, 1864, Painting; oil on wood panel, Freer Gallery of Art.
Hamiltonian Gallery Frank Hallam and Jonathan Monaghan December 12 - January 16 A new exhibition of works by Washington, DC photographer Frank Hallam Day, and Hamiltonian Fellow, Jonathan Monaghan. Whether through African mannequins, Christian imagery or heraldic symbolism, both artists present recontextualized notions of the West.
International Visions Gallery SU in DC Art Show December 10 - January 23 18 contributing artists from the Syracuse University community are as diverse as their artworks. Graduation years span 1945 through 2004. Mediums include photography, pastel, textile, and handmade paper. Many are Washington-based, others live and work in the college town.
International Visions Gallery In Abandoned Places Michael Platt February 3 - March 13 Known for his fusion of digital and conventional photography, drawing and printmaking, Platt's subjects - "the marginalized and the survivors" - exist in spaces that are discarded - a bare forest, a drained fountain or a crumbling room.
The Fountain, Michael Platt
The Kreeger Museum Kentridge and Kudryashov: Against the Grain William Kentridge Oleg Kudryashov October 3 - December 30 As two of the most significant printmakers in the world today, both artists use bold technical elements to express forceful imagery that comments directly and indirectly on important contemporary issues while exploring human values under totalitarian regimes. Though the printmakers have never met, this exhibition will join them together in a demonstration of the nature of thought and feelings in similarly repressive societies.
Luther W. Brady Art Gallery Clothing the Rebellious Soul: Revolution 1963 - 1973 November 5 - January 22 Never-before-published vintage hippie clothing and artifacts are imaginatively displayed along with a narrative that outlines the decade 1963-1973 with an emphasis on portraying the political and social upheaval of the times. The show is curated by Nancy Gewirz in collaboration with Mark E. Hooper of Princeton, N.J
National Museum of Women in the Arts Lands of Enchantment: Australian Aboriginal Painting October 9 - January 10 In recent years, Australian Aboriginal art has captured the attention of the global art market. Collectors and museums worldwide relish the striking color and intricate patterning of Aboriginal paintings in particular. The works' nuanced expressions of Aboriginal history and culture reinforce their significance as rich cultural artifacts.
Telling Secrets: Codes, Captions, and Conundrums in Contemporary Art October 9 - January 10 Artists today often create literal layers (as in collage) to deepen meaning in their works. This exhibition of 39 paintings, photographs, drawings, and prints from NMWA's collection invites viewers to consider multiple interpretations
Elements of Nature: Equines and Still Lifes by Clarice Smith October 9 - January 10 Elements of Nature: Equines and Still Lifes by Clarice Smith features 20 paintings that exquisitely articulate Clarice Smith's graceful vision of the natural world. Hard Copy: Book as Sculpture August 7 - January 10
Victoria's Secret, Robin Kahn
The Phillips Collection Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction February 6 - May 9 The exhibition demonstrates O’Keeffe’s important contribution to the history of American abstraction. Showcasing over 100 paintings, drawings, watercolors, and sculpture dating from 1915 to the late 1970s, the exhibition also includes 14 photographic portraits of O’Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz. By assembling works from her entire career, this exhibition reveals O’Keeffe as a painter who adopted abstraction as early as 1915, worked extensively with it throughout the 1920s, and used it thereafter as the foundation for her art.
Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens October 10 - January 10, 2010 Man Ray translated the 20th-century modernist taste for African art into photographs that reached a popular audience. About 60 of his photographs, many never before exhibited, along with more than 40 photographs by his contemporaries, including Cecil Beaton, Walker Evans, and Alfred Stieglitz, will appear side-by-side with 20 of the African objects featured in the images.
Intersections In this new contemporary art series, artists respond to artwork and spaces in The Phillips Collection with projects of their own, revealing connections and contrasts between art of the past and present. Icarus - Barbara Liotta October 22 - January 31, 2010 Conceived as a portrait of human energy and inner strength, and as a symbol of flight and aspiration, this large-scale sculpture is paired with portraits from the museum's permanent collection, including Eugene Delacroix's Paganini, Amedeo Modigliani's Elena Povolozky, and Chaim Soutine's Woman in Profile.
Man Ray
Renwick Gallery What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect Now through January 24, 2010
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum Now through January 10, 2010 Grand Salon Installation-Paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Renwick) Permanent
The Honor of Your Company Is Requested: President Lincoln's Inaugural Ball Now through January 18, 2010
Smithsonian American Art Museum Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum Now through January 10, 2010 These watercolors, pastels, and drawings from the 1920s to the 1960s 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 works from the museum's permanent collection by artists such as Stuart Davis, Sam Francis, Edward Hopper, Willem de Kooning, Joseph Stella, Grant Wood, and Andrew Wyeth.
Grand Salon Installation - Paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Renwick) June 6, 2009 - Permanent Seventy paintings featuring landscapes, portraits, and allegorical works by fifty-one American artists from the 1840s to the 1930s. Artists whose works are on view include Edward Mitchell Bannister, Romaine Brooks, Elliott Daingerfield, Daniel Garber, William Morris Hunt, George Inness, Homer Dodge Martin, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Abbott Handerson Thayer, John Henry Twachtman, and Irving R. Wiles.
The Honor of Your Company Is Requested: President Lincoln's Inaugural Ball Now through January 18, 2010
Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009 (Renwick) August 7 - January 3, 2010 Presents the work of ceramic artist Christyl Boger, fiber artist Mark Newport, glass artist Mary Van Cline, and ceramic artist SunKoo Yuh.
What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect October 2 - January 24, 2010 Enter the world of artist William T. Wiley, whose self-deprecating humor and sense of the absurd make his art accessible in spite of his many private symbols, allusions, narratives, and layers of meaning. Wiley's art has stood the test of time in the face of changing styles, successive movements, critical theories, and passing fashion. This retrospective, which features eighty-eight works from the 1960s to the present, is the first full-scale look at Wiley's career since 1979 and explores important themes and ideas expressed in his work.
Workhouse Arts Center Faculty and Student Exhibition January 6 - January 24 All students, faculty and staff were invited to participate in an exhibition of new works created in Workhouse Arts Center 2009 classes and workshops
