The pandemic is forcing the city’s major cultural institutions, many now closed, to ponder their futures.

With the National Museum of the American Indian already on the mall, art that represents the American Indian doesn’t often show up at other local museums. But George de Forest Brush: The Indian Paintings, a National Gallery of Art show that opened this weekend, presents insight into both the work of an obscure painter and into 19th century Native American life. Brush grew up in Brooklyn and Connecticut, and is not a Native American. He…

“Blind by immediate perils of his positions, haunted by his dream of the future, he is the anonymous standard bearer of innumerable battles without name. He is pure flame. Such fire will liberate and cleanse the world,” Duncan Phillips on Honoré Daumier’s The Uprising in 1940. While some art collectors purchase works that will some day turn a profit, others looks for pieces that are personally significant in some capacity. Duncan Phillips, the founder of…

Last week, Artomatic announced the dates and location of this year’s art extravaganza, and today at noon, the registration flood gates open. If you want to participate, get out $90 and register quick before all of the good spots are taken. Don’t worry too much though; although registration is first come, first serve, there are nine full floors of space available this year, compared to last year’s two. Now, on to this week’s arts agenda….

Even though he has a room dedicated to his likeness in the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s new exhibit, The American Evolution: A History Through Art, one of George Washington’s most famous portraits resides at the National Portrait Gallery and has a storied history. Nicknamed the “Lansdowne” portrait, Gilbert Stuart’s 205-year-old painting, George Washington, has not spent many of those years in this country. “Lansdowne” comes from the person for whom it was painted, the first…

In this newest exhibit at the Phillips Collection, the museum shows off 120 works acquired in the last decade, including work by 28 artists new to the Phillips. Director Jay Gates, along with Chief Curator Eliza Rathbone, explained at the press preview on Monday that these recent acquisitions continue the tradition of Founder Duncan Phillips, who expressly wished for the museum’s collection not to be stable or static, but for his successors to maintain the…