Corcoran College of Art and Design
Corcoran College of Art and Design
Beatrice
An up-close look at Turner to Cézanne
Corcoran curator Beatrice Gralton explores highlights of this stunning exhibition
Artini
ARTINI 2010
View the Feature Nights schedule, vote for your favorite artistic martini, and join us for ARTINI on March 27!!

Exhibitions

on view

Come be inspired by the Corcoran Gallery of Art's expansive collections, dynamic exhibitions, and innovative programs and events.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales
through APRIL 25, 2010

Vincent van Gogh, Rain–Auvers, 1890

Vincent van Gogh, Rain–Auvers, 1890. Oil on canvas. National Museum of Wales; Miss Gwendoline E. Davies Bequest, 1951 (nmwa 2463). Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales presents an outstanding group of 19th- and 20th-century paintings and works on paper from the National Museum Wales—home to an internationally acclaimed collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.

The exhibition will feature 53 works—many of which have rarely been exhibited outside of Europe—including masterpieces by Paul Cézanne, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Honoré Daumier, Augustus John, Edouard Manet, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, J.M.W. Turner, and Vincent van Gogh.

Learn more

 

A Love of Europe: Highlights from the William A. Clark Collection
through APRIL 11, 2010

John Singer Sargent

Edgar Degas, French (1834–1917), The Dance Class (Ecole de Danse), c. 1873 oil on canvas William A. Clark Collection, 26.74

In 1926 Senator William A. Clark of Montana bequeathed his personal collection of over 800 works of art to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The life of Senator Clark was surprisingly parallel with that of David Davies, who built the fortune left to Gwendoline and Margaret Davies. They lived through the same tumultuous period; both were self-made men; both were industrialists with interests in mining; both became politicians. And ultimately, the wealth of both went to the enrichment of major galleries of art.

Ranging from ancient Antiquities to Impressionist paintings, Senator Clark’s collection today forms the core of the Corcoran’s holdings of European art. Timed to coincide with Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales (on display at the Corcoran from January 30 through April 25, 2010), A Love of Europe displays Clark’s particular enthusiasm for 19th-century French painting. The exhibition will include works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, and Edgar Degas.

 

2010 Senior Thesis Exhibitions
Through May 23, 2010

Each year, the Corcoran celebrates their graduating undergraduate class with the Senior Thesis Exhibitions, a series of week-long, rotating shows in Gallery31 that feature photojournalism, photography, graphic design, digital media design, and fine art produced by members of this year’s graduating class. The Senior Thesis shows culminate in May with the All-Senior Exhibition, which provides graduates of the class of 2010 a unique opportunity to exhibit their work in a major museum setting.

 

Selections from the Collection of Historic American Art
On view now

Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara, 1857, oil on canvas, 42 1/2 x 90 1/2 inches, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund, 76.15

The historic American collection spans the history of American art from colonial times through 1980. These holdings include remarkable paintings by such distinguished artists as John Singleton Copley, Frederic Church, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, George Bellows, and Edward Hopper, which were purchased as the finest examples of contemporary art of their time. The historic American collection has been further strengthened by other significant acquisitions; for example, in 1996 Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr. donated 34 works by African-American artists, including Aaron Douglas’ masterpiece Into Bondage (1936).

The Corcoran has particularly strong collections of Colonial and Federal era portraiture, neoclassical sculpture, Hudson River School painting, art of the American West, American Impressionism, and early 20th-century realism. Its holdings include major works by painters such as Albert Bierstadt, Childe Hassam, and John Singer Sargent, and sculptors such as Paul Manship, Hiram Powers, and Bessie Potter Vonnoh. It also features a remarkable number of iconic works in the history of American art, including Samuel F. B. Morse’s House of Representatives (1822), Thomas Cole’s Departure and Return (1837), Frederic Church’s Niagara, Albert Bierstadt’s Last of the Buffalo (1888), Willard Metcalf’s May Night (1906), and George Bellows’ Forty-two Kids (1907).

 

Abstraction from the Collection
Ongoing

Alma Thomas

Alma Thomas, Pansies in Washington, 1969, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 48 inches, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1972.9.1

Abstraction from the Collection fills the Corcoran’s Rotunda.  The display brings together Washington Color School paintings from the mid-20th century, and recent work by artists such as Ross Bleckner, Chris Martin, and Robin Rose.  Variously focusing on color, surface texture, and composition, the works highlight different strategies of picture-making, and of reforming the world through painted and sculptural form.

 

American Bronzes from the Corcoran Gallery of Art
On view now

American Bronzes

Frederic Remington, American (1861­–1909), Off the Range (Coming Through the Rye), Modeled 1902; Cast 1903, bronze, Museum Purchase  05.7 (photograph by David Finn)

This installation of more than 30 bronze sculptures from the Corcoran’s world-renowned collection of American art highlights works dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries by such masters of the medium as Elie Nadelman, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Alexander Phimister Proctor (sculptor of Washington’s Buffalo Bridge).  Works by women sculptors are a particular strength of the Corcoran’s collection, including those by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, Abastenia St. Leger Eberle, Anna Hyatt Huntington, and Bessie Potter Vonnoh. The exhibition also features popular favorites such as western bronzes by Frederic Remington, a Civil War group by John Rogers, and sculptures by artists better known for their paintings, such as Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent.

 

Sculpture from the Mouse House: The Olga Hirshhorn Collection at the Corcoran
on view now

Even before her marriage to one of the most astute art collectors of the 20th century, Olga Hirshhorn had long been accumulating objects on her own. While her first collections consisted of hats, hair combs, furniture, and jewelry, they pointed the way to her lifelong commitment to art. She is a passionate collector with an extraordinary breadth of interest in small scale objects at the forefront of artistic thought or steeped in traditional culture, from artists both renowned and little-known. From Cypriot, African, and pre-Columbian antiquities to sculpture, paintings, and works on paper by contemporary masters, Hirshhorn has amassed a treasure trove of primarily small and domestic-scale objects that demonstrates her searching, critical eye and sensitivity to a wide range of forms and styles.

In 1995 and again in 2004, Olga Hirshhorn donated significant groups of art from her collection to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Sculpture from the Mouse House: The Olga Hirshhorn Collection at the Corcoran displays a selection of three-dimensional works from these gifts that she had displayed in her Washington, D.C. home. Her tiny residence came to be called the “mouse house” by her friends, and the size of these works reflect the intimate nature of her home as well as the lasting friendships between herself and some of the artists whose work she collected.

Olga Hirshhorn’s collection was created mainly during the 1960s and 70s, a time when her late husband, Joseph H. Hirshhorn, the founding donor of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, was still avidly collecting. Through him and his legendary love of American and European modern art, she met artists and dealers and became an avid collector herself. Her collection substantiates her astute eye and keen passion for all the arts. Ranging from the geometric elegance of works by Henri Laurens, Ilya Bolotowsky and Kenneth Snelson to the pop sensibilities of John Chamberlain and Antonia Miralda, the Hirshhorn collection at the Corcoran offers a glimpse into the passion of collecting for the love of art.