Arts Agenda: Bits and Pieces
It's summer and our beloved Arts Editor is away this week, so the agenda is a little on the short side. Here are a few things to see.
>> We have written before about the Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran's Experimental Media project. Starting this week, WPA\C is hosting a new show called SiteProjects DC. Curator Welmoed Laanstra has asked 15 local artists to create site-specific outdoor artwork, both installations and performances, through July 28, along U St. NW between P and V Sts. The artists were asked "to explore the issues of poverty, gentrification, community, and revitalization of the historic 14th street corridor." The opening is scheduled for Friday night (June 15, 7 to 9 p.m.) at the Black Cat. That evening, at 8 p.m., Laanstra will lead a tour of the project sites, departing from the Black Cat.
>> Documentary filmmaker Patrick Cazals will introduce two recent films being screened at the National Gallery of Art this weekend (June 15 and 16, 12:30 p.m.). Irina Gedrovich's Amateur Photographer, from 2004, is based on the diaries and photographs of a German soldier on the Eastern front. Sergei Loznitsa's 2005 film Blockade is a compilation of Moscow silent archival footage of the 900-day siege of Leningrad, with reconstructed sound and no dialogue. Films are shown in the East Building auditorium (use the 4th St. entrance, just below Constitution Ave. NW).
>> Also on Friday (June 15, 5:30 p.m.), Smithsonian curator Jackie Serwer will lead an illustrated presentation and discussion on the Washington Color School, Washington Art Makes Its Mark: The Color School and Beyond with Jackie Serwer, in the McEvoy Auditorium, on the lower level of the Reynolds Center (8th and F St. NW).
Photo of the Black Cat by Eye Captain, from the DCist Flickr Pool
>> Saturday is opening day for the new exhibit at the Phillips Collection, American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection. The show will be on display through September 16, when it will tour several other museums around the country. This includes paintings by Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, Robert Spencer, Augustus Vincent Tack, John Henry Twachtman, and Julian Alden Weir, all in the style that everyone seems to love so much. 1600 21st St. NW. Consult their Web site for times and ticket prices.
>> On Saturday afternoon (June 16, 4 p.m.), there will be an excellent combination of film and music, as the Thad Wilson Quintet plays music inspired by the original Miles Davis soundtrack during a screening of Louis Malle's 1958 noir thriller, Elevator to the Gallows. Free tickets will be distributed starting one hour beforehand in the G Street lobby of the Reynolds Center (8th and F St. NW).