90th Anniversary Installations

About the Exhibitions

In 2011, The Phillips Collection celebrates its 90th anniversary as America’s first museum of modern art and launches the countdown to its centennial. A host of celebratory installations take place throughout the year.

Howard Hodgkin, As Time Goes By
(January 8–May 8, 2011)
Hodgkin’s most ambitious work to date, As Time Goes By (2009), comprises starbursts of vibrant color. The two 20-foot-long, hand-painted etchings were recently acquired for the Phillips’s permanent collection. Turner Prize winner Hodgkin had his first American exhibition at the Phillips in 1984.

Anniversary Reading Room
(January 8–December 31, 2011)
A fascinating glimpse into the museum’s extensive archives, this display outside the museum’s library provides a unique perspective on modern art through rarely seen photographs, correspondence from major artists, and more.

Sam Gilliam, Flour Mill

(January 29–April 24, 2011)

Gilliam creates a site-specific work for the museum’s signature elliptical stairway, which he calls a “beautiful, curved frame.” The artist had his first solo show at the Phillips in 1967.

Augustus Vincent Tack: Decorative Panels for the Music Room
(May 7–December 31, 2011)

A monumental series of 12 works by Augustus Vincent Tack, commissioned by Duncan Phillips in 1928, is reinstalled in the wood-paneled Music Room, for which it was originally created.

Left Behind: Selected Gifts from the Heather and Tony Podesta Collection
(June 16–October 2, 2011)

This celebration of recent gifts from collectors Heather and Tony Podesta features photographs of unpopulated spaces in which a human presence is not evident but implied.

Morris Louis
(July 14–October 9, 2011)

In the 1960s, the Phillips’s colorist tradition found new expression in the Washington Color School and the pure stains of Morris Louis. Seal, a recent gift from the Marcella Brenner Revocable Trust, is showcased with four drawings and three paintings.

Will Ryman’s Roses: 58th Street
(August 4, 2011–January 5, 2012)
Colossal fiberglass and stainless steel rose blossoms adorn the Phillips’s lawn at the corner of 21st and Q streets. Drawing inspiration from nature’s cycles, the structure transforms in the changing light of the fall and winter seasons.

Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party
 and European Masterworks
(September 2–December 31, 2011)
Pierre Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party makes a triumphant return to its original location, the first gallery in his home that Duncan Phillips opened to the public in 1921. Other early acquisitions by Bonnard, Cézanne, Monet, and van Gogh, are also on display.

The Klee Room
(September 12–December 31, 2011)

The Phillips re-creates its Klee Room, which opened in 1948 as the first room dedicated exclusively to Paul Klee’s work by a museum. Duncan Phillips assembled 13 of the artist’s finest pictures, which remained on nearly constant display throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

Eye to Eye: Joseph Marioni at the Phillips
(October 22, 2011–January 29, 2012)

Thirteen glowing paintings by Marioni are surrounded by about 40 works from the museum’s collection that trace the development of color and light in modern painting. This is the first Washington, D.C., exhibition of Marioni’s work.