Arts Groups, Facing Their Own Virus Crisis, Get a Piece of the Stimulus

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Julia Jacobs

Estimating a $100 million shortfall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is pushing for substantial government support for arts nonprofits in the upcoming stimulus package.Credit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

The so-called coronavirus curve is far from flat, but for many of the country’s arts organizations, revenue certainly is. Ticket sales are practically nonexistent. So, like other sectors of the economy, arts organizations have been turning to local and federal taxpayers for help, trying to make the case that American culture needs a bailout, too. The $2 trillion federal stimulus deal, which was approved by the Senate on Wednesday.... includes $75 million for the National Endowment for the Arts and $75 million.... Another $50 million was designated to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which distributes funds to museums and libraries. [More]

Lost, and Now Found, Art From the Civil Rights Era

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Hilarie M. Sheets

Panel 1 of “Struggle: From the History of the American People.” The work, by Jacob Lawrence, was received with some ambivalence by the art world. The collection was eventually purchased by a private collector who later resold each panel separately. The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via PEM

During the civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) — one of the leading black artists of his day — painted a series of 30 panels re-examining early American history. The series, “Struggle: From the History of the American People,” presented a radically integrated view of the nation’s founding, including unheralded contributions of African-Americans in the fight to build a new democracy. The majority of these little-seen paintings have been reunited for the first time in roughly 60 years in “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle,” on view at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., through April 26. [More]

Rediscovering India’s Forgotten Masterpieces in London

BBC | CULTURE
By Rahul Verma

Family of Gulam Khan, Six Recruits, Fraser Album, c. 1815, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institute). Ghulam Ali Khan was a the court painter for Mughal emperors Akbar II and Bahadur Shah II

They were simply labelled ‘Company Painting’ and ‘Company School’; but some artworks assigned to a niche bureaucratic category are now being recognised as masterpieces. Paintings commissioned by patrons of the East India Company during the late 18th and early 19th Centuries are currently on show in an exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London. Forgotten Masters – Indian Painting for the East India Company focuses on artists who were previously neglected. According to its curator, historian William Dalrymple, they should be celebrated as “major artists of the greatest capabilities”. [More]

A Voice for the Arts, and Social Justice, joins the Board of the National Gallery of Art

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Philip Kennicott

Darren Walker at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit in 2015. Walker was named a member of the National Gallery of Art board in September. (Daphne Doerr/Ford Foundation)

Late in 2014, the city of Detroit emerged from a bankruptcy that had threatened to destroy what little was left of its social bonds.A “grand bargain” mediated by a U.S. District Court judge saved the city, including most of the promised pensions and all of the museum’s art. Central to making that grand bargain work was Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. In the five years since that crisis, Walker has emerged as one of the country’s preeminent voices for the arts, and social justice, and for new strategies to ameliorate inequality. And in September, the National Gallery of Art announced that Walker would be joining its board, one of the smallest and most exclusive governing bodies in the art world, with only nine members, four of them ex officio positions, including the chief justice of the United States and the secretaries of the Treasury and State departments. [More]

Art-Lover: Dani Levinas Alert to the Voice and the Tap on the Shoulder

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Ted Loos

Dani Levinas in the home he and his wife, Mirella, share in Washington with their art collection. From left, Richard Deacon’s “X-Copper” (2017); on wall, Bruno Dunley’s “The Lake” (2017); Jorge Méndez Blake’s “The Art of Loving” (2009) and Waltercio Caldas’s “Untitled” (1993). Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

Among his many roles, Mr. Levinas — an avid art collector and the chairman of the board of the Phillips Collection, the modern-art museum in Dupont Circle. For the last 50 years, he and his wife, Mirella, 69, have been buying art, much of which is in their Georgetown home, a grand old residence that has been made over into an ultramodern showplace. The Levinas collection numbers in the hundreds, and about two-thirds of it is by Latin American artists. Some of the makers, like the Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora and the Chilean artist Iván Navarro, are quite established, but others would qualify as new names to many. [More]

Christ at Center of Spanish Sculptor Alonso Berruguete’s Art

THE ARLINGTON CATHOLIC HERALD
By Nora Hamerman

“The Adoration of the Magi,” c. 1537-38, by Spanish sculptor Alonso Berruguete is a painted wood with gilding depiction of the Holy Family. St. Joseph peers over Mary’s shoulder as she looks down at the babe squirming to receive the gift of the oldest king. NORA HAMERMAN | COURTESY

For the first time, the work of celebrated Spanish sculptor Alonso Berruguete is being featured at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Not only did Berruguete bring the emotional power and physical realism of the Italian Renaissance to Spain, he brought Christ back to the center of Spanish religious art. As liturgical Christmastide draws to a close Jan. 12, Berruguete’s moving paintings, sculptures and drawings invite us to contemplate the mystery of salvation from the birth of Christ to his death and resurrection. “Alonso Berruguete: First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain” is in Washington until Feb. 17 at the National Gallery of Art, which is free and open to the public every day. [More]

Did You Miss These Show This Fall?

Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Gwaneum) from Korea, Goryeo dynasty, ca. 1220–1285. One of the Buddhist masterworks at the Smithsonian’s Freer|Sackler galleries.

Mark your calendar. From a revamped MoMA and the fearless Pope.L to Renaissance sculptors and female modernists, here are more than 100 shows that define the new season. SACRED DEDICATION: A KOREAN BUDDHIST MASTERPIECE A thousand-year-old gilded wood statue of the Korean bodhisattva of compassion makes a timely visit to our nation’s capital. Sept. 21-March 22; Freer Sackler Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., freersackler.si.edu. [More]

In DC's ‘Verrocchio,’ Leonardo’s Master Is the Star

THE NEW YORK TIMES 
By Jason Farago

The haunted polychrome “Bust of Christ” (1470-1483) displayed Verrocchio’s ability to imbue religious icons with psychological sensitivity.CreditYale University Art Gallery

WASHINGTON — Probably, on a long car ride or at a lagging dinner party, you have been asked that trivial query: If you could have been born at any time and place, where and when would you choose? If you’re an artist, then at least as a practical matter you ought to consider reincarnating in Florence in the late 15th century. You could spend your whole career painting saints, carving statesmen and designing palaces, perhaps splitting the work with your colleagues. Leonardo and those other artists all worked in the same studio in Medici Florence, the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio (circa 1435-1488). Like most of the top artists during the Renaissance’s greatest building boom, Verrocchio was a man of all trades, chiseling marble and casting bronze, painting altarpieces and designing monuments, machinery, theatrical costumes. [More]

Collecting to Explore ‘Origin, Culture, Form, Function and Race’

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Audrey Hoffer

Tony Gyepi-Garbrah and Desirée Venn Frederic at their residence in Washington. Credit Ting Shen for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Desirée Venn Frederic and Tony Gyepi-Garbrah live in a light-filled apartment in the Trinidad neighborhood of Northeast Washington that is small in size but grand in scope. The charcoal walls, stretching up to 15-foot ceilings, hold dozens of paintings, prints, photographs, 100-year-old textiles, collages, drawings, pastels, ceramics, and antiques, conferring a museumlike aura on the home. “One of the reasons I took an interest in Tony was because he understood legacy-building with art,” she said. She and Mr. Gyepi-Garbrah, 39, plan to marry later this year. [More]

The Beautiful Paradoxes of da Vinci’s Teacher at National Gallery of Art

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Andrea del Verrocchio’s “Bust of Christ” (c. 1470/1483). Credit Yale University Art Gallery

The 15th-century painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio stood at the center of the Renaissance. A favorite of the Medicis, he was a teacher to Pietro Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci. With lips set and eyes downcast, Verrocchio’s painted terra-cotta bust of Christ — one of dozens of treasures in “Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. — projects confidence, resignation, weariness, compassion, devotion to duty, pain and an exalted kind of loneliness. [More]

The Museum Is the Refugee’s Home

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Jason Farago

Liu Xiaodong, in his painting “Refugees 4” (2015), depicts Syrian refugees at the port of Lesbos gathered together in a moment of rest. A show at the Phillips Collection features 75 artists on migration and displacement.

WASHINGTON — “In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees,’” Hannah Arendt wrote in 1943. She was in New York by then. "Hell is no longer a religious belief or a fantasy, but something as real as houses and stones and trees,” Arendt wrote. Today the United Nations estimates that there are 25.9 million refugees worldwide, the highest number recorded since Arendt and countless others fled their homes during World War II. These are the lives that populate “The Warmth of Other Suns,” a poignant, solemn and utterly shaming exhibition through Sept. 22 at the Phillips Collection here. The show fills the Washington museum with the work of 75 artists, some staring down current crises of migration, others with more poetic views of movement and displacement. [More]

Two Pakistani American Women Reinvent Traditional At With Unconventional Subjects

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Vanessa H. Larson

Ambreen Butt’s mixed-media artwork, “Shoaib (8),” takes its title from the name and age of a young victim of an American drone strike. (Photo by Kevin Todora/Ambreen Butt)

Ambreen Butt makes a striking first impression. In the Pakistani American artist’s first solo exhibition in Washington, two large images hang on the wall just opposite the entrance to her show, “Mark My Words,” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Concurrent with Butt’s show at the NMWA, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is coincidentally also showcasing several etchings by a kindred spirit: Shahzia Sikander, a 2006 MacArthur Fellow who had a well-regarded solo exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1999 and 2000 devoted to paintings inspired by Indo-Persian miniatures. [More]

Broadway's "Amazing Grace" the Musical Live Returns to Museum of Bible in Wash., DC

MUSEUM OF BIBLE

Buy Tickets Now!

Museum of the Bible Has Jumped the Ark

HYPERALLERGIC
By Hrag Vartanian

The CEO of the Museum of the Bible, Ken McKenzie, appears to think that the Biblical story of David and Goliath is real, and that archaeologists have actually discovered the exact stone (which he’s weirdly specific about) used to slay the giant. A former pilot and officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force turned Airbus executive, McKenzie’s words are the latest example of the Museum of the Bible being involved in questionable intellectual activity and framing. Recently the museum, as reported by Michael Press for Hyperallergic, has engaged in what appears to be illegal archaeological activity on occupied lands and fake Dead Sea scrolls. [More]

60 Years On, Alvin Ailey’s Dancers Take The Stage — And Prove Why The Company is Unlike Any Other

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Sarah L. Kaufman

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Rennie Harris’s “Lazarus” at the Kennedy Center. (Paul Kolnik)

Sometimes, the less said, the better. Even when kicking off a triumphant occasion, such as the 60th anniversary of a modern-dance company, which is, by the way, a monumental mile-marker in the economically stressed field of dance. On Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center, Alvin Ailey Artistic Director Robert Battle kept his opening remarks blissfully simple. At the D.C. premiere of a work he’d commissioned to celebrate six decades as a primarily African American dance company, Battle spoke of the late company founder Ailey as “a black man who had a vision 60 years ago, and here we are, living in his wake.” And with that, he left any further commentary to the art. A brilliant move. [More]

Karen Pence Teaching Art at Religious School In Virginia

THE WASHINGTON POST

In this Dec. 6, 2018, file photo, Karen Pence smiles as she gives a tour of the holiday decorations at the Vice President's residence in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's back to school for Karen Pence, Vice President Mike Pence's wife. Mrs. Pence began teaching art to elementary students at Immanuel Christian School in Northern Virginia on Tuesday. Mrs. Pence accepted the job in December and was to have rebooted her teaching career on Monday. But classes were canceled after a heavy weekend snowfall across the Washington region. Her office says she'll teach twice a week until May. The second lady is facing backlash after it was revealed Immanuel Christian School requires teaching applicants to agree to a "personal life of moral purity," and acknowledging marriage is between a man and woman. [More]

The Museum of the Bible removes five of its Dead Sea Scrolls from view after researchers prove they’re fake

ARTNET NEWS
By Eileen Kinsella

Museum of The Bible, courtesy of SmithGroup JJR Architect.

Some of the Museum of the Bible’s most valuable objects—five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls—have been deemed fakes following a German analytics company’s forensic examination. The artifacts will be taken off display from the private Washington, DC, museum, which was founded by Hobby Lobby president Steve Green. After doubts were raised about the scrolls in April 2017, the museum sent five fragments to the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in Berlin. The analysis found that the fragments “show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin and therefore will no longer be displayed at the museum,” according to CNN.com. [More]

Museum of the Bible Unveils Newest Exhibition ‘Sacred Drama: Performing the Bible in Renaissance Florence’

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

WASHINGTON, DC — Officially opened to the public on July 1, 2018, Museum of the Bible’s newest exhibition, Sacred Drama: Performing the Bible in Renaissance Florence, offers a rare opportunity to learn about Sacred Drama (Sacra Rappresentazione), a theme never before featured in an exhibition in the United States. Sacred dramas were theatrical performances of Old and New Testament stories and the lives of the saints. Religious communities used sacred dramas to provide moral instruction and civic education to children, the future citizens of Florence. Museum of the Bible is pleased to be the first institution to bring this little-known, yet very influential Renaissance-era cultural experience to U.S. audiences. [More]

Jerusalem and Rome, an exhibition on first century cultures at the Museum of the Bible

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

Image from the exhibition

WASHINGTON, DC---In its new exhibit, the Museum of the Bible presents a selection of archaeological remains from the Land of Israel in the first century CE. They tell the story of the developments in this era and bear witness to the glory of Jerusalem during the reign of King Herod and the Roman procurators, examine the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome and the fall of Masada, and, finally, trace the continued existence of Judaism after the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, and the rise of Christianity. The exhibit and its artifacts are under the auspices and courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [Tickets]

The transformative nature of the photographs of Diane Arbus

THE NEW YORK TIMES 
By James Estrin

“Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C. 1967.” Credit The Estate of Diane Arbus

John P. Jacob first saw Diane Arbus’s work in 1980 while taking a college photo class to help him in his chosen career of architectural preservation. The effect of her images was so powerful that he dreamed about them every night for the next week. He then decided to dedicate his life to photography, eventually becoming the curator of photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her images brought Mr. Jacob and Mr. Selkirk together in the making of “Diane Arbus: A Box of Ten Photographs,” published recently by Aperture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum to accompany an exhibition at the museum. Mr. Jacob wrote the essay for the book and curated the exhibition, which runs through January. Mr. Selkirk, who is the only person to have printed Ms. Arbus’s negatives since her death in 1971, was a source for Mr. Jacob. [More]