Have you or anyone know you know sat for a portrait? In the world since photography, what relevance does the tradition of painted portraiture have? These are questions that the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery would like us to consider. The museum is offering a free event, the Edgar P. Richardson symposium, this Friday (November 17, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.) on the subject of Today’s Face: Perspectives on Contemporary Portraiture. The morning session features two…

>> Show ‘Em How It’s Done: Remember how much we hated the Art Walk? We can’t fix the mosaicked drain gutters (ugh), but you can do your part and dress up the rest. The D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities is soliciting entries for the next exhibit entitled Drift. Hat tip to Lenny from Mid Atlantic Art News for this info, and who also tells us that the first exhibit may have suffered simply…

Doilies make things look precious, dainty and cute, like snowflakes without the hassle of puddles. They look good on mantels, under candelabra and posh clocks. But doilies made from cheap paper simply look tacky when they frame paintings — exactly the look Marcel Duchamp wanted when he hung the Société Anonyme’s first show in New York in 1920. The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America, currently showing at the Phillips Collection, is the first visiting show…

Written by DCist contributor Genevieve Smith. With perhaps the exception of art involving excrement or the denigration of religious icons, there are very few types of contemporary art more likely to raise the ire (or at least the eyebrow) of nonbelievers than those using found art objects. Walking into a gallery filled with readymades, one can almost hear a grumbling murmur of “my six year-old could have made that.” But while a sculpture constructed out…

You Dada See It: DCist finally spent a day exploring Dada at the National Gallery, and it’s really the sort of exhibition that grows on you as you move through it. The first room, detailing the Dada movement as it emerged in Zurich, is a tough nut to crack — a few too many photo collages that aren’t terribly stimulating clutter the landscape. But as you move through Berlin and Hannover, eventually reaching Paris and…