Mary Swift's Crop of D.C. Art World Flashbacks

A 1984 photograph of Walter Hopps, taken by Mary Swift.

Remember Mary Swift? She used to show up at openings in jodhpurs and riding boots. Though the equestrian outfits never jibed with contemporary art's somber-hued uniform, her enthusiasm propped up the District's art scene for decades. Many of her photographs capturing the city's artists, poets and dancers got published in her now-defunct broadsheet Washington Review; the rest were stored away. At Flashpoint, a selection of Swift's pictures from the past 30 years amounts to a yearbook of Washington's creative class -- back when they had hair. Immortalized here are all-stars including painter Sam Gilliam and sculptor Martin Puryear, plus Walter Hopps, the beloved and eccentric curator who died last March.

"Mary Swift's Washington" at Flashpoint, 916 G St. NW, Tuesday-Saturday noon-6 p.m., 202-315-1305, to Aug. 26.

Amid the Routine, Candy for the Eye

The second and final installment of the Inter-American Development Bank's survey of Latin American art from the 1980s and '90s, "Paradox and Coexistence II," hardly lives up to its grandiloquent title. Sometimes provincial, sometimes sophisticated, this hodgepodge of an exhibition includes woodblock prints, sculpture, neo-expressionist painting and photography. My hands-down favorite: Brazilian conceptualist Vik Muniz's riff on the late French performance artist Yves Klein's 1960 picture "Leap Into the Void," a picture of the Frenchman seemingly jumping from a second-story window. An outlandish fabrication, the Klein photomontage was steered further from objective truth when Muniz painted a copy in chocolate sauce and photographed the resulting image -- as a diptych, no less. Parsing the Muniz picture is a full day's work; the rest of the show isn't.

"Paradox and Coexistence II" at the IDB Cultural Center, 1300 New York Ave. NW, Monday-Friday noon-6 p.m., 202-623-1213, to Aug. 26.

At Conner, an Ungainly Landing in the Real World

Virginia Warwick's "Mouse Coffins": Bring your own critters.(Conner Contemporary Art)

Conner's fifth annual survey of the area's best art-school grads includes enough copying to threaten the honor code. Maki Maruyama gets the contrivances of Japanese art down cold: Her creepy-cute girl-boy with a helmet of hair turns out to be a double amputee, imposing another layer of fetish on the already fetishistic style. Likewise, Zach Storm does a convincing imitation of comic artist Barry McGee in his works on paper; he's even aped the trademark saggy eyelids of one McGee character. More memorable: Virginia Warwick's tribute to what the cat brought home -- 36 pint-size wooden coffins fit for mice. Scraps of string and fabric pad the rodents' final resting spots. Warwick's attention to these creatures' comforts is a bittersweet gesture.

"Academy 2005" at Conner Contemporary Art, 1730 Connecticut Ave. NW, Tuesday-Saturday noon-5 p.m., 202-588-8750, to Aug. 27.

O Canada: Interpretations Of Thy Native Landscape

Monique Mongeau's "Serie l'Herbier," on exhibition at the embassy.(Embassy Of Canada)

Before the Group of Eight we had the Group of Seven. Before the Group of Seven we had the other Group of Seven: not a clique of superpowers but a band of Canadian landscape painters. It was founded in the early 20th century by artists inspired by wilderness painter Tom Thomson. His followers rendered landscapes in a post-impressionist style indebted to French painting and Japanese prints. Now, seven contemporary Canadian artists revisit the movement in photography, painting, sculpture and video. Though the modern-day efforts bear no obvious resemblance to their forebears, vague traces of Thomson's influence emerge in Monique Mongeau's decorative panel paintings and in Lois Andison's clever, if lightweight, dissection of color called "7 Hues."

"A Group of Seven: A Contemporary Look at the Canadian Landscape" at the Art Gallery of the Canadian Embassy, 501 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., 202-682-1740, to Sept. 16.

Loose Brushwork, Spooky Images

Laurentz Thurn's "Mac," at the Goethe-Institut, captures city life with blurry brush strokes.(Courtesy of the Artist)

German transplant Laurentz Thurn likes to watch. The artist's canvases depict fellow New Yorkers scurrying along city streets and suggest impressionistic security footage -- one part stalker, two parts loose brushwork. The artist's best efforts here are paintings on paper, hung edge-to-edge like a surveillance reel unfurled in the Goethe-Institut vestibule. Thurn's passerby pictures bring to mind Beat Streuli, the Swiss artist best known for filming anonymous pedestrians at major New York intersections, yet the two artists handle their subjects very differently. Streuli's camera obliterates each stranger's mystique by registering every wrinkle, while Thurn preserves anonymity by drowning details in dollops of paint.

Laurentz Thurn at the Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh St. NW, Monday-Thursday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Friday 9 a.m.-3 p.m., 202-289-1200, to Sept. 2.

The Wet and Mild World of Music Videos

Great idea, dreary execution. Burt Barr riffs on slick music videos in his short film "Roz." The premise: a woman in the shower lip-syncs to a bluegrass ballad. Barr starts strong, filming his subject in erotic slow motion as water runs down her hair and smoke snakes from her mouth. Then his camera moves in tight and we endure several long minutes of her near-catatonic expression as she bobs to the music. If MTV begs for our attention, then "Roz" dares us to leave. In the gallery's side room, artist Ben Peterson shows a series of precise drawings of damaged backdrops for TV shows. The artist's stylized renditions of destruction are as artificial as the sets themselves.

Burt Barr and Ben Peterson at G Fine Art, Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m.-6 p.m., 202-462-1601, through Saturday.