Off and On the Mall: Washington’s Newest Art Museum, The Rubell Museum DC, the Hirschhorn, and the National Gallery
This special day trip to Washington includes visits to two major museum exhibitions and a tour of Washington’s stunning new art museum: The Rubell Museum DC.
Rubell Museum DC, which opened in a renovated historically Black public school in southwest DC in October 2022, is dedicated exclusively to contemporary art – meaning art being made now – and is part of a collection of paintings, sculptures, photography, videos and installation art distinguished by unprecedented range and depth. Founded by Don and Mera Rubell, significant participants in the contemporary art world, the Rubell Museums are among the most prestigious and influential private art institutions in the US. Focusing on a wide range of working artists at varying stages of their careers, the privately held and run Rubell has a free hand to be edgy and provocative as it surveys the state of American culture today. The inaugural exhibition, What’s Going On, includes 190 works by 50 artists who are responding to the social and political issues of today.
At the National Gallery we will have a guided tour of Philip Guston Now which charts the 50-year career of one of America’s most influential modern artists through more than 150 paintings and drawings. Renowned in his time and in ours, Guston’s work continues to resonate, attract, and provoke, raising crucial questions about the relationship of art to beauty and brutality, freedom and doubt, politics and the imagination. This tour will be especially meaningful, coming shortly after Aneta’s 3-part series on Guston.
At the Hirshhorn we will explore A Window Suddenly Opens: Contemporary Photography in China - a survey of photography by leading multigenerational Chinese artists and showcasing 186 works made between the 1990s and 2000s. The exhibition’s title is from a 1997 “manifesto” by Chinese artists that celebrated a shift in the practice of photography from realism to conceptual art. Over three decades, Chinese artists embraced an unprecedented freedom to focus on the self, and responded with candor. This window of artistic freedom may now be closed.
Members-only program. $100 per person. Space is limited. Register and pay online via the link below.