(National Building Museum)
HIVE @ NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM
After blockbuster installations dedicated to icebergs and the beach, the National Building Museum turns to a perhaps less comforting structure for this summer’s immersive show: the honeycomb. Hive consists of three interconnected, domed chambers made out of thousands of paper tubes painted silver and magenta. The installation was designed by Studio Gang, whose founder Jeanne Gang describes it as, “ a series of chambers shaped by sound that are ideally suited for intimate conversations and gatherings as well as performances and acoustic experimentation. Using wound paper tubes, a common building material with unique sonic properties, and interlocking them to form a catenary dome, we create a hive for these activities, bringing people together to explore and engage the senses.”
July 4 through September 4 at the National Building Museum. $16 for adults, $13 for youths/students/seniors, and $10 for Blue Star Military Adults. Tickets will be available for advance purchase starting June 20. Tickets are free, though still necessary, for National Building Museum members, with availability beginning online on June 13.
Dana Tai Soon Burgess Company performing “The Foster Suite: The Remains of Loss and Longing” in the Kogod Courtyard in 2016 (Jeff Malet)
DANA TAI SOON BURGESS DANCE COMPANY @ NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
In conjunction with the exhibit, The Face of Battle, which we wrote, “brings the cost of war home … in the laughter, exhaustion, and absence of the people behind the uniform,” the National Portrait Gallery hosts the Dana Tai Soon Burgess Comany’s “After 1001 Nights,” a new dance inspired by “the psychological impact of war on soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.” According to a press release, the dance, which is choreographed to a piece by iconoclastic composer John Zorn, “focuses on a soldier looking back at his younger self and trying to come to terms with what he saw and did in war.”
July 8 at 2 and 4 p.m. at the National Portrait Gallery, Kogod Courtyard. Free.
Courtesy of the Hirshhorn
SOUND SCENE X @ HIRSHHORN
For one day only, the Hirshhorn will host this 10th annual festival of audio art, interactive sound installations, and games curated by DC Listening Lounge. This year’s theme is dissonance. Installations will give you the opportunity to listen to the solar system, play a veggie keyboard, build wind chimes, compose melodies based on body temperature, and “construct a wall of silence.” See our preview of last year’s festival.
Saturday, July 8 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Free.
(Transformer)
HOMEGROWN @ TRANSFORMER
For its summer exhibition, Transformer, in partnership with Logan Hardware, Miss Pixies, and the rooftop farming program UpTop Acres, will be showcasing, “local art, agriculture, and business and examining what it means to sustain a hyper-local lifestyle in D.C. Exploring intersectional themes of sustainability and the local, homegrown programming will include performances, conversations, and workshops from artists, farmers and independent business-owners alike.”
July 12—August 23 at Transformer, 1404 P Street NW. Opening reception is Wednesday, July 12, 6—9 p.m.
Fanny Sanín, Detail from Acrylic No. 2, 2011, 2011; Courtesy of the artist; Photo by Robert Lorenzson
EQUILIBRIUM: FANNY SANIN @ NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
Five paintings and more than 30 drawings demonstrate the process behind the colorful geometric works of Fanny Sanin, a Bogota-born artist who now lives in New York. Associate Curator Virginia Treanor says, for more than 40 years, Sanín has methodically pursued symmetry, harmony, and equilibrium in her geometric abstractions. In the field of abstract art, women have too often been seen as imitators or followers of their male peers. The significant and dynamic contributions of women, like Fanny Sanín, to abstraction have only recently begun to be fully recognized.”
July 14—October 29 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Matthias Mansen, Detail from Bather, before the Storm, 1991, woodcut, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Bell
MATTHIAS MANSEN: CONFIGURATIONS @ NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
German artist Matthias Mansen uses scavenged wood from floorboards or abandoned furniture and transforms them into large-scale woodcuts, using repeated motifs in subtly altered variations. The National Gallery of Art will exhibit examples of Mansen’s serial projects, which “are best viewed as an ensemble, so that their grammar and rhythms become palpable.”
July 23 – December 13, 2017 at the National Gallery of Art, West Concourse Gallery.
(Ai Weiwei Studios)
AI WEIWEI: TRACE @ THE HIRSHHORN
Back in 2012, the Hirshhorn’s survey of work by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Wewei was a must-see, but because Chinese authorities had confiscated his passport, he was unable to attend his own exhibit. That’s changed this year, when Ai attended the Hirshhorn’s latest exhibit and was able to see his installation Trace for the first time. We wrote that this showcase of new and recent works is “provocative and hilarious.”
Through January 1, 2018 at the Hirshhorn.
Marlene Dietrich on the SS Europa, 1933, Cherbourg,France.By Paul Cwojdzinski. 1933. Deutsche Kinemathek-Marlene Dietrich Collection, Berlin
MARLENE DIETRICH: DRESSED FOR THE IMAGE @ NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
Hollywood Legend Marlene Dietrich is the subject of this recently opened exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. Dressed for the Image examines the legacy of the Berlin-born entertainer as a pioneer of androgyny as well as a patriot who performed for American troops during World War II. We wrote that, “She didn’t just push boundaries, she smashed them.”
Through April 15, 2018 at the National Portrait Gallery, 8th and F Sts NW. FREE. Gallery hours are 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day except Christmas Day.
Sylvia “Marilyn” Shot by Gordon Ames Lameyer. June 1954. Photo by Gordon Lameyer, Courtesy The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
ONE LIFE: SYLVIA PLATH @ NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
Also recently opened at the Portrait Gallery, an exhibit that reveals a surprisingly light side to the poet whose fame has at times been overshadowed by her husband, poet Ted Hughes, and her suicide at the age of 30. Co-curator Karen Kukil told DCist that she “wants to dispel the morose stereotype of her … she was an incredibly brave, fearless, and intensely intelligent woman.” Read our preview of the show here.
On view through May 20, 2018 at the National Portrait Gallery, 8th and F Sts NW. FREE. Gallery hours are 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day except Christmas Day.
