Now entering it's fourth year, FotoWeekDC will kick off this Friday. The annual festival highlights photography as an artistic medium and will showcase numerous collections and exhibitions over the course of the week. more ›

Explorations of complex relationships, elements of steampunk, and the influences of far-away lands invade this week's Arts Agenda. more ›

The National Building Museum, which hosts interesting events like the SAVOR Craft Beer Festival and 24-Hour City Project, and is often considered one of the city's more plugged-in museums, will begin charging for admission to exhibits on June 27. more ›

From Hieronymus Bosch to Asher B. Durand to John James Audubon, the influences inherent in John Alexander’s work are clear. His paintings and drawings run the gamut from landscapes to abstractions, making for a diverse and extraordinary exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. John Alexander: A Retrospective, with 40 paintings and 27 works on paper, opens today and runs through March 16. more ›

David Macaulay, the self proclaimed “explainer of things,” has been drawing and illustrating architecture for the past 30 years. In The Art of Drawing Architecture, the National Building Museum showcases Macaulay’s knack for deconstructing buildings and showing their many layers from various perspectives. Preferring simple materials, such as pen and ink, Macaulay recreates vast spaces on single sheets of paper. Spanning his career, the exhibit starts by documenting his most recent work, Mosque, a book... more ›

As we mentioned earlier this week, sometimes we don't envy Washington's urban planners. Their challenges often encompass issues as varied and complicated as economic development, land use planning, sustainability, design and social justice. Add to that the design politics associated with the symbolism invested in the nation's capital, and planning for D.C. becomes a unique urban problem to tackle. Not that it stops us from trying. Yesterday, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission... more ›

FRIDAY: >> This weekend is filled to the brim with events surrounding the 2007 Urban Film Series tour just in time for Black History Month. Dozens of short and feature-length films addressing the black experience are being screened at Regal Cinema Gallery Place, many with panel discussions following. There's a bevy of established and rising talent to see, but our pick for Friday has to be a conversation and book-signing with the Wizard's own center... more ›

DCist is, collectively, having one of those Fridays. You know, one of those Fridays when your boss dumps a bunch of work on your desk and wants it done before you leave for the weekend (the sweet, sweet weekend) and your Internet keeps crapping out so you can't even check your email. The weekend is quickly approaching and we haven't yet had time to scour the best of the city's offerings. But, we think... more ›

This post comes from new DCist contributor Sam Biddle Like a host of museums not affiliated with the Smithsonian and not on the National Mall, the National Building Museum exists slightly off the tourists' beaten path. However, as dedicated urban enthusiasts the museum is one of our favorites, and extremely Metro-accessible to boot. This year the museum is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a free summer-long film series that began this weekend and will continue... more ›

This DCist thinks the National Building Museum is unsung. It is the most amazing space in this fair city (in the gigantic red-brick Montgomery Meigs-built old Pensions Building) and the exhibits are not run of the mill. Who knew concrete could be interesting? The museum’s latest show, "Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community," is really a classic immigrant story: Jews get persecuted in other countries, come to the U.S. and D.C. for a... more ›

A major permanent exhibit on the history, geography, and architecture of Washington D.C. will open at the National Building Museum this Saturday. more ›

DCist has heard nothing but glowing reviews for the National Building Museum's exhibit on affordable housing, which will close this Sunday, August 8. The positive review in the Post, said the displays "demonstrate a renewed commitment to social housing by a significant portion of the architectural profession, and they illustrate a new variety and sophistication in affordable housing design. The photo is of D.C.'s LeDroit Park, one of the 18 designs on display at the... more ›