Go Team!

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Joe Holbach, Trish Waters, Bill Koberg, and Renée Maurer in their hotel lobby where a banner for our exhibition is on display. Photo: Sue Frank

Today is the big opening for our exhibition in Daejeon, Korea, Conversations: Impressionist and Modern Master Works from The Phillips Collection. Two years in the making, this show furthers our relationship with notable museums in Asia and the citizens of those countries who have seen our works in loan and traveling exhibitions in the past. This unusually large team—chief registrar and director of special initiatives Joe Holbach, associate registrar for exhibitions Trish Waters, installations manager Bill Koberg, assistant curator Renée Maurer, and associate curator for research Sue Frank—is representative of the size and complexity of this installation. Joe reports, “Highly energetic opening tonight.” (Which technically was yesterday for them.)

Summer: Black River Valley

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John Marin, Black River Valley, 1913, Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper 15 1/2 x 18 3/4 in.; 39.37 x 47.625 cm.. Acquired 1926.

During summer 1913, John Marin spent the summer along the Black River in Castorland, New York, near the Adirondacks, painting the local landscape of the river valley and surrounding mountains including Black River Valley. His paintings during that summer were full of bright, luminous color, which Marin exaggerated with watercolor paint. Marin typically dated his paintings only by year, not by month or season, but his Castorland paintings are recognizable by a blue, green, and pale yellow summery palette. He used his penchant for transparent color, loose and fluid technique, admiration for cubism, and mastery of watercolor paint to create a beautifully abstracted image of the rolling hills and deep river valley, conveying the warmth of a summer day.

This work is currently on view in Made in the U.S.A.

They Came, They Saw, They Edited

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Volunteers working in the library. Photo: Sarah Osborne Bender

Volunteers working in the library. Photo: Sarah Osborne Bender

On Sunday, about fifteen volunteers came to the Phillips Library to help create and expand Wikipedia articles related to American artists both in our Made in the U.S.A. exhibition and the rest of our permanent collection. It was a great day of work; many articles were improved and others created from scratch. The spirit behind Wikipedia aligns with our museum’s mission statement—a dynamic environment for collaboration, innovation, engagement with the world, scholarship, and new forms of public participation—and this was all evident here on Sunday in abundance.  Many thanks to Wikimedia DC members for being so generous with their experience and enthusiasm.