Like other arts venues and culture organizations, museums and galleries have mostly all reopened by now, and have also mostly returned to some sense of normal, although it’s always a good idea to check operating hours and admission pricing and policies before embarking on any cultural outing.
Among the vast and varied special programming on tap this fall at the area’s many public-facing, knowledge-disseminating institutions, no theme or topic is more prolific or widespread than surveys or examinations of African-American art and artists and the Black experience in America.
In particular, now is a great time to see and discover the work of Black visual artists, something you can do quite easily at a solid dozen area museums, from the National Gallery of Art to Hillwood, ArTecHouse to Transformer, the Renwick Gallery to IA&A Hillyer, as they and many other organizations seem to be heeding the loud pandemic-fueled calls agitating for greater overall diversity and minority representation in the presentation and production of art and culture.
Editor’s Note: This column has been modified slightly from the magazine edition.
AMERICAN VISIONARY ART MUSEUM
800 Key Highway
Baltimore, Md.
410-244-1900
www.avam.org
- ABUNDANCE: Too Much, Too Little, Just Right — The 27th original thematic mega-exhibition at this unique and uniquely quirky museum is officially described as “a wildly joyful, community-building contemplation of just what constitutes real wealth,” going on to suggest real wealth is rooted in deep satisfaction, productive happiness, and gratefulness. The mega-exhibition intends to serve as a showcase of art and artists “who have wrought new worlds from modest, often discarded, materials — equipped only with their hands, hearts, and fertile imaginations” (Opens 10/8)
- Esther and the Dream of One Loving Human Family — A display of 36 hand-embroidered works detailing the Holocaust survival story of Esther Krinitz along with testimonies from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Rwandan genocide survivors to shine a light on humanity’s unjust persecution of innocents as a clarion call for the need to push harder to bring the dream of a world at peace closer to reality (Re-opening 10/8)
- The Science and Mystery of Sleep — The latest sleep-related scientific research, including sleep’s impact on obesity and diabetes, adolescents, even hormones and testicles, is examined in “plain-language” detail alongside three artist-made bedrooms (Now-10/7)
- Bling Universe — AVAM is “one small speck in a Bling Universe,” and “adorning one’s world — transforming it into a place that defies convention, surprising and delighting, providing hope and wonder — is what the Bling Universe is all about” (Permanent Collection)
AMY KASLOW GALLERY
The Shops in Spring Valley
4300 Fordham Rd. NW
www.amykaslowgallery.com
- Folk Art is Fine Art: Texture — This gallery, opened in the early months of the pandemic by its namesake, a former international photojournalist, is readying its second exhibition in a series heralding folk art. It features a curated selection of sculptors, painters, weavers, potters, and assemblers creating some of the world’s most astounding, and collectible, works of indigenous fine art. Texture offers a stunning cross-cultural journey, from Colombia to Uzbekistan, showcasing everything from tapestries of handspun raw silk soaked in botanical colors and stitched into perfectly smooth piles, to ceremonial beer pots contoured out of mud and decorated with raised dots enumerating the number of cows owned by the village’s tribal chief (9/23-12/18)
Previews of the art and artists featured in the gallery’s earlier exhibitions can be viewed at the gallery’s website, with highlights including: Washington Landscapes, the exhibition that just closed earlier this month,…