EVEN IF YOU'RE not normally into that artsy stuff, you'll be able to appreciate this second part of the Hirshhorn's "The Cinema Effect" exhibit — after all, it uses contemporary film and TV to make art. Ha! It wasn't art before! Take that, Aaron Sorkin!
Sorry about that. Anyway, this exhibit is filled with art drawn from all kinds of realistic film. It's accessible and astounding.
» Hirshhorn Museum, Independence Avenue at Seventh Street SW; free; 202-633-1000. (L'Enfant Plaza)
Photo courtesy Kerry Tribe
THE GREAT THING ABOUT being married is that you have to appeal to only one person — and it isn't even you. The same goes for all kinds of romantic bonding, and it creates a dynamic that is utterly irreproducible.
Coupling is culture, the creation of an ever-evolving two-person civilization. Each pairing creates its own language, music, play — all of which evaporate on parting. Or on simply being exposed to another person.
And yet coupling is precisely what Amy Sillman is interested in. The painter asked friends to pose, then made taut, rubbery representational ink sketches, some of which hang at the entrance to her Hirshhorn "Directions" show, subtitled "Third Person Singular." In the gallery behind are the larger abstract oils they sometimes led to, sometimes followed.
Photo of riders at L'Enfant Plaza on Monday evening by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE the big test for Metro: the first baseball game at the new Nationals stadium that started at 7:10 p.m. on a weeknight — which meant fans would be traveling at the same time as evening rush hour riders.
I decided to dive in to the prospective craziness to sample it firsthand. But from this rider's vantage point, the big test ended up feeling more like a quiz. One that the teacher didn't collect or grade.
Maybe it was because the weather dipped into the upper 40s by evening — a bit chilly to sit in an uncovered ballpark. Maybe it was because the NCAA college basketball championship game was scheduled for the same night. Whatever the cause, the trip to the stadium on Metro wasn't that crowded. And, due in large part to the transit agency's efficiency, it was easy as pie.
IT SEEMS AS IF WANEGECHI MUTU is the kind of artist who would hesitate to define herself based on a place — neither her birthplace of Nairobi, Kenya, nor Brooklyn, where she lives now. Instead, the provocative collage maker sees herself as a "contemporary, urban-raised woman." Maybe that's why she's able to pull off her creepy, grotesque images of women — constructed from glossy fashion magazines and books of African art — merging two sets of cultures into art both critical and sensuous. She'll talk on Thursday at the Hirshhorn as part of its "Meet the Artist" series.
» EXPRESS: What exactly do you do?
» MUTU: I take what seems like an image that is one particular way, and I switch it around and give it a new life. I use images from National Geographic, which still have a very colonial underpinning, and I turn them into, sort of, fantastical, titillating, critical subject matter. And I do that with bits and pieces from glossy magazines, fashion magazines, hunting magazines, motorbike magazines. ... I guess I'm an image optimist.
Continue Reading "Re-imagining Photographs: Wanegechi Mutu" »
Metro Boosts Service for Thanksgiving Travel
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Greenbelt L'Enfant Plaza National Airport Rosslyn
HEADED TO A LOCAL AIRPORT in the coming days for dreaded Thanksgiving travel? At least one portion of your journey might not be as difficult as you think it'll be.
Metro has announced it will be increasing its transit offerings in anticipation of larger holiday crowds before and after Thanksgiving.
That means more Blue and Yellow Line trains serving the Reagan National Airport station on Sunday. Also, there'll be increased service on Wednesday and Sunday on two express Metrobus routes: the Dulles Airport/5A route from the Rosslyn and L'Enfant Plaza stations and the BWI/B30 route from the Greenbelt station. On Thursday, Metrorail and Metrobus will run on a Sunday schedule.
» "Metro to Operate Extra Trains and Buses During Thanksgiving Week in Anticipation of Travel to Local Airports" [WMATA]
» EARLIER: "Thanksgiving Air Travel Crunch in Full Swing" [Free Ride/Express]
ALTHOUGH L'ENFANT PLAZA is often derided for being a soulless quarter of massive federal office buildings, it does have its aesthetic charms. One of those has been ascending the escalator bank into the courtyard of the former U.S. Department of Transportation headquarters at 7th and D streets SW. Emerging from the perpetual twilight of the busy Metrorail transfer station below, not only did the gleaming white marble exterior of the Nassif Building, as it was called, instantly greet you, but the sound of the fountain in the center of this old photo from Vornado Charles E. Smith added ambience. The building was designed by Edward Durell Stone, who also designed the Kennedy Center.
But no more. The Nassif Building is being gutted and its exterior is being stripped as if vandals from the Dark Ages were attacking a giant monument from imperial Rome. Soon, the new glass and steel Constitution Center office building, a project developed by JBG Cos., will take shape.
Continue Reading "L'Enfant Plaza Entrance to Close Until July '08" »
LET'S FACE IT, when it comes to communist Russia, information is lacking. The fall of the Soviet Union, however, has led to some startling revisions in history.
Cartoonist Nick Abadzis came across some of that new information in 2002 and turned it into his graphic novel, "Laika."
For those uninitiated with Soviet cosmonautic history, Laika was the first earthling in orbit, reaching space in Sputnik 2 on Nov. 3, 1957. And she was a dog. Laika paved the way for manned space flight, the next being fellow cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human in orbit.
The artist, who will be speaking at the National Air and Space Museum on Saturday, tells the legend of Laika. Abadzis mixes fact with fiction, re-creating the mongrel stray’s life as she’s trained and rocketed into the final frontier, while diving into the relationships among the scientists and the politics of the Russian space program.
While Abadzis was taken by the story as a child, his interest was renewed as an adult.
"Some new information came to light," he said. "This was interesting simply because the Russians admitted basically that Laika had died just a few hours into the mission from overheating and stress, and that was really the spark that set the ball rolling."
Continue Reading "Animal Attraction: Cold War Politics of 'Laika'" »
YESTERDAY, REPORTS CAME OUT that Maryland transportation officials are adding weekend service on the MARC commuter train system's Penn Line sometime next year, making Baltimore more accessible from D.C. on Saturday and Sunday. The change is part of a plan to triple MARC's capacity by 2035.
It turns out that the same effort will bring MARC service to a new arena: Virginia.
As The Post's Philip Rucker reports, the plan would extend Penn Line service to L'Enfant Plaza in D.C. and Crystal City in Arlington County near the Pentagon. It's a move that would lighten some of the load on Metrorail's crowded Red Line service at Union Station, where MARC's three lines all end currently. But don't expect any of that to happen until at least 2020, Rucker reports.
As regular MARC riders know, the train system already runs outside the Maryland lines. Aside from its Union Station stop, it also serves three stations in West Virginia.
» "Md. Officials Plan to Expand MARC as Region Grows" [WaPo]
» EARLIER: "MARC to Offer Weekend Service in '08" [Free Ride/Express]
THE WASHINGTON HILTON stands out. Not only does massive brutalist structure dwarf the historic Kalorama Heights and Dupont Circle buildings in the blocks that surround it, but it's got historical heft as well: It's the spot where, in 1981, would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr. shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan.
Now, a development group led by Magic Johnson's Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds and Lowe Enterprises is seeking to begin $100 million worth of renovations — and it will also seek landmark status for the 42-year-old hotel, the Current newspapers reported this week.
Even if you're not enthralled with the Hilton's hulking design, it's hard to argue that it isn't a distinctive building. It's one of only two notable giant curved structures in a city of square modern boxes. The other is the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development at L'Enfant Plaza, characterized by its double curved-Y formation, raw concrete design and the translucent doughnut structures on its 7th Street SW plaza.
It's noteworthy that an effort to grant a building like the Washington Hilton landmark status would come as the old U.S. Department of Transportation headquarters is having its streamlined modernist marble skin torn off. It's being replaced by — what else? — the kind of glass-and-steel exterior that K Street corridor developers adore.
Continue Reading "Hinckley Hilton Developers Seek Landmark Status" »
FOR ABOUT $750 MILLION a year, the U.S. government is kind enough to maintain the cluster of satellites that serve as the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS). While high-tech GPS may be becoming ubiquitous now, used for tasks as simple as getting directions or tracking a shipment, the origins of the system lie in the time-tested field of astronomy.
The Smithsonian Residents program "Time, Place and Space" focuses on why we started looking to the skies for guidance in matters of timekeeping and place-finding. Rather than approaching it as a DIY class for all matters navigation, Dr. David DeVorkin, curator of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's History of Astronomy section, will explain how the ancient methods of time-telling and navigation have allowed modern technology to produce devices such as GPS.
But aside from the novelty of a talking TomTom, DeVorkin will explain that almost every form of navigation is enormously aided by GPS, as is every form of commerce.
Continue Reading "'Time, Place & Space': Dr. David DeVorkin" »
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