Have Renovation, Will Travel

Some Famous Washington Artworks Are Returning to Bigger, Better Spaces

A visitor regards "Grande Tete," a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, in the Phillips Collection exhibition at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. (By Francois Mori -- Associated Press)

For six years, some of Washington's beloved artworks have been traveling the world.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" visited Tokyo.

John Singer Sargent's portrait of turn-of-the-20th-century statesman Henry Cabot Lodge flew to the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington was shown in Seattle and Minneapolis.

A Paul Cezanne self-portrait from the Phillips Collection showed up in Switzerland.

"Osceola, the Black Drink, a Warrior of Great Distinction," one of George Catlin's famous Indian portraits, went to Kansas City.

Romare Bearden's "Empress of the Blues" was on view in Manchester, N.H.

Wayne Thiebaud's "Neapolitan Meringue" was shown in Fargo, N.D.

And now they are almost home.

The rare excursions outside Washington occurred because the Phillips, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery were all being expanded and renovated. The two Smithsonian museums, tenants of the Old Patent Office Building, have been closed since 2000.

While the building was undergoing its $216 million renovation, the staff at American Art organized 14 shows. Almost 950 paintings and sculptures were packed up and displayed in 105 museums. The tours lasted six years. The Portrait Gallery prepared nine major shows and sent 640 artworks on a trek that included Santa Fe, St. Petersburg, Fla., and San Diego.

During its remodeling the Phillips never closed, but the $29 million expansion into a third building limited the exhibition space. So the staff selected 67 masterpieces and devised one show of American works and another of European works. The European masterworks stopped at larger cities, and when the construction took longer than expected, the American art went out to midsize U.S. cities. Works from the Phillips eventually went to 11 museums on three continents.