The Reynolds Center housing two museums, The National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, reopened July 1st and I ventured over there on a walk home from Adams Morgan to Eastern Market. To be honest, it was the promise of air conditioning and some good building design that had lured me, rather than the art itself.
I am sucker for dynamic art–art that somehow changes, either because it was designed that way or because the very act of observing or interacting with it changes it. It comes as no surprise then that my favorite piece in the building was David Hockney’s Snail Space with Vari-Lites, “Painting as Performance” (above). The room-sized view of his Mulholland drive neighborhood blown up into preposterous proportions and then painted in Day-Glo colors with a 9-minute computer program light show gazing down on it was the first piece I saw when I walked into the Lincoln Gallery of Contemporary American Art and by far the most entrancing. (The only drawback was the lack of tape on the ground marking the line that would trigger security sensors and an alert that said repeatedly, “Please step back. Security has been notified.” People were stepping too close to the work, which reached horizontally across the floor as well as vertically on the wall, so they could see the system of lights.)
While there was an entire gallery full of key pieces, including a lovely Calder scultpture, the other truly spectacular pieces were Nam June Paik’s “Megatron/Matrix” and “Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii”. There were several other extensive exhibits, including a vast collection of William Wegman pieces, featuring his beloved and popular Weimeraners. There’s an old and stuffy part of the museum too, but I skipped it in favor of checking out some of the National Portrait Gallery.
Highlights of the Gallery include the Americans Now exhibit currently open on the first floor, a Portrait Competition with an extraordinary first-prize winner (Sam and the Perfect World - above… not a photo!), and the ever-popular collection of American Presidents.
After the presidents, I stopped into the National Gallery of Art’s “Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting” exhibit. I’m not much for this era of painting or content, but the exhibit had an interesting section on X-rays of the paintings, showing the underdrawings the artists did before they painted. The museum also houses one of my favorite series, Monet’s cathedrals at Rouen. The most exquisite of the series is at the Getty in Santa Monica, but the two held here are worthy enough for the time being. I’ll be back to the National Gallery to see the cathedrals again and to absorb the whole collection in bite-sized pieces.