The Smithsonian Craft Show Goes Green in “Craft Optimism”

This year’s Smithsonian Craft Show, opening two days after Earth Day, has a special focus: sustainability.

For nearly 40 years, the Smithsonian Women’s Committee has drawn artists from all over the country to showcase and sell their work at the prestigious Smithsonian Craft Show. Last March, when COVID-19 forced many facets of our lives online, the Smithsonian Craft Show was one of few craft fairs that successfully made the transition. More […]

by Hannah Docter-Loeb

Sonya Clark: Tatter, Bristle, and Mend Uses Hair to Tell the Story of Black Life

Clark alerts us to the politicization of Black hair by featuring it in a way that connects it to experiences, particularly the transatlantic slave trade, that have inhibited African diasporic peoples’ progression.

Sonya Clark: Tatter, Bristle, and Mend Digital exhibition at nmwa.org to June 27 On one level, some of Sonya Clark’s art is unassuming—a ball of hair might not be seen as extremely political. But once placed in an exhibition with an unraveling Confederate battle flag, reconsidering the narrative of a ball of hair is necessary. […]

by Shantay Robinson

Men of Change: Taking It To The Streets Is an Important Dialogue With Its Community

The Anacostia Community Museum’s spring exhibition, reimagined for the outdoors, is deeply rooted in Deanwood.

Ten months after the killing of George Floyd sparked a summer of protest and reckoning with America’s recurring anti-Black racism and aggressive policing, the trial of Derek Chauvin is underway. Juxtaposed against startling images of police violence and reiterating the truth that Black lives matter is an exhibition titled Men of Change: Taking it to […]

by Priscilla Ward

CulturalDC Provides Artists Unconventional Platforms to Respond to the World

Now, they may even be able to bring back canceled exhibitions from last spring.

Last March, a 22,000-pound, 320 sq. ft. shipping container sat outside Union Market. The portable art space is CulturalDC’s Mobile Art Gallery, used since 2017, which typically hosts three to five exhibitions per year at locations throughout the city. Then COVID-19 happened. CulturalDC had to pause the Mobile Art Gallery’s installation Rendition, which was supposed […]

by Jennifer Anne Mitchell

An Act of Nature Brought Down Lou Stovall’s Backyard Studio. Now What?

After a tree fell, the backyard studio where artist Lou Stovall screen printed his own and others’ artwork for nearly 50 years had to be razed—but his legacy persists.

Artwork from Lou Stovall’s print studio, Workshop, Inc., is ubiquitous in local galleries and museums. Pieces populate institutions like the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as the American University Museum, D.C.’s Art Bank, the Phillips Collection, and Addison/Ripley Gallery. But unlike many of the artists he created prints […]

by Robert Bettmann

The Phillips’ Exhibition Community in Focus is Cathartic After 2020

Its digital format makes reviewing the emotional year more manageable.

Devastation and rebuilding. Mistrust and faith. Isolation and unity. These are just some of the contradictions that make the Phillips Collection’s year-end exhibition Community in Focus a discordant experience that is both heart-wrenching and heartening—and true to life. Summarizing 2020 isn’t easy, but this project attempts to do just that through a powerful display of […]

by Jennifer Anne Mitchell

Dennis O’Neil, 1946–2020

The titan of D.C. printmaking and the longtime director of Hand Print Workshop International died on Nov. 2.

Dennis “Denny” O’Neil, one of the titans of D.C. printmaking, died Nov. 2 in his Alexandria home, after several years living with progressive supranuclear palsy. He was 74.  For nearly 35 years, he was the director of Hand Print Workshop International, a screenprinting studio he founded in the early 1980s. Over the years, he collaborated […]

by John Anderson

Queer Threads: CURIOUS SPACES Gives Queerness Curb Appeal

The exhibition's two distinct installations, visible through storefront windows, are compelling—but seeing art from a sidewalk is hard.

Queer Threads: CURIOUS SPACES is indeed set up in curious spaces. The collaborative exhibition, put on by Transformer, is a kaleidoscopic mash-up. It builds on a 2014 exhibition organized by John Chaich, Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community, which focused on cheeky, unconventional fiber art that explored the textures of queerness, at New York’s Leslie-Lohman […]

by Emma Sarappo

The Smithsonian Craft Show Virtually Convenes More Than 100 Artists

Three area craft artists who are featured in the fair explain their creations.

The Smithsonian Craft Show is a prestigious event in the arts. More than 100 artists have historically been selected out of about 1,000 applicants across craft mediums, organized in these categories: ceramics, decorative fiber and basketry, furniture, glass, jewelry, leather and metal, paper, wearable art, and wood. This year, the show is coveted for yet […]

by Jennifer Anne Mitchell

Dupont Underground Has a New CEO

Robert Meins is handing the reins over to Oliver Clemmons, the organization’s former CFO.

At the beginning of the month, Dupont Underground leader Robert Meins turned the organization over to new CEO Oliver Clemmons, who was previously the subterranean arts nonprofit’s CFO.  Clemmons, 29, has been working with Dupont Underground in an official capacity since 2018, and had provided bookkeeping services for the organization from 2016 onward. He’ll be […]

by Emma Sarappo

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