Free Summer Saturdays

May 25-August 31, 2013

Edward Hopper. Ground Swell. 1939. Oil on canvas. 36 3/16 x 50 1/16 in. (91.9 x 127.2 cm). Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund, 1943. 43.6

Join the Corcoran on Saturdays this summer for Gallery tours, workshops, demonstrations, and performances! Enjoy our summer exhibitions and programming free of admission on Saturdays from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend.

Programs

May

One Million Bones Workshop
Saturday, May 25;1p.m. – 4p.m.
Free

The Corcoran is proud to partner with One Million Bones, a large-scale social arts practice, which uses education and hands-on art making to raise awareness of genocides and atrocities going on around the world. One Million Bones will be collecting artwork bones for a collaborative installation of 1,000,000 bones on the National Mall from June 8th-10th. Bones are either handmade of clay or will be made of biodegradable material. This installation will serve as a collaborative site of conscience to remember victims and survivors, and as a visible petition to raise awareness of the issue and call upon our government to take much needed and long overdue action. Every bone created through this initiative generates a $1 donation, up to $500,000, to CARE for their work on the ground in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.    

Please join us at for a bone making session to create a bone of your own. Once complete the bones will be part of the 3 day installation on the National Mall in June.

June

One Million Bones Workshop
Saturday, June 1; 1p.m.-4p.m.
Free

The Corcoran is proud to partner with One Million Bones, a large-scale social arts practice, which uses education and hands-on art making to raise awareness of genocides and atrocities going on around the world. One Million Bones will be collecting artwork bones for a collaborative installation of 1,000,000 bones on the National Mall from June 8th-10th. Bones are either handmade of clay or will be made of biodegradable material. This installation will serve as a collaborative site of conscience to remember victims and survivors, and as a visible petition to raise awareness of the issue and call upon our government to take much needed and long overdue action. Every bone created through this initiative generates a $1 donation, up to $500,000, to CARE for their work on the ground in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.    

Please join us at for a bone making session to create a bone of your own. Once complete the bones will be part of the 3 day installation on the National Mall in June.

Figurative Sketching Workshop in the gallery and Spotlight Tour:  Robert Henri/John Sloan
Saturday, June 8; 12 p.m.–3 p.m.
Free; Pre-registration required

Open to adolescents and adults. Join us for a figurative sketching workshop and spotlight tour on Robert Henri’s painting of John Sloan, with a live model. Learn techniques sketching from the painting and the model. All materials are provided.

Create a Tee Workshop
Saturday, June 8; 10am-1pm
Free; no registration required

Get ready for the summer and design your own unique t-shirt with selected art material.

Let’s Fly a Kite: Kite Making Workshop
Saturday, June 22; 10am-12pm
Pre-registration required

Get ready to fly a kite that you build and decorate yourself! We will have a kite-making instructor in the Corcoran’s Atrium with all the necessary materials for your unique kite-building experience. Fee includes materials for one kite.

July

War/Photography Opening Day
Saturday, July 6; time
Free; no registration required

War/Photography Art Response Workshop
Saturday, July 13; 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Free; Pre-registration required

All ages welcome. After viewing the exhibition, participants respond artistically through guidance and assistance from an art therapist. Adults and children are encouraged to use a wide variety of art materials to help create a sense of resolution and closure.

Build-An-Alien Collaborative Project
Saturday, July 13; 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
Free; no registration required

All ages welcome. A collaborative art-making project giving participants the opportunity to imagine what artist Ellen Harvey’s alien visitors might look like. Using paper, clay, and other materials, create one part to contribute to a whole alien form.

Neighborhood Mapping Workshop
Saturday, July 20; 10 a.m.-12 p.m.
Free; Pre-registration required

All ages welcome. How will others see our communities in the future? What will your neighborhood look like in 10,000 years? Through the process of tracing aerial maps of their own neighborhoods, participants will use paint and canvas to reinterpret their neighborhoods and express what is important to them through color and symbolism.

Printmaking Workshop
Saturday, July 27; 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and 1 p.m.-3 p.m.
Free; no registration required

All ages welcome. Stop by and learn about two different types of printmaking!  Design and print your own woodblock in the morning and silk screen in the afternoon.

August

Sketching in the Gallery
Saturday, August 3; 12 p.m.–3 p.m.
Free; Pre-registration required

Open to adolescents and adults. Join us for a workshop and learn techniques sketching from a painting and live model. All materials are provided.

NOW Performance: Mary Coble
Saturday, August 10; time
Free; no registration required

Through performance, video, and installation, Mary Coble explores the limits of her own body’s physical abilities while identifying and challenging social limitations and regulations. Past performances include binding her breasts continually with duct tape, inscribing the names of queer hate-crime murder victims on her body with inkless tattoos, and using flag semaphore to convey the difficulties of human connection and communication. Coble will be performing an original commission at the Corcoran.

Kid Pan Alley: Camp Creativity Performance
Saturday, August 17; 11am

Attend the concert finale after a week-long songwriting workshop that combines creativity, music, and art.  Campers as budding songwriters draw musical inspiration from the art in the galleries and render a grand performance not to be missed.

Community Pop-Up Gallery
Saturday, August 24; 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
Free; no registration required

Explore how we interpret our own history through unfamiliar objects of our past. During this one-day Community Pop-Up Gallery inspired by Ellen Harvey: The Alien’s Guide to the Ruins of Washington, D.C., participants bring unusual antiques, family heirlooms, and collected objects from the past for a temporary display in our north Atrium. Participants and visitors discuss and examine the objects, share stories about what they were used for, and reflect on what the objects might tell us about society at the time.

Throughout the Summer

Sidewalk Chalk Drawing

Every Saturday; 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Free; no registration required

Highlights from the Corcoran Collection will be illustrated in chalk by artists, Julia Benton and Whitney Waller. Chalk drawings will be located on the sidewalk outside the Corcoran’s main entrance on Seventeenth Street.

Take It to the Bridge
Select Saturdays
Free; no registration required

The Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design, in conjunction with the Washington Project for the Arts, presents a new series of work by local and regional artists (DC, MD, VA, WV, PA, DE). Take It to the Bridge includes temporary exhibitions, performances, installations, and interventions on the Performance Bridge inside the Corcoran’s glass entryway. Many of the events take place on Free Summer Saturdays.

Take It to the Bridge is juried by performance artist Holly Bass; Lisa Gold, executive director of Washington Project for the Arts; and Sarah Newman, curator of Contemporary Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art. Created in February 2012 by Bass and architectural designer Kashuo Bennett, the Performance Bridge transforms the Corcoran’s glass entryway into an exhibition space. The Bridge asks us to look up and out, to see in entirely new ways. As a performance space it embodies explicit conceptual themes such as exposure, transparency, entrapment, anthropological display, and the diorama. It is capable of supporting sculpture or installation, live performers, as well as more ethereal works that use sound and light as material.

The presentation of Free Summer Saturdays is funded in part by the DC Commission of Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.