The Phillips Collection Summer 2012 by Vivian Djen

summer 2012 magazine

Jasper Johns Variations on a theme

photo: james brantley

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Dear Friends, As I write today, I am reflecting on the life and legacy of Caroline Macomber, our much beloved trustee who died suddenly on January 27. It is hard not to write about Caroline. I feel her absence acutely—at our recent board meeting, in the context of the salon style luncheons she initiated and planned with us, at our exhibition openings and programs, which she almost always attended. I miss especially Caroline and I in deep conversation about a David Smith sculpture her quiet asides, words of wisdom to at last year's Art and Innovation Summit. ponder and often to act upon. I was a newcomer in Caroline’s life. At her beautiful funeral service, children and longtime friends eloquently described the marvelously rich texture of their relationships and her impact. Her imprint on the Phillips is remarkable. She was a trustee for 20 years, reflecting an enduring engagement with the museum. She looked to the long-term vitality of the Phillips, chairing the Eliza Laughlin Society to encourage and promote bequests and testamentary gifts; she understood that these gifts build our future. My friend and predecessor, Jay Gates, expressed his appreciation of her influence perfectly: “Caroline was a remarkable person. She was one of the most decent, publicly spirited people I ever had the privilege to work with. She was extraordinarily bright and invariably optimistic. Her commitment—not just to The Phillips Collection, but to the value of public institutions—was absolute.” Indeed, Caroline’s deep connection with the Phillips is a paradigm of the important relationship between the passionate, diligent patron and the dedicated, hard-working staff, all in support of the great institutions that are the cultural good in our society. This is the fundamental personal contract that sustains the arts in our country now, over previous centuries, and, I hope, into the future. I thank Caroline and her family. I thank our many generous friends—from lifelong supporters to our newest members—who enable us to do our work at the Phillips.

Summer 2012 Maga zine

Boar d of Tr us t ees

Victoria P. Sant, Honorary Chair George Vradenburg, Chair Linda Lichtenberg Kaplan, Vice Chair George D. Swygert, Jr., Vice Chair Thomas D. Rutherfoord, Jr., Treasurer Carolyn Small Alper C. Richard Belger Janet Maybin Brenner James T. Demetrion John Despres Lawrence Duncan III Gerald W. Fischer Léonard Gianadda Bonnie Burke Himmelman Lynne N. Horning Margaret Stuart Hunter Dorothy Kosinski, ex-officio as Director B. Thomas Mansbach A. Fenner Milton Toni Harris Paul Lyn Rales Moshira Soliman Alice Phillips Swistel Richard E. Thompson Alan L. Wurtzel Leo E. Zickler

f e at u r e s

Jasper Johns Untitled, 1960 Intaglio in 11 colors on Kupferdruck Etching Paper 43 1/ 2 x 33 5 / 8 in. Ed. 60 Published by Universal Limited Art Editions Private collection Art © Jasper Johns and ULAE/ Licensed by VAGA, New York NY

2 Jasper

Johns Variations on a Theme

Jasper Johns has created some of the most innovative prints of the last century. Master printer Bill Goldston, who has worked with Johns for over 40 years, shares stories about collaborating with the celebrated American artist. Renée Maurer 6 A nto n y

Gormley D r aw i n g S pac e The British artist talks with Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenovic´ about the evolution of his exquisite abstract and figure drawings and prints. His works on paper, like his sculpture, investigate the human experience.

James B. Adler, Trustee Emeritus Marion O. Charles, Trustee Emerita William A. Christenberry, Trustee Emeritus Jonathan Fineberg, Trustee Emeritus James F. Fitzpatrick, Trustee Emeritus Jay Gates, Director Emeritus Hiroko Goh, Honorary Trustee J. Roderick Heller III, Trustee Emeritus Gifford Phillips, Trustee Emeritus Jennifer Phillips, Trustee Emerita Patricia Bennett Sagon, Trustee Emerita David W. Steadman, Trustee Emeritus John C. Whitehead, Honorary Trustee

Dorothy Kosinski, PhD

The Phillips Collection Magazine is published by The Phillips Collection especially for its members and is a benefit of membership.

6 Antony Gormley Clearing L, 2006 Carbon and casein on paper 30 3 / 8 x 43 3 / 4 in. © Antony Gormley Image courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

also in this issue 12 R e c e n t Ac q u i s i t i o n s 15 I n t e r s e ct i o n s 16 Museum News

Send change of address information to The Phillips Collection 1600 21st Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 202-387-2151

17 Happenings 18 S u p p o r t i n g t h e P h i ll i p s

u n c a n P h i ll i p s a n d D the Washington Art W o r ld o f t h e 1 9 2 0 s Duncan Phillips’s relationships with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Freer Gallery of Art, and local private collections helped shape his new museum. Karen Schneider

Summer 2012

Best wishes,

C ag e at t h e P h i ll i p s

Ray Kass explains composer John Cage’s experimental process for creating his watercolors in The Phillips Colletion.

The phillips collection Magazine

Director of Communications and Marketing: Ann Greer Editor: Vivian Djen Designer: Skelton Design

10 John

19 Museum Shop 12

20 Dates to Save Scrapbook of drawings by Gifford Beal

22 Upcoming Exhibition

Jasper Johns Variations on a theme A C o n v e r s a t i o n w i t h B i ll G o ld s t o n

By Renée Maurer Assistant Curator

above: Target, 1960 Lithograph: 1 stone on Japan paper 22 ½ x 17 ½ in. Ed. 5/30 Published by Universal Limited Art Editions John and Maxine Belger Foundation Art © Jasper Johns and ULAE / Licensed by VAGA, New York NY

left:

Decoy, 1971 Lithograph with die cut: 18 aluminum plates, 1 stone, 1 die on Rives BFK paper 41 x 29 in. Ed. 40/55 Published by Universal Limited Art Editions John and Maxine Belger Foundation Art © Jasper Johns and ULAE / Licensed by VAGA, New York NY

Jasper Johns’s creative impulses and collaborations with national and international print workshops have produced over 360 graphic images, acclaimed as some of the most innovative artworks of the last century. Printmaking has been integral to the American artist’s career for more than five decades. His interest in making variations of a single motif found a natural outlet in the medium, which allows for the reworking of ideas and records the stages that lead to a final image. While lithography has been his primary technique, Johns (b. 1930) has also used intaglio, silkscreen, and lead relief to interpret subjects drawn from popular culture, his earlier work, and the history of art. Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme features iconic examples that chart the artist’s experiments from 1960 to today. Phillips assistant curator Renée Maurer visited with master printer Bill Goldston, director of Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), to discuss print collaborations with Jasper Johns.

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“ You have to marvel at Jasper .... It is extraordinary that an artist possesses the technical foresight in etching something like this.”

Tatyana Grosman and Jasper Johns during the printing of Corpse and Mirror at ULAE in 1976. Photograph by Hans Namuth

In 1960, Johns, already renowned for his paintings of targets, flags, and numbers, was introduced to printmaking by Tatyana Grosman, who in 1957 founded ULAE, a fine art publishing house in Long Island, New York. Bill Goldston, who worked closely with Grosman, describes her approach: “For [Tatyana] the word ‘no’ didn’t exist .... Not only did she help pin and sponge the stone for the printer, she was doing whatever was necessary to be a part of it .... It brings you to another level, the process of presenting and printing a piece.” Grosman invited artists like Johns to her workshop to learn lithography, an

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effort that helped revive the practice of printmaking in America. Impressed by Johns’s paintings, Grosman was convinced that these works would beautifully translate into lithography. That year, Johns produced five lithographs: Target, Coat Hanger I, 0 through 9, Flag I, and Flag II. He also started his 0–9 series. To this day, Johns maintains a significant relationship with ULAE. Goldston met Johns in 1970 and collaborated with him on Decoy (1971), considered Johns’s first attempt at offset lithography, a process that prints an image in its original orientation rather than the traditional reverse. Goldston had experience using an offset press in the military, and encouraged Grosman to buy a press for ULAE to work on a Johns catalogue. “That’s how we ended up with the offset. I showed Jasper the proofs [from the catalogue]. He asked how I made them ....We later took the plates from his 1st Etchings, 2nd State (1969) and transferred them to a lithographic printing plate. I think Jasper likes the litho plate better than the stone because he can just flip it around, move it, and draw right on it. We did this transfer and put it on the offset press. [Tatyana] was concerned about printing Jasper’s original plate on that press. She feared it would ruin the plate. And Jasper said, ‘It’s my plate. If it ruins it I will just do another one.’ So we printed this area here at the bottom [of Decoy]. Everything Jasper did for the next 16 years at this studio was offset printing.” For decades, Johns has also experimented with etching, a process in which unprotected areas of a metal plate are incised when submerged in acid. At ULAE, Johns developed four impressive color etchings based on the seasons, which revisit his earlier paintings of the same subject. Made during a time of transition in Johns’s career, these works are an allegory for the artist and the cycle of human life. The Seasons (Summer) (1987) shows a silhouette of a figure with fragments of history from Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to painted American flags. Goldston described the project as “phenomenally successful...Jasper likes to work in etching.... I think it has a lot to do with the convenience of working with one person. With lithography you need more than one person to make it work efficiently.”

Shrinky Dink 4, 2011 Intaglio in 2 colors on Revere Standard White Felt paper 28 3/4 x 31 3/4 in. Ed. 50 Published by Universal Limited Art Editions Courtesy ULAE Art © Jasper Johns and ULAE / Licensed by VAGA, New York NY

The Seasons (Summer), 1987 Intaglio: 5 copper plates on Somerset paper 26 x 19 1/8 in. Ed. 73, AP 4/14 Published by Universal Limited Art Editions John and Maxine Belger Foundation Art © Jasper Johns and ULAE / Licensed by VAGA, New York NY

Several of Johns’s newest prints incorporate drawn or stamped American Sign Language letters, a motif he first used in 2007. In Shrinky Dink 4 (2011), the letters appear with painted calabash gourds, objects from Johns’s Saint Martin home. Johns first experimented with Shrinky Dinks™ (flexible plastic sheets that reduce in size and harden when heated) in the 1970s. He recently returned to the material to make drawings. Goldston explained: “Jasper asked me, ‘If I send you a small drawing, can you make it look different?’ I spent my life trying to make things look the way [Johns] gave them to me. He sent me this little Shrinky Dink drawing. My assistant Brian Berry and I did five plates trying to vary the drawing to make it look like what I thought Jasper wanted. He selected one for his project and I assumed the other four would be destroyed. Instead Jasper worked around and over that central image and they became Shrinky Dink 1–4.” Goldston considers Untitled (2011) a tour de force in etching. “John Lund [Johns’s master printer] told me that the whole thing is spit bite [a process in which an acid solution is painted directly on a prepared plate].... You

have to marvel at Jasper: there are 11 colors printed from only three plates. You print the multicolored blue plate, then the red and yellow plate, and finally the black plate. What you need is timing—you don’t want the blue plate or red plate to dry fully or else the black won’t print cleanly.... It is extraordinary that an artist possesses the technical foresight in etching something like this.” Quotes from Bill Goldston are from an interview conducted at ULAE on March 14, 2012. Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme is on view June 2–September 9, 2012. The exhibition is organized by The Phillips Collection in collaboration with the John and Maxine Belger Foundation.

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Antony Gormley: Drawing Space By Vesela Sretenovi´c, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

form of “messing about,” even though I take the activity very seriously. I do drawings in notebooks that deal with specific issues in the making of sculpture, but the drawings that I enjoy best are the ones that are free explorations. VS: Do you make a distinction between your pro-

cesses for sculptural work and work on paper? They seem to be part of the same whole—this was my impression seeing your quiet drawing room next to your busy sculpture studio. AG: The drawing space at my studio, while being connected to the sculpture studio, is a place apart, very much my space. When I am in there, I like the feeling of being in a time-space capsule that can go anywhere, whereas all the work that I do in the main studio is much more directed. VS: In your sculptural practice, you use your

Antony Gormley’s exquisite drawings are spontaneous and direct, exploit unusual materials, and address collective experience and memory. The first major U.S. presentation of his works on paper, Antony Gormley: Drawing Space features a rich array of works by the acclaimed British artist (b. 1950), including drawings, prints, and two recent sculptures. Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenovic´ visited Gormley in his studio in London in February. Excerpts from their discussion follow. above : Clearing L, 2006 Carbon and casein on paper 30 3 / 8 x 43 3 / 4 in. © Antony Gormley Image courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

opposite :

Space, 2007 Lithograph 43 3 / 4 x 30 3 / 8 in. Edition of 40 © Antony Gormley Image courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

own body. How do you approach bodies in your drawings?

for your sculpture, installation, and public artwork than your drawings and prints. How do you explain that?

AG: There are three very different modes that I use in drawing, but they are all registers of my body. The first mode is the most active. I stand, and the surface on which I am working is either horizontal or attached to the wall vertically. The drawing registers the movement of my body. This is most evident in the Clearing series.… I try to be as present in the moment as possible and the resulting work is a register of that embodied moment. I also sometimes work sitting and these are usually more intimate drawings on a smaller scale, in which the body is pictured or indicated, rather than evoked, by a trace or by a scratch.… Sometimes they have, as in a diagram, indications of internal organs, but more often than not they are silhouetted images that simply carry a feeling of a body in space.

AG: For me, drawing is a foundational activity, something that I do every day. In a sense it is a seedbed of and for ideas and feelings. It is also a place of escape from the procedural demands of making sculpture. Sculpture takes a long time; it involves planning and persistent physical activity. But drawing is wonderfully open. As a result, the drawings are themselves very varied and are a

The third mode of drawing is one in which I am registered by a process. The Bodies in Space prints were made simply by me lying down and the outline of my body was traced by my wife. That outline is then used to form a template and the template is used to mask the area of falling pigment.… I take my body as a test site, a specific example of a universal condition.

VS: Generally speaking, you are better known

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“ I have never wanted to use color in order to reproduce the colors of a referenced object – the color comes from the materials: the redness of blood, the yellowness of milk, the earthiness of earth.”

VS: Your drawings are so free and highly

charged. Some are soaked in black pigment or stained with vegetables, minerals, oils, earth, casein, glue, animal skin, even semen and blood; some are about the body, others about the moving line or geometry of space. Could you speak to this opposition of density and fluidity, blackness and translucency, figurative and abstract that coexists in your work?

project was with Okeanos Editions in California in 1989. I spent a month developing a series of woodblock prints that attempt to isolate the body as a place of transformation, reflect the relationship of the body to architecture, and evoke internal organs as windows for both perception and feeling. I went on to make a set of etchings called Body and Soul, trying to evoke the space of the body seen from the inside and trying to reconcile gravity, light, and space. They are direct prints of the apertures of the body where mouth, ears, nose, anus, and penis become holes through which space becomes apparent and various other load-bearing parts of the body (particularly the knees) are then impressed onto the plate indicating weight. VS: You came to art making after studying

archaeology, anthropology, and art history. Was there a decisive moment for this shift? How did your trip to India in the early 1970s impact your decision?

Untitled, 2001 Monochrome aquatint etching Edition of 200 18 3 / 8 x 16 3 / 8 in. © Antony Gormley Image courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

VS: You have said that you are not keen on print-

making, yet a number of works in the exhibition are prints. What then makes you do prints? AG: So far I have done three major suites of

prints. I think of them as multiples of the instantaneous used to reinforce basic ideas. The first

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AG: I decided in India that I would try to be a sculptor rather than a picture maker. I am eternally grateful that I studied archaeology, anthropology, and art history. I think it gave me a sense of the two poles of the world, one of which I was attempting to make a contribution to: the essential role of “making” in the evolution of our species.… Human beings cannot be dissociated from the work that they do, of which perhaps the most telling is creative work. Art history taught me how that kind of “making” has evolved in Western culture. Traveling to India allowed me to put that cultural and historical conditioning into a wider context. At that time, all my education had either come from other people’s knowledge or books. In India I realized that being itself is the greatest source of understanding.

below : Antony Gormley in his drawing studio

AG: The challenge for me is to allow drawing to be a place of possibility and openness, becoming an extension of living itself. I have never wanted to use color in order to reproduce the colors of a referenced object—the color comes from the materials: the redness of blood, the yellowness of milk, the earthiness of earth. I am very interested in the idea that every mark is not just about the making of a sign, it is about the place that something happened—the evidential and the oracular is more important to me that the representation. This exhibition is called Drawing Space because what I am trying to achieve in my drawing is the same as my sculpture: to explore the twofold nature of our experience. The first is being in that space—whatever or wherever it is—that we are in when we close our eyes, and the second is being in that space which exists beyond the skin and is seemingly infinite.… For me these are the two imperatives: to make a true statement of embodiment, while also acknowledging the infinity of space. Antony Gormley: Drawing Space is on view June 2–September 9, 2012. Special thanks to Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, and the Antony Gormley Studio, London.

above : Mansion, 1982 Black pigment, oil, and charcoal on paper 33 x 23 5 / 8 in. © Antony Gormley Image courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

top :

Bearing Light III, 1990 Woodblock print 22 ½ x 19 ½ in. © Antony Gormley Image courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

The exhibition is organized by The Phillips Collection. Sponsored by

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Duncan Phillips and the Washington Art World of the 1920s

John Cage at the Phillips

center: For his exhibition at the Corcoran, Phillips selected, among others, works by American artists John Henry Twachtman, Augustus Vincent Tack, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, as well as French artists.

The Phillips Collection is America’s first museum of modern art, but it wasn’t the first museum in Washington. As Duncan Phillips was forming his collection, he was also building relationships with local museums and collectors. In 1920, a year before he opened his museum, Phillips exhibited some of his works at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the only art museum open to the public at the time, allowing him to gauge the critical reaction to his developing collection. He also purchased at least 11 paintings from the Corcoran’s biennial exhibitions, most of them by American impressionists.

In conjunction with Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme, the Phillips is participating in the citywide John Cage Centennial Festival in September, celebrating the legendary avant-garde composer who was a longtime friend and collaborator of Jasper Johns. Cage produced a series of watercolors at Mountain Lake Workshop, Virginia, in 1988. Ray Kass, founder and director of the workshop, explains Cage’s process for his New River Watercolors, Series III, three of which are in the Phillips’s collection.

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The I-Ching computer pages also determined the vertical placement of the stone at the bottom of the paper, as well as the number of vertical washes and hues each of the works should receive. On the first sheet, Cage painted around the partial perimeter of the stone three times, moving the stone’s position and varying the color; he followed the I-Ching, but also experimented. The stone could traverse the right and left borders, sometimes resulting in a partially painted contour on the paper and leaving the rest of the image on the studio floor. Finally, Cage decided that each of the paintings should receive a neutral gray wash. — Ray Kass Cage’s watercolors and works by his contemporaries Morris Graves and Mark Tobey are on view June 2–September 9, 2012.

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John Cage Untitled (from New River Watercolors, Series III), 1988 Watercolor on rag paper 36 x 15 in. each Gift of Ray Kass and the Mountain Lake Workshop, 1990

On September 6, violinist Irvine Arditti will be at the Phillips to perform the complete Freeman Etudes by John Cage, and on August 9, the Creative Voices DC panel discusses Cage and his friendship with Johns. Visit www. phillipscollection.org/ calendar for more information.

The Phillips Collection Archives

John Cage's use of chance to compose his work was intended to direct attention to the choices from which the work was made. Before he began New River Watercolors, Series III at Mountain Lake Workshop, Cage had a dream about painting with a feather around a single stone, and said that he wanted to do a group of paintings with one mandala-like stone placed near the bottom of the paper. To select the materials and format for the series, Cage used “chance-operations” derived from a computerized printout of mathematical permutations from the ancient Chinese Book of Chance, or I-Ching—a source he consulted throughout his career to produce music, art, and texts. From a variety of paper sizes, stones, and feathers, the printout randomly identified a 36-inch-wide roll of paper, a flat stone approximately nine inches in diameter from nearby New River, and a single guinea hen glide-wing feather. Cage decided that the stone would be a template for all of the paintings in the series, and he asked us to divide the 10-yard roll of paper into 25 sheets, each 15 inches wide.

Meanwhile, on the Mall, the Freer Gallery of Art was being constructed to house the collection of Charles Lang Freer, who died in 1919. Duncan Phillips called Freer “our inspired predecessor.” Both men installed artwork based on visual affinities rather than chronology or nationality; Freer saw connections between Japanese pottery and 19thcentury American painting much as Phillips found exciting relationships between Egyptian sculpture and post-impressionist painting. Professional connections soon formed between the two museums: Freer’s secretary and research assistant was Katharine Rhoades, who served on The Phillips Collection’s first board of trustees. Rhoades managed the transfer of Freer’s

Duncan Phillips used numeric rankings to compare works by American artists in his evolving collection with paintings by the same artists in the Corcoran and the “National” (the Smithsonian’s National Gallery which later became the Smithsonian American Art Museum).

collection from Detroit to Washington and was often on site at the Freer, which opened in 1923, working closely with architect Charles Platt. At the same time, Rhoades was a member of several Phillips trustee subcommittees, discussing similar issues of design and interior decoration during the museum’s formative

Corcoran Gallery of Art Archives

By Karen Schneider, Librarian

below: Installation view of the Corcoran’s 11th biennial exhibition in 1928

stages. Furthermore, William Acker, Duncan Phillips’s brother-inlaw, was an associate in East Asian languages at the Freer. Duncan Phillips also built ties with fellow collectors, helping to organize in 1925 an exhibition of paintings from Washington collections at the Smithsonian’s National Gallery (then located in the National Museum of Natural History, and later to become the Smithsonian American Art Museum). For assistance, Phillips turned to leading collectors and arts patrons such as Agnes Meyer, a member of the Stieglitz circle who was the wife of Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post. Phillips also sought the opinion of Leila Mechlin, art critic for The Washington Star and secretary of the American Federation of Arts. Phillips contributed to the exhibition works by Honoré Daumier, Pierre-August Renoir, and George Inness, among others, emphasizing quality rather than quantity in his selection. Selected correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and books that reveal Duncan Phillips’s relationships with Washington collections in the 1920s are on view in the Reading Room through December 30, 2012.

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RE C EN T A C QUISI T ION s

Leo Villareal's Scramble and Gifford Beal's Circus Parade are on view in the permanent collection galleries this summer. GIFFORD B EAL’ S PIC T URES Q UE A M ERICA

Photo: Joshua Navarro

The family of American artist Gifford Beal (1879–1956) has donated to The Phillips Collection a selection of 11 prints by the artist and a scrapbook filled with his charming watercolors. The gift, courtesy of Kraushaar Galleries in New York, strengthens the Phillips’s Beal collection as well as the museum’s holdings of American art.

Installation view at The Phillips Collection

LEO V ILLAREAL’ S d i g i ta l c o lo r f i e l d

By Klaus Ottmann, Curator at Large

Villareal’s Scramble is a square light box with rapidly changing light-emitting diodes (LEDs), suggesting the effect of Frank Stella’s mobile 1967 sets for the Merce Cunningham dance of the same title. For Cunningham’s Scramble, Stella stretched vividly colored pieces of cloth over rectangular aluminum frames; mounted onto casters, the frames were moved around the stage, producing a shifting collage of purple, blue, red, green, yellow, and orange. Stella later created his celebrated Scramble painting

Scramble, by multimedia artist Leo Villareal (b. 1967), was directly inspired by a public conversation between Villareal and Frank Stella, moderated by Phillips Curator at Large Klaus Ottmann during a symposium at the Phillips in June 2011. The symposium was held in conjunction with the exhibitions Kandinsky and the Harmony of Silence: Painting with White Border and Stella Sounds: The Scarlatti K Series.

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and print series made up of concentric squares of colors. Villareal’s Scramble, with its never-repeating soft color shifts that blend into each other and onto the adjacent walls, is a 21st-century variation on abstract color field paintings, represented at The Phillips Collection by the works of Sam Gilliam, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Mark Rothko, and others. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Villareal began experimenting with light, sound, and video when he studied set design and sculpture at Yale University. He has created site-specific commissions throughout the world, including at MoMA PS1, New York; Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas. Villareal specializes in computer-programmed LED installations and is best known in Washington for Multiverse (2005–08), a light sculpture that runs along the walkway connecting the East and West Buildings of the National Gallery of Art.

top and left:

Leo Villareal Scramble, 2011 Light-emitting diodes, Mac mini, custom software, circuitry, wood, Plexiglas 60 x 60 x 8 in. Ed. 2/3, The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions, 2012

above : Frank Stella, Curator at Large Klaus Ottmann, and Leo Villareal at the Phillips symposium in June 2011

Gifford Beal Circus Parade, n.d. Etching on paper 8 ¾ x 12 in. Gift of Gifford Beal Family, Courtesy of Kraushaar Galleries, 2011

By Susan Behrends Frank Associate Curator for Research

By 1914, as Duncan Phillips was just beginning his career as an art critic and thoughtful collector, Gifford Beal—a student of William Merritt Chase along with Edward Hopper—had achieved commercial and critical success for his picturesque scenes of America. Phillips, an admirer of Beal’s work, struck up a friendship with him in 1917 when both were members of the Century Club in New York. Beal then played a seminal role in Phillips’s personal life: in early 1921, when Phillips presented his nascent collection at the club, Beal introduced his niece Marjorie Acker to

the young collector. Marjorie and Duncan married later that year, establishing a lifelong connection between Beal and the founder of The Phillips Collection. As a New Yorker, Beal was fascinated by the people on the city's streets. Several of the prints in this recent gift are of New York subjects, including Central Park, one of Beal’s favorite places in town. Beal spent his summers exploring cooler localities such as New Brunswick, Maine, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. From 1923 until the end of his life he divided his time between New York and Rockport, Massachusetts, where he stayed next to the harbor and enjoyed the townsfolk. Five of the new prints entering the collection depict Rockport subjects and are related to paintings already in the museum's collection. Beal was also attracted to the pageantry of the tent circuses that traveled the region north of Boston (the North Shore) each summer. He explored them again and again in paintings and prints, writing in a diary that “no day can compare with a day at the circus, for an artist who loves it.” Phillips acquired three of Beal’s circus paintings and a number of circus prints. This new gift includes two circus etchings that complement paintings in the collection, providing invaluable insight into the world of this important artist who captured the charm of early 20th-century American life.

The etching Fishermen with Nets (n.d.) by Gifford Beal, given to the museum by the artist's family in 2011, complements Beal’s oil painting Carrying the Nets (1923), which Duncan Phillips acquired in 1923.

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Reconstructing Gifford Beal’s World By Sylvia Albro Paper Conservator

Although the book—a widely used brand at the time—is called “The Ideal Scrapbook,” it certainly wasn’t ideal for conservation. The paper is composed of wood pulp, the same material used to make newspaper, which turns brown and brittle over time. Each page had strips of adhesive dots with gum; Beal would wet the dots to paste the drawings onto the page. The book was most likely kept near a fireplace or in a room with a lot of soot, because there was a considerable amount of dirt on the pages. My first task was to clean off the soot. Then I removed the drawings from the scrapbook using a handheld steamer. Some of the drawings on newsprint had cracked over time and had to be mended with new paper. Next, I removed the adhesive from the back of the drawings using light moisture and heat through blotters. The drawings were then humidified in a Gortex package and placed between blotters and weights for a few weeks to flatten them. With the help of conservation assistants Caroline Hoover and Juan Tejedor, we mounted the clean, flat drawings on museum quality conservation board by slipping them into corners made of Japanese paper; that way, the drawings are not adhered to the board and can easily be rearranged if

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desired. The scrapbook, now empty, is kept in an archival box in a climate controlled room along with the drawings on their new supports, and the drawings are separated by sheets of glassine to prevent abrasion. Our museum guidelines on how long works on paper can be exhibited at specific lighting levels will help preserve the drawings. Because the scrapbook was kept closed for many years, most of the drawings were in good condition and the colors were preserved from fading. Some of the drawings on lesser quality paper, however, became very brittle, and had they been left in the book any longer would have deteriorated beyond repair. Watercolor is especially sensitive to sunlight, so we are lucky that the colors have remained so fresh. Whether the figures are resting, standing, holding a newspaper, or eating, Beal was able to capture their essence in a few simple strokes and washes of brilliant color. Some of the figures are labeled, and many of them appear in the artist’s other paintings and prints in the museum’s collection. Associate Curator for Research Susan Behrends Frank is researching who these people are and looking for connections among Beal’s works. While the conservation work is complete, the stories are just beginning.

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As seen in this preconservation photo, the moisture on the strips made the paper curl into an accordion shape, which transferred to the drawings.

Left:

Sandra Cinto Untitled, 2011 Permanent pen and acrylic on canvas 47 ¼ x 72 ¾ in. Private collection Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York below : Installation view of After the Rain at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 2011 Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

Sandra Cinto One Day, After the Rain

Photos: Jean Vong

The Phillips Collection’s recently acquired Gifford Beal scrapbook, most likely put together during the early 1910s, was an interesting conservation challenge. It appears that Beal drew people outdoors around New York by bringing his drawing materials with him, including watercolors, charcoal, pastel, pencil, and pen, and sheets or pads of different grades of paper. Beal sketched groups of people and individuals of all shapes and sizes drawn from behind. He then selected and cut out some of these drawings and glued them into the scrapbook, totaling 60 sketches on 8 pages, front and back. The similar style and scenes throughout the scrapbook hint that the sketches were created over a short period of time.

Once the drawings were removed from the scrapbook, they were grouped based on their placement in the scrapbook, one board per page.

Sandra Cinto shares her inspiration and process for creating One Day, After the Rain, a monumental multipart drawing in ink and acrylic on canvas that covers the walls of the museum's café. “After I was invited to create an installation for the café, I visited the museum and fell in love with Arthur Dove’s Sun Drawing Water (1933). I decided to create an installation in homage to this important American artist. I researched Dove’s work and life and discovered two connections between his paintings and my work: nature and the passing of time. I like the way that he worked with the landscape, forms, and colors. “I was moved, as well, by the big window in the café. This connection with architecture was important in defining my project. I imagined movement coming through the window and registering the time lapse throughout the day from dawn to dusk to nightfall. I also considered the installation being

in a café and reflected on the meaning of this space. It is a place where people go after visiting the collection to think about what they saw. The fact that they are seated and resting inspired me to develop a project full of details and movement. The more time visitors spend in the space, the more details they can explore and become immersed in the drawings. This is a characteristic of my art—it is necessary to take time to see the details. In that sense, the café is the perfect setting for this kind of aesthetic enjoyment.” Cinto lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. She has exhibited her work internationally, including at the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo, the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. One Day, After the Rain is on view May 19, 2012–December 30, 2013 in the Vradenburg Café. Hear Sandra Cinto talk about her work on May 19 in the café. Intersections is supported by Phillips International Forum members.

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happenings

T HE PHILLIPS IN NASH V ILLE

After a successful tour oversees in Italy, Spain, and Japan, To See as Artists See: American Art from The Phillips Collection, the museum’s major touring exhibition of over 100 works by 75 artists, made its fourth stop in February. Presented at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, the exhibition drew crowds eager to discover the American side of a collection that is well known in Nashville after a popular 2004 exhibition of the Phillips’s European masterworks at the Frist. The exhibition will be at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Forth Worth, Texas, this fall, before its homecoming celebration at the Phillips in 2014.

In collaboration with the George Washington University, the Phillips awards annual postdoctoral fellowships to support research and teaching on topics in American, European, or non-Western art, including photography, from 1780 to the present. phillips student art i n N at i o n a l e x h i b i t i o n

This May, the Association of Art Museum Directors and the U.S. Department of Education, with assistance from The Phillips Collection, present Museums: pARTners in Learning, an exhibition of 40 student artworks created through museum-school collaborations. Fifteen museums, including the Phillips, are participating. The exhibition demonstrates the importance of arts integration in K–12 education, which enhances learning across the curriculum and enriches students’ self-esteem and leadership skills. The exhibition is on view at the U.S. Department of Education from May 11 through June 22. Visit www.aamd.org/ partnersinlearning2012 for more information and to see the student artwork.

CO M ING SOON T RY S T AT T HE PHILLIPS

Tryst Coffeehouse Bar and Lounge is coming to the café! The menu includes specialty coffee and espresso drinks and other beverages, fresh pastries, and scrumptious sandwiches, salads, and soups. Come grab a bite to eat and linger in the café or courtyard with our free public Wi-fi. The café is open every Thursday until 8:30 pm from June through August. Members receive a 10% discount in the café and are invited to preview Tryst at the Phillips beginning May 22.

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The Phillips Collection has been crowned “Best Museum” in the Washington City Paper’s Reader’s Poll for the third year in a row. Thank you to everyone who voted for us!

SNAPSHOT: PAINTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHY , BONNARD TO VUILLARD Trustees, Circles, Patrons and friends gathered on February 1 for a preview of the exhibition. 1. Director Dorothy Kosinski and Roland Celette 2. Snapshot guest curator Elizabeth Easton and Senator John Kerry 3. Van Gogh Museum Head of Exhibitions Edwin Becker and Van Gogh Museum Director Axel Ruger 4. Sigurd Schelstraete, Agnes Matthysen, Charlotte Matthysen, and Florence Fasanelli

T HE PHILLIPS CA M ERATA

The museum’s first resident music ensemble performed to a packed house of 400 people at the National Gallery of Art in February. On May 27, as a finale to the 2011–12 Sunday Concerts season, Miranda Cuckson (violin), Karen Johnson (viola), Olivia Hajioff / Marc Ramirez (viola), David Teie (cello), and Edvinas Minkstimas (piano) will perform Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet and Schumann’s buoyant and inventive E-flat Quintet. Visit www.phillipscollection.com/music for reservations.

NEW Y EAR CELE BRA TION Trustees, Circles, and Patrons rang in the new year with a reception at the Phillips. 5. Ludmila Cafritz and Conrad Cafritz 6. Judith Terra, Director Dorothy Kosinski, and Lionell Thomas 7. Joseph DiGangi, Charlotte Potler Klein, and Charles McKittrick 8. Board Chair George Vradenburg, Trish Vradenburg, and Susan Butler

Photos: james brantley

Valerie Hellstein is the 2012–13 Phillips postdoctoral fellow, and will join the Phillips’s Center for the Study of Modern Art in July. Hellstein received her PhD in art history from Stony Brook University, New York, in 2010, and is a scholar of 20th-century American and European art, in particular the connections between modern art, spirituality, and politics. She is currently working on a book, tentatively titled Collective Anarchy: The Club, Abstract Expressionism, and the Cold War, and most recently taught at Boston College and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In addition to furthering her research at the Phillips, Hellstein will teach an art history course at the Center, deliver a public lecture on her research, and participate in other scholarly activity at the Center and at the George Washington University.

Best Museum

Photo: Arjaan Everts

W ELCO M E NE W POS T DOC TORAL FELLOW

Photos: james brantley

museum news

PHILLIPS AFTER 5 9. The February Phillips after 5 included acting workshops led by Arena Stage.

YARNING FOR LOV E

On Valentine's Day, the Phillips’s Dupont Circle neighborhood woke to a valentine from the museum and local knitters. Hand-knit hearts adorned trees and buildings, creating a lovely pathway between The Phillips Collection and project partner Looped Yarn Works.

AR T LINKS TO LEARNING CO MMUNITY CELE BRA TIONS 10. On January 18 and 19, the Art Links to Learning Museum-in-Residence program culminated with celebrations for students, teachers, and parents from our partner schools Tyler Elementary School and Takoma Education Campus, including student performances, in-gallery activities, and viewing student artwork in the Young Artists Exhibition.

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S u p p o r t i n g t h e P h i ll i p s

Museum Shop

t o d ay a n d i n t h e f u t u r e

administers loans to museums, and also engages with the Kansas City community. Craft has been executive director of the foundation and the center since 2009 and is excited about the future, which includes the addition of clay, lithography, and metal studios and more spaces for art classes. The foundation is collaborating with The Phillips Collection on Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme. Both Belger and Craft have fond memories of the Phillips. “My father used to travel to D.C. for meetings,” Belger recalls. “At 11 years old, I would escape and explore the neighborhood. That’s how I stumbled onto the Phillips. I remember in 1955 or ’56 looking at Luncheon of the Boating Party and some Braque paintings. I think that was the beginning of my understanding of collecting in depth. Phillips collected in units and was a true visionary.” Dick Belger became a member of The Phillips Collection’s Board of Trustees in 2007. For her part, Craft’s first visit to the Phillips was in the 1980s with Ballet Memphis colleagues. “I would come through D.C. regularly to see ballet. Because of Degas’s Dancers at the Barre, we frequented the Phillips.” As co-chairs of the Phillips’s International Forum, Belger and Craft hope to expand the museum’s mission beyond the East Coast. Belger explains: “The world is a more global place and museums no longer serve a small area. The Phillips is in a strong position because of Duncan Phillips’s great collection.”

DICK B ELGER AND EV ELY N CRAFT: COLLECTING IN DEPT H Seeing prints by Jasper Johns was a turning point in C. Richard (Dick) Belger’s collecting career. A Midwesterner from Kansas City, Missouri, and CEO of Belger Cartage Service, Belger has always been a collector, with interests that range from coins to decorative art. In 1969, at Morgan Gallery in Kansas City, he came across Johns’s Fragment—According to What Coat Hanger and Spoon (1971). “It was a work of our time,” he explains. “Johns provided a different way of looking at things.” The print became Belger’s first fine art purchase. In Memphis, Tennessee, Evelyn Craft grew up around art. She studied business and initially worked in banking, but later combined her interests in finance and the arts—first as director of Ballet Memphis, then as director of the Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, Florida. Craft met Belger in 2005 when she worked on a Morean exhibition that included loans from the John and Maxine Belger Foundation. Established in 2000, the foundation focuses on collecting large numbers of works by several specific artists so that a given artist's work can be examined in one location. Belger, the foundation’s secretary, describes its mission: “We collect work in depth by contemporary American artists, including Johns. We have over 100 or 200 pieces by each artist, from early to recent work. There is a journey you can track in their art; that journey is at the heart of the collection.” The Belger Arts Center displays and organizes exhibitions of works in the foundation’s collection,

Please join us for these upcoming trips: June 29: Philadelphia (Day Trip)

Debra Pearlman’s book takes young readers on a journey through artwork by Jasper Johns and the artists who inspired him. By searching for Johns in his work, readers are introduced to the American artist and learn to look at art in an original and imaginative way. Ages 8 and up. 30 pages, hardcover.

July 21–30: Munich and Berlin, Germany October 11–15: Kansas City December 4–7: Art Basel Miami

For more information, contact Anissa Masters: amasters@phillipscollection.org or 202-387-2151 x229 A CIRCLE OF SUPPORTERS

Participants toured the colorful streets of Havana and visited the art school ISA Universidad de las Artes.

contemporary artists, and Nashville favorites. The group also attended a reception at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, followed by a private dinner with director Susan Edwards and the board of trustees in honor of the Phillips’s major touring American art exhibition, To See as Artists See: American Art from The Phillips Collection.

The Phillips Collection’s Circle members provide critical support to sustain the museum's permanent collection, worldclass exhibitions, and award-winning education programs. With a shared passion for art and cultural enrichment, and a commitment to the museum’s continued success, this select group of major donors cultivates Duncan Phillips’s vision of the museum as a “beneficent force.” Circle members gain access to exceptional experiences, people, and places such as the Annual Circles Dinner. On April 13, Belgian Ambassador Jan Matthysen and Mrs. Agnes Matthysen generously hosted the dinner, a black-tie evening at the Belgian Residence.

ART AROUND THE WORLD The Phillips Collection’s travel program brings art enthusiasts together for excursions to exclusive cultural destinations. In February, participants traveled to Cuba for a week of art, history, and cultural tours throughout Havana and neighboring cities, as well as concerts and private viewings of galleries and studios with some of Cuba’s leading artists. In March, Phillips travelers enjoyed a two-day trip to Nashville, Tennessee, where they visited two prominent private collections featuring work by modern masters,

Where is Jasper Johns? $14.95/Members $13.46

Ambassador Jan Matthysen and Board Chair George Vradenberg at the Annual Circles Dinner on April 13.

For information about becoming a Circle member, contact Allison Chance: achance@ phillipscollection.org or 202-387-2151 x314

Travelers enjoy lunch in Nashville at the popular Tin Angel restaurant.

Correction: In the FY2011 Annual Report from the last issue of the magazine, Eliza Laughlin Society member Penelope d. B. Saffer was inadvertently omitted and Irene Wurtzel's name was spelled incorrectly. The Phillips regrets these errors.

Van Gogh: The Life $40/Members $36

Van Gogh: The Life (Random House, 2011) is Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s detailed, well-researched 953-page biography of the iconic Dutchman. Unlike many other publications on the artist's posthumous fame and his work's meaning, this book focuses instead on Vincent van Gogh’s life and times, with a surprising conclusion: the authors' strong, well documented case that van Gogh did not commit suicide. Acclaimed for their 1991 biography of Jackson Pollock, Naifeh and Smith have again produced a myth-busting account of an artist who lived hard, died young, and suffered for his art. Readers suffer with him as the biography fully documents van Gogh’s many disappointments and the remorse he felt for his difficult relationship with his family, for whom the authors’ greatest empathy is reserved. Filled with penetrating, vivid descriptions of van Gogh’s art along with his personal struggles, The Life is a relentless but compelling account of his path to tragedy. Although reading the book is a long, difficult journey, like van Gogh’s art it is a worthwhile endeavor. Even more meaningful than its specific insights about the artist is what readers learn about the human spirit, and what one can endure for what was van Gogh’s seemingly unobtainable, yet ultimately realized, goal: to be recognized as a beloved and important artist. – Paul Ruther, Manager of Teacher Programs

Totem City Building Set $28/Members $25.20

Totem City is a three dimensional building adventure made with 130 pieces of sturdy recycled cardboard printed with swords, dragons, symbols, and textures. Construct a church, a vessel, an airplane, or a sailboat—or make your own creation! Ages 6 and up. Other compatible Totem sets available in the Museum Shop.

Order Online

shop.phillipscollection.org Order by Phone

202-387-2151 x238

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D at e s t o s av e

Unless otherwise noted, events are included in admission to the special exhibition. Visit www. phillipscollection.org/calendar for a complete schedule of events and to make reservations.

PHILLIPS AF T ER 5 J AZZ ’ N FA M ILIES FUN DAY S

A lively mix of art and entertainment, Green CaterinG including live music, food, and cash bar. Saturday, June 2, 10 am–5 pm Reservations strongly advised for this Sunday, June 3, 11 am–6 pm popular event: www.phillipscollection.org/ calendar. $12; $10 for visitors 62 and over The Phillips’s annual free celebration happy 90th phillips ColleCtion! andanniversary students. Members always admitted free, features musicians improvising to artno reservation needed. Catering provided by works in the galleries and performances throughout the weekend, including Let’s Get Jazzed with Tony Small and the Boys Thursday, June 7, 5–8:30 pm and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington geppettocatering.com • 301-927-8800 DC Jazz Festival and pianist Janelle Gill. Visitors create In 1the fourth annual partnership 4/7/11 between jazz-inspired art to take home, visit GPC_Phillips_Anniv_Ad_FR.indd the 4:40:46 PM the Phillips and the DC Jazz Festival, the instrument petting zoo, and view the Michael Thomas Quintet pays tribute to New Jasper Johns and Antony Gormley exhibiYork jazz legends from the 1950s. Violinist tions on opening weekend. Part of the David Shulman plays in the galleries, interannual Dupont-Kalorama Museum Walk preting the visual rhythms of the paintings Weekend. In collaboration with DC Jazz on view. Includes screening of two episodes Festival. Proudly sponsored by KidsPost. of “The Simpsons” (where Jasper Johns All activities and museum admission appears as himself and Lisa meets her jazz are free. mentor), as well as gallery talks about Johns. In partnership with the DC Jazz Festival.

Thursday, July 5, 5–8:30 pm The British Invasion The British are coming! In honor of British artist Antony Gormley’s exhibition, the Phillips celebrates all things English with screenings of the British sketch comedy show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” and British-themed music, fashion, and gallery talks. Also learn about printing techniques featured in Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme with master printer Scip Barnhart. In collaboration with the British Embassy, Washington. Thursday, August 2, 5–8:30 pm Food Truck Fiesta

M E M B ER PRE V IE W S Be among the first to see Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme and Antony Gormley: Drawing Space

Quiet the mind and satiate the appetite with the second annual Food Truck Fiesta in Hillyer Court behind the museum. Silent film screenings, along with American Sign Language classes in the galleries, pay tribute to the sign language imagery featured in Jasper Johns’s prints. In collaboration with DC Shorts Film Festival and Gallaudet University.

Thursday, May 31, 10 am–8:30 pm Friday, June 1, 10 am–5 pm Tours offered on these dates at 11 am and 2 pm For information on special previews and receptions for trustees, Circle members, Patrons, Friends, Associates, and Contemporaries, visit www.phillipscollection.org/support

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LECTURES AND GALLERY TALKS Thursday, May 17, 6pm Duncan Phillips Lecture: Gary Tinterow Tinterow discusses his experience as former chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art, and the collectors and acquisitions that shaped the history of the museum. After nearly three decades at the Met, Tinterow is now director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. $20; $8 for members; free for students. Registration required Saturday, May 19, 4 pm Artist’s Perspective: Sandra Cinto The artist discusses One Day, After the Rain, her Intersections installation covering the café walls, with Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenovic´. Included in museum admission; free for members Thursday, May 31, 6 & 7 pm Gallery Talk: Feast of Friends: Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party Renoir used friends and colleagues as models for his monumental impressionist painting, representing their varied backgrounds and social classes in a dazzling portrayal of modern life. By donation Thursday, June 14, 6:30 pm Curator’s Perspective: Multiple Times/Multiple Ways: Jasper Johns's Prints National Gallery of Art consulting curator Ruth Fine discusses Johns’s diverse approaches to printmaking and the important role prints have played in the evolution of his practice in all media. Thursday, June 21, 6 & 7 pm Gallery Talk: Duncan and Dove: The Patron / Artist Relationship Duncan Phillips saw Arthur Dove as one of the most significant American painters of his day, building a professional relationship with the artist and amassing the world's largest collection of Dove’s work. By donation

Thursday, June 28, 6 & 7 pm Gallery Talk: Jasper Johns and Printmaking Practice Using stamps and found objects in lithography and embossed relief, Johns conducted experiments that led to advances in printmaking. Thursday July 12, 6:30 pm Artist’s Perspective: Bill Goldston on Jasper Johns Bill Goldston collaborated with Jasper Johns on several prints in the Johns exhibition. He provides an insider look at Johns’s work with fine art publisher Universal Limited Art Editions, where Goldston has been director since 1982. Thursday, August 9, 6 pm Creative Voices DC: John Cage Artists and collectors share their experiences working with avant-garde composer John Cage, discuss his friendship with Jasper Johns, and reflect on his watercolors on view at the Phillips. In conjunction with the citywide John Cage Centennial Festival. Panelists include Renée Butler, Helen Frederick, Steve Antosca, and Ray Kass. By donation, registration required Thursday, August 23, 7 pm Curator’s Perspective: Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme Assistant Curator Renée Maurer discusses Jasper Johns’s printmaking legacy, from his iconic targets, flags, and numbers, to his new work. Thursday, August 30, 7 pm Curator’s Perspective: Antony Gormley: Drawing Space Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenovic´ examines Gormley’s wide range of works on paper, focusing on his exquisite figure and abstract drawings and prints.

FIL M S

PERFOR M ANCE

Thursday, May 24, 6:30 pm Manhattan

Thursday, June 28, 6:30 pm Vocal Colors: A Musical Exploration of Visual Art

Woody Allen’s Oscar-nominated black-andwhite film highlights the romantic travails of 42-year-old Isaac Davis (Allen), who has a 17-year-old girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a lesbian ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep), and a romantic interest in Mary (Diane Keaton). 1979, 96 mins. By donation

Wolf Trap Opera Company returns with performers responding to art at the Phillips, bridging musical genres from pop to classical and avant-garde. In collaboration with the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. $20; $8 for members. Registration required

Thursday, May 31, 6:30 pm Midnight in Paris

M USIC

A trip to Paris highlights the differences between romantic writer Gil (Owen Wilson) and his wealthy, spoiled fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). 2011, dir. Woody Allen, 94 mins. By donation

Sunday Concerts are held in the Music Room at 4 pm and conclude with informal conversations between audience and performers. $20; $8 for members; includes museum admission for the day of the concert. Advance reservations recommended

Thursday, July 19, 6:30 and 7:30 pm Decoy This short film narrated by Barbara Rose examines Jasper Johns’s thought process and methods as both a printmaker and painter. As the artist works on his lithographs at Universal Limited Art Editions, the subtle meanings and ironies that characterize his work begin to emerge. 1972, dir. Michael Blackwood, 18 min. Thursday, July 26, 6:30 pm Just Trial and Error: Conversations on Consciousness Using visual material from artist Antony Gormley and a score by Wajid Yaseen, filmmaker Alex Gabbay attempts to link the worlds of art and consciousness. The film unfolds through a series of captivating interviews. 2010, 62 min.

Sunday May 13 & 20 Raphael Trio The Raphael Trio continues its comprehensive traversal of the piano trio repertoire, highlighting two rarely performed trios by Italian operetta composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari. Sunday, May 27 The Phillips Camerata Miranda Cuckson (violin), Karen Johnson (viola), Olivia Hajioff / Marc Ramirez (viola), David Teie (cello), and Edvinas Minkstimas (piano) perform Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet—written originally for the Beethoven String Quartet—and Schumann’s buoyant and inventive E-flat Quintet. Thursday, September 6, 6 pm John Cage Centennial Festival Violinist Irvine Arditti performs the complete Freeman Etudes by John Cage, with real-time sound environment created by Jaime Oliver. $20; $8 for members; includes admission to Phillips after 5

DE M ONS T RAT ION Thursday, June 21, 6:30 pm Interactive Printmaking Master printer Scip Barnhart demonstrates basic printmaking techniques presented in Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme. Barnhart teaches printmaking, art of the book, and drawing at Georgetown University and is director of Union Printmakers Atelier. Each participant receives a limited edition print designed for this presentation by Barnhart. $20; $8 for members. Registration required

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Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Baltimore, MD Permit No. 3361

1600 21st Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 Address Service Requested – Please include mailing label

u p co m i n g e x h i b iti o n October 6, 2012–Jan u ar y 6 , 2 0 1 3

Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Sculpture The Phillips presents the first major American museum exhibition of the works of Scandinavia’s most highly acclaimed artist. Originally trained as a geologist, Per Kirkeby (Danish, b. 1938) produces richly layered canvases that are structured like geological strata, suggesting flux, movement, and change over time. His striking bronze sculptures of fragmented body parts, reminiscent of Rodin, are similarly based in a deep dialogue with nature. Kirkeby is also a printmaker, filmmaker, writer, and poet. The exhibition highlights key moments in his career, from his early association with minimalism and the radical Fluxus movement in the 1960s to his recent work, which marries the poetic and metaphysical to the scientific investigation of the material world. The exhibition is organized by The Phillips Collection. The exhibition is proudly sponsored by

Additional support is provided by the Danish Arts Council Committee for International Visual Arts

Per Kirkeby New Shadows V, 1996 Oil on canvas 63 x 63 in. Private Collection