It was a year dominated by politics, with all its repetitious rancor, superheated fervor and loud, dull, swaggering partisanship. Art nourished the escapees from this main event in a space apart, making the national drama look especially tawdry and silly. The political backdrop to a Joan Miro exhibition—war, fascism, military devastation— at the National Gallery made our own battles seem nothing by comparison. Cultural changes at a level deeper than policy and mere stratagem were registered in exhibitions at the Phillips Collection and the National Building Museum. And Washington institutions, including the troubled Corcoran and the flourishing District public library system, worked to define very different senses of the future. Art and architecture are about building, making, doing, and the contrast seemed particularly marked this year to the hometown industry of tearing down, slashing apart and leveling to the lowest common denominator.
Best of the arts
Our picks for this year’s best music, movies, television, arts, classical music, dance, museums and theater.
Best of 2012 in art, architecture: Miro, ‘Roads of Arabia’ and a plan to rework D.C.’s main library
(Courtesy The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection/Courtesy The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection) - \"Stag at Sharkey's” by George Bellows.
1. The National Gallery’s “Joan Miro: The Ladder of Escape” was the local highlight of the year, a large, absorbing and emotionally dense exhibition that was first seen at the Tate Gallery in London. The show was fully synoptic, but never plodding, a survey of a magnificent career that built, ultimately, to a masterful sense of the simple gesture. The last rooms of the show, devoted to Miro’s late works, were simply stunning.
2. The Sackler Gallery is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and among the high-profile events was the opening of the spectacular “Roads of Arabia” exhibition, an in-depth look at art and archaeology that fleshes out Saudi Arabia’s complicated history as a religious and commercial crossroads. Many of the sculptures, stele and funeral objects have a haunting, geometric cleanliness and abstraction that makes them feel like products of a mid-20th-century atelier. Egypt, Greece, Rome and a host of other cradles of civilization flowed through the land and left their mark before Islam and its strictures against representation left another kind of mark that lingers today.
3. Controversy has dogged Philadelphia’s Barnes Collection for years, through a long period of mismanagement, financial troubles and sleepy ambition. But much of the bad feeling about the Barnes evaporated in May when its new home opened on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Designed by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the building integrates the magnificent collection into a modern setting, leaving intact the basic flow and arrangement of the galleries as they were in its old home in suburban Philly. The new museum is an architectural marvel: a thoughtful balance of preservation and innovation that serves the art, the history and the visitor equally well.
4. The Phillips Collection is landlocked, though in the best ways: in a high-priced, high-traffic neighbor, and in an elegant building that flatters the scale of its collection. The best Phillips Collection exhibitions don’t overwhelm with the number of works, or the size of the art, but rather with the intensity and focus of the experience. Last February’s show, “Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard,” gave viewers a nuanced and fascinating view into how the rise of the camera, and the spread of amateur photography, influenced French painters of the late 19th century.
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‘Extraktions’ gives order to fragments
Delaware artist Ron Meick’s work is on exhibit at Washington Printmakers Gallery.
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Art adds a little extra culture to agriculture
A seed library commissions artists to design heirloom packaging for its packets
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Exhibit: ‘Living Artfully: At Home with Marjorie Merriweather Post’
The show at Post’s Hillwood mansion lets visitors immerse themselves in the intricacies of luxurious living.
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The good fight of Faith Ringgold
In a Women in the Arts show, Ringgold’s ’60s works still challenge us to see — and celebrate — color.
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Oprah Winfrey donates $12 million to Smithsonian
Combined with previous gift, it is the Museum of African American History and Culture’s largest donation.
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Project will fill Mall with handmade bones to raise genocide awareness
Three-day installation aims to honor victims and survivors, protest global conflict
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Beneath Braque’s enigmatic surfaces, a civilized decency
A Phillips Collection exhibition surveys the French painter’s unruly, colorful and ultimately humane works.
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Issues that can’t be brushed off
At the Smithsonian’s Museum of African Art, a discussion of black women and health, hair and heritage.
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Galleries: ‘Loose Canon’
Northern Virginia artist Ethan Rochmis’s Watergate Gallery show is mainly ink drawings of horizontal lines.
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Corcoran carpet breaks world record at Sotheby’s auction
The gallery’s Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet sells for more than $33 million, shattering expectations.
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Panel’s video promotes Eisenhower Memorial
The Eisenhower Memorial Commission introduced an online educational component to its project.
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The Phillips Collection unveils Georges Braque exhibition
The museum focuses on the French artist's still lifes, painted between 1928 and 1945.
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'Anchorman: The Exhibit' to open at Newseum in November
Memorable sets and props from the Will Ferrell film will go on display, just in time for the release of "Anchorman: The Legend Continues" in December.
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‘Anchorman: The Exhibit’ to open at Newseum in November
Interactive exhibition will include props and costumes from the 2004 cult hit, just in time for the sequel.
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