Results tagged “theart>”

This week the big news is the appointment (PDF) of Dorothy Kosinski as the new Director of The Phillips Collection. She's currently the Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Dallas Musuem of Art, and comes with an impressive résumé that include extensive curating, acquisitions, and teaching experience. Kosinski will officially take over next spring, to replace retiring Director Jay Gates, just in time to take the reins on a five-year strategy the...

Written by DCist contributor Amy Cavanaugh The Tuareg people, who once roamed a region of the Sahara, are the subject of a new exhibit at the National Museum of African Art. Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World uses art to explore the present-day world of a nomadic tribe, and explains that though the end of French colonial rule and droughts made most Tuareg settle down permanently, many aspects of their lives...

>> DAM! Fest kicks of with its first night of shows featuring a dozen different bands at three venues, including New York's A Place to Bury Strangers (don't miss our interview with the band) and Dirty on Purpose at the Rock and Roll Hotel, Vandaveer and Julie Ocean at the Red and The Black, and Foreign Islands at DC9, among many others. Check out our guide to the DAM! highlights. >> Two film festivals open...

MONDAY: Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert D. Kaplan will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his latest book, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts. According to Kaplan, journalists are too quick to report on the negative aspects of the military. Commence with bickering over the Iraq war ... now. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Blogger Diane Vadino will be at Olsson's in Dupont Circle to read from her first novel, Smart Girls Like Me. 7 p.m. She'll also...

"Books," wrote the poet Philip Larkin, "are a load of crap." No doubt Larkin, one of the most gifted lyric poets of the 20th century and a career librarian at the University of Hull, was being ironic. But irony or no, the participants and sponsors of this Saturday's National Book Festival vehemently disagree. Held every year for the last six years on the National Mall -- rain or shine -- the festival brings together marquee-name...

It's round two of the official opening of the fall art season. If you didn't get to check out all the openings last week (and who humanly could have?), spend part of your Saturday afternoon perusing the rest -- our reviewer particularly enjoyed the show at Flashpoint. But block off your evenings for the parties to celebrate the following openings: >> Up in Bethesda, it's the big night for the Trawick Prize finalists, as they...

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...

What makes a champion? Is it commitment, the ability to spend the long hours necessary honing a skill to a razor's edge, forgoing the simple pleasures of idle laziness the rest of us take for granted? Is it drive, that fire in the belly that pushes a winner on, past discouragement, past early failures, past the point when lesser beings throw in the towel? Maybe it's simply birthright, taking advantage of those innate abilities that...

THURSDAY: >> Flashpoint puts a little twist on the gallery show with Anonymous III by WPA\C. The show will feature 100 works by established and emerging artists from the D.C. area, but every piece will remain anonymous until it's purchased by an art lover who will have to appreciate quality over a name brand. The gallery will hold a reception this evening to scope out the goods, but you won't be able to purchase anything...

The Smithsonian Institution's woes have been front and center in the news lately, and now it has sent its first victim to the chopping block. In the wake of last week's fairly crushing – though not entirely surprising – report on the state of the museums, Secretary Lawrence M. Small has submitted his resignation, announced today by the Board of Regents Executive Committee. Some have noted that Small may only be the first of the...

>> Welcome to March and another First Friday in Dupont Circle from 6 to 8 p.m. Find the gallery locations here. >> We've all got our old movie favorites. If you pop in Gone with the Wind everytime you're home sick, or channel surf for old episodes of I Dream of Jeanie on a Sunday afternoon, you're just the person Mark Bennett is drawing for. His India ink draftings of the fictional homes used in...

The holiday shopping season is officially in full swing, so the literary reading cup runneth over and ruineth your coffee table with big names. Message from Big Literature: Books make great gifts! Message from DCist: Free readings help keep your entertainment budget low, which is helpful since you already have to spend your entire bonus on gifts for other people. MONDAY: Joan Collins is 73 years-old and still fabulous. We're not sure how she does...

October is apparently the month of our discontent. After weeks of build-up about being excited to see Baltimore pop-punk outfit Karmella's Game play the Rock N Roll Hotel, the band sent a note the afternoon of the show saying that, due to circumstances beyond their control (including the headliner's broken-down van), the concert was cancelled. I wept bitter tears. You would, too, if you'd only gotten one chance to see the band in all their...

Saturday at the Fringe brings audience goers political polemics, aerial artistry, deconstruction chic and a tour of some D.C. neighborhoods. When you have to navigate, don't forget to use our special Fringetastic new Google Map. The best way to get to the show on time! Theatrical Performances: Frozty the Abominable Snowman, Landless Theatre There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found! For when they placed it on his head, he...

On any other Wednesday evening, you might find local writer Sarah Grace McCandless at Bar Pilar, staging pictures with friends in the photo booth, or enjoying a drink at Larry’s Lounge, her favorite dive. Tonight, you won’t find Sarah at either place. Instead, she’ll be at Olsson’s in Penn Quarter reading from her second book, The Girl I Wanted to Be. Whether she's already won you over with her memoir, Grosse Pointe Girl , or...

Political art is a tricky thing; one can cross the line from clever criticism to heavy-handed vitriol with a quick stroke of the brush. American University’s Katzen Art Center provides a daring look at the many facets of this genre with Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement, a collection on tour from the San Jose Museum of Art in California. The show is a mixed bag of subject matter, media, and style, but each piece...

>> New York artist Faith Ringgold's latest series, Jazz Stories 2004: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow, will be at the University of Maryland's The Art Gallery starting Wed. through Dec. 10. If you were inspired by last weekend's Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, try to make it there by 5 p.m. tomorrow for the artist talk, then stick around for the opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. >> Hemphill Fine Arts is hosting a...

>> You better act fast to see "Bringing It All Together: The Art of Joyce Lomax" at Ramee Art Gallery -- the show will only be up this Friday and Saturday. The exhibit, the last to be on view at the gallery's 14th Street space, features works on paper, paintings and ceramics by Atlanta-based artist Joyce Lomax. On August 20, Ramee Art Gallery will relocate to 606C Rhode Island Avenue, NE. The reception for...

(This post was written by DCist Arts contributor J.T. Kirkland of Thinking About Art) An article written by Marc Spiegler titled "Do art critics still matter?" was recently published by The Art Newspaper, and we can’t think of a better time to discuss the issues laid out herein. Essentially, Spiegler’s main point is that traditional critics are a dying breed, at least in terms of power and paid profession. Upon giving it some thought, the...

>> "Mexican Report: Contemporary Mexican Art" -- the key show opening this week -- will be exhibited concurrently at three art venues in the D.C. area. It opens at the Cultural Institute of Mexico this Thursday with at reception at the Institute starting at 6:30 p.m., followed by a tour of the Meridian International Center (a five-minute walk, but transportation will be provided as well). "Mexican Report" consists of an extraordinary gathering of the...

The Freer and Sackler galleries are encouraging visitors to take a final peek at Do-Ho Suh's "Staircase-IV" (at left) as its final weekend on display is fast approaching. The translucent red nylon work is a 1:1 scale reproduction of his New York apartment staircase, complete with architectural detailing. The artist says the "work starts from a reflection on space, especially personal space. The space I'm interested in is not only a physical one, but an...