Remembering John Lewis

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Congressman John Lewis visited The Phillips Collection in May 2008 during the whirlwind first months of my tenure as director of the museum. He joined me and curator Elsa Smithgall along with National Endowment for the Arts Chair Dana Gioia to view our installation of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series. He also generously made time to talk to some of the students with whom we work. What an impression he made on all of us.

NEA Chair Dana Gioia, Dorothy Kosinski, Congressman John Lewis, and Curator Elsa Smithgall with Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series

Congressman John Lewis speaks with students in the auditorium

Congressman Lewis was friends with artist Benny Andrews (1930-2006). We are honored to have in the Phillips’s collection Andrews’s magnificent Trail of Tears, thanks to the incredible generosity of Agnes Gund. Andrews produced collages and ink drawings for the 2006 publication John Lewis in the Lead: A Story of the Civil Rights Movement by Jim Haskins ad Kathleen Benson. Later, in 2013, Lewis wrote a foreword for the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition Benny Andrews: There Must Be a Heaven at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York City. Lewis’s words about Andrews capture the ethical compass of his life:

Benny Andrews, Trail of Tears (Trail of Tears Series and Migrant Series), 2006, Oil on four canvases with painted fabric and mixed media collage, 76 x 145 x 1 in., Gift of Agnes Gund, 2019

“You see, for Benny, like all of us who were involved in non-violent direct action, protest is an act of love, not one of anger. Through all the jailings, beatings, protests, and prayers of the Civil Rights Movement, we always had ‘this basic idea,’ as Benny so appropriately put it, ‘that good would overcome evil.’ And it is from that place that we offered our complaint. Our desire was not to condemn, but to appeal to the better angels of all humanity. We demonstrated what was wrong to awaken that divine spark that resides in all of us with the power to build and not tear down, to reconcile and not divide, to love and not hate. This critique is an invitation to build a better world based on simple justice that values the dignity and the worth of every human being.”

We mourn Congressman Lewis’s passing and honor his lifelong work for and devotion to equity and justice.

I Miss Canyon by Helen Frankenthaler

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The Phillips Collection galleries have been dark and empty and our staff and visitors have been missing our beloved collection. In this series we will highlight artworks that the Phillips staff have really been missing lately. Manager of Museum Evaluation & Data Analysis Kristen Paral on why she misses Helen Frankenthaler’s Canyon.

(LEFT) Helen Frankenthaler, Canyon, 1965, Acrylic on canvas, 44 x 52 in., The Phillips Collection, The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions and funds given by Gifford Phillips, 2001 (RIGHT) My re-creation of Frankenthalter’s process

Have you ever missed something so much that you tried to re-create it? When the pandemic hit, I found myself longing for, and trying to re-create, many aspects of my pre-COVID life. I missed my friends and so I arranged Zoom happy hours, which were unsatisfying compared to in-person conversations. I craved for all my favorite restaurant staples and so I learned to cook my own edition of crab cakes, refried black beans, crusted flounder, miso soup, and Greek hummus. Finally, and most poignant, I missed being surrounded by art.

I work at an art museum not only because I enjoy art, but because I believe it is central to our human experience. There is much that I can live without, as this pandemic made apparent, but I cannot live without art.

Within one week of the quarantine beginning, I kept glancing at an empty wall in my bedroom. I needed more art in my life and Helen Frankenthaler’s Canyon kept popping into my mind. So, like my favorite restaurant foods and happy hours with friends, I decided to re-create it.

Frankenthaler used her trademark soak staining technique to create Canyon in 1965. Soak staining is a combination of Jackson Pollock’s pouring technique with Frankenthaler’s innovative method of significantly diluting oil paint pigments with turpentine. Together the techniques yield an ethereal, watercolor-like effect.

My makeshift studio

The first challenge I faced in beginning the project was figuring out how to soak stain using acrylics; I couldn’t use fume-emitting oils paints in a studio space shared with children and pets. Next, I needed to set up a studio space. Frankenthaler created her artwork on the floor, where she poured and, pushed her diluted pigments into glorious abstract formations, often representing landscapes of the seaside near her studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I tried placing my canvas on the floor like Frankenthaler, but my back and knees ached; plus, I couldn’t keep my dogs away! So, I set up my studio on a table instead and completed a couple of studies. This experiment reiterated the point that to truly capture the effect of Canyon, the canvas must be laid flat, as mixing paint on canvas with a brush did not yield the signature of effect of Frankenthaler’s soak staining.

The first time that I poured diluted paint on my canvas, chills went down my spine. It felt all wrong! I quickly grabbed a paper towel in a panic and worked to rescue my canvas, but my frenzy dissipated as the magic began.

My experiment pouring diluted paint on a flat canvas.

I pushed and pulled the paint with a palette knife and paper towel. Suddenly the yellow blob of paint began to transform. I rushed to mix and dilute the red-orange color and poured it on the center of the canvas. Once again, I felt like I ruined my painting and so I returned to controlling the process with paint brushes. I alternated back and forth between the two techniques and somewhere along the way, an amalgam of Frankenthaler’s style with my own emerged from the swirls of paint.

Looking at the painting on the table versus on the easel.

I relished the crispness of my clean lines and divisions of colors, but admired Frakenthaler’s ability to make colors float together with seeming intention using soak staining. However, this edition of my painting was unbalanced and I didn’t understand why until I changed my perspective. I propped the painting up on my easel and the solution immediately came to me.

My version of Canyon was too controlled. With each harsh transition in color that I created by using a paintbrush and mixing on canvas, I forced myself to dilute pigment and pour it directly on the canvas to soften the edges. The process of pouring became more natural feeling as I worked. Finally, the painting was complete. But it wasn’t a true replica of Frankenthaler’s, nor was it an original artwork of mine. It is, instead, a process piece representing a journey of healing inspired by art.

My final piece!

I don’t like letting go of control and the pandemic has been testing my sense of having dominion over my life. I clung to my preferred methods of painting because I needed to make something work the way I expected it to. By forcing myself to use Frankenthaler’s soak staining method, I found peace in chance. I found truth in what is, instead of what I can make happen. I discovered a piece of myself that wanted to just let go and accept beauty wherever it can be found.

For now, this journey continues at home and I look forward to the day that it extends back into museums. Until then, I will continue to miss Frankenthaler’s Canyon.

Welcoming and Engaging Our Summer Interns—Online!

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Levon Williams, Temporary Program Manager of DEAI, shares his experience launching the Phillips’s first virtual internship program.

Our Summer 2019 Intern Cohort meeting on Zoom

In June, The Phillips Collection began its summer internship program funded by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. This paid internship program, led by the museum’s Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion (DEAI) Department, aims to create a pipeline of 21st-century museum professionals from historically underrepresented communities in the museum field. We are very excited to have a cohort of nine students this summer!

Planning for this summer’s internship program has been particularly interesting as it is our first that will be completed virtually. We’ve had to assess how to maintain the goals of providing a high quality and impactful internship program without having the interns on site. Working with Makeba Clay, the Phillips’s Chief Diversity Officer and Head of the DEAI Department, I reviewed several webinars and publications on the topic supporting remote interns and have been excited to see them in practice.

During the 10-week program, the interns’ focus as a cohort is in three areas: museum operations, DEAI in museums, and leadership/teamwork. Including leadership and teamwork in a more intentional way is the result of finding that leadership skills are a much desired competency for incoming entry level museum positions.

The interns are represented in a wide swath of departments: Public Programs, Marketing and Communications, DEAI, Editing and Design, Visitor Experience, and Family Programs at the Phillips’s satellite location Phillips@THEARC. We are only a few weeks in and their support has already proven extremely valuable. Interns are working on projects that support major operations such as website design, developing new and innovative programs that can be delivered remotely and in-person once the museums reopens, a review of the museum’s collections from a DEAI lens, and creating new methods to engage volunteers remotely, to name a few. All of these projects support the professional development of the interns and the strategic goals of the departments where they are interning.

In addition to their departmental projects, as mentioned we are also working to create as a shared cohort experience. The interns meet as a cohort twice a week for additional professional development. During these sessions representatives from various departments chat with interns about the journeys that have led them to the Phillips and the museum field as a whole. We also meet to explore and discuss concepts around 21st-century museum leadership, including exploring their strengths, their individual and teamwork styles, and working remotely.

All in all, the Phillips’s first fully virtual internship is an experiment. We feel confident about our ability to meaningfully connect with interns in a virtual space. We hope to be able to use this pilot program as a model to increase the Phillips’s ability to serve a wider group of interns through the Sherman Fairchild Foundation Internship Program going forward. I’ll be back at the end of the 10 weeks to give more insights about what we have learned and I look forward to talking to you all then!