Functional Design

D.C.’s Public Library, “Back to the Future”shows da Vinci’s Notebooks; Museum of American History with Buckminster Fuller’s Dome

SPECULATING ABOUT THE FUTURE is an endlessly fascinating pursuit. In his 1895 novel THE TIME MACHINE, H.G. Wells set his story at the dawn of an apocalyptic new age of modernity. Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie METROPOLIS portrayed a futuristic city where a highly-cultured utopia merrily squatted on top of a bleak underworld of workers. On a much lighter note, Robert Zemeckis’s 1985 sci-fi comedy film BACK TO THE FUTURE inserted a teenager in a time-traveling DeLorean car and sent him back 30 years to 1955 to make sure his future parents would fall in love (to thereby produce him!), and then return him to his 1985 present. In August, an Olivier-award winning musical based on BACK TO THE FUTURE will open at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre.

Washington’s Hillwood Museum: “Reflections in a Collector’s Eye”

“COLLECTING” IS PART OF our DNA. From earliest times, we have collected food, clothing, and shelter to survive. But once those basics are met, we look around and find something new and glitzy to make our hearts beat faster. Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973) was a preeminent 20th century collector. She grew up in wealth and turned that into a megafortune as CEO of General Foods, notably embracing the new idea of “frozen foods” in the 1920s. With her fortune secured, she next decided to build a life that would make her happy.

“PRAYER & TRANSCENDENCE” now at Washington, DC’s Textile Museum

THE TEXTILE MUSEUM at the George Washington University Museum has organized a fascinating exhibition that explores the role and iconography of classic prayer carpets–a subject I knew nothing about, but which I enjoyed thoroughly under the guidance of a superb docent.

THE FREER GALLERY’S CENTENNIAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE FREER GALLERY IN Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian’s first art museum on the National Mall, is celebrating its centennial this year. Opening in 1923, it was built to house the Asian and Near Eastern collections of Charles Lang Freer, one of the “titans of industry” who made vast fortunes in America’s Gilded Age.

Freer (1854-1919) was born into a family of modest means in Kingston, N.Y. He went to work in a cement factory after his mother died when he was fourteen, then gradually worked his way up the manufacturing pipeline, securing ever-higher positions at the New York, Kingston, and Syracuse Railroad. In 1880 he co-founded the Peninsular Car Works in Detroit, where he oversaw the manufacture of Peninsular’s rail cars and locomotives; in 1892, he orchestrated the merger of a dozen rail companies and became wealthy enough to retire in 1899 when he was 49.

D.C.’s Renwick Gallery Celebrates Its 50th

Centrally-located across from the White House, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery (part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum) is the nation’s flagship museum of American craft and decorative arts. Opened in 1972, the museum is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year by showcasing widely-diverse perspectives of craft and design with the exhibition THIS PRESENT MOMENT: CRAFTING A BETTER WORLD. The museum launched an acquisitions campaign in 2020 to enlarge the number of Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, Indigenous, and women artists represented in its permanent collection. More than 200 craft objects were collected, and over 130 of these newly-acquired works are among the 171 artworks on display in THIS PRESENT MOMENT. Nora Atkinson, the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge for the Renwick helped organize the exhibition with Mary Savig, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft, and Anya Montiel, curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

A Guest Editorial: “Beauty in Things that Pass – what dogs can teach us”

It wasn’t planned. And that’s perhaps what made it all the more magical. But this past Christmas morning, Vlad and his best friend Malibu were the only dogs in the baseball field (the one we pretend is a dog park). I’m not sure why they were the only dogs there. It might have been the holiday, of course, or the hour (7am). Or it could have been the mud left from the previous day’s snow flurries. And HERE is what ensued:

A Virtual Vernissage: ‘Google Arts & Culture’ Unveiled

When a friend raved about Google Arts & Culture, I nodded evasively. The awful truth was I only vaguely knew about this platform—I had heard of it, but had never used it. I wasn’t alone. As I began to explore, I came across a recent piece by Washington POST chief art critic Philip Kennicott where he admitted, “Before the pandemic shut down, I almost never visited the vast trove compiled by Google’s Art & Culture platform. I wrote about it when … it was announced in 2011 and then never paid it a second thought. Today, I find myself slinking back and enjoying parts of it thoroughly.” (Kennicott, WashPOST, 5/29/2020)

Philanthropy Today: Murky Waters, Quirky Consequences, and the Joys of Public Art

Philanthropists may fancy themselves the Medici of today’s art world. Demanding or endearing, they control the money that shapes public access to contemporary art and culture. The Sackler family has earned the consequences of outraged headlines, with the Louvre the latest museum to scrub “Sackler” from its walls. Other major museums like the Met, the Guggenheim, and the Tate have stopped accepting Sackler money.

?How Many Tears Are Enough? An Installation by June Ahrens

June Ahrens’ installation How Many Tears Are Enough? is a contemplative work that slowly reveals its intricate symbolic, emotional content. It is comprised of various types of shape defining wires and ropes suspended from the ceiling, all hovering just above long sheets of highly reflective silver Mylar. While the main expression of three-dimensional lines dominates most of the space of the University of Connecticut’s Stamford Art Gallery, there is also a back wall covered with unadorned black, knotted rope that creates a waterfall-like backdrop. When seen together, these two works give gallery visitors a basis for establishing personal links that may be viewed by some, as a dramatic field of ascending souls.

Sculptor, Patrick Dougherty and ‘A Passing Fancy’ in Falmouth, MA?

Patrick Dougherty is motivated to work with stick materials because of increased massive urbanization and the destruction of forests all over the United States. Knowing that sticks have been a foundation for human survival across cultures and throughout time –being used for building shelters, ladders, and tools for hunting in addition to keeping warm and cooking—he finds them a universal material for his work. Since the early 1980s Dougherty has been fabricating huge environmental installations that he calls Stickworks. The majority of his large, quirky and temporary pieces take approximately three weeks to construct and each monumental sculpture is distinctly unique. Prior to starting a work he takes time getting to know the milieu in which it will be created, oft visiting the place several times prior to its actual construction. The installation’s final shape results from Dougherty’s observations about the overall locale, the interaction of the volunteers in the community who help build the work, as well as the specificity of the site where it is erected.