S+ART

Be a part of the 2012 Folklife Festival

       

Demonstration of Peace Corps mud cloths, Photo from 2011 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Themes in 2011 Festival included: Colombia, Peace Corps, and Rhythm and Blues.

 

Celebrating 46 years, the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival is bringing traditional performances, live music, authentic cuisine, crafts, story tellers and more from various communities and cultures to the National Mall (beginning on Wednesday, June 27- Sunday, July 1 and Wednesday, July 4 - Monday, July 8).  

What is this festival, you ask?

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is a national and international exhibition of living cultural heritage, treasured and celebrated annually on the National Mall, taking place for two weeks every summer. Nearly every festival has drawn more than one million visitors. One great perk of the festival, is the free admission! The festival is typically organized into three focuses, featuring a nation, region, state, or theme. This year’s programs include three diverse ranges of cultural experiences:

Citified: Arts and Creativity East of the Anacostia River:

Presented in partnership with the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum, the program celebrates the art and creativity of schools, churches, community organizations, business and other residential and local venues of the neighborhoods in Anacostia. Identity is expressed through an eclectic range of arts and cultural activities, such as African dancing and drumming, storytellers, hip-hop dancing, comedians, demonstrations of tattoo art and much more!

 

AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall

 

Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding the AIDS Memorial Quilt:

This year marks the 25^th anniversary of The AIDS Memorial Quilt and 30 years of life with AIDS. This year’s program features the unfolding of the 47,000 hand-sewn panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, craft demonstrations, dance and musical performances, interactive discussions, and other activities that bring together individual and communities to remember loved ones. The quilt will be on display on the National Mall and at more than 40 other locations from July 21-25.

Campus and Community:

This year’s Folklife Festival celebrates the 150^th anniversary of the founding of land-grant universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which partners with communities putting research into action in the areas of agriculture and food, health care, sustainable living, and education. The events featured include hands-on activities, demonstrations, and discussions.

For more general info on the festival and to learn about past festivals go to:

http://www.festival.si.edu/visitor/general.aspx

http://dc.about.com/od/specialevents/a/FolklifeFest.htm

Enjoy!

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 ~Margaret McClung

Food in Art

With Thanksgiving coming up, it's hard not to think about food. As mentioned in yesterday's post, the Smithsonian American Art Museum has an event this weekend focusing on food in art and the work of Wayne Thiebaud. But Thiebaud isn't the only artist who looks to food for inspiration. For centuries, food has been used in still lives as symbols of hospitality and abundance, references to religion or mythology, and memento mori, and contemporary artists continue to depict food in new ways.

In 2001 photographer and video artist Sam Taylor-Wood made a video titled Still Life. The video shows the time-lapsed decaying of a bowl of fruit. It opens with an appetizing arrangement of fruit, similar to those found in traditional still life paintings except for a ballpoint pen in the foreground, but quickly becomes a literal and explicit memento mori. During the three minute film we are confronted with the outcomes of the passing of time: fading beauty, decay, and mortality.

Watch Sam Taylor-Wood's Still Life. Warning: it's kind of gross.

On a much happier, less morbid note, dcist.com recently featured the work of artist John Holcomb in their article The District As A Pop-Tart. In a series titled The United Plates Holcomb has created prints showing every state and The District of Columbia as food. The illustrations are fun and playful and definitely worth a look. If they don't inspire you to make art they'll at least give you some creative ideas for playing with your food at your next meal.

If you're interested in exploring more food in artwork, the Luce Foundation Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum offers Food for Thought, a food themed scavenger hunt through the Center's collection. The scavenger hunt can played in person in the museum, or online by downloading the clues and searching the online collection. The Food for Thought scavenger hunt is available anytime the Luce Foundation Center is open, 11:30am - 7:00pm daily.

images:
Wayne Thiebaud, Around the Cake, 1962
John Holcomb, Washington D.C., 2010

 

Allison Recht

Goings On

Film: "Waste Land," 2009
Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Vik Muniz sets out to make portraits of the garbage-pickers (catadores) at the world’s largest landfill, in Jardim Gramacho outside Rio de Janeiro, using refuse collected on site as his source material. Lucy Walker’s Moby-scored documentary won a 2010 Sundance Audience Award. In English and Portuguese.

TONIGHT - Thursday, 11/18 @ 8:00pm
Hirshhorn Museum, Ring Auditorium
Independence Avenue and Seventh Street SW
FREE

www.hirshhorn.si.edu

 

 

Food in Art Family Day
As Thanksgiving approaches, discover how food has been a source of inspiration for artists in our collection. Try a scavenger hunt through the galleries or sketch out the decoration for your own delicious cake. Decorate your own apron and pick up a recipe for frosting inspired by Wayne Thiebaud’s pastel cakes and pies. Don’t forget to stop by the photo still-life station and get those fruits and veggies ready for their close up!

Saturday, 11/20 @ 11:30am-3:00pm
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Kogod Courtyard
8th and F Streets NW
FREE

image: Wayne Thiebaud, Neapolitan Meringue, 1986/1999, Smithsonian American Art Museum

www.americanart.si.edu

 

Lathe Demonstrations
Watch the Capital Area Woodturners, Chesapeake Woodturners, and Montgomery County Woodturners demonstrate the process used by the artists in A Revolution in Wood to create their unique pieces. Related Exhibit: A Revolution in Wood: The Bresler Collection. 

Tuesday, 11/23 @ 12pm-pm
Renwick Gallery, Palm Court, 1st Floor
1661 Pennsylvania Avenue NW (at 17th Street)
FREE

image: Derek A. Bencomo, Hana Valley, First View, from the "Peaks and Valleys Series", 1997, Smithsonian American Art Museum

www.americanart.si.edu

 

Allison Recht

Goings On

There are two exciting events going on TONIGHT:

At 6:00 pm the Corcoran Gallery is hosting the National Arts & Humanities Month Grand Fete. DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) is celebrating art as a valuable part of our daily lives with works on display by the newly announced visual and media Artist Fellows' at Gallery 31, along with newly acquired pieces from the Art Bank Collection as part of a two week installation titled "Synergy." For more information, visit dcarts.dc.gov

FREE
Call 202-724-5613 to order
Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design
500 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
202-639-1700

At 6:30 pm Irina Stotland will be discussing The Self-Portraits of Paul Gauguin as part of the Kreeger Museum’s Post Impressionism Lecture Series. Stotland will explore the variety of methods that the painter employed in developing his image of self in his works, and offer a theory that links his visual vocabulary of self-imagery with his words, by exploring his letters and articles.

$7-$10
Call 202-338-3552 to order
Kreeger Museum
2401 Foxhall Road, NW
Washington, DC 20007
202-337-3050

 This weekend the National Gallery of Art is offering a gallery talk titled “Masterworks from American Modernism: The Shein Collection: ‘Painting VI’ by Morton Schamberg”. 30 minute lectures will be given by lecturer Wilford W. Scott about Morton Schamberg’s 1916 oil painting Painting VI.

Saturday 10/23 @ 12:00 pm and Sunday 10/24 @ 12:00 pm
FREE
National Gallery of Art - East Building, Ground Level, Information Desk
401 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20565
202-737-4215

Wednesday is Art on the Rocks, an art-inspired cocktail competition hosted by The Art League in which 5 local mixologists from Austin Grill, Chadwicks, Columbia Firehouse, Jackson 20, and Vermilion must choose a piece from the juried exhibit Dinner Party as inspiration and create a cocktail. Ticket holders may sample the cocktails and vote for their favorite at the event. Enjoy appetizers from the restaurants, demos by Art League instructors and drawings for prizes. Must be 21 or older.

Wednesday 10/27 @ 6:30 pm
$25 in advance, $30 at the door
Call 703-683-1780 to order or download an order form from www.theartleague.org
The Art League
105 North Union Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-683-1780

Image Credits:
Anna U. Davis, Self Portrait
Paul Gauguin, Self Portrait
Morton Schamberg, Painting IV
From the exhibit Dinner Party, The Art League

Allison Recht

Going On: Arts on Foot

Today, tomorrow, and Saturday, take a stroll over to 7th and F Streets NW for The Washington Examiner's Arts on Foot event. Featured activities include a juried fine art market, entertainment stages, exhibits, hands-on activities, food and wine tastings, and a neighborhood showcase. This annual event is free and offers the perfect way to enjoy our beautiful fall weather this weekend. Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. Saturday will also feature a Festival to celebrate the final day of the event.

Goings On: Art + Coffee

 
For all of you who sit and enjoy your coffee at Starbucks or other boutique coffee establishments, here’s something new to try.  Why not combine a relaxing cup of coffee with treasured examples of American Art?  Visit the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum for an event called “Art + Coffee: Luce Foundation Center for American Art.”  This year-round event takes place Wednesday through Sunday from 1:30 to 3:30 PM in the F Street lobby.  Participate in a staff-led tour then sit and enjoy coffee and other beverages while watching video clips of artist interviews on a large LCD screen or surfing free wireless internet!

Art + Coffee = The Perfect Combination!

For information about programs in the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, please call (202) 633-5435 or e-mail AmericanArtLuce@si.edu.

New Exhibition! "Black Box: Superflex"

August 9, 2010 to November 28, 2010

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum of modern and contemporary art is excited to announce an upcoming exhibit called, “Black Box: Superflex,” scheduled to run from August 9, 2010 to November 28, 2010.

 This exhibition highlights everyday societal realities that push the viewer to examine them with a more probing eye.  Playful, yet satirical, Black Box: Superflex is sure to be a viewer's favorite this Fall!

Below is a description of the exhibition from the Hirshhorn:

“Since 1993, Superflex—the Danish art collective based in Copenhagen and Rio de Janeiro whose members are Jakob Fenger (b. Roskilde, 1968), Rasmus Nielsen (b. Hjørring, 1969), and Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen (b. Copenhagen, 1969)—has staged unconventional artworks that use social intervention as a means of calling attention to such issues as democratization, environmentalism, and consumerism. The group’s “actions” and provocations have ranged from an initiative that helped Thai pig farmers convert barnyard excrement into marketable biofuel to an urban project for which they conspired with convenience store owners to disorient customers at the checkout by informing them their “purchases” would be free.

Commercial imagery, such as the logos and signature color combinations that are increasingly inescapable aspects of our visual landscape, has inspired contemporary artists since even before the Pop era. For “Flooded McDonald’s,” (2009), Superflex meticulously constructed and filmed a life-size replica of the interior of an actual restaurant of the fast food chain. The artists borrow the cinematic vocabulary of documentaries, ads, and disaster movies to create this suspenseful, ambiguous drama. For reasons unknown, the patrons and staff have left the premises, leaving viewers behind to watch, think, and speculate.”

  

Goings On: The World of Yves Klein

Yves Klein remains in modern art’s more recent memory as one of the most influential, forward-thinking, and conceptual artists of the twentieth century.  This summer, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is hosting an exhibition of Klein’s work—the first retrospective of his work in the United States in 30 years.  The exhibition is called With the Void, Full Powers, and runs from May 20, 2010 to September 12, 2010.

All of Yves Klein’s major series will be represented in the exhibition, including works from Anthropometries, Cosmogonies, fire paintings, planetary reliefs, blue monochromes, gold and pink monochromes, and body and sponge reliefs.  More ephemeral works such as “air architecture,” letters, writings, sketches, and photographs will also showcase his unique process and individualistic artistic conception of the self.

 Born in Nice, France in 1928, Yves Klein’s artistic career was abruptly cut short at the age of 34 when he suffered a fatal heart attack in Paris in 1962.  However, his contribution to modern art has left a legacy of capturing the immaterial and achieving artistic spirituality through pure color.  In his quest he invented a variation of ultramarine blue called International Klein Blue.  He practiced his notions color and art through a wide range of media, such as painting, sculpture, photography, music, film, performance, and literature.  His pioneering approach paved the way for modern artists to be less concerned with physical objects and more concerned with representing the conceptual, abstract, and intangible.  In connection with this exhibition, the Hirshhorn Museum is conducting gallery talks, lectures, and after hours events aimed at illuminating the world of Yves Klein—as both an enduring artist and transitory man.

"Color is sensibility in material form, matter in its primordial state."

-Yves Klein

The schedule of events is as follows:

Friday, July 16^th

Gallery Talk: Yves Klein, 12:30 PM to 1:00 PM

Steve Antosca, composer and artistic director of the VERGE ensemble and the National Gallery of Art’s New Music Ensemble, discusses Yves Klein's Monotone Symphony.

Location: Hirshhorn Museum, meet at information desk

Admission is free

Friday, July 23^rd

Gallery Talk: Yves Klein, 12:30 PM to 1:00 PM

Daniel Moquay, director of the Yves Klein Archives in Paris, leads a tour of the exhibition while sharing his extensive knowledge of the artist’s career and creative process.

Location: Hirshhorn Museum, meet at information desk

Admission is free

 

Hirshhorn After Hours: A Special Evening of Art, Music, and Cocktails, 8:00 PM to Midnight

After Hours celebrates Yves Klein with gallery talks, live music, and special performances by Karl Marks, Brandon Joseph Neukam, and Sunrize Highway.  Hosted by drag performer, Summer Camp.

Location: Hirshhorn Museum

Tickets On Sale Now: $18 in advance, free to Annual Circle members (tickets must be purchased in advance; no door sales)

Buy Tickets Now

Thursday, September 9^th

Kaira Cabañas on Yves Klein, 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Kaira Cabañas, an art historian and contributor to the exhibition catalogue, discusses Klein’s work with directed focus on his film and performance work.

Location: Hirshhorn Museum

Admission is free 

Every Saturday + Sunday through September 12^th

Exhibition Tour: Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, 12:30 PM

Docent-led tour of exhibition

Location: Hirshhorn Museum, meet at information desk

Admission is free

 

 

 

 

MAKIYKUMANTA-Peru: Arts and Cultural Legacy

This year’s Indian Summer Showcase at the Smithsonian has yet again proved to be a phenomenal success.  The National Museum of the American Indian has featured a continual series of cultural displays from Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Hawai’i, and Peru in its annual summer celebration.

What’s coming up next?  The 6-day festival of “MAKIYKUMANTA-Peru: Arts and Cultural Legacy.”  This event runs from Tuesday, July 13^th through Sunday, July 18^th and is co-sponsored by the Embassy of Peru.

  

 

 

Here is a sampling of daily events:

 10:00am- Arts and Crafts Exhibits Open

10:00am-10:30am- Open

10:30am-11:00am-Open

11:00am-11:30am- Children's Workshop by Antonieta Merida (ceramics)

11:30am-12:00pm- Musical Performance by INCA SON

12pm- 12:30pm-Perfomrance by INCA SON (includes dance lessons)

12:30pm-1:00pm- Open

1:00pm-1:30pm- Films/Videos

1:30pm-2:00pm- Films/Videos

2:00pm-2:30pm- Musical Performance by INCA SON

2:30pm-3:00pm- Performance by INCA SON (includes dance lessons)

3:00pm-3:30pm- Senora de Cao (conference)

3:30pm-4:00pm- Open

4:00pm-4:30pm- Rural Community Lifestyle (conference)

4:30pm-5:00pm- Open

5:30pm- Arts and Crafts Exhibits Closes

  

Location:

American Indian Museum

Potomac Atrium, 1^st Level

Fourth Street & Independence Ave., S.W.

Washington, DC 20560

The National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., is located on the National Mall between the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum and the U.S. Capitol Building.

Hours: 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM daily

This event is FREE to the public!

In addition to enjoying music, performances, food demonstrations, films, lectures, and dance, visitors are able to purchase textile, silver jewelry, paintings, ceramics, and wood/stone carvings.

Come see the beauty and spirit of these Peruvian arts!

Goings On: 10-Day Festival for Arts and Artisans from Bolivia and the Peruvian Island of Taquile

For the fifth consecutive summer, the National Museum of the American Indian has hosted the acclaimed multicultural Indian Summer Showcase—a cultural amalgamation featuring indigenous native art, dance, film, food and music.   
This summer’s Fifth Anniversary schedule of events looks promising, as several exciting and enlightening concerts, demonstrations, fairs, and performances bring together the traditional, yet dynamic native cultures of Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, and even Hawai'i.

The first three-day event of the Indian Summer Showcase began Saturday, May 29, called Celebrate Hawai’i: Hula, highlighting Hawaiian dance, food, and botany.

Following this event is the three-day Ibero-American Guitar Festival, starting TOMORROW, Friday, June 4 through Sunday, June 6.  Look forward to hearing traditional instruments in concerts and in classes.

Next is the event featured: the 10-Day Festival of the Arts and Artisans from Bolivia and the Peruvian Island of Taquile.  Presented by the National Museum of the American Indian, and co-sponsored by the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), this 10-day festival takes place from Friday, June 11, 2010 to Sunday, June 20, 2010 in the Potomac Atrium (1^st level) of the NMAI.  Best of all? It’s completely free to the public! 
Venture over to see the authentic crafts and culture of the visiting Bolivian artisans.  Ideal for kids and families, or simply anyone interested in the colorful and diverse offerings of Bolivian art or Peruvian dance, this Indian Summer Showcase event highlights the objects of artistic and cultural significance of the Chiquitanos, Guarayos, Icocenos, and Ayoreosl people from the eastern lowlands region of Bolivia. 
These indigenous artisans will be showcasing and selling traditional weavings, embroidery, pottery, paintings, and sculpture for visitors to bring home a piece of authentic Bolivian art for themselves.
  If this isn’t exciting enough, you will be able to see customary dances performed by an ensemble from the Island of Taquile in Lake Titicaca!

 

Following this 10-day festival is a collection of equally enticing events, such as Country of the Clouds: Indigenous Artists of the Oaxaca-Mixtec Region from June 22 to June 26, MAKIYKUMANTA-Peru: Arts and Cultural Legacy from July 13 to July 18, All Hands on Design! Native Designers from Argentina from July 31 to August 3, and finally Living Earth Festival, which wraps up the Indian Summer Showcase event series.

For more information on the schedule of the Indian Summer Showcase festivals, concerts, films, etc., go to www.AmericanIndian.si.edu or the Indian Summer Showcase Schedule of Events 2010.

Make a point to check it out!