When Cecilia Wagner, publicity and marketing manager with The Phillips Collection, contacted us about previewing their new summer exhibitions I jumped at the opportunity to photograph inside an internationally-renowned museum that sits three blocks from my house.  I couldn’t make the daytime press preview, so I met her during Phillips after 5, when the museum stays open until 8:30 pm and entertains visitors and staff alike with live jazz, gallery talks, catered food and a cash bar.

Right from the start, I gave Cecilia a hard time.  I can only photograph in your presence? I can’t see the archives? I can’t shoot inside your offices? Perhaps I overextended my blogger press credentials but the tour energized me and I learned a lot about America’s first museum of modern art.  Plus, she did get me into the kitchen (see farther down the post).

We started amongst the the “predominantly white” paintings of Richard Pousette-Dart on the top floor and moved into the “white-on-white” paintings of Robert Ryman downstairs.  I leave these works to your own interpretation, but I enjoyed them for their occasional use of color and the texture that graphite, ink, gouache, oil, and acrylic create (talents I do not possess).  Another reason this exhibit made me curious is because of a passage Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography, which I’m reading now:

“Freed by photography from the drudgery of faithful representation, painting could pursue a higher task: abstraction.  Indeed, the most persistent idea in histories of photography and in photography criticism is this mythic pact concluded between painting and photography, which authorized both to pursue their separate but equally valid tasks, while creatively influencing each other.”

In discussing Ryman’s work, the Phillips says he “was uninterested in painting recognizable things or telling stories in his paintings, and he took up the challenge of non-representational painting.”  I would like to have asked both Pousette-Dart (first three images below) and Ryman what, if any, influence photography had on their style of painting.  In many respects the pressure of creating photographic likenesses of people drives me away from it and toward something like screenprinting, where I could care less about reality.

The above sculpture is is by Pousette-Dart (1916-1992), called The Ballet, c. 1950, paint on wire and found objects.

Entrance to Phillips after 5 also gets you access to treats from Geppetto Catering.

Bassist Zack Pride (1st below) and flautist Jamal Brown (2nd below) played solos in the gallery, improvising through their interpretations of paintings in different rooms.  Zack’s performance was my favorite part of the visit and completely unexpected.  The next Phillips after 5 on July 1st will have multi-era arrangements from the Potomac Jazz Project.  (It will also have a gin tasting.)

Artwork is everywhere here, even carp tattoos swim their way through the gallery.

Inside the music room, where I just missed a performance by pianist Janelle Gill.  I also met museum director Dorothy Kosinski, who previously worked at the Dallas Museum of Art and told me about a town called Marfa (I might have to visit Texas in October).  The entire museum staff is sprinkled throughout Phillips after 5 and you can tell they enjoy working here.  Many thanks to our new friends for a fun visit.Photo Credits: Joshua Yospyn/Worn Magazine (please ask permission to use our images)

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