The year’s first blockbuster show opens at the Hirshhorn, but while you’re waiting to get timed tickets, there are worthy shows away from the crowds.
Yayoi Kusama’s “The Obliteration Room,” 2002. (Photo by QAGOMA)
YAYOI KUSAMA: INFINITY MIRRORS @ HIRSHHORN
Whimsical Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is best known for immersive installations that can only accommodate a few people at a time. Because of the huge, WONDER-level interest in the Hirshhorn’s Kusama retrospective, the museum will, for the first time in its history, distribute free, timed passes for visitors. The show begins chronologically with Kusama’s legendary “Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field,” in which spotted, stuffed phalluses are reflected back from every angle, and conclude with “The Obliteration Room,” where visitors stick dots to a stark-white vision of suburbia. The exhibition will feature a total of six “kaleidescopic environments,” two-large scale installations, as well as paintings and sculptures that date as far back as the early 1950s. To handle the high traffic, the Hirshhorn will also triple the number of guides and volunteer attendants, and open a pop-up Dolcezza coffee shop. The exhibit will go on a five-city tour after it leaves the Hirshhorn in May.
February 23-May 14 at the Hirshhorn. Passes for opening weekend (Feb. 23-Feb. 27) will be released online Monday, Feb. 13, at 11 a.m. for Hirshhorn e-news subscribers and at noon for the public. After that, passes will be released online every Monday at noon for the following week. A limited number of walk-up tickets will also be released. And Hirshhorn members will have access to a special line.
Henri de Touloue-Lautrec, Cover for L’Estampe originale (1893). (The Phillips Collection)
TOULOUSE-LAUTREC @ PHILLIPS
Painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) died when he was only 36. But in a career that spanned less than two decades, he created thousands of drawings and hundreds of paintings that documented the vibrant cabaret performers and musicians of Parisian nightlife. The Phillips brings together, for the first time in the United States, a collection of nearly a hundred of the artist’s prints and posters in Tolouse Lautrec Illustrates the Belle Époque.
February 4-April 30, 2017 at the Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street NW.
Giovanni della Robbia, Resurrection of Christ, ca. 1520- 1525. (National Gallery of Art)
DELLA ROBBIA @NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
The terracotta sculptures of Luca della Robbia (1399/1400-1482) are, as the National Gallery of Art writes, “some of the most innovative and expressive examples of art from the Italian Renaissance.” The exhibit Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence presents 40 works by Luca and members of his family, as well as examples of work by a competing workshop. While many of the pieces are on loan from American museums, the exhibit includes work on loan from Italy, including The Visitation (c. 1445), from the church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia, Italy and traveling to the United States for the first time.
February 5 – June 4 at the National Gallery of Art, 6th & Constitution Ave NW. West Building, Main Floor – West Garden Court. Free.
(Sandy Spring Museum)
RELIQUARY FOR ST. VALENTINE’S DAY @ SANDY SPRING MUSEUM
Want to give your Valentine something home-made this year? Artist Suzanne Herbert-Forton leads a workshop to help you transform a cigar box into a work of art using recycled materials. Fill your reliquaries with photos, trinkets and any small objects that hold a special memory.
February 4, 2017 at Sandy Spring Museum, 17901 Bentley Road, Sandy Spring, MD. $35-40. Register here.
Detail from Olson Kundig’s prize-winning entry, “Welcome to the 5th Facade.” (Blank Space)
WHEN ARCHITECTURE TELLS A STORY @ NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM
Next month, the National Building Museum celebrates the winners of Fairy Tales, an architectural storytelling competition open to architects, artists, designers, and writers. WAMU’s Lauren Ober will read passages from the winning entries, and the program will feature an interview with Alan Maskin of the prize-winning design firm Olson Kundig.
Monday, February 6 at 6:30 p.m. at the National Building Museum. $20. Pre-registrer here. . Walk-in registration based on availability.
Detail from Michael Booker, “Etch-A-Sketch Bust,” 2016. Oil on woven canvas, 30”x40”
SELFIE: ME, MYSELF, AND US @ FLASHPOINT
Eight artists from the Sparkplug Collective examine our obsession with selfies, exploring, “concepts of identity, transformation, and personal deception through painting, sculpture, mixed media, photography, and a site-specific performance.”
February 11 – March 11, 2017 at Flashpoint Gallery, 916 G St NW. Free.
Marissa Long, Candles Portal & Chandi Kelley, “Ascending Cloud” (Transformer)
LUMINIFEROUS AETHER @ TRANSFORMER
Corcoran School of Art graduates Chandi Kelley & Marissa Long present new photographs that explore, “immaterial passages, portals opening in space, and objects wavering between states of being.”
February 4 – March 11 at Transformer, 1404 P Street, NW. Opening reception on February 4 from 6-8 p.m. Artist talk on February 25 at 2 p.m.
