Meet Nehemiah Dixon

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Meet our new Director of Community Engagement Nehemiah Dixon III. Nehemiah is excited to craft a robust community engagement plan at Phillips@THEARC (where he has been part of the advisory committee since its inception) and beyond.

Photo of Nehemiah Dixon III

Nehemiah Dixon with Sam Gilliam’s Red Petals (1967)

Tell us about yourself!
I am a native Washingtonian and proud graduate of the School Without Walls, Senior High School located on the campus of the George Washington University. My first authentic art class was a life studies class at the Washington Studio School in Georgetown, but I knew art was my passion in the fourth grade when I drew the perfect Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. My Grandmother was an artist, who loved to make copies of Van Gogh’s and she would make these large mixed-media landscapes and display them in her all-white living room. She would take us to the Smithsonian museums on the weekend which I believe sparked my curiosity about the industry and probably directed a lot of my choices. I always knew I wanted to stay in the industry, so I graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a bachelor’s degree in General Fine Arts. In 2016, I started a company called Nonstop Art where I worked with a team of artists and developers to create and manage a makerspace in an affordable housing complex. No matter what form it takes, making art and working in the arts has been and a fulfilling and rewarding career.

What excites you about working at The Phillips Collection?
I worked at the Phillips back in 2005/2006 as a Museum Assistant. I met so many cool artists, writers, and historians, some of whom I am still friends with today. My two brightest moments were when Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party returned and I had the opportunity to witness all the fanfare and excitement around the museum with the staff and the patrons. I literally spent hours staring at that painting, engaging visitors about the historical significance of that piece. I also met Sean Scully after his artist talk at his solo show! This alone makes the Phillips avant-garde in its relationship with artists and its community. As Director of Community Engagement I am excited to work with an amazing team of scholars, artists, and educators. This is a dream come true.

What project are you most interested in working on?
There is a kid somewhere in Washington, DC, that just drew the perfect Ninja Turtle. I want to find them and bring them to The Phillips Collection. In the Spirit of Duncan Phillips’s mission to support the unknown artist in his community, I want to uphold the idea that artists and community need us. Without Duncan Phillips we might not know Vuillard. Just imagine how many people’s lives we can touch, inspire and change forever with each program, event, opening, conversation, and experience! I am most interested in hearing from the community, taking that input, and providing excellent experiences!

What would you like people to know about Phillips@THEARC?
A few weeks ago Monica Jones (Phillips@THEARC Program Coordinator), other staff members, and I held a conversation with the community about what a flag represents as part of our project State of DC (a collaboration between MidCity Development, Nonstop Art, The Phillips Collection, and DC Public Library). We used two pieces from the permanent collection, Vik Muniz’s American Flag (2009) and Jake Berthot’s  Little Flag Painting (1961) as inspiration for the discussion. The discussion turned into a critique about how one flag was pristine and made using technology versus the other which was painterly and aged. One member of the community said the pristine flag belonged in “Northwest,” whereas the more rugged flag felt like “Southeast.” This important dialogue emphasized for me the importance of exposure and belonging. We are there to listen and engage with our community about what is relevant to them. What you should know is that Phillips@THEARC provides access to a catalogue of very important works of art to a historically underserved community. Our commitment to wellness and arts programming could very well improve the quality of life of the residents we serve.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
I am most happy making art or talking about art, or helping others make art, or planning something related to the arts—it’s a thing. Also, I almost joined the circus.

Riffs and Relations: Shaping the DC Landscape

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During and after the Great Depression and World War II, when fewer museums dotted the local landscape, Duncan Phillips (1886–1966) joined forces with cultural leaders like James V. Herring (1887–1969) who opened the Howard University Gallery of Art in 1930, and Alonzo J. Aden (1906–1961), who with Herring in 1943 opened in their home the Barnett Aden Gallery, the first black-owned commercial art space in the US.

Herring and Aden championed Phillips’s efforts to bring modernism to a wider audience. They valued his emphasis on the innate visual relationships found in art, and his belief that works should be displayed in intimate settings, ideas they interpreted in their galleries. As they developed their collections, Phillips, Herring, and Aden supported many of the same artists and acquired examples of their work. They crossed racial boundaries, forged collaborations, exchanged art loans, and fortified a professional and collegial relationship. Together, they endorsed local artists and incorporated diverse voices, helping to make art more accessible and shaping the cultural landscape of this city.

Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition features several artists associated with these three cultural institutions:

David C. Driskell, Still Life with Sunset, 1966, Oil on canvas, 48 x 32 in., Collection of Joseph and Lynne Horning

David C. Driskell studied art at Howard University and Catholic University. While at Howard, he began visiting The Phillips Collection, where he enjoyed seeing in the galleries works by American and European modern painters. Driskell recalled his early visits: “I just felt a sense of welcome there . . . Washington was still a segregated city [but] . . . I felt accepted at the Phillips . . . [I would] walk down the hall and see a Cézanne, and a Rouault, and come down the steps, and there would be [a] Marjorie Phillips . . . and [a] Pippin . . . I could go there and see great art and feel I might become part of this.” Driskell would later bring his Howard art students through the galleries of the Phillips.

Alma Thomas, Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963, Acrylic on canvas, 47 5/8 x 44 1/4 in., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1976

Alma Thomas, the first fine arts graduate of Howard University, accompanied Driskell on visits to the Phillips, especially on Sundays for the concerts. They became associated with a new generation of artists encouraged by the cooperative interactions of Washington’s cultural leaders. After graduating from Howard, Thomas began teaching art at Shaw Junior High School. She brought students to various cultural institutions, including the Central Public Library, the Smithsonian, the Corcoran, and the Phillips. In the 1950s and 60s, the large-scale abstractions by Washington Color School painters—Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, Morris Louis, and later Thomas and Sam Gilliam—permeated the local art scene. Phillips, Herring, and Aden promoted, collected, and exhibited works by these artists.

James Lesesne Wells, Primitive Girl, 1929, linoleum cut, 7 ½ x 7 in., David C. Driskell Collection, Permanent loan to the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park

Renowned for his work during the Harlem Renaissance, James Lesesne Wells was also an educator, painter, printmaker, and designer who mentored many students during his 39-year tenure at Howard University in the art department. Primitive Girl shows the artist’s engagement with African art and expressionist printmaking techniques. Phillips acquired Wells’s Journey to Egypt in 1931, making it the first work by an African American artist to join the museum’s collection.

James Lesesne Wells, Journey to Egypt, 1931, Oil on canvas mounted on cardboard, 13 3/8 x 15 7/8 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1931

 

Loïs Mailou Jones, Place du Tertre, 1938, Oil on canvas, 18 1/4 x 22 5/8 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1944

In 1930, James V. Herring recruited Loïs Mailou Jones to teach at Howard University, where she would remain an art instructor for the next 47 years. In 1937, she received a yearlong fellowship that brought her to Paris, where she painted still lifes, portraits, and street scenes in an Impressionist style like this example. She began exhibiting her art at the Phillips in the 1940s during the Christmas Sales Exhibitions, which premiered the work of local artists, who received all proceeds from the sales. Jones, who was friendly with Phillips, felt that these shows provided “a wonderful opportunity for young artists to exhibit in a first-class gallery.”

In this spirit, we invite Howard University students and staff to visit Riffs and Relations for free on Saturdays and Sundays with Howard ID.

Prism.K12: We get to be the artist!

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From October 2019 through February 2020, teachers from Maryland and DC participated in an arts integration course offered by the University of Maryland and The Phillips Collection. “Connecting to the Core Curriculum” provides PK-12 educators with the opportunity to blend the visual arts seamlessly into the core curriculum, using The Phillips’s Prism.K12 arts integration strategies and resources. The course culminated in an exhibition of student artwork Energizing Education: Teaching through the PRISM of Arts Integration, on view through April 5, 2020. Teacher Kory Sutherland shares her experience in the course.

I found out about The Phillips Collection’s Arts Integration class through an email that I almost didn’t open. I’m so glad I did because “Connecting to the Core Curriculum: Building Teacher Capacity for Arts Integration with Prism K-12” is a gem of a class that I can’t speak highly enough about. Co-taught by Hilary Katz of the Phillips and Kenna Hernly of the University of Maryland, the class is designed to support teachers in teaching with and through the arts. The group of teachers in this year’s cohort represented a wide range of subjects, grades, and abilities, from PreK through high school. Together we learned how to use art as an entry to other subjects by exploring the Phillips’s galleries, reading articles, and creating lessons. We practiced slow looking techniques, made blackout poetry, tried blind contour drawing, and, my favorite, we created stop-motion animation videos. With this time and guidance we were able to better understand what arts integration is, what resources are available, and how we can best bring these exciting techniques to our own classrooms.

Kory Sutherland (right) with other UMD-Phillips Prism.K12 participants learn how to use stop-motion animation. Photo: Travis Houze

I’m a teacher at Temple Emanuel’s Early Childhood Center in Kensington, Maryland, so I don’t fit into the target demographic for the class. For my students the languages of painting, building, and sculpting often come more easily than spoken language. We are a Reggio Emilia-inspired school, so my students have a lot of practice representing their thoughts visually. Incorporating art into an early childhood setting is a natural fit but this class helped me to elevate our learning to another level. When I showed my three-year-old students the work of contemporary artist John Grade, they were eager for more. Looking at Grade’s work Middle Fork, a 150-foot replica of a Western Hemlock tree, we found the values of collaboration, teamwork, and care of the natural environment. After learning about how Grade and his team worked together, we used Prism.K12 strategies Connect and Express to create our own large-scale sculpture of wooden blocks, “A Gathering Place for Foxes.” Through the process of building we measured tree stumps, wondered if wood is alive or had blood, learned about foxes, and imagined what animals would need to feel comfortable and happy in an environment designed for them. The children ended up expressing their ideas by adding snacks, internet, and plumbing to the structure, as well as places “for animals to play and be cozy.” My students envisioned the structure, problem-solved, and then brought it to life, inviting other children, teachers, and parents to help along the way. A students said, “We’re working like the artist! We get to be the artist!” This is the kind of connection that I’m looking forward to seeing more of as I continue my arts integration path. I can hardly wait to continue my class’s study of trees and forests by introducing them to other artists.

A Gathering Place for Foxes created by Temple Emanuel’s Early Childhood Center students

For my colleagues with older students, an interdisciplinary approach to teaching is less common. Throughout the 12-week class I loved hearing about the range of projects they came up with. To name a few examples, students learned about dance, math, architecture, fashion, heroes, and family history. At one point, a classmate remarked that using art to teach AP World History changed the entire mood of his class, taking pressure off of his students while not sacrificing any of the rigor of the lesson. Another classmate described the pure delight of her students as they worked together to build robots and write code to make them draw in novel ways. Giving students an opportunity to work collaboratively was a benefit that many of the teachers described as an unexpected bonus to their projects, encouraging communication and mutual respect. To me, the examples of my colleagues show the promise of what art can do to spark teaching that is dynamic, engaging, and inclusive. I’m proud of what we achieved together and I hope you enjoy the richness of our community exhibition. 

A Gathering Place for Foxes created by Temple Emanuel’s Early Childhood Center students

A Gathering Place for Foxes created by Temple Emanuel’s Early Childhood Center students