Handmade Holiday Cards from the Archives of American Art

Where: Archives of American Art

When: through January 5, 2014

A festive exhibit, in keeping with the time of the year.  It's clearly meant as a Christmas treat, as it will close at the beginning of January, so if you're interested in seeing the cards that artists send at the holiday season, head over to the American Art Museum now.

I'm not entirely certain what I expected from this show; I guess I thought that artists would make far nicer cards than anything I send each year.  Some cards were lovely, others, not so much.  One by Lyonel Feininger, that was supposed to be the Three Wise Men, looked like something a child would have drawn.  According to the notes, it represented the "sketchy idiom of his drawing."  I've been underestimating my own artistic talents, as I could have drawn something just as good.

I was more impressed with the work, or at least the dedication,  of Andrew Bucci who drew and painted every card he sent each year (about 125) by hand.  And I feel hard done by writing a couple of sentences in the 60 or so I send out.

I learned that the LOVE motif developed by Robert Indiana originated as a Christmas card - by the way, if you've not been to the Sculpture Garden recently, there's a new addition: AMOR set up just like the LOVE sculptures.

Umichi Hiratsuka's card with the Washington Monument and a cherry blossom was my favorite - I'd love to send those out, if only someone would sell them!

I noticed an error in one of the write-ups, which made me think how infrequently they appear.  Rather than criticizing the writer, I offer my kudos to the Smithsonian generally for making so very few mistakes.

Verdict: If you like Christmas cards, or are in the area (at the Downtown Holiday Market, perhaps), you can add to your holiday spirit with this show.  If not, it's not a must-see.

In/finite Earth: A National Juried Exhibition for Emerging Artists with Disabilities, Ages 16-25

Where: Ripley Center

When: through January 2014

I had planned to see this show right after the government re-opened, but when I went over to the Ripley, it wasn't up yet.  Obviously, they hadn't been able to get it in place before the shutdown, unlike the Sackler's yoga exhibit.

No matter, it's up now, and in a new, nicer space.  This show is a display of contest-winning art work by young artists with disabilities.  The idea behind the contest is to encourage these folks as they're deciding whether to make art their life work.  Not only do the award winners get to see their work exhibited in a traveling show (so to speak), but they also get a cash prize, made available by Volkswagen, which co-sponsors the contest.  The winners are on display at the Ripley every year, and I look forward to seeing what each year will bring in the way of new artists.  My thought is that, when one of them makes it REALLY big, I'll be able to say, "Oh yes, I saw his/her work years ago..."  Dare to dream, I always say, even if it's only about the success of other people.

In years past, it's been presented in the hallway leading from the concourse to the International Gallery.  It's a small show (there are 15 winners), so it doesn't require a lot of room, but the hallway isn't the most inviting space, and I think there just isn't much foot traffic there.  Frankly, there's not a lot of foot traffic at the Ripley period, so the show needs all the help it can get.  This year, it was in the main concourse itself, which is far better.  There's much more room, so each artist's work has plenty of display area.  You don't have everything displayed practically each on top of the other, and it's easier to evaluate each artist separately.  I know that displaying paintings one on top of the other is a legitimate style, but I just don't care for it.  It just seems too higgledy-piggledy to me.  So sue me, I'm not a fan of salon display.

The one criticism I would make is that the plaques describing the work and giving some details about the artist are placed very low.  Even someone as short as I am had to stoop to read them.  I kept thinking the whole time that I wished they were higher on the wall.  Someone tall would be quite uncomfortable, I think.

The stories of the artists and how they've overcome their disabilities, or used them to express their artistic talent is quite amazing.  One person in particular, Emilie Gossiaux, was diagnosed with severe hearing loss at age 5, then lost her sight in a bicycle accident when she was in college.  I couldn't blame her if she'd just given up her artwork at that point, but she's still creating.  Her sculpture, Bird Sitting was lovely; I was shocked when I read that she is blind.  It's a small white clay piece; the wings look like hands, so it's a portrait of a bird and of a person.   It was my favorite piece in the show.

The other item that really caught my eye was one by a dyslexic artist, Madalyne Hymans.  It's about her dyslexia and people's (boneheaded) responses to it.  It's a large rectangle, with quotes from various teachers, fellow students, and others with whom she's interacted, about dyslexia and how it means she's stupid or lazy.  Her artwork clearly proves them wrong, and I wish her well in her career.  Doesn't the quote go, "Living well is the best revenge"?  I hope it proves true for her.

Verdict:  Well worth a visit, as usual with this show.  The new setting does much more justice to the artists' work than the hallway!

Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris

Where: National Gallery of Art, West Building, Ground Floor

When: through January 5, 2014

Charles Marville (1813-1879) took up photography in 1850, following a lack of success in his first chosen profession, book and magazine illustration.  Photography was a relatively new medium at that time, having been invented only eleven years earlier.  When you look at the photographs in this exhibit, you are looking at the beginnings of an art form.

Marville photographed locations throughout France, Germany and Italy, but it was his photographs of his native city of Paris that earned him his acclaim and that served as his greatest inspiration.  The first room of the show focuses (no pun intended) on his early career.  Many of the shots are self-portraits.  He would set up the shot, then pose and have an assistant take the actual picture.  The wall notes suggest that his interest in posing in pictures, often as someone other than himself, in the guise of a dandy, for example, are evidence of his desire to re-make himself.  Born of humble parentage, he sought to rise above his lowly station.  That may well be true, or it might be he just found himself able to work well with his own figure as a part of the picture.  Whatever the reason, we are treated to several shots of European landscapes and ruins with the artist included.

By 1855, Marville developed a network of wealthy and important patrons.  In 1862, he became the official photographer of the city of Paris, and was tasked with documenting the city's re-birth under the Second Empire.  Napoleon III wanted to modernize Paris, to eliminate the narrow city streets and make everything more open.  The idea was to move air, water, people and goods more freely about the city.  In order to do this, a certain amount of destruction was necessary, and there were those who viewed the modernization as the end of the world they knew.  It was certainly the end of Old Paris.

One of the first targets of the modernization was the Bois de Boulogne.  It was transformed from a royal hunting ground to a public park, and Marville took pictures of the transformed space.  Ponds and streams were created, straight lanes were made into meandering walks, all so that city dwellers could have a taste of country life.  I couldn't help but be reminded of Marie Antoinette and her masquerading as a shepardess, as this was a fantasy of the countryside, rather than the reality.  Perhaps the fullest embodiment of this idea was the restoration of the Longchamps windmill.  Although no longer functional, it was picturesque, which was apparently all that mattered.

Marville, when not photographing destruction and new construction, did a number of sky and cloud studies.  Photographers of the time had great problems taking pictures of the sky, especially clouds.  I remember this from the Faking It show I saw earlier this year.  Marville did any number of experiments with photography, trying to get the sky and clouds right, and his are some of the first successful studies.

But mostly what Marville busied himself with was documenting the changing nature of the city of Paris.  In some cases, the photographs he took are the only existing record of streets that had run through the city for centuries.  Along with greater circulation, the wider streets would be harder to blockade, so there may have been more than one reason to change the look of the city.  On one wall is a reproduction of a map from 1871, showing the streets that were transformed - very little of the city was left untouched.  One photograph appealed to me very much, a photo of the Saint-Andre-des-Arts, a clump of buildings covered in advertisements.  This horrified those who were looking for a more homogenized aesthetic, and it, along with many other similar groupings of buildings, was torn down.

Along with the loss of character, was a loss of raw sewage running in the streets, the hazard of the unwary pedestrian.  On the one hand, one sees the romance of the old city, with its winding little streets and haphazard architecture, but on the other hand, there's nothing romantic about raw sewage.  After the modernization of the Second Empire came the Franco-Prussian War and the French Commune, so there was yet more re-building, and more to photograph.  Marville was also chosen to document the installation of "street furniture": lamps, fountains, benches, even public urinals.  His photographs of the street lamps are lovely.

Sadly, by the time Marville died in 1879, he, like the old city, had been replaced and forgotten.  The man who had been such an important part of documenting the city's transformation received not one single obituary.

Verdict: See this if you like photography or French history; it's an interesting examination of both.

Fire & Ice: Hindenburg and Titanic

Where: National Postal Museum

When: through January 6, 2014

2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and the 75th anniversary of the crash of the Hindenberg.  In honor of these melancholy remembrances, the Postal Museum has set up a display on both of them together, focusing on the postal angle in both.

Both vessels carried mail in order to underwrite their expenses, and both had post offices on board, along with postal employees.  It was a mark of social distinction to send a letter from the Titanic or the Hindenberg; it showed you were rich enough to travel on them!

There's plenty of information in this exhibit about both accidents: the terrible loss of life and the resulting popularization of the two incidents.  In addition to being disasters involving modes of transportation, they've both become 20th century icons.  Both are cases of the mighty falling, a reminder that human beings cannot always control nature.  We seem to get this lesson brought home to us every night on the news now, but there's something about the rich and elegant being forced to contend with forces beyond their control that grabs the imagination.

A Smithsonian connection in relation to the Hindenberg: it had sailed over the Mall before heading north to New Jersey, where it crashed.

A sad fact about the Titanic: all of the musicians in the band, the one playing "Nearer My God to Thee," perished in the shipwreck.

Verdict: Worth a visit if you are interested in the Titanic or Hindenberg - it also provides an opportunity to see the expanded museum.  There's now a set of galleries on the main floor, where the post office used to be.  Philatelists take note!

Tell It with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial

Where: National Gallery of Art, West Building, Main Floor

When: through January 20, 2014

The plaster copy of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial is on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Art, and there are no plans to remove it any time soon, so far as I know.  What will be closing on January 20 is the exhibit set up around it, which seeks to shed some light on the soldiers who fought with Shaw and whose stories have been lost in the attention give to their commander.

If you've seen the movie Glory, then you know the story of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the African-American regiment he commanded during the Civil War.  Although they were defeated at the battle of Fort Wagner, South Carolina, and lost 1/3 of their number, including Shaw himself, their dedication and bravery proved that African-Americans were every bit the fighting men that white soldiers were.

The memorial itself is worth an extended look - it's the first to feature not only the officer being remembered, but also the men he commanded.  Although the idea of honoring the common soldier is not controversial today, it had not been seen before this work was completed.  Booker T. Washington said of it that it stood "for effort, not victory complete."  The original bronze statute is in Boston, at the edge of the Boston Common.  The plaster copy on display at the National Gallery was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1900, where it won an award.  It is considered to be one of the finest examples of 19th century American sculptures in existence.

The display around it focuses on the lives of soldiers in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and the efforts of civil rights leaders to encourage young African-American men to enlist.  Included are photographs of African-American soldiers from the time period.  I was reminded of the several exhibits I've seen over the past couple of years of Civil War portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery - that solemn expression on the soldier's face.

Verdict: I recommend this exhibit - it's small, so easily managed in a lunch hour.  It's not everyday you get to see an award-winning piece of sculpture, with an informative historical display.

Northern Mannerist Prints from the Kainen Collection

Where: National Gallery of Art, West Building, Ground Floor

When: through January 5, 2014

The Kainens, a married couple, were great benefactors of the National Gallery, and this is the first of three shows highlighting works they have given.  And there's a lot to choose from in setting up these shows: beginning in 1975, they gave 1289 works to the National Gallery, then in 2012, Mrs. Kainen bequeathed another 781 works.  Thank you very much, Mr. and Mrs. Kainen, for sharing your collection with those of us able to the visit the gallery.

Mannerism flourished in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, in both Haarlem and Prague.  It was an artistic movement characterized by sophisticated, often obscure, subjects, elaborate compositions and an elegance that bordered on the distorted.  These are highly cerebral works, designed for those with a classical education, who could understand and appreciate them.

Hendrick Goltzius, from Haarlem,  specialized in mythological and allegorical subjects.  His deeply cut, individual lines, which vary in width, convey the appearance of volume, texture and tone.  The skill necessary to achieve such effects was as enticing to buyers as the subject matter of the prints.  The exactitude in these works made me think of them as a sort of anti-Impressionist movement.  One sees them as satisfying to create, but perhaps not much fun to draw?  There's no sense that the artists let himself go, so to speak, in creating these works.

The works of Bartholomaeus Spranger, from Prague, feature prurient but elegantly styled erotica, most notably the transgressions of the gods.  His works came from deep sustained curving lines that give an impression of a 3D surface.  To illustrate the difference between the two men, consider that both of them created a picture of Mars and Venus together.  Goltzius' work shows them being found out by Venus' husband, Vulcan.  Thus, adultery is punished.  In Spranger's work, the couple are shown together before their discovery, a far different picture.

Verdict: A small show, easily managed in a lunch hour.  Very interesting, if you like Mannerism or are curious to learn more about it.

Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press

Where: National Gallery of Art, West Building, Ground Floor

When: through January 5, 2014

This is an exhibit about the long slog, the terribly hard work that goes into making a work of art.  In case you thought that artists just woke up one day with an idea fully formed in their head for a great work of art, think again.  There's a vast deal of trial and error that goes into the creative process.  Inspiration is a factor, but perspiration is a given.  This show pulls back the curtain on the process, and lets the viewer seeing the workings behind the work.

Crown Point Press was one of the most influential printmaking studios of the late 20th century.  The works on display here were created between 1972 and 2010.  The first three rooms focus on the work of three particular artists; the final two rooms cover the work of many artists who were influenced by the first three.

The first room is devoted to the work of Chuck Close.  He set limits and restrictions on the work he would do, which he found gave him a kind of freedom.  It seems contradictory, but I understand what he means.  Sometimes, when you have unlimited choices, you become paralyzed.  You are unable to choose, which means you are trapped by your own indecision.  If you limit your options, you are then able to choose, able to work freely, within the constraints you've set.  His work involved pictures of heads - those of his friends and family and his own head.  A self-portrait is in the room, and I know I've seen it before, but where?  Perhaps it was in another show I saw at some point, or maybe it was on a website I visited.  I've been wracking my brain, but to no avail.  The perils of middle age...

Richard Diebenkorn, the focus of the second room, sets his course for "rightness," which I'm interpreting as a sort of "I'll know it when I see it" model.  He works in an incremental way on his pictures, until they are exactly to his liking.  It's interesting to see the changes he makes along the way to what's "right," although I confess there were points at which I might have made different choices.

The third room is devoted to the "art" of John Cage, who I've seen before and not liked.  This display does nothing to change my opinion.  He relies on chance, making no choices in his art, but allowing various outside influences, including the I Ching, to make the choices for him.  Please.  It's as if he wants to take no responsibility for his work; everything is the result of some other force.  You might just as well have a robot put paint to paper according to a computer program.  Note that he also "composes" music that consists of total silence.  Again.  Please.  I did find out that the works I'd always thought of as rings from a coffee cup are actually from a teapot, so I can't say I didn't learn anything.

Next we have a room entitled "Echoes," works by other artists that are reminiscent of or influenced by the first three artists.  One work, by Anne Appleby, with its squares of color, reminded me more of Ellsworth Kelly than of any of the work I'd just seen.

Finally,  the last room focuses on the title of the show: Yes, No, Maybe.  Some are things that worked, some are things that didn't and were abandoned and some are things that were never really resolved - where the journey is the destination.

Verdict: An interesting show, if you like to see what's going on behind the scenes.  If you don't care for John Cage, you can just skip his room entirely; there's nothing here that's going to make you sit up and take notice.

High Art: A Decade of Collecting

Where: Air and Space Museum

When: through January 1, 2014

Although I don't think of the Air and Space Museum as an art gallery, it does have the largest collection of aerospace-themed art in the country.  These 50 works on display are part of a 7,000 piece collection.  The display is divided into three parts: Visions of Flight (which is largely abstract art with a flight motif), Faces of Flight (which are portraits of people involved in the history of flight or space exploration) and Looking Back (which is art depicting important events in flight or space exploration).

The picture shown here is by Fran Forman, who took old family photographs and combined them with pictures from different cameras using a computer to put together her final works.  I don't know that I've seen her work before, but it did seem familiar somehow, as if I'd seen something like it in another exhibit.  One of Jeffrey Milstein's works, 49 Jets, is on display; I saw a show of his work at Air and Space a while ago and liked it.  I didn't think I'd have much interest in the undercarriages of airplanes, but for some reason they are intriguing.

Of the portraits, I think the ones of Carl Sagan and Neil de Grasse Tyson are the best.  Alan Bean also has a piece in this show, and I was happy to see him again.  I'd enjoyed the show of his work I saw several years ago, on what might have been my first trip back to Air and Space since childhood.

Verdict: A nice show, manageable in a lunch hour.  Worth a stop, especially if you're here anyway for the codex.

Grand Procession: Dolls from the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection

Where: National Museum of the American Indian

When: through January 5, 2014

This show is in the small exhibit gallery on the 2nd floor, which means that I could take a bit of time to look at each doll on display.  When the NMAI has a big exhibit in their 3rd floor space, I'm rushing to see everything in a lunch hour.

There are five artists' work on display here, including three artists from one family: a grandmother, mother and daughter.  All of the artists have won awards for their dolls, so what you're seeing is top-flight craft.

A Grand Procession opens every powwow and is an opportunity for members of a tribe to don their regalia and dance into the arena.  This was a tradition of the Plains and Plateau tribes in the 1700s and 1800s.  These dolls from the Diker Collection are doing much the same thing, albeit in a static way.  Happily, most of the dolls are in display cases that allow you to see them from all sides.  There is as much ornamentation on the back as there is on the front.

Jamie Okuma is the first artist featured.  She is quoted as saying, " Each piece has lived through whatever was going on in my life at the time I was making it."  There is a piece of her biography in each doll.  The faces on her dolls are basically blank.  One is not distracted by the face of the doll, and so can concentrate on the incredible craftsmanship that goes into each piece.  The costumes are amazing, especially considering how small they are.  Rhonda Holy Bear does paint faces on her dolls; they wear expressions that seem to show both serenity and determination.

The Growing Thunder family's dolls make up the rest of the show.  Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty and her mother, Joyce Growing Thunder both had dolls on display in the "A Song for the Horse Nation" show that was at NMAI some months ago.  The faces on these dolls are also quite generic, so you notice the bead and quill work on the costumes.  Jessa Rae Growing Thunder is the daughter of Juanita; all of them create dolls that are very much in the same style.  I'd be hard pressed to tell one from the other.  Juanita is quoted as saying, "You can't do it if you are upset.  You make mistakes and have to backtrack."  This reminded me quite strongly of the show I saw at African Art several years ago about basket weaving.  One of those artists was quoted saying almost the same thing.  Clearly, the tortured lives of the great painters means you can toss paint around no matter your mood, but for work as intricate as this - you need to be as serene and determined as Rhonda Holy Bear's dolls look.

Verdict: If you have any interest in Native American art or dolls in general, do not miss this amazing collection of artwork.

The Art of Little Golden Books

Where: Museum of American History

When: through January 5, 2014

Who doesn't remember the Little Golden Books?  Those staples of childhood reading, with their simple stories and colorful pictures - they may no longer sit on our shelves, but they live on in our mind's eye.  This show, in the Small Documents Gallery (which, remember, is not called Small because of its size, but because of the donor for whom it is named), showcases pieces from the museum's collection of original Little Golden Book items, including the books themselves.  The Western Publishing Company, who published the books, donated this collection to the museum in 1992, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the books' debut.

The books were meant to extend reading and literacy to the middle classes.  In the 1920s, progressive educators stressed the importance of childhood literacy, and in the 1930s, Eleanor Roosevelt picked up the cause in her column, "My Day," advocating for family reading.  Whereas prior to their appearance, children's books were expensive enough that only the wealthy could afford them, the Little Golden Books, priced at only 25 cents, were affordable to a much wider audience.

Many of the books depicted children performing adult roles.  Girls were shown cooking and cleaning house, while boys were shown performing various jobs, including manual labor and public sector work.  I wonder if they might not be shown as young venture capitalists now.  There was also some very early product placement.  Two books featuring medical jobs (doctor for boy, nurse for girl, of course), came with bandages, a nice bit of advertising for Band-Aid.

There was not much in the way of diversity in the books.  Any non-white people depicted were always shown in stereotypical roles - servants, for example.  Of course, this was before the civil rights movement of the 1960s, so one is not really surprised.  Still, the difference between the Little Golden Books and what my niece (who is 8) reads today is vast.

One of the series that I must have missed is a book entitled Gaston and Josephine, a book about two French pigs who emigrate to America.  With all the fun they seem to have on the ship across the Atlantic, it sounds much better than reading a book about cleaning!

I was happy to see that the museum has gone out of its way to entice people into this out-of-the-way space.  There are large reproductions of the covers in the hallway leading to the Gallery, and even a "book nook" with copies of the books, and benches for reading.

Verdict: Well worth a stop; it's a small show and will bring back many memories.

A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Where: American Art Museum

When: through January 5, 2014

This show celebrates the 30th anniversary of the American Art Museum's photography collection.  It is composed of 100 of the museum's over 7,000 photographs.  The show is divided into several sections: American Characters, Spiritual Frontier, America Inhabited and Imagination at Work.  I found some photographs clearly fit in the categories to which they were assigned, and others I thought were a bit of a stretch - perhaps a "miscellaneous" category would have been helpful?

Walt Whitman is quoted as having said that photography is a quintessentially American activity and, now that I think about it, perhaps he's right.  When I think of great photography, I do tend to think of Americans.  Of course, that might be that I live here and am exposed (no pun intended) to more American photography than works from other countries.  In any event, there is lots of American photography to see, and this show offers up plenty.

Of course, there is an Ansel Adams piece; no points for picking him out of a crowd.  He's one of the few black and white photographers whose work I just love.  I don't even try to imagine what his shots would look like in color, which is saying something for someone so enamored of color as I am.

I was quite proud of myself for recognizing a set of Harry Callahan pieces.  I went to a retrospective of his work at the National Gallery a while back, and I knew his wife Eleanor as soon as I saw her in one of those terribly unflattering poses.  I admire her dedication to her husband's art; surely it must be dedication, as no one would pose for those pictures thinking they would look attractive.

Another familiar photographer on display is William Wegman, with a set of greyhound pieces.  I don't have strong feelings about Wegman (or about greyhounds, for that matter), so I've never been quite sure what all the fuss is about.  I envy his ability to get his dogs to sit still long enough to take a picture, but I wouldn't spend a fortune to buy one of his photographs.

A piece that I might have overlooked is one by Walker Evans.  It's entitled, "Kitchen Wall, Alabama Farmstead" and is part of the series of photographs he took for the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.  I just read an article in a magazine about that project, so I spent a bit more time with the photo than I would have otherwise done.  It's not an action photo, but it does paint quite a picture of people making do with very little, of desperate times calling for desperate measures.

Another artist featured is Eadweard Muybridge; his piece is one of a western landscape.  His first name is spelled in such an unusual way, that I feel as if I've seen it before - possibly in the show (in the same space) of pictures of the American West?

Verdict: A large show, but worth spending the time to see some very fine photography.

Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa

Where: African Art Museum

When: through January 5, 2014

As I write this, it's not even September, but I'm already seeing exhibits that will close in 2014.  Partly that's because my schedule has allowed me to see several exhibits per week lately, and partly it's because there don't seem to be as many shows on display that are closing this fall.  There are a TON of shows closing in January, however, so it's not as if I lack for things to see.

I haven't been to the African Art Museum in a while - they don't seem to have as many temporary exhibits as the Sackler (which is almost identical in size).  I'm not sure why that is, but I wish they offered a few more things I could add to my list to visit.  I find I like contemporary African art very much and would enjoy seeing more of it.

This display, which is fairly large, is comprised of works that consider the role of the land in African society.  In some pieces this is the actual earth itself, in others it's representations of land, maps for example.  In yet others, it's what is contained below the surface of life, buried in the earth.  The show focuses on works from 1800 - present.

The first work I noticed was a painting, imagine my surprise.  I've noticed that a lot of African art is composed of sculpture, masks, bead work, but you don't often see a lot of painting.  This one is a still life called Hottentots Holland:  Flora Capensis 2 by Andrew Putter.  It reminded me of many still life paintings I've seen over the years in the National Gallery.  At first, it's a lovely arrangement of flowers, but the more I looked, the more I saw other images in the floral designs.  An interesting piece, and one I was sorry to leave behind.

One thing I noticed about the display is how young many of the artists are; lots of them were born in the 1960s or later.  Nice to know that, despite the continent's problems, people are still making art and sharing it with the rest of the world.

Another set of paintings that I liked was Christine Dixie's Even in the Long Descent I-V.  This deals with the Cape Frontier Wars, which lasted from 1779-1879.  The five works show a family buried in the earth, complete with their dog.  The idea, as I interpreted it, is that the life we live today, on the surface of the land, is built on the lives of others, who are now hidden below us.  It behooves us not to forget these people, and the circumstances of their lives.  Dogs, I found out, are often used as symbols of the underground, as they dig in the earth - something I didn't know before.

Less traditional pieces are represented as well, including a piece by Batoul S'himi.  It's a pressure cooker, with a map of the world carved into it.  It symbolizes the under-representation of women in world politics and the pressure that exists to change this.  One of the last pieces I saw was one by Younes Rahmoun entitled Kemmoussa.  It's a series of plastic bags, tied into tiny knots and strung together.  I couldn't help but be reminded of the plastic bags I take with me every day when I walk my dogs - these bags have a better fate than the ones I'm using!!

Verdict:  Well worth a look if you're at all interested in African art, or in the relationship between people and the land.

The Civil War in America

Where: Library of Congress

When: through January 4, 2014

Although the Library of Congress is not on my usual list of destinations, a friend recommended this show, and since I was taking some time off this week, I decided to go a bit off my beaten path.

The first thing that struck me was the security in place; aside from the fact that you could keep your shoes on, it's like being at an airport.  This similarity extends to the clueless people in line, who don't understand that "remove your keys" means you should take your keys out of your pocket.  There was a couple ahead of me that was baffled by many such instructions.  After you get in, however, the building itself is quite something to see.  Frescoes and statuary abound, and that's before you even get to the exhibit spaces. 

The Civil War is marking its sesquicentennial (a word I just love and too rarely get to use) and this show is part of that remembrance.  The exhibit is quite large, so plan on spending a bit of time there.  I made it through in about an hour, but I didn't dawdle.  The show is very well-organized and everything on display is carefully labeled - clearly librarians had a hand in this!  It's set up as a timeline: the show begins with the period immediately before the war and ends with Lincoln's assassination and the surrender at Appomattox.

I learned a few things at this exhibit; if you're a Civil War buff, this may not constitute new information - feel free to skip this paragraph!  The majority of the men who enlisted in the Confederate Army were not slaveowners themselves; they were poor rural people who had been told that they were fending off an invasion by Northerners.  Clever of the wealthy to get the poor to fight their wars.  The District of Columbia was not only home to the federal government, but also to many Southern sympathizers, which must have made for interesting times here in the place where I spend so much of my life.  About 400 woman concealed their identities and fought on both sides of the conflict.  I can only imagine that the medical examinations were quite cursory!  This I knew before, but it's worth mentioning: at the battle of Antietam, over 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing in action - that's just one day.  That number is so staggering that I can't even comprehend it.  Hot air balloons were used for aerial reconnaissance - you'd think they would have been unwieldy and easy to shoot down, but perhaps they could stay above the fighting and there certainly were no airplanes available!  Only 48 copies of the Emancipation Proclamation were printed.  These were signed by Abraham Lincoln and offered for sale for $10.  Not all of them sold.  Now I realize that $10 in the 1860s was far more money than $10 today, but still...

I was reminded of two exhibits from the Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum.  One was the small show on Adalbert Volck - one of his drawings was on display.  The other was the exhibit on the Civil War and its influence on American Art.  There was (no surprise) a Matthew Brady photograph on display here, and I remembered that the ability to takes photos and distribute them at home brought the horror of the war into America's living rooms.

The part of the show that drew the most attention was the arrangement of the contents of Lincoln's pockets on the night he was assassinated.  Aside from a slight feeling of ghoulishness, I couldn't help but think he had quite a few little items with him, and wonder why a $5 Confederate bill was among them.

Verdict: Well worth a trip to the Library of Congress to see this very well-organized show.  Take plenty of time and plenty of patience with you.