Author Archives: Experiment Station

Painting Native Land

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Sherman Fairchild Fellow Gary Calcagno on why Native voices are necessary in representing the land we occupy. Join us on April 7 for a discussion about Indigenous arts with Dr. Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora) Lisa Myers (Beausoleil First Nation).

Spring is a time of renewal and a chance to smell blossoming flowers, hear the chirping birds, and bask in warming weather. In Washington, DC, the cherry blossoms are a yearly event drawing crowds from all over and inspiring painters like Marjorie Phillips who depicted the Tidal Basin with the flowering cherry blossoms. The land around us has inspired artistic representation from time immemorial with movements like the Hudson River School being a notable American example situated in the Northeast. Artists across the U.S. have represented American soil in varying ways.

Georgia O’Keeffe, for example, is an artist who often painted the land of Taos, New Mexico, where she remained in the latter years of her life. In Ranchos Church, No. II, NM, O’Keeffe depicts the San Francisco de Assisi Mission Church, a Spanish church completed in the turn of the 18th century during Spanish colonization. O’Keeffe captures the undulating adobe facade that blends with the beige earth creating an abstracted view of the church. The church also sits on the land of the Taos Pueblo people and incorporates the commonly used adobe of the region that creates the iconic landscape of Taos, New Mexico.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Ranchos Church, No. II, N.M., 1929, Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 36 1/8 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1930; © The Phillips Collection

However, our relationship to the land is much more than the flowers, birds, and earth. The Phillips Collection sits on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Piscataway and Anocostan peoples of the region. Decolonizing the museum is a movement that seeks to undo the colonial violence of museum institutions. While no strategy is one size fits all, the Abbe Museum in Maine offers, for example, “at a minimum, sharing authority for the documentation and interpretation of Native culture.” When artists paint landscapes, what is often left out is the Indigenous presence, a byproduct of colonial violence.

Bringing in Native voices into museum spaces is thus a vital step in decolonizing institutions. Indigenous perspectives are necessary in rewriting narratives that have left out the very people whose land we occupy. As part of the collaboration between The Phillips Collection and the University of Maryland, we are excited for the next installment in the Antiracism: Communities + Collaborations series which will be hosted virtually on Thursday, April 7, at 6 pm EST. Dr. Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora) from Cornell University will be in conversation with Lisa Myers (Beausoleil First Nation) discussing Indigenous arts and decolonizing action. For more information and Zoom registration links, see the event page on our website.

The Phillips Collects: Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi

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Through its 2020–2022 Contemporaries Acquisition Fund, The Phillips Collection has recently acquired a work by DC-based artist Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi (b. 1981, Tehran, Iran). Created with acrylic on individual Masonite panels and incased together as a floor-piece, Ilchi’s work (to be completed in spring 2022) fluctuates between abstraction and representation, depth and flatness, evoking unknown landscapes and inner psychological spaces. “While her paintings merge fluid layers of poured paint with imagery derived from old Persian paintings and illuminated manuscripts, Ilchi’s intricately executed tile works—including the Phillips piece—join geometric patterns taken from Islamic architecture with the modernist grid, bridging distinct cultural traditions,” explains Vesela Sretenović, Cross-departmental Director for Contemporary Art Initiatives and Partnerships.

Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, Work in progress, to be completed spring 2022, Acrylic on individual Masonite panels, 6 x 6 in. each, Overall with base, c. 40 x 58 x 6 in., The Phillips Collection, Contemporaries Acquisition Fund

The artist describes her work as “the product of my multifaceted experience as an Iranian-American immigrant. It provides a space where my two disparate histories come together to reflect on cultural traditions and notions of belonging. By combining conventions of Western abstraction with conventions of Persian art, I explore contradictory painting processes and the ways in which they can be melded into a hybrid visual language.”

Ilchi’s artwork was selected by the Phillips’s Contemporaries Steering Committee (CSC), a young professionals membership group invited to deepen their connection to the Phillips through cultural and social events, including the Art Acquisition. The group has previously acquired works by Nara Park and Ellington Robinson in 2018, and Zoë Charlton in 2019.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Tehran, Iran, in 1981, Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi moved to the US when she was 18 and studied art first at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2006 and then at American University, where she received an MFA. Her work embraces the notion of duality, standing between abstraction and representation, geometric patterns and gestural expression, as well as between different histories, cultures, and art traditions. Ilchi’s work has been exhibited in New York, Switzerland, Washington, DC, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and is included in several private and public collections. She has been awarded numerous residencies, including the Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, The Jentel Foundation, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She is represented by Hemphill Artworks in Washington, DC.

Storytime with Karen

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At Karen Schneider’s retirement party last week, she shared with the staff some of her favorite moments over her 41 years at the Phillips (which included a lot of parties!). We’re excited to share some of them with you here.

Becoming the Phillips Librarian: Laughlin Phillips, son of Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, was the director when I started at the Phillips. He was a kind, gentle man who was also shy and modest. He loved getting to know the eccentric staff and delighted in seeing our artwork. He was also a terrific writer and editor and he would make whatever we wrote infinitely better. My background is in studio art. I was an artist in residence for two years and taught art to middle and high school students at National Cathedral School. I needed something for the summer and came to the Phillips. During my interview, I was asked if I had worked in a library before. I said yes, at Bennington College. Laughlin (he liked to be called Loc) led me upstairs to the the library, which was on the fourth floor of the house. The room had been Marjorie Phillips’s studio and the site of the Phillips Gallery Art School as well as Loc’s nursery. Loc opened the door and it was complete chaos. There were workmen on ladders building bookshelves, drop cloths spattered with paint, and the radio was blaring. Loc looked down at me and cleared his throat, which I later learned was a sign that he was nervous. Just then two cats raced across the room, Bazooka and Fiona. Loc asked me, “Do you think you could do something with this?” I said, “Yes.” I worked at the Phillips that summer and really enjoyed it. There was much to be done. I wrote a list of why the Phillips needed a librarian and what that person would do and I nominated myself. When I was back at National Cathedral School the head of the art department came up to me with a wide-eyed look and told me that Laughlin Phillips was on the phone. He told me “We like what you wrote. You’re on!” The fact that I had no art history or library degree did not matter to him. He was a good judge of character and loved to hire artists. He delighted in all of our eccentricities.

The Ham: John Gernand, the museum’s first registrar, fed Bazooka and Fiona promptly at 1:00. The cats came into his office precisely at 1:00 and John unwrapped aluminum foil which contained thin pieces of ham. After they had their lunch, Bazooka relaxed belly up on John’s desk under his lamp which was next to his phone. I always wondered what would happen if he received a call from the MoMA. Did the person on the end of the line hear Bazooka go Rarr?

Art Barn: One year we had our staff show at the Art Barn in Rock Creek Park. One of the staff members came running up to me—”Laughlin Phillips bought your work on paper!” I thought, “Drat! I should have added more zeroes to the price!” Loc wanted to talk to me about my work, which he put on the mantle of his fireplace next to a Braque still life.

The Hat Party: We had a hat party in the original courtyard. Everyone had to wear a hat. There was a fringed lampshade hat that someone found in one of the offices, a Sherlock Holmes hat worn by Jim McLaughlin, our curator, a red fez as well as my black pillbox hat. By the end of the alcohol fueled event, Giacometti’s Monumental Head in the middle of the courtyard had a huge pile of hats on top of its head.

Come as a painting party: One of our best parties was one in which we dressed up as a painting. I think that Bill Koberg made a hat that had a reproduction of Walt Kuhn’s Plumes. I was the guitarist in Manet’s Spanish Ballet and made my guitar using foamcore.

Present at the Unveiling: In the 1980s, the small staff was permitted to watch the uncrating of works of art, something that would be forbidden today, when only the curators, registrars, preparators, and director are allowed that privilege. I will never forget the joy experienced by all of us as a stunning Bonnard landscape from a French museum was unpacked from its enormous crate. It was included in a major Bonnard exhibition in 1984.