Ragnar Kjartansson Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (14 October-8 January 2017)
Ragnar Kjartansson’s first major US retrospective opens at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden this month. A rotating cast of local musicians will perform Woman in E (2016), a new work in which a sequin-clad woman strums an E-minor chord over and over on a rotating pedestal during opening hours.
Artworks by African Americans from the Collection Smithsonian American Art Museum (until 28 February 2017)
To celebrate the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), this neighbouring institution will present 184 works by African-American artists from its collection, spanning the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century to the present. Visitors can see examples of work by Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence and Loïs Mailou Jones, who are also included in NMAAHC’s inaugural installation.
The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts Freer and Sackler Galleries (15 October-20 February 2017)
The first major exhibition to focus on the history of the Koran in the US includes 50 sacred texts spanning 900 years, from the early eighth century to the 17th century. Commissioned by sultans and other members of the ruling elite in the Arab Middle East, Persia, Turkey and North Africa, the sumptuous works are on loan from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul, which has one of the world’s best Koran collections.
Bill Viola: the Moving Portrait National Portrait Gallery (18 November-7 May 2017)
The National Portrait Gallery will present more than 20 emotionally charged videos by the New York-based artist Bill Viola. The show marks the first time an exhibition at the museum has focused exclusively on new media. Curators consider Viola’s slow-motion videos as portraits, including a recent diptych projected on granite that explores the fear of ageing.
People on the Move: Beauty and Struggle in Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series Phillips Collection (8 October-8 January 2017)
All 60 panels from Jacob Lawrence’s visual epic, the Migration Series (1940-41), will be reunited for this exhibition. The series depicts the Great Migration, the movement of millions of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North in search of a better life. The founder of the Phillips Collection bought 30 panels soon after Lawrence completed them; the others are on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
It Takes a Nation: Art for Social Justice with Emory Douglas and the Black Panther Party, Africobra and Contemporary Washington Artists American University Museum (until 23 October)
More than 15 artists, including Hank Willis Thomas and Sheldon Scott, respond to the work of Emory Douglas, the minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, and his Howard University colleagues. Sculpture, paintings and photographs explore art’s role in the political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s.
And locals choose their can’t-miss shows
Melissa Chiu, director, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Isamu Noguchi, Archaic/Modern
Smithsonian American Art Museum (11 November-19 March 2017)
“Inspired by the traditions and materials used in ancient art and architecture, Noguchi’s sculptures are contemporary relics, equally at home in a Buddhist Zen garden and a city centre. There is something very magical about works that appear so simple and yet so intricate; a Noguchi is the sort of object you can look at for hours, always discovering something new and unexpected.”
Sarah Tanguy, curator, ART in Embassies, US Department of State
Nicole Salimbene: Mending
Flashpoint Gallery (until 15 October)
“Salimbene’s breathtaking installation has interactive stations where visitors can experience mending as a medium, metaphor and practice. Interweaving Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, the show highlights parallels between mindfulness and stitching while triggering a quiet meditation on our shared need for reparation.”
Linn Meyers, artist
Rachel Farbiarz: a Different Country
G Fine Art (29 October-10 December)
“Farbiarz’s works on paper convert loss and dislocation into heartbreaking tableaux of the sublime, weaving a poetic vision that leaves us wondering if our strange dreams and daily news headlines have melded into a permanent reality or if, perhaps, this is all just an illusion.”
Dorothy Kosinski, director, Phillips Collection
Ragnar Kjartansson
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (14 October-8 January 2017)
“I’m delighted that Ragnar Kjartansson will be at the Hirshhorn this autumn. He was part of a roundtable discussion at Phillips’s own international forum in 2012. That same year, I also admired his mesmerising performance art, The Visitors, at the Luhring Augustine Gallery.”
Eames Armstrong, artist and curator
Rhizome DC’s autumn programme
“All the exhibitions, events, workshops and other programming happening at Rhizome DC are fantastic. The space opened earlier this year in a cosy old house, and it’s radically different from the big institutions in DC, covering everything from electronics to cooking. It feels like a vibrant community is forming and solidifying around it.”
