Staff Show 2017: Tracy Wingate

In this series, Manager of Visitor and Family Engagement Emily Bray highlights participants in the 2017 James McLaughlin Memorial Staff Show, on view through September 17, 2017.

Tracy Wingate, The Three of Us

What do you do at The Phillips Collection? Are there any unique or interesting parts about your job that most people might not know about?

I am a Museum Assistant; the interesting aspect of my job would be the public interaction.

Who is your favorite artist in the collection?

I am always amazed by the work of Jacob Lawrence and Horace Pippin.

What is your favorite space within The Phillips Collection?

I love all galleries in the house.

What would you like people to know about your artwork on view in the 2017 Staff Show (or your work in general)?

My art reflects African American relationships, the bonds that have been established with friends and family.

The 2017 James McLaughlin Memorial Staff Show is on view August 3 through September 17, 2017.

Horace Pippin’s The Barracks Heads to the Brandywine

Pippin_The Barracks

Horace Pippin, The Barracks, 1945. Oil on canvas, 25 1/4 x 30 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1946

Postdoctoral Fellow Anne Monahan consulted on the development of Horace Pippin: The Way I See It, an upcoming exhibition on self-taught artist Horace Pippin (1888-1946) that opens April 25 at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The first major exhibition of Pippin’s work in over 20 years, the exhibition brings together 65 of Pippin’s works from different stages of his career.

During her time at the Phillips, Dr. Monahan has researched Horace Pippin and unearthed new information about his family, his sources, and his relationship to the burgeoning market for his work in the 1940s. Her research focuses on his history paintings, his representations of African American labor and leisure, and new readings of a painting in the Phillips’s collection, The Barracks (1945).

The Barracks will be on view at the Brandywine through July 19 as part of the exhibition. Elizabeth Steele, Head of Conservation at the Phillips, cleaned the painting before it traveled for the show, restoring the dark colors to full effect by removing a layer of white film that had leached out of the dark pigments over time.

Eliza French, Manager of Center Initiatives, Center for the Study of Modern Art

Artists and Armistice

Horace Pippin, The Barracks, 1945. Oil on canvas, 25 1/4 x 30 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Acquired 1946.

Veterans Day used to be known as Armistice Day, to recall the signing of the Armistice that formally ended World War I at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 and to remember with gratitude all those who served.

It is interesting to see how many artists in The Phillips Collection served during WWI.

Georges Braque joined the French Army in 1914 and left to recuperate from a severe head wound.

Raymond Duchamp-Villon enlisted in the French Army Medical Corps, got Typhoid fever in 1916, finally dying in 1918.

Roger de la Fresnaye enlisted in 1914 and drew and painted watercolors of his comrades. In 1918 he got a lung hemorrhage in the trenches, ailing until he died in 1925.

Franz Marc joined the German Infantry. He was deemed a notable artist and exempted from military service, but before the discharge papers could reach him he was killed by shrapnel at the Battle of Verdon in 1916.

Paul Klee‘s father pulled a few strings to get him off the front lines, so Klee became a painter of camouflage on German aircraft.

André Derain was drafted and served for five years.

Oskar Kokoschka joined the Austria-Hungarian Army, was wounded in action, and was discharged when the doctors determined that he was mentally unstable.

Harold Weston did relief work and was a painter for the British Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force.

Then there’s Horace Pippin. In 1917, at 29 years old, Pippin joined the New York State 15th National Guard, a segregated unit that became the 369th Infantry Regiment. Continue reading