Upcoming Exhibitions

Side by Side: Oberlin's Masterworks at the Phillips

September 11, 2010–January 16, 2011

Twenty-five significant works from the rich collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin will be presented with selections from the Phillips’s permanent collection, creating new artistic conversations and provocative juxtapositions. Many of these works have not left the Allen in half a century and include paintings by artists in the modernist tradition—such as Paul Cézanne, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Claude Monet, and Mark Rothko—as well as significant works by Hendrick ter Brugghen, Peter Paul Rubens, and Joseph Mallord William Turner, among others. Organized by The Phillips Collection and the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.

TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and

the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945

October 9, 2010–January 9, 2011

Like impressionism, which challenged the traditions of painting, pictorialism expanded the possibilities of photography beyond the literal description of a subject. Pictorialist photographers produced some of the most spectacular photographs in the history of the medium and influenced subsequent developments in modernist photography. Comprising over 130 photographs, this exhibition retraces pictorialism’s beginnings with the experiments of Hill and Adamson, and Julia Margaret Cameron; through its mastery by Alfred Stieglitz, Gertrude Kasebier, and Alvin Langdon Coburn; to its lasting legacy in early works by Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. Organized by George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and Vancouver Art Gallery.

Proudly sponsored by

Coburn and the Photographic Portfolio

Oct. 9, 2010–Jan.9, 2011

David Smith, Invents

February 12–May 15, 2011

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

Philip Guston, Roma

February 12–May 15, 2011

From the films of Federico Fellini to the vestiges of ancient Rome and the works of Italian Renaissance and modern painters, Philip Guston (1912–1980) drew inspiration from Italian art and culture and the distinctive Italian landscape. This exhibition of nearly 40 paintings is the first to examine the seminal work Guston completed while he was artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1970-71. During this Italian sojourn, his third and last, Guston continued to develop pared-down forms organized into unconventional narrative systems that provoked new directions in his late paintings. The Phillips Collection is the only U.S. venue for this exhibition. Organized by the City of Rome and the Museo Carlo Bilotti – Aranciera di Villa Borghese, in partnership with the American Academy in Rome.

Made possible by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art

From Drawing to Painting: Kandinsky’s Painting with White Border

June 11–Sept. 4, 2011

After a visit to his native Moscow in 1912, Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944) sought to find a way to record the “extremely powerful impressions” that lingered in his memory. Working tirelessly through numerous drawings, watercolors, and oil studies over a five-month period, Kandinsky eventually arrived at his 1913 masterpiece, Painting with White Border. The exhibition will reunite this painting with over 12 preparatory studies from international collections, including the Phillips’s oil sketch, and compare it with other closely related works. Complemented by an in-depth conservation study of Painting with White Border, the exhibition will provide viewers with a rare glimpse into Kandinsky’s creative process. Organized by The Phillips Collection and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Degas’s Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint

Oct. 1, 2011–Jan. 8, 2012

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) was immersed in and fascinated by the world of ballet. His creative process in approaching a painting became akin to choreography. This exhibition attempts to uncover the history behind his late masterpiece in The Phillips Collection, Dancers at the Barre. A rich selection of preparatory studies and works in various media reveal the complex process that underlies this bold and timeless painting. Dancers at the Barre has been assigned a range of dates, but recent conservation treatment of the painting at the Phillips reveals evidence that Degas began the painting in the 1880s and reworked and completed it around 1900. The exhibition showcases how Degas slightly alters the composition and manipulates the figures in the painting to create a highly deliberate composition, yet one with a great sense of movement.

Snapshot: Painter-Photographers, Bonnard to Vuillard

Feb. 4–April 29, 2012

Known primarily as painters and printmakers, a group of post-impressionist artists experimented with photography for their private use, interpreting the new medium and producing surprising, inventive results. This exhibition debuts many previously unpublished photographs taken by painters including Pierre Bonnard, Felix Vallotton, and Edouard Vuillard with the hand-held Kodak during the 1890s. Approximately 200 photographs, 40 paintings, and 60 works on paper integrate the histories of painting and photography, and explore the inspiration afforded by the new medium in such subjects as domestic interiors, city streets, nudes, and portraiture. Organized by The Phillips Collection, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

©2010 The Phillips Collection.

1600 21st Street, NW | Washington, DC 20009 | 202-387-2151