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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
The American Evolution: A History through Art
March 1–July 27, 2008
The American Evolution: A History through Art offers a fresh
take on the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s time-honored collection
of American art. A display of more than 200 objects in a wide range
of media dating from the colonial era to the present, the exhibition
presents five overarching themes that have shaped American culture:
Money, Land, Politics, Cultural Exchange, and The Modern World.
These themes are fundamental to the way that the United States
has developed, and to the stories that have become central to our
national identity. Art plays a crucial role in telling these stories.
The term “evolution” suggests change over time. This
exhibition proposes that the United States is a dynamic nation
in a constant state of re-definition. The display embraces a thematic
model that reveals continuities in artistic production from the
Colonial era to the present. From Gilbert Stuart’s stately
18th-century portrait of George Washington to Andy Warhol’s
irreverent 1973 likeness of the Communist leader Mao Zedong, and
from Frederic Edwin Church’s dramatic 1857 view from the
brink of Niagara Falls to Richard Diebenkorn’s abstract 1975
rendering of the suburban expanses of Ocean Park, California, The
American Evolution explores many of the ways that American life
and art have evolved over 250 years.
Chance Encounters
Photographs from the Collection of Norman Carr and Carolyn Kinder
Carr
March 29–June 22, 2008
This exhibition presents 60 images selected from an exceptional
private collection of street photography. It includes work by such
pre-eminent American and European photographers as Diane Arbus,
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander,
Lisette Model, Paul Strand, and Garry Winogrand. With the initial
encouragement of John Coplans, the famous photographer, curator,
and editor of ArtForum, the Carrs began acquiring photographs in
1978. Assembled over a 30-year period, the collection has grown
to include more than 150 photographs and features one of the most
significant private holdings of work by legendary photographer
Weegee (Arthur Fellig).
Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power
September 13, 2008–January 25, 2009
Richard Avedon (1923–2004), America’s pre-eminent
portraitist and fashion photographer, photographed the faces of
politics throughout his career. As the country enters the next
presidential election season, the Corcoran will bring together
Avedon’s political portraits for the first time. Juxtaposing
images of elite government, media, and labor officials with counter-cultural
activists and ordinary citizens caught up in national debates,
this exhibition will explore a five-decade taxonomy of politics
and power by one of our best-known artists.
Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power will include approximately 250
photographs from the 1950s through the artist’s death in
2004, displayed chronologically and grouped within Avedon’s
specific editorial projects. The exhibition will include many rarely-seen
and some never-before-exhibited or published photographs. A major
catalogue, published by Steidl, will accompany the exhibition.
Avedon, with unparalleled access afforded by his fame and his work
for such magazines as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Egoiste, and
The New Yorker, photographed important figures of the American
political scene throughout his career. In addition to single portraits
commissioned to accompany magazine profiles, the artist made several
extended photographic essays with political themes.
Among these, his groundbreaking 1976 portrait series “The
Family” is most significant. Commissioned by Rolling
Stone magazine, Avedon made 69 portraits depicting elected officials,
government bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists, captains of industry,
and union leaders—all representatives of the American political,
military, media, and corporate elite. He photographed people on
both sides of the civil rights debate for his book Nothing
Personal (1964), and in the late 1960s and early 1970s he documented the
American anti-war movement and the war in Vietnam. In 1993 Avedon
combined past work with new images for a nostalgic New Yorker photo-essay
called “Exiles: The Kennedy Court at the End of the American
Century.” In 2004 the artist accepted a New Yorker commission
to make portraits that would illustrate “a sense of the country” during
a politically fractious time. While working on the project in Texas,
Avedon suffered a cerebral hemorrhage; he died a short time later. “Democracy” was
published by The New Yorker in incomplete form just before the
election.
This exhibition traces one artist’s fascination with the
animating forces of American democracy. Seen together, the photographs
comprise a kind of historical group portrait, showing key figures
from a half-century of political life. They provoke questions about
the complex motivations of portraitists and their subjects, who
work—sometimes at cross-purposes—to depict or project
an image that conveys personal history, character, ambitions, and
ideals. Finally, they reveal an extraordinary career-long investigation
into the complex nature of power. Surrounded by the faces of the
powerful, leaders and ordinary citizens alike, the audience is
itself empowered by the dialogue that results between those who
use power to exercise control and those who seek it to affect change.
ABOUT THE CORCORAN
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, a privately funded institution, was
founded in 1869 as Washington’s first and largest non-federal museum
of art. It is known internationally for its distinguished collection
of historical and modern American art as well as contemporary art,
photography, European painting, sculpture and the decorative arts.
Founded in 1890, the Corcoran College of Art + Design is Washington’s
only four-year college of art and design offering Bachelor of Fine
Art degrees in Photojournalism, Digital Media Design, Fine Art,
Graphic Design, Interior Design, and Photography; Associate of
Fine Art degrees in Digital Media Design, Fine Art, Graphic Design
and Photography; a five-year Bachelor of Fine Arts/Master of Arts
degree in Fine Art and Teaching (BFA/MAT); and two-year Master
of Arts degrees in Teaching, Interior Design, Exhibition Design,
and the History of Decorative Arts. The College’s Continuing Education
program offers part-time credit and non-credit classes for children
and adults.
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