We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.
28
SUNDAY
Janet Elliott Wulsin and her husband, Frederick Roelker Wulsin Jr., weren’t exactly professional photographers, but with titles such as Shepherd and Yurt and Tibetan Cowboys Herding Yaks, it’s fairly obvious that their subject matter was beyond your typical vacation snapshots. Shot during four years of travel in China and Mongolia—including a 1923 expedition sponsored by the National Geographic Society—the sampling of the couple’s work that constitutes “Vanished Kingdoms: The Wulsin Photographs of Tibet, China & Mongolia 1921–1925” includes scenes of camels at an oasis and Tibetan grain-threshing. A Beijing studio transferred the images to glass before painting them with watercolors; the treatment both reinforces and cuts against the exhibition’s documentary feel. The show’s presentation may not be quite as compelling as its content—beyond “Range: Asia, widely distributed,” for instance, there’s not much information on that white-throated kingfisher the Wulsins brought back—but “Vanished Kingdoms” still makes a strong case for amateurism. The exhibition is on view from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. daily to Sunday, Sept. 3, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily to Sunday, Oct. 1, at the National Museum of Natural History, 10th Street & Constitution Avenue NW. Free. (202) 633-1000. (Joe Dempsey)