School Program Educators Meet with Question Bridge Artist

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Experiment Station

Bayeté Ross Smith discusses Question Bridge with Phillips School Programs Educators last month.

On Wednesday, October 7, Bayeté Ross Smith, one of the creators of Question Bridge: Black Males met with Phillips School Programs Educators to discuss strategies on how to integrate the themes and content of the exhibition into school tours. On view through January 3, 2016, this documentary-style video installation seeks to represent and redefine black male identity in America.

According to Smith, Question Bridge is an effective education tool because, as a case study, it facilitates broader conversations about the identity politics operating in other identity groups and underrepresented demographics. Smith explained that the project reveals not only that indicators of identity are rather arbitrary, but also that there is as much diversity within a demographic as there is outside of it. “The only thing that black men have in common is that they are male and black,” said Smith. “You can’t say they have one thing in common. This seemed like a prime way to examine this issue and deconstruct it, as well as examine the idea of communication and healing within one community—even though it isn’t exactly ‘one community’ so to speak.”

Bayeté Ross Smith and Phillips School Program Educators during October’s session on Question Bridge.

During his presentation, Smith exposed the group to the many ways educators can engage with the project through the Question Bridge curriculum, website, and mobile app. The curriculum aims to help students develop a variety of skills, such as building cultural, visual, and multimedia literacy. Furthermore, it allows students to engage in the essential, overarching question of how we can create equitable environments of inclusion in our diverse 21st century society. Composed of eight functioning modules with specific learning goals, based on themes such as “The Human Condition,” “Code Switching,” and “The Power of Communication,” the Question Bridge curriculum offers an alternative way for workshops to be structured and students to engage with the material. Each module includes a student workbook and teacher guide, which consists of a list of additional resources and a glossary of terms for reference.

On Thursday, November 12, the Phillips is hosting an Evening for Educators focused on Question Bridge. Find details and register here.

Caitlin Casey, K12 Education Intern

Finding Artistic Counterparts in Three Collections

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Experiment Station

In this video, Exhibition Curator Renee Maurer gives a brief introduction to Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks from Switzerland, The Staechelin & Im Obersteg Collections.

Collection Comparisons: Cézanne’s Still Lifes

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Experiment Station

In the Collection Comparisons series, we pair one work from Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks from Switzerland with a similar work from the Phillips’s own permanent collection.

(left) Paul Cézanne, Glass and Apples, 1879–1882. Oil on canvas, 12 3/8 x 15 3/4 in. The Rudolf Staechelin Collection © Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin P. Bühler (right) Paul Cézanne, Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears, 1893. Oil on canvas, 18 1/4 x 21 7/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Gift of Gifford Phillips in memory of his father, James Laughlin Phillips, 1939

Paul Cézanne painted almost 200 still lifes over the course of four decades. By the late 1870s, he focused on household items, such as clusters of fruit, cloth, and a vessel. In 1879, Cézanne produced a series of 11 still lifes, each arranged on a chest set before bluish floral wallpaper. Rudolf Staechelin purchased Glass and Apples, at left above, in 1918.

Painted over a decade later, The Phillips Collection’s Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears by Cézanne (above right, and on view in a gallery adjacent to the special exhibition) shares formal motifs with the Staechelin example, including a display of fruit set on furniture before similar wallpaper. Both paintings were formerly owned by Impressionist artists: the Phillips still life was in Claude Monet’s collection, while Staechelin’s canvas was featured in Ambroise Vollard’s first solo show of Cézanne’s work in 1895 and shortly thereafter purchased by Edgar Degas for 400 francs.

Close inspection of the two works side by side also reveals a key difference. While Cézanne keeps the focus in the foreground in Glass and Apples, the artist adds depth and complexity to Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears by including a second table in the upper left portion of the painting as well as an artfully arranged piece of patterned cloth that hangs along the top edge of the composition.