Artists
Visionaries in art, literature, dance, music and design who define the creative tradition
Pierre Huyghe Wins American Art's Contemporary Artist Award
Yesterday, the American Art Museum announced that French artist Pierre Huyghe is this year's winner of the museum's biennial Contemporary Artist Award. The $25,000 prize is awarded to a contemporary artist under the age of 50 who has already amassed a significant oeuvre and demonstrates great creat...
December 16, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
Holiday Storytime at American Art Museum
Gracing the cover of the December 2, 1922, issue of The Saturday Evening Post was a slumped, sleeping Santa. Crawling over him were elves, resembling those in the illustrations of Brothers Grimm fairy tales, putting last-minute touches on gifts and loading his sack.The painting is one of over 300 t...
December 14, 2010 |
By Megan Gambino
Events: Holiday Fun, American Indian Artists, Fossil Forensics and More
Monday, December 13: For an all-inclusive seasonal celebration, come see “Seasons of Light.” This annual performance highlights the customs of winter holidays from all over the world, such as Ramadan, Diwali, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, Christmas and winter solstice celebrations. Tickets are required. P...
December 13, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
New Video Art Show Opens at the American Art Museum
Movies are a major part of our popular culture and are like visual comfort food. You watch them eating popcorn in a comfortable chair and enjoy the show. Video art on the other hand can be an intellectually harder pill to swallow. You find video art in an art museum where the benches are uncomforta...
December 10, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Bruce Lee Kicks it Old School at the Freer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB-QGOChuQcThink old-school kung fu movies, and whose fists of fury likely come to mind? Bruce Lee’s. And if the thought of him dispatching bad guy after bad guy gets your blood flowing, kick down the doors of the Freer Gallery this Friday night, December 10, at 7:00p...
December 09, 2010 |
By Jeff Campagna
Nothing Is Hands-Free in the Hirshhorn's New Black Box
Scale modelers of the world, unite! In the Hirshhorn’s new short film exhibit that opened yesterday, Black Box: Hans Op de Beeck, anonymous hands moving with a fluid, mime-like grace create stark, uninhabited set designs, in miniature. A lit city street, a theater stage and a barren forest-scape ar...
December 07, 2010 |
By Jeff Campagna
Events: Seasonal Celebrations, Norman Rockwell, Public Art and More
Monday, December 6: For an all-inclusive seasonal celebration, come see “Seasons of Light.” This annual performance highlights the customs of winter holidays from all over the world, such as Ramadan, Devali, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, Christmas and Winter Solstice celebrations. Tickets are required. Pr...
December 06, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Weekend Events: Holiday Fun at the National Zoo, Natural History Museum and the Freer
Friday, December 3: ZooLights, the National Zoo's festive electric light display, is back once again—and this year it's absolutely free! For children of all ages, a menagerie of LED light sculptures modeled after critters at the zoo will be on display. Tickets are NOT required. (Yay!) for visitors ...
December 03, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Getting Directions at the Hirshhorn
As humans, we are curiously fascinated by destruction–the destruction of reputations, of ideas and especially of things. That fascination is turned into conceptual art by the two featured artists of the Hirshhorn's new exhibit, Directions: Cyprien Gaillard and Mario Garcia Torres.French multimedia...
December 02, 2010 |
By Jeff Campagna
Wednesday Roundup: Flamingos, Planes and XKCD
First Aircraft Moved to New Hangar: This week, AirSpace reports that the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver was the first aircraft to move into the Udvar-Hazy Center's new Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. Designed in 1938 and manufactured in 1942, the scout bomber flew in World War II. The Air and Space Mu...
December 01, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
A Breathtaking New Bridge
The construction of the bridge that bypasses the Hoover Dam was an Erector Set dream come true for this photographer
December 2010 |
By T.A. Frail
Painter Alexis Rockman Pictures Tomorrow
There's trouble ahead in the artist's eerie yet riveting paintings, now the subject of a major exhibition
December 2010 |
By Cathleen McGuigan
Under the Spell of San Miguel de Allende
Ever since American Stirling Dickinson arrived there in 1937, the Mexican town has been a magnet for artists and U.S. expatriates
December 2010 |
By Jonathan Kandell
Happy 175th Birthday, Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri, o175 years ago today. Author of such literary classics as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain's famous wit makes him just as relevant today as...
November 30, 2010 |
By Jamie Simon
Events: Japanese Rock and Roll, Latin American Poetry, Pop Up Books and More
Monday, November 29: IMAXBaby, it's cold outside—so come on in and enjoy an IMAX movie. Theaters are located in the Natural History Museum, the Air and Space Museum and the Udvar-Hazy Center. In addition to short films—like “Dinosaurs” and “Legends of Flight”—catch a screening of the full-length fe...
November 29, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Artist Alexis Rockman Tells A Tale of Tomorrow at American Art
A strange other world recently emerged in the third floor galleries at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It's a vivid, surreal land where cities are swamped by floods, man-size mosquitoes taunt ecotourists in the night, cows and pigs and chickens are re-engineered to look more ani-meal than anim...
November 23, 2010 |
By Beth Py-Lieberman
"Ancient Chinese Jades and Bronzes" Opens at the Freer Gallery
After spending more than a decade in storage, a group of Chinese jade and bronze works have been reinstalled in two newly renovated galleries at the Freer Gallery of Art. The exhibit, "Ancient Chinese Jades and Bronzes," marks the first phase of the museum's plan to overhaul each of their Chinese a...
November 22, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
Weekend Events: Jazz at the Freer, Fashionable Gods and a National Portrait Gallery Family Fun Day
Friday, November 19: Jason Hwang's Edge QuartetAn award-winning violinist, composer, and jazz artist, Hwang returns to the Freer with his latest project, Burning Bridge, commissioned by Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works program. His Edge Quartet is joined by guest artists on erhu (Chinese fidd...
November 19, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Wednesday Roundup: Space Suits, Diaries and Native Music
Inner Workings of the Space Suit: This week, the AirSpace blog exposes one of their spacesuits from the inside out using X-Ray imaging. Until now, the only way to glimpse the inside of these high-tech uniforms was to shine a flashlight down the wrist or neck of the outfit. But recently, Mark Avino,...
November 17, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
Weekend Events: Classic Japanese Cinema, Fashion of the Gods and Perspectives on Portraiture
Friday, November 12: Perspectives on PortraitureExplore dynamic relationships between portraits, artists, subjects and viewers in docent-led tours at both the Sackler Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. At the Sackler, experience Fiona Tan’s integration of portraiture, moving image and sound...
November 12, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
