Upcoming Exhibitions

Pousette-Dart: Predominantly White Paintings

June 5–September 12, 2010

In the early 1950s, Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992) created a series of paintings nearly without paint, using graphite and oil on canvas to produce works both complex and spare. These luminous and poetic works are filled with symbolic imagery and natural forms, and represent a dramatic departure from the monumental, richly colored surfaces of his earlier work. This exhibition of approximately 20 paintings and three sculptures marks the first time in over 50 years that a significant number of these paintings are on view .

Robert Ryman: Variations & Improvisations

June 5–September 12, 2010

Ryman is an American painter best known for abstract, white-on-white paintings. This exhibition presents Ryman's ongoing examination of painting, including the effects of light and shadow and the painting's relation to surrounding space. This presentation of approximately 25 small-scale works is the first overview of Ryman's art in the Washington area, coinciding with the artist's 80th birthday. The paintings are drawn from private collections, some of which have rarely been shown in the U.S.

TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and

the Photograph as Art 1845-1945

October 9, 2010–January 9, 2011

In their effort to elevate photography to an art form equal to painting, the pictorialist photographers of the late 19th century produced some of the most spectacular photographs in the history of the medium. Comprising over 130 photographs, this exhibition retraces pictorialism's development from the experiments of Hill and Adamson, and Julia Margaret Cameron; through its mastery by Alfred Stieglitz, Gertrude Käsebier, and Alvin Langdon Coburn; to its lasting legacy in early works by Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. Curated by George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.

In conjunction with this exhibition, the museum displays recently acquired Coburn holdings, featuring selections from the celebrated portfolios New York (1909), Paris (1910), and Men of Mark (1913).

Side by Side: Oberlin Masterworks at the Phillips

Sept. 11, 2010–Jan. 16, 2011

Twenty-five masterworks from the rich collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin are paired with selections from the Phillips's permanent collection, creating new artistic conversations and provocative juxtapositions. Many of the these works have not left the Allen in half a century, and include paintings by artists in the modernist tradition-such as Paul Cézanne, Adolph Gottlieb, Claude Monet, and Mark Rothko-as well as work by Peter Paul Rubens and Joseph Mallord William Turner. Organized by The Phillips Collection and the Allen Memorial Art Museum.

David Smith Invents

Feb. 12–May 15, 2011

David Smith (1906-1965), one of America's most celebrated and important sculptors, blurred the boundaries between sculpture, painting, and drawing. This exhibition of works from the early 1950s through the early 1960s provides a window into the artist's creative process. It features works on paper, paintings, and approximately seven sculptures in conversation with the artist's photographs, including the sculpture Bouquet of Concaves (1959), a recent gift and the first Smith sculpture to enter The Phillips Collection. Smith's two- and three-dimensional work from this period reveals his fascination with a vocabulary of concave and convex shapes that appear in multiple configurations and repetitions, and with different surface treatments.

Philip Guston, Roma

Feb. 12–May 15, 2011

From Federico Fellini's films to ancient Roman vestiges and Italian painters such as Giorgio di Chirico, Giotto, and Piero della Francesca, Philip Guston (1912-1980) drew inspiration from Italian art, culture, and the country's distinctive landscape. This exhibition of nearly 40 paintings is the first to examine the transitional work Guston completed during his tenure as artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome during the early 1970s. He had begun to shift away from abstraction to concentrate on concrete objects in his paintings, and this visit provoked as he continued to develop a vocabulary of pared down forms organized into unconventional narrative systems. The Phillips Collection is the only U.S. venue for this exhibition.
Organized by Museo Carlo Bilotti, Aranciera di Villa Borghese, Rome and the American
Academy in Rome.

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