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Friday, April 29 Poets & Painters

Celebrate National Poetry Month! Use the paintings at the museum to inspire your poetry. View the paintings and read poetry aloud, followed by a discussion of the artwork. Free. 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM. American Art Gallery. Madeline Andre and Arcynta Ali-Childs blogged about poets in the Smithsonian collections.

Andrew Young by Ross R. Rossin, oil on canvas, 2009; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Jack Watson; © Ross R. Rossin

Saturday, April 30 Meet Andrew Young

Civil rights leader Andrew Young will discuss his experience working with Martin Luther King Jr., and his own role in American history. Young will also sign copies of his book Walk in My Shoes: Conversations between a Civil Rights Legend and His Godson on the Journey. Free. 2 PM. National Portrait Gallery. Related exhibition: “The Struggle for Justice” National Portrait Gallery

Sunday, May 1 Restoring the Kabul Museum

Learn about the ongoing restoration of the Kabul Museum, as explored in Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul. This internationally touring exhibition, though currently not on view at a Smithsonian museum in DC, presents more than 200 objects thought to have been destroyed or stolen from the museum before they were recovered in Afghanistan in 2004. Deborah Klimburg-Salter will give her presentation, “Twice Buried, Twice Found: Reinventing the National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul.” Free. 2 PM Freer Gallery of Art

"In the Garden (Celia Thaxter in her Garden)" by Childe Hassam

April is National Poetry Month, so to honor the words and songs of famous poets, the Wednesday List is all about poetry. Scattered across the Smithsonian museums, here are a few of the most influential and famous poets you already know, as well as a few newcomers whose work you may want to get familiar with. (Posted in chronological order by their birth, not by relative awesomeness)

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882)

Most famous for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century, Emerson’s more notable works include Nature, Self-Reliance and The Poet. Emerson, who spent his career lecturing and writing, published 10 collections of poems and essays and corresponded with other famed poets such as Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Daniel Chester French sculpture of Emerson is located in the American Origins exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery.

2. Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809-October 7, 1849)

Best known for his poem “The Raven,” Poe’s poems were often about death and mourning— dark subjects and imagery— compared with the optimism of the early culture in America at that time. Although “The Raven” became a popular sensation after it was published in The Evening Mirror in 1845, Poe died a poor man. But diehard Poe fans don’t have to wait another year to visit his grave on the anniversary of his death. Instead, see a portrait of the man in the American Origins exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery.

3. Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819-March 26, 1892)

Often called the “father of freeverse,” Whitman is most famous for his book Leaves of Grass.  Though many viewed his work as obscene and profane at the time, Whitman is regarded by many as “America’s poet” for his ability to write in a uniquely American character.  His portrait by John White Alexander is located in the American Origins exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery.

4. Celia Thaxter (June 29, 1835 – August 25, 1894)

Born in Portsmouth, New Hampsire in 1835, Thaxter became the hostess of her father’s hotel, the Appledore House, where she entertained and welcomed famed poets such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Sarah Orne Jewett. Her first poem called “Landlocked” was published during a 10-year period where she lived away from her beloved islands and on the New Hampshire mainland.  Her poems appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and she later became one of the country’s favorite authors. In the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a painting by Childe Hassam depicting Thaxter in her garden is found on the East wing of the second floor.

5. Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906)

Dunbar was a poet who gained national recognition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with his poem “Ode to Ethiopia.”  His parents escaped slavery in Kentucky and fled to Dayton, Ohio where Dunbar grew up the only African-American student at his high school. After publishing two books of his standard English and dialect poems, he combined them to form Lyrics of a Lowly Life and rose to international literary fame. The portrait of Dunbar by William McKnight Farrow is also located in the American Origins exhibit in the National Portrait Gallery.

6. E.E. Cummings (October 14, 1894-September 3, 1961)

E.E. Cummings became famous for his poetry during the first half of the 20th century after working as an essayist and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine. Though Cummings’ body of work includes about 2,900 poems and various forms of writing such as plays and novels, his drawings and paintings are seldom explored. Located in the Hirshhorn’s online collection, you can view many of these overlooked works.

7. Malangatana Ngwenya (1936-2011)

Malangatana Ngwenya is an artist best known for his brightly-colored murals and canvases. In his work, the Mozambiquen painter depicts powerful subjects like the trauma of armed conflict and revolution, as well as the small pleasures of daily life and the triumph of the human spirit. One such painting, Nude with flowers, 1962, on display at African Art, also reveals Ngwenya’s “hidden” talent as a poet. On the back of the painting, he has handwritten “Poema de Amor,” a love poem which is a little too racy to print in these parts.

8. Joane Cardinal-Schubert (1942-2009)

You may have to dig deep to find the poetry of multimedia Blackfoot (Blood) artist Joane Cardinal-Schubert, her poems encompassing but a part of her  artistic repertoire, which included writing, curating, directing videos, painting and drawing. You can see some of Shubert’s work, which focuses largely on Native history, social injustice and environmental concerns at the American Indian Museum exhibition “Vantage Point.”

9. Nora Naranjo-Morse (b.1953)

While you’re at the American Indian Museum, make sure to check out the clay pottery of Santa Clara Pueblo artist Nora Naranjo-Morse, on display in the landscape area along the Maryland Avenue side of the museum. Born into a family of mostly women potters and visual artists, Morse focuses her work on the connection between pueblo people, their land and the clay they use to build on that land. Morse is also a sculptor, writer, film producer and poet, whose collection Mud Woman: Poems from the Clay combines poetry with photographs of her clay figures.

BONUS! 10. Phillis Wheatley

Born in Gambia, Senegal, Wheatley was enslaved as a child and grew up in Boston, where she learned to read and began writing poetry. In 1773, Wheatley published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, becoming the first published black woman poet. The book also made Wheatley famous and her success led to her eventual emancipation. A bronze life-size bust of Phillis Wheatley, by celebrated artist Elizabeth Catlett, is part of the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, though not currently on display. Created in 1973, the bust marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of Wheatley’s book and Catlett’s interest in the feminist movement of the 1970s.

–With additional reporting by Arcynta Ali Childs

Grazia Toderi, Orbite Rosse (Red Orbit), 2009. Installation view, The New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK. Courtesy of the artist.

Step into either side of the gallery theatre at the Hirshhorn to see the new exhibition, “Directions: Grazia Toderi,” and one is greeted by the faint aroma of fresh paint that’s indicative of a new installation. Yet the smell is strangely comforting and exciting at the same time. It makes for a perfect environment for the viewer to settle back in the darkness and take in Italian video artist Grazia Toderi’s two looped digital projection pieces, Orbite Rosse and Rossa Babele.

“Toderi’s images suggest glistening, breathing, atmospheres which appear to be both earthly and celestial,” says Hirshhorn curator Kelly Gordon, and this is evident in the mesmerizing, twinkling, rose-colored cityscape of Orbite Rosse. Viewed with a faded binocular pattern projected atop the footage, a nighttime vista is seen from high, while low, rumbling murky noises complete the hypnotic ambience. The distinctive pale rose-colored tint derives from the interaction between the city lights and the vapors in the atmosphere.

Toderi uses computer-aided digital manipulation of video footage and pictures to compose her final creations with, as Gordon says, “painterly finesse.” The projection screens for the second piece, Rossa Bebele are placed next to each other, like opposite pages of an open book. Both screens appear to be half-full of what looks like a sea of magma (one filled from the top, one filled from below), and from each sea, a pyramid of light gradually builds and subsides. Appropriately, a slightly harsher audio component accompanies this piece, with a combination of what sounds like swirling thunderstorm effects and caldera atmospherics filling the chamber.

“Directions: Grazia Toderi” will be at the Hirshhorn through September 5, and ATM’s Jeff Campagna spoke to Toderi last week about her work.

Why did you choose to use this medium for your art?

I chose to use video because it was the medium that has more possibility to communicate everywhere in the world, especially here. It’s a kind of Utopian idea, to just be energy that can be transmitted everywhere. I looked at the moon landing when I was young, and for me it was a very important moment, because every person in the world could see the same important thing. So it has this kind of power… So I’m interested in this kind of relation between personal memory and collective memory.

Orbite Rosse and Rosso Babele seem to be more abstract than your previous works–is there a reason for that?

I think one of the reasons is that something has changed. With some of my previous videos, I was interested in taking something from television and adding this kind of relation with collective memory. Now I think it is different, and I don’t believe in the power of television anymore [laughs]. This is my problem. And I come from a country [Italy] where television was really terrible during the last year. I started to use video in a different kind of way. Because I’m more interested in creating something completely by myself in this moment, I’m not interested in taking something from television. I want to be alone on the other side.

Is there a certain feeling that you’re attempting to convey to the viewer?

I like to leave the viewer completely free. The most important thing to art is that everyone can be free.

How long does it take you to complete an average piece?

Months. Sometimes I start to draw about one idea, and it takes months to focalize, drawing and drawing. And after, when I finish this kind of first step, I’m ready to go around and take photographs of things that I need… It could be one or two months again. It also depends where I need to go. And I start to elaborate and work on all the images and put them in an archive. So I have thousands of images that I put together, and after I start to do the animation in the computer. I do it step-by-step. It is very long.

"The Peacock Room Comes to America" unveils the Peacock Room, as it appeared in 1908. Photo courtesy of the Freer Gallery.

When a British shipping magnate Frederick R. Leyland asked the expatriate American artist James McNeill Whistler to redecorate his dining room in 1876 and 1877, a dispute arose between the artist and his patron. Whistler had promised “minor alterations” but lavishly painted the room with plumed peacocks and feather patterns on the ceiling and shutters. Leyland refused to the pay the artist his fee. Charles Lang Freer, founder of the Freer Gallery, later bought the room and shipped it to his mansion in Detroit, before donating it to the Smithsonian.

The Freer Gallery has now restored the famous Peacock Room to its 1908 glory. “The Peacock Room Comes to America,” the first special exhibition in the room since 1993, opened April 9. The Freer’s Curator of American Art Lee Glazer discusses the lavish room and the artist who created it.

Why peacocks?

Whistler was inspired by images of peacocks in Japanese art, and they also appealed to him as emblems of pure beauty.

Can you see evidence in the room of Whistler’s anger?

The mural over the sideboard, pointedly titled “Art and Money, or, the story of the room,” depicts Whistler’s quarrel with Leyland over the price of the room. Whistler is the poor peacock on the left, the silver crest feather a reference to the artist’s famous white forelock; the bird on the right, with coins around his feet and embellishing his breast, represents Leyland. If you know the references, it’s pretty nasty. But the evidence is all in the anecdote. The image itself fits harmoniously enough into the overall blue and gold decoration of rest of the room.

What did Freer see in this room? It must have cost him dearly to have it shipped from London?

Freer was actually ambivalent about the Peacock Room. He favored artistic subtlety, and the Peacock Room seemed embarrassingly gorgeous. But he bought it, as he said, “out of a sense of duty” to his friend Whistler. Once he reassembled the room in Detroit and filled it with his own collections of Asian pottery, however, he made his peace with it.

Why did you decide to take out the blue and white porcelain and reinstall it with Freer’s rough-textured, iridescent stoneware and pottery?

The Peacock Room has had this incredibly dynamic, cosmopolitan history, but visitors to the museum have experienced it as a static icon. By changing the pots, we’ve made it possible for people to tap into a lesser-known chapter in the room’s history and given it a very different look and feel that will encourage a new appreciation of the room’s infinite variety—of surface, color, pattern and light.

Monday, April 25

Born to be Wild 3D features the conservation efforts of primatologist Birute Galdikas with orangutans in Borneo, along with that of Dame Daphne Sheldrick‘s work with elephants in Kenya. Both women live near the animals, rescuing them and returning them to live in the wild. Film is shown at 2:25, 4:25 and 6:25 daily. The Johnson IMAX Theater at the Natural History museum. Tickets are $9 adults, $8 seniors and $7.50 children ages 2 to 12. Toll free phone 866-868-7774 or online.

Tuesday, April 26 Star-Spangled Banner

Meet the seamstress who sewed the Star-Spangled Banner. Help her assemble a new flag and learn about its history. Free, repeats daily through Friday at 2 PM and 3:30 PM. Flag Hall, American History Museum.

Wednesday, April 27 DC Youth Creativity

Participate in a community forum on  youth and creativity in Southeast D.C. The Junk Yard Band, Facilitating Leadership in Youth (FLY), Life Pieces to Masterpieces art center and Multi Media Training Institute will be representing their programs. Free. 7 PM. Anacostia Community Museum

Thursday, April 28 My Dog Tulip

Paul and Sandra Fierlinger will introduce their film, My Dog Tulip. The Fierlingers  will discuss their films, show samples of their animation and talk about the future of animation. Free. 7 PM. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Friday, April 29 Poets & Painters

Does the art at the museum inspire you to write? View paintings and read poetry aloud, followed by a discussion of the artwork. Free. 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM. American Art Gallery