Anyone who talks about a picture being worth a thousand words can stuff it. For “Call + Response,” Hamiltonian Gallery asked 16 visual artists to create responses to the poetry and prose of 16 writers. In many instances, the words surpass the visuals—as in Christian Howard’s “Spaghetti Western,” in which watching a cowboy flick on a hospital TV makes the writer contemplate mortality, and which is paired with an abstract, metallic print by Ian MacLean Davis. Likewise with Mike Scalise’s “Well, There’s Not Much We Can Do About That,” a vignette about an encounter with Mr. Rogers and an injured bird, which is met by Bryan Rojsuontikul’s tombstone epitaph, which does not explore the nuance of Scalise’s story. —-Maura Judkis

Read the full City Lights pick here; exhibit details after the jump:

THE EXHIBITION IS ON VIEW NOON TO 6 P.M. TUESDAY TO SATURDAY TO FEB. 13 AT HAMILTONIAN GALLERY, 1353 U ST. NW. FREE. (202) 332-1116.