Washington, D.C
Three different art experiences in Washington, D.C., at the National Gallery, American University and Glenstone – Artblog
Blaise Tobia and Virginia Maksymowicz travel to Washington for a trifecta of art experiences and they write about how different each art experience was. Read on, then take a little trip to Washington, maybe do it this month! Enjoy!
Authors Introduction
The two of us recently drove down to Washington, D.C., with three primary art objectives in mind: to see the Paris 1874 Impressionist exhibition at the National Gallery; to see the exhibition Faces of the Republican Party at American University; and to make our first visit to the relatively new Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland, just outside of the District. One of the great things about DC (at least for now) is that the national museums, which are top quality, offer free admission. In terms of the visual arts, a visitor can easily fill two days with visits to the National Gallery (and its contemporary-oriented East Wing), the Hirshhorn, the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (both sharing the amazing building that was formerly the U.S. Patent Office), the museums of African and Asian Art, and the American Indian Museum.
National Gallery
The current marquee exhibition at the National Gallery is Paris 1874: the Impressionist Moment. One-hundred fifty years ago, a show that included a style of art that would become known as “Impressionism,” was held in Paris under the name Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc. It featured thirty artists and was set up as a counter-exhibition to the gigantic annual Paris Salon, which hosted over 2000 artists and half a million visitors.
The Paris 1874 exhibition sets up a comparison between the Salon and the Société — in fact, the curators challenge visitors to deduce for each work on view whether it was part of the Salon or of the Société.
The Société exhibition came to be known as the First Impressionist Exhibition and was followed by seven more, through 1886. Interestingly, most of the artists in the 1874 show were not actually Impressionists. The exhibition has often been categorized as a Salon des Refuses, and it is true that some of the exhibitors, including Monet, Manet, Renoir and Cezanne, had not been selected for the Salon. But there were also artists who showed in both exhibitions, one of them, surprisingly, a woman, Berthe Morisot.
Paris 1874 includes works in the National Gallery’s collection. In addition, other works that had been in either of the two 1874 Paris exhibitions were brought from museums around the world. One of these is Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise.” (It was a negative reaction to this painting that caused the art critic Louis Leroy to coin the term “Impressionism.”)
Another featured work is Jean-Léon Gérôme’s1873 painting in grand historical style, “L’Eminence Grise,” which won the Salon’s grand prize in 1874. And the intelligence of the National Gallery installation is evident in the fact that Gerome’s “L’Eminence Grise” and Monet’s “Impressionism: Sunrise” are the first two paintings seen by visitors, displayed side-by-side.
One of the most impressive things about the National Gallery exhibition is that it presents a great deal of historical and cultural context for the two 1874 exhibitions including the fact that Paris was a city just beginning to recover from the devastations of the Franco-Prussian War (1871) and the Paris Commune that followed it.
Another component of the show that impressed us wasn’t even in the exhibition proper: two large photographic projections were on view for visitors waiting to enter the exhibition, and these were quite amazing. Digital animator Andrey Zakirzyanov, working with custom A.I. tools, created very believable 3D animations from photographs and paintings featured in the exhibition, giving viewers a convincing sense of a living Paris of 1874.
Paris 1874 is on display through January 19, 2025, (which happens to be, perhaps not coincidentally, the last day of the Biden Administration).
American University Museum
At American University we saw an exhibition that was truly as different as possible from Paris 1874. Faces of the Republican Party features 43 provocative portraits created by artist Jeff Gates, that depict prominent right-wing figures. Each portrait (digital collage, 23×16 inches) is based on a statement by the person depicted. Gates sees these statements as ugly and, accordingly, makes the portraits ugly. He starts with one or more photographs of the person and then goes through a complex process of layering, distorting, coloring and adding additional elements to create a visual representation that embodies the anger and disdain that seem to be transforming the person — literally — into a demon.
One example is Gates’s portrait of Roger Stone featuring a statement Stone made just after the November 2020 election while votes were still being counted: “Fuck the Voting. Let’s get right to the Violence.” Visually, Stone is depicted with wild glowing eyes, a gaping mouth, a pattern of lines on his face evoking Maori warrior tattoos, and a marker in his hand being wielded like a weapon about to poke someone’s eyes out. Other figures depicted include Matt Gaetz, Michael Flynn, Rupert Murdoch, Greg Abbott, Rona MacDaniel and Donald Trump himself.
These are very strong works. Made during the past three years, they have perhaps become even stronger after Trump’s election. A viewer has to admire the courage that American University has shown in exhibiting them.
Faces of the Republican Party closed December 8, 2024. A PDF of the exhibition catalog is available for download.
Glenstone Museum
Our experience at the Glenstone Museum was, yet again, very different – from both exhibitions that we had seen earlier.
Glenstone, which opened in 2006, is the project of two very wealthy art collectors, Mitchell Rales and Emily Wei Rales, who have spent more than $2 billion on it. The grounds encompass 300 acres of meadows and woodlands, traversed by walking paths and streams. Separate from the art on display, this beautiful outdoor setting is clearly a masterpiece of landscape design. A number of modern, minimalist structures have been worked into the landscape: a small museum (called the Gallery), a larger museum (with over 50,000 square feet of exhibition space, called the Pavilions), a building dedicated solely to a Richard Serra work, a restaurant, various service units, and the Rales’s own residence. All the buildings were designed by Charles Gwathmey and Thomas Phifer.
The Glenstone esthetic seems to be to give lots of breathing room to its major outdoor sculptures. There are only about a dozen works, spread around the site. They include large pieces by Richard Serra, Tony Smith, Jeff Koons, Simone Leigh, Charles Ray, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Michel Heizer and Ellsworth Kelly, an odd small piece by Robert Gober (two porcelain sinks half-buried in the woods), and — our favorite — a set of three small stone huts (Clay Houses) designed by Andy Goldsworthy, each containing a work made of naturally drying clay. And, easily holding its own as a sculptural “work,” is a crazy set of boardwalks through the woods designed by PWP Landscape Architecture (which also did the bulk of Glenstone’s landscape).
The indoor works were less impressive. The Gallery presents a sampling by contemporary artists who could be characterized as the same old suspects, and they are not always top-quality examples. (One exception is a very wry “closet” by Robert Gober, built right into the “white cube” wall.) The Pavilions are very minimalist in architectural style, austere and even foreboding, with the exhibition spaces widely separated along long dark underground hallways. Unfortunately for us, the main artist on display was Cady Noland, whose work leaves us underwhelmed. (Apparently the Rales have amassed the largest collection anywhere of Noland’s work.)
Glenstone struck us as a blend of Storm King, Dia Beacon and the New Jersey Pine Barrens. It is definitely worth a visit. And, while you’re there, take a ride around nearby Potomac, Maryland. It features two of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the U.S. Comically, some of the largest houses (mansions with twelve, sixteen or even more rooms) are crammed into relatively small lots just like typical row houses in Philly!
BTW . . . In doing research for this piece, we discovered something linking our last stop, Glenstone, with our first stop, the National Gallery: Mitchell Rales was president of the National Gallery from 2019 to 2024.
Read more articles by Blaise Tobia and Virginia Maksymowicz on Artblog.
Washington, D.C
Supporters press for a DC memorial to Thomas Paine, whose writings helped fuel the Revolutionary War – WTOP News
NEW YORK (AP) — Some 250 years after “Common Sense” helped inspire the 13 colonies to declare independence, Thomas Paine…
NEW YORK (AP) — Some 250 years after “Common Sense” helped inspire the 13 colonies to declare independence, Thomas Paine might receive a long-anticipated tribute from his adopted country.
A Paine memorial in Washington, D.C., authorized by a 2022 law, awaits approval from the U.S. Department of Interior. It would be the first landmark in the nation’s capital to be dedicated to one of the American Revolution’s most stirring, popular and quotable advocates — who also was one of the most intensely debated men of his time.
“He was a critical and singular voice,” said U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a sponsor of the bill that backed the memorial. He said Paine has long been “underrecognized and overlooked.”
Saturday marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of Paine’s “Common Sense,” among the first major milestones of a yearlong commemoration of the country’s founding and the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Paine supporters have waited decades for a memorial in the District of Columbia, and success is still not ensured: Federal memorials are initiated by Congress but usually built through private donations. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed bipartisan legislation for such a memorial, but the project was delayed, failed to attract adequate funding and was essentially forgotten by the mid-2000s.
The fate of the current legislation depends not just on financial support, but on President Donald Trump’s interior secretary, Doug Burgum.
In September 2024, the memorial was recommended by the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission for placement on the National Mall. Burgum needs to endorse the plan, which would be sent back to Congress for final enactment. If approved, the memorial would have a 2030 deadline for completion.
A spokesperson for the department declined comment when asked about the timing for a decision.
“We are staying optimistic because we feel that Thomas Paine is such an important figure in the founding of the United States of America,” said Margaret Downey, president of the Thomas Paine Memorial Association, which has a mission to establish a memorial in Washington.
A contentious legacy
Scholars note that well into the 20th century, federal honors for Paine would have been nearly impossible. While Paine first made his name through “Common Sense,” the latter part of his life was defined by another pamphlet, “The Age of Reason.”
Published in installments starting in 1794, it was a fierce attack against organized religion. Paine believed in God and a divinely created universe but accepted no single faith. He scorned what he described as the Bible’s “paltry stories” and said Christianity was “too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice.”
By the time of his death, in New York in 1809, he was estranged from friends and many of the surviving founders; only a handful of mourners attended his funeral. He has since been championed by everyone from labor leaders and communists to Thomas Edison, but presidents before Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s rarely quoted him. Theodore Roosevelt referred to him as a “filthy little atheist.”
There are Paine landmarks around the country, including a monument and museum in New Rochelle, New York, and statue in Morristown, New Jersey. But other communities have resisted. In 1955, Mayor Walter H. Reynolds of Providence, Rhode Island, rejected a proposed Paine statue, saying “he was and remains so controversial a character.”
Harvey J. Kaye, author of “Thomas Paine and the Promise of America,” cites the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 as a surprising turning point. Reagan’s victory was widely seen as a triumph for the modern conservative movement, but Reagan alarmed some Republicans and pleased Paine admirers during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention when he quoted Paine’s famous call to action: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
Reagan helped make Paine palatable to both parties, Kaye said. When Congress approved a memorial in 1992, supporters ranged from a liberal giant, Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, to a right-wing hero, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina.
“Reagan opened the door,” Kaye said.
An immigrant who stoked the fire of revolution
Paine’s story is very much American. He was a self-educated immigrant from Britain who departed for the colonies with little money but with hopes for a better life.
He was born Thomas Pain in Thetford in 1737, some 90 miles outside of London (he added the “e” to his last name after arriving in America). Paine was on the move for much of his early life. He spent just a few years in school before leaving at age 13 to work as an apprentice for his father, a corset maker. He would change jobs often, from teaching at a private academy to working as a government excise officer to running a tobacco shop.
By the time he sailed to the New World in 1774, he was struggling with debt, had been married twice and had failed or made himself unwelcome in virtually every profession he entered. But Paine also had absorbed enough of London’s intellectual life to form radical ideas about government and religion and to meet Benjamin Franklin, who provided him a letter of introduction that helped him find work in Philadelphia as a contributor to The Pennsylvania Magazine.
The Revolutionary War began in April 1775 and pamphlets helped frame the arguments, much as social media posts do today. The Philadelphia-based statesman and physician Benjamin Rush was impressed enough with Paine to suggest that he put forth his own thoughts. Paine had wanted to call his pamphlet “Plain Truth,” but agreed to Rush’s idea: “Common Sense.”
Paine’s brief tract was credited to “an Englishman” and released on Jan. 10, 1776. Later expanded to 47 pages, it was a popular sensation. Historians differ over how many copies were sold, but “Common Sense” was widely shared, talked about and read aloud.
Paine’s urgent, accessible prose was credited for helping to shift public opinion from simply opposing British aggression to calling for a full break. His vision was radical, even compared to some of his fellow revolutionaries. In taking on the British and King George III, he did not just attack the actions of an individual king, but the very idea of hereditary rule and monarchy. He denounced both as “evil” and “exceedingly ridiculous.”
“Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived,” he stated.
A message that continues to resonate
Historian Eric Foner would write that Paine’s appeal lasted through “his impatience with the past, his critical stance toward existing institutions, his belief that men can shape their own destiny.” But “Common Sense” was despised by British loyalists and challenged by some American leaders.
John Adams would refer to Paine as a “star of disaster,” while Franklin worried about his “rude way of writing.” Meanwhile, George Washington valued “Common Sense” for its “sound doctrine” and ”unanswerable reasoning,” and Thomas Jefferson, soon to be the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, befriended Paine and later invited him to the White House when he was president.
Paine’s message continues to be invoked by those on both sides of the political divide.
In his 2025 year-end report on the federal judiciary, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts began by citing the anniversary of “Common Sense” and praising Paine for “shunning legalese” as he articulated that “government’s purpose is to serve the people.” Last year, passages from “Common Sense” appeared often during the nationwide “No Kings” rallies against Trump’s policies.
One demonstrator’s sign in Boston said, “No King! No Tyranny! It’s Common Sense.”
Copyright
© 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
Washington, D.C
DC native killed in multivehicle crash remembered for his love of photography – WTOP News
Aaron Marckell Williams, 26, was killed after being struck in a multivehicle crash following a high-speed chase in Northwest D.C. on Wednesday afternoon. A 20-year-old man was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
While working Election Day in 2022, Sam Plo Kwia Collins Jr. drove alongside Aaron Marckell Williams to cover the evening results for the Washington Informer. As it became clear that Kenyan McDuffie would win his bid for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council, the duo rushed over to McDuffie’s victory party.
As soon as Collins Jr. parked his car, Williams “got to the front and took a very iconic photo” of McDuffie pointing at the crowd during his victory speech.
Over three years later, Collins Jr. saw the photo again on the Informer’s website and began thinking about his former colleague.
“Only to find out a couple of days later that he left us,” Collins Jr. told WTOP.
Williams, 26, was killed after being struck in a multivehicle crash following a high-speed chase in Northwest D.C. on Wednesday afternoon. A 20-year-old man was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
To those who know him, Williams, a D.C. native, was known for his chill personality and love of photography. His Instagram page is filled with event coverage featuring hip-hop artist Pharrell Williams and former President Barack Obama.
The pair met after Williams returned to the District after graduating from the University of Miami.
His love of photography shined as they covered news events.
During downtime, Williams was very personable, Collins said, and willing to share about his background growing up in D.C. and attending a boarding school before going to Miami. While his laid-back approach may have confused some, he was not lazy, Collins said, calling his photos “quality work.”
“He just made it look very effortless, and that just spoke to his personality,” Collins said.
Williams recently chose to take a break from the Informer to focus on freelance work.
Washington Informer Managing Editor Micha Green told NBC Washington he was traveling multiple countries, including Ghana, to continue working as an “amazing visual storyteller.”
“We are heartbroken over the loss of Marckell Williams — a talented photographer, storyteller, and beautiful soul who was once part of the Washington Informer family,” the outlet wrote in a statement posted on X. “His passion for capturing people, culture, and truth will never be forgotten.”
The last time Collins recalls seeing his former coworker, Williams was taking photos at a go-go event on Marion Barry Avenue. Even though he was focused on his craft, Williams stopped for a moment to talk with his former reporting partner. The love shown at that moment, Collins said, spoke about the person Williams was.
“Being laid back in a city like this, where it gets more expensive and there’s just so much going on, that’s a feat in itself,” Collins said. “He had that spirit. He was just too good for us.”
LANDOVER, Md. – Bruno Mars is bringing The Romantic Tour to the Washington, D.C. region this spring!
The Grammy-winning star will stop at Northwest Stadium on Saturday, May 2, 2026.
The stadium’s website lets fans sign up for presale access now. Tickets go on sale Thursday, January 15 at 12 p.m.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 02: Bruno Mars performs onstage during the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 02, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
Bruno Mars – The Romantic Tour 2026 DatesApril – October 2026
Apr 10, 2026 – Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, NV
Apr 14, 2026 – State Farm Stadium, Glendale, AZ
Apr 18, 2026 – Globe Life Field, Arlington, TX
Apr 22, 2026 – NRG Stadium, Houston, TX
Apr 25, 2026 – Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field, Atlanta, GA
Apr 29, 2026 – Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte, NC
May 02, 2026 – Northwest Stadium, Landover, MD
May 06, 2026 – Nissan Stadium, Nashville, TN
May 09, 2026 – Ford Field, Detroit, MI
May 13, 2026 – U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN
May 16, 2026 – Soldier Field Stadium, Chicago, IL
May 20, 2026 – Ohio Stadium, Columbus, OH
May 23, 2026 – Rogers Stadium, Toronto, ON
May 24, 2026 – Rogers Stadium, Toronto, ON
Jun 20, 2026 – Stade de France, Paris, FR
Jun 21, 2026 – Stade de France, Paris, FR
Jun 26, 2026 – Olympiastadion, Berlin, DE
Jul 04, 2026 – Johan Cruijff ArenA, Amsterdam, NL
Jul 05, 2026 – Johan Cruijff ArenA, Amsterdam, NL
Jul 10, 2026 – Riyadh Air Metropolitano, Madrid, ES
Jul 14, 2026 – Stadio San Siro, Milan, IT
Jul 18, 2026 – Wembley Stadium Connected by EE, London, UK
Jul 19, 2026 – Wembley Stadium Connected by EE, London, UK
Aug 21, 2026 – Metlife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ
Aug 22, 2026 – Metlife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ
Aug 29, 2026 – Acrisure Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA
Sep 01, 2026 – Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, PA
Sep 05, 2026 – Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, MA
Sep 09, 2026 – Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, IN
Sep 12, 2026 – Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, FL
Sep 16, 2026 – Caesars Superdome, New Orleans, LA
Sep 19, 2026 – Hard Rock Stadium, Miami, FL
Sep 23, 2026 – Alamodome, San Antonio, TX
Sep 26, 2026 – Falcon Stadium, United States Air Force Academy, CO
Oct 02, 2026 – SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles, CA
Oct 03, 2026 – SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles, CA
Oct 10, 2026 – Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, CA
Oct 14, 2026 – BC Place, Vancouver, BC
More information on the tour can be found online.
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