July and August Highlights By Maura McCarthy washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Friday, June 28 2002

Ron Mueck "Untitled (Big Man)" (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden)

Comings

At Arts and Industries, the "Man of the Year," or rather, "Person," comes under the microscope beginning July 3. Learn how Time magazine's ever-popular tradition began (Charles Lindbergh was the first honoree) and see how it has changed over 75 years. Photographs, artifacts and video document the history makers and selection process.

A small exhibition at the Corcoran looks inside the "Gilded Cage," that is interiors occupied by female subjects in turn-of-the-century paintings. From the late-19th-century aesthetic movement to more-modern feminist interpretations, the exhibition explores concepts of femininity as captured by American painters John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Wilmer Dewing and Childe Hassam.

The latest entry in the Hirshhorn's Directions series looms large with the oversized figures of Australian-born, London-based sculptor Ron Mueck. Familiar to many is his "Untitled (Big Man)" sculpture in the museum's collection: that giant, hairless man you see crouched in the corner of this page. The four-piece exhibition marks the first stateside solo show of his psychologically and physically challenging works. Come in during Art Nights: Every Thursday through Aug. 29, the Hirshhorn and three other Smithsonian Museums -- African Art and the Freer and Sackler galleries -- extend their hours and add musical performances.

No longer undercover: Washington's International Spy Museum opens July 19. In the largest collection of espionage artifacts ever publicly exhibited, keep your eye out for such tools of the trade as an enigma machine, lipstick pistol, wristwatch camera and escape boots. The worlds of the unseen and unseemly are new neighbors to the MCI Center.

Goings

Three photography shows are worth one last look this summer. Images captured by the North Vietnamese -- many never before published -- are on display in "Another Vietnam" at National Geographic's Explorers Hall through July 7. "The Eyes of History" are open through July 29 at the Corcoran as the White House Press Photographer's Association honors its winners. One of summer's surefire hits -- photographer Edward Weston's retrospective -- is on view at the Phillips until Aug. 18.

At the Textile Museum, two shows meet their makers: "Technology as Catalyst" on July 28 and "Hidden Threads of Peru: Q'ero Textiles" on Aug. 4. From high-tech to indigenous traditions, these exhibitions exemplify the best of what the oft-missed museum has to offer.

"Feminism and Art" tackles a mere four decades of gender issues as explored by female artists. Provocative works by Judy Chicago, May Stevens, Ana Mendieta, Petah Coyne and those ever-vigilant Guerrilla Girls are on view through Aug. 11.

Architect Richard Neutra is inextricably linked with California; but the National Building Museum offers a view of Windshield, his New York home for the John Nicholas Brown family. This modernist manse was sadly destroyed, but its re-creation here will dazzle.