Museum-goer's Holiday

Last week brought the annual return of "turkey lurkey time," and Out There dutifully jetted back to the East Coast to attend the expected rituals with our nuclear family. Just as typically, we cushioned "family time" with "OT time" - to wit, several days all to ourselves in Washington, DC, to enjoy plenty of cultural opportunities. The national capital is a great place for art-lovers, since so many museums are free. We make regular pilgrimages to our favorites, including the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, the American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Renwick Gallery, and the Phillips Collection (this last has an admission fee).

We were pleased to see pieces by some favorite contemporary artists included in "The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art," now showing at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We were already familiar with Laurel Roth Hope's work, as it has been exhibited at Gallery Wendi Norris here in San Francisco, and it was great to see it showcased in a museum setting. Her "Regalia" (2011) uses such unconventional art materials as fake fingernails, barrettes and false eyelashes in most inventive ways. The connections between avian plumage and cosmetic paraphernalia are telling.
"Migrant Fruit Thugs" (2006) by Fred Tomaselli, leaves, photo collage, gouache, acrylic, and resin on wood panel, part of The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art.

Artist Fred Tomaselli is probably best-known for his phantasmagorical compositions on the theme of drug culture, in which he arranges pills and potions in hallucinogenic, psychedelic schemes. In the work on display at AAM, he foregoes pharmaceuticals for equally eye-popping nature. Referring to "Migrant Fruit Thugs" (2006), the museum supplies a blurb worth quoting in full: "Nature has long been part of Tomaselli's work, both physically and conceptually. Not only is he a regular bird-watcher, he is also an accomplished gardener, amateur beekeeper, and regular fly-fisher. The dazzling array of collaged images is drawn from camping and sporting catalogues, gardening books, and field guides. Tomaselli also collects and incorporates the plants he grows. 'Migrant Fruit Thugs' includes huge fig leaves from the artist's garden and references an incident when he witnessed two rose-breasted grosbeaks devouring his figs."

Also showing at the AAM: photorealist Richard Estes ' "Realism, and Untitled - The Art of James Castle," a so-called "outsider artist." Exciting us at the NGA: El Greco in the National Gallery of Art and Washington-Area Collections: a 400th Anniversary Celebration; Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860; and Degas's Little Dancer. Worth the entrance fee at the Phillips: Neo-Impressionists and the Dream of Realities: Painting, Poetry, Music. All right up our arts alley.

Finally, a shout-out of thanks to OT's swell big bro, who took us to lunch at the National Press Club, in its restaurant appropriately dubbed the Fourth Estate.