Art Exhibits

National Museum of Women

This spring, the National Museum of Women in the Arts will unveil the first phase of a bold public art project. Sculptures by renowned women artists will be exhibited in changing installations on New York Avenue—right at NMWA’s front door. The first phase of the New York Avenue Sculpture Project features four monumental sculptures by French-born artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002).

http://www.nmwa.org

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

May 20 - Sept 12, 2010

In preparation for the opening of "Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers" we are experimenting with letting the artist himself introduce the show. From May 1 until the exhibition opens on May 20, the Hirshhorn is turning its social media outlets over to Klein. Audiences will experience him in his own words, as he explains his goals, process, artworks and projects. “For this first U.S. retrospective in nearly 30 years of one of the 20th century's most influential artists, we felt it was essential not only to present Klein as the maker of beautiful objects but also as a thinker, a philosopher who paved the way for future generations,” says exhibition co-curator Kerry Brougher, chief curator and deputy director of the Museum. This launches a brand new programmatic endeavor using today's communications tools to provide dynamic, thought-provoking content that extends the ideas and energy of the exhibition. Quotes by Klein will be posted daily to Twitter and Facebook with links to accompanying images, video and audio on Flickr and YouTube. As the material is made available through social media, it will also be posted to this ongoing timeline that will be built up daily on the Hirshhorn website. At the end of 20 days, audiences will have a complete record of the daily postings collected in one place. Thus Klein will live online, a platform that fulfills his expressed desire “to realize in my own creations that 'transparence,' that immeasurable 'void' in which lives the permanent and absolute spirit freed of all dimensions.”

http://hirshhorn.si.edu

Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
May 2–September 6, 2010

In the first scholarly exhibition of American poet Allen Ginsberg's photographs, all facets of his work in photography will be explored. Some 79 works on display will range from the 1950s "drugstore" prints to his now celebrated portraits of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, snapshots of Ginsberg himself taken just before he achieved literary fame, and his later portraits of the Beats and other friends made in the 1980s and 1990s. Ginsberg (1926–1997) started taking photographs in 1953 when he purchased a small, secondhand Kodak camera. For the next decade he captured numerous intimate shots of himself as well as his friends and lovers. He abandoned photography in 1963 but returned to it in the early 1980s. Encouraged by photographers Berenice Abbott and Robert Frank, he reprinted much of his early work and began making new portraits, adding sometimes extensive inscriptions. Although Ginsberg's photographs form a compelling portrait of the Beat and counterculture generation from the 1950s to the 1990s, his pictures are far more than mere historical documents. The same ideas that inform his poetry—an intense observation of the world, a deep appreciation of the beauty of the vernacular, a celebration of the sacredness of the present, and a faith in intuitive expression—also permeate his photography.

http://www.nga.gov

German Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, 1580-1900
May 16–November 28, 2010

This stunning exhibition of 120 of the finest German drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection showcases major works ranging from the 17th-century baroque and 18th-century rococo to 19th-century romanticism and realism. Passionately assembled by Wolfgang Ratjen (1943–1997) over three decades, the drawings include rare, evocative, and influential examples by Hans von Aachen, Johann Rottenhammer, and Adam Elsheimer; studies for soaring religious ceilings by some of the greatest South German artists, including Cosmas Damian Asam, Matthäus Günther, and Johann Baptist Enderle; delightful Augsburg designs for rococo prints by Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner, Johann Esaias Nilson, and Gottfried Eichler; landscape watercolors by Johann Georg von Dillis and Caspar David Friedrich; architectural watercolors by Balthasar Neumann, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Rudolf von Alt; and an exciting group of realist drawings by Hans Thoma, Adolph Menzel, and Max Liebermann.

http://www.nga.gov