Over at Modern Art Notes, blogger Tyler Green has the (hilariously named) MANscoop that the National Gallery of Art is in negotiations to expand across the street from its current location on Constitution Avenue into the Federal Trade Commission building. The deal isn’t sealed yet, but Green’s sources sound pretty confident that the museum will be moving over to the space in time for a 2012 opening. MAN has a decent history of the two…

If you are lucky enough to have the President’s Day holiday off work and you manage to wake up before 5 p.m., it may be a good chance to go down to the National Mall and look at some art. The National Gallery of Art’s new exhibit, Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965, takes a focused look at four themes in the artist’s work during an important decade in American art. Johns is one…

Two new shows opened yesterday on the second floor of the Hirshhorn Museum, and an unexpected ice day offered the perfect chance to go see them. Refract, Reflect, Project brings together a few rooms worth of light works from the museum’s collection, some more recent and some classics. The most striking work was an installation by the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, whose The weather project transformed the Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern in 2003….

We start this week’s Arts Agenda with some news from the Hirshhorn. Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes tells us that the Hirshhorn has a new director, noting that: The Hirshhorn held no press conference introducing their new director. The Corcoran, however, just held a presser to announce that they don’t have a director! Anyhow, back to the latest listings … Kick off summer by visiting some of the new exhibits around D.C. this week….

(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…