Community in Focus (Week 1)

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The Phillips Collection invites everyone to participate in Community in Focus, a community project to capture a unique photographic snapshot of an unprecedented year. We asked you to show us your inimitable spirit, suffering, joy, and resilience, and here are some images that captures those human emotions that connect us all. Stay tuned for more photos and submit your own!

Tyrone Hilton, July 8: The Jeb Stuart statue was removed in Richmond along with other confederate statues. After its removal, it became a bigger canvas for people to show their feelings of anger and sadness towards police brutality and social injustice.

Bekah Richards, June 19: I took this photo at the end of a long run through Rock Creek Park on a humid, steamy evening. I have been so grateful this year for Rock Creek Park and other nearby trails!

David Abizaid, June 2: A cellist plays as soldiers arrive outside the White House during a Black Lives Matter protest, the day after Trump’s walk to St. John’s Church.

Pilar Gormley, April 12: Happy Easter. After sending one patient to the ICU, I am about to go into another room to discharge the other one home. The interpreter, the patient and I all shout in Spanish as we discuss his instructions over the loud air scrubber blowing in the background.

Liza Banks Campagna, May 29: Taken at the first family gathering since the pandemic began. My younger sister, Bea, celebrated her eighteenth birthday and high school graduation in our back yard with our extended family. She sits in the chair in the bottom middle of the photo, fielding Happy birthday and congratulatory texts.

Ambrose Vurnis, September 19: This photo was taken the morning after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. People brought flowers and payed their respects.

Together We Are Awake

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Join the movement! The Phillips Collection, in partnership with the DC-Area chapter of the Wide Awakes—with masks on—gathered on October 17 in Dupont Circle to decorate signs in the colorful, psychedelic style of the 2020 Wide Awakes, then walked together to the Women’s March. The Wide Awakes are a collaboration of U.S. cultural leaders joining forces to produce civic actions before and after the 2020 election. Check out some of our photos from the day. All photos are by Kristin Adair.

“We are a network of thousands of artists, cultural workers, and activists driven by the most urgent social and political issues of our time. We’re organizing communities, sharing knowledge, building art, agitating for change, and getting out the vote. Who are The Wide Awakes? YOU ARE!”

Visit www.capeon.com to learn how you can be part of the movement.

Welcome back to The Phillips Collection

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What a precious experience to be back in the galleries, up close to works of art, and with fellow art lovers! It is marvelous to look closely at McArthur Binion’s DNA: Black Painting: 1 made up of birth certificate words, or the jagged wood elements in Aime Mpane’s Maman Calcule, or sense the touch of the artist’s hand in the brushwork in a Stuart Davis. Art looking is about taking time, investing patience, giving into a dialogue, or, to paraphrase Duncan Phillips, about “meeting the artist half way.” Even with the necessary safety precautions of timed tickets, limited numbers, masks, social distancing, the experience is powerful.

Dorothy Kosinski with McArthur Binion, DNA: Black Painting: 1, 2015, Oil paint stick, graphite, and paper on board, 84 x 84 in, The Phillips Collection, Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2016

Museums are places for art and wellness—so, naturally, the first hours of our reopening Preview Days were reserved for our many community partners, many of whom are essential workers, teachers, and health professionals; our heartfelt thanks to them for all of their heroic work through the pandemic. My thanks to our supporters, donors, and trustees for an abiding investment in our work, even as our doors have been closed. I thank our dedicated staff for engaging our audiences so creatively on myriad digital platforms during the past months, and for continuing to grow our online offerings that will be the foundation for a robust digital presence going forward. Thank you to those that have kept our building and artwork safe since March. And thank you to the frontline staff who are now on site to ensure that your visit is pleasant and safe. It has been a team effort to reopen our doors.

Scenes from our reopening Member Preview Days, October 8-11

Please visit—there is a lot to see: Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, Moira Dryer: Back in Business (both have been extended through the end of the year), a new installation of 11 Edward Hopper paintings from the Whitney Museum of American Art, a video installation of an election theme work by Brian Dailey, and banners by conceptual artist Jenny Holzer on the main façade. And there will be more to see as we carefully open up additional galleries, and as we prepare for our centennial in 2021. Welcome back.