Chris Klimek

Solas Nua's 'Disco Pigs' is frenetic, demanding drama

IF YOU GO: 'Disco Pigs' at Solas Nua Approximately 60 minutes, performed without intermission Through Saturday, Dec. 5 Flashpoint Mead Theatre Lab 926 G St. NW Admission: $20; call 800-494-8487 or visit solasnua.org Solas Nua's current production of Enda Walsh's "Disco Pigs" runs only 60 minutes, and you're relieved when it's over. Not because it's bad -- on the contrary, it's a work of sparkling, propulsive genius, astutely staged and brilliantly performed. But know this: Its brilliance is of the combative, exhausting variety. Its pace? Frenetic! Its language? Formidable. Our protagonists/narrators, Pig and Runt, don't communicate in mere Irish slang, but in their...

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'A Flea in Her Ear' is an offering of delicious escapism

If you go 'A Flea in Her Ear' Where: Source Theatre, 1835 14th St. NW When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday Info: $20, $17 for patrons 24 and under, 10-plus group rate: $15; 202-204-7741; constellationtheatre.org Approximately two hours, 45 minutes, including two intermissions. In the two years and change since its debut, Constellation Theatre Company has built a reputation for stylized, expressionistic takes on plays either elemental and ancient ("The Arabian Nights," "The Oresteia") or dense and political ("The Good Woman of Szechwan," "Temptation"). The plucky troupe's latest offering, an update of the century-old French farce...

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Artist's photographs chronicle changing landscape

If you go Edward Burtynsky: Oil Where: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW When: Through Dec. 13 Info: $10, $8 students, seniors, military; $6 museum members and age 6 and under; 202-639-1700; corcoran.org Edward Burtynsky's massive landscape photos of industrial subjects have the scale and gloss of a megabudget Hollywood techno-thriller, but escapism is the furthest thing from the artist's mind. He illuminates places and processes that some of us may never think about, but that are fundamental to our survival as a society dependent upon machines. Dependent, specifically, on the blood that makes them run -- oil. Oil is the title and the subject of...

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Woolly Mammoth's 'Full Circle' an ambitious, muddled tale

If you go 'Full Circle' Where: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St. NW When: Through Nov. 29 Info: $45 to $57; woollymammoth.com Show is approximately 2.5 hours, including one 15-minute intermission. When we say Woolly Mammoth's production of Charles L. Mee's decade-old satirical farce "Full Circle" is a sprawling affair, we don't mean merely that it's forever threatening to collapse under its own allegorical girth. As directed by Michael Rohd, the show is performed promenade-style, appropriating almost every public area of the building as a stage wherein a dance party might erupt or a trial be called to order. A fresh-faced chorus of student...

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'Darker Side of Light' at National Gallery of Art

If you go "The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850-1900" Where: National Gallery of Art, Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW When: Through Jan. 18, 2010 Info: Free; 202-737-4215; nga.gov The influential 19th-century French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire opined in pair of essays published in the 1860s that etching, above all other visual media, demanded complete honesty from the artist. Perhaps that's why it's the etchings, particularly those by the German symbolist Max Klinger, that are the most haunting of the 100-plus pieces featured in "The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy 1850-1900." Klinger's "Abduction" is part of a...

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Scena Theater's Poe double feature apt for the season

If you go Poe Double Feature: "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" Where: H Street Playhouse, 1365 H St. NE When: Through Nov. 29 (various performance times, check Web site for details) Info: $25 to $32, $15 for Thursday shows for young professionals; scenatheater.org Halloween is done and gone, but Scena Theatre's aptly sepulchral Poe double-header -- "The Fall of the House of Usher" followed after intermission by director Robert McNamara's solo performance of "The Tell-Tale Heart" -- is still neatly matched to the season. Not only is "Usher" set, in one of several Poe phrasings that playwright...

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What's in a name? Little port, plentiful 'Authority'

Quotidian's small but mighty production very well done If you go "Port Authority" Where: Quotidian Theatre, the Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda When: Through Nov. 22 Info: $25, $20 seniors and students; 301-816-1023; quotidiantheatre.org/tickets.htm (Approximately 105 minutes, performed without intermission) Conor McPherson's unshowily devastating three-hander "Port Authority" is stocked with premises that are, summarized in their most reductive forms, utterly familiar: I Love Her But She Loves Someone Else, I Loved Her But the Flame Has Cooled, I Loved Her But She Died. So it's a credit to McPherson's humane, observant pen -- and to the...

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National Gallery featuring postwar American art from Meyerhoff Collection

If you go The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works Where: National Gallery of Art (East Building), Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW When: Through May 2, 2010 Info: Free; 202-737-4215; nga.gov The story of postwar American art is thrillingly retold in the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, now being given pride of place at the National Gallery of Art for the first time since 1996, and featuring two dozen works added in the intervening years. This domestic treasure trove of 126 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints concentrates on the work of six transformative masters: Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marsden, Robert...

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Katzen welcomes collection of art from 'down under'

If you go "Australian Indigenous Art Triennial: Culture Warriors" Where: The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW When: Through Dec. 6 Info: Free; 202-885-1300; american.edu/cas/katzen/museum Barely more than four decades have passed since Australia amended its constitution to include its native Aboriginal population in the census and recognize them as citizens. The referendum passed in 1967 with more than 90 percent of the vote. Two years ago, Brenda Croft, a lecturer at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, commemorated the 40th anniversary of the referendum by organizing an exhibit of artwork by creators...

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Comedian Mike Birbiglia returns to the scene of the crime

If you go Mike Birbiglia's "I'm in the Future Also" Tour Where: 8 p.m. Saturday When: Warner Theatre, 1299 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Info: $28 to $38; tickets.livenation.com Mike Birbiglia was a sophomore at Georgetown University when he won a "Funniest Man on Campus" contest in his first-ever appearance on any stage. He told jokes on "Letterman" when he was 24. He got his first Comedy Central special when he was 25. But it wasn't until he leapt through the second-story window of a motel in Walla Walla, Wash., that he got his big br -- er, that his career entered a significant new phase. Now 31, Birbiglia wasn't permanently injured in the fall....

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Girl power: National Gallery's Judith Leyster exhibit showcases portraits

If you go Judith Leyster 1609-1660 Where: National Gallery of Art, Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue When: Through Nov. 29 Info: Free; 202-737-4215; nga.gov The 17th century was a man's man's man's world. But the Dutch painter Judith Leyster was so extraordinary that she achieved recognition for her mastery of genre scenes and portraits in her own time. She most likely trained under the Dutch master Frans Hals, and most certainly earned acceptance to Haarlem's exclusive Guild of St. Luke in 1633. Once Leyster married fellow painter Jan Miense Molenaer two years later and became pregnant with the first of their three children, her artistic output dropped. So did...

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In Newport's superheroic calculus, yarn trumps spandex

Twenty years ago, when Tim Burton made "Batman" -- the one with Jack Nicholson as the Joker, remember -- he put bat-star Michael Keaton in a molded suit with rubber muscles, which is more or less what cinematic superheroes have worn since. Mark Newport has his own ideas about what kind of clothes make the (super)man. The crime-fighting garb he creates has more in common with a librarian's sweater or those snowsuit pajamas with the feet in them you had when you were 4 than with sleek body armor. He knits these costumes full size from acrylic yarn and even models them, letting his physical imperfections hang out, in sharp contrast to the myth of para-human invincibility. Besides the...

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The Eye: Paul Roth on Edward Burtynsky

Name: Paul Roth Occupation: Senior curator of photography and media arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art Residence: Adams Morgan The work: "Oil Fields 19b, Belridge, Calif., USA 2003" by Edward Burtynsky If you go 'Edward Burtynsky: Oil' Where: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW When: Through Dec. 13 Info: $10, $8 students/seniors/military, $6 museum members and children ages 6 and under; 202-639-1700; corcoran.org What I want to tell you about this piece: This is the first picture people will see when they come to the Corcoran exhibition "Edward Burtynsky: Oil." It is outside the gallery next to the sign announcing the show, and it's also the cover of the...

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On a wing and a prayer: Forum Theatre presents 'Angels in America'

If you go "Angels in America: Millennium Approaches" (Oct. 5-Nov. 22) "Angels in America: Perestroika" (Oct. 24-Nov. 22) Where: Round House Theatre Silver Spring, 8641 Colesville Road Info: $25; $20 seniors, groups and subscribers; $15 students and patrons under 30; 240-644-1099, Ext. 1032; forumtd.org Michael Dove is nine days away from the premiere of the most ambitious project his Forum Theatre company has ever undertaken. But on this rainy Saturday morning, he's got more pressing problems -- like getting his voicemail to work. On Oct. 5, the troupe will open its production of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1991 play, "Angels in...

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U2: 'Claw'ing its way right back to the top

360 Tour is band's first venture back to stadium shows since 1997's PopMart If you go U2 360 Tour with special guest Muse Where: FedExField, 1600 FedEx Way, Landover, Md When: 7 p.m. Sept. 29 Info: $30 to $250; ticketmaster.com The Claw, the Crab, the Spaceship -- whatever you call U2's latest stadium-shrinking contraption, it's undeniably impressive. The previews and reviews of the group's 360 Tour, which lands at FedEx Field on Tuesday, dutifully tick off the custom stage's dimensions: At 164 feet tall, its frame towers above the stadium surrounding it, holding aloft a bleeding-edge 360-degree video screen, with a $40 million price tag. To quote one of the other few...

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The Eye: Benjamin Trott

Name: Georgina Bath Goodlander Occupation: Interpretive programs manager, Luce Foundation Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum Residence: Baltimore What I want to tell you this piece: Benjamin Trott didn't often paint women. But what's more interesting here is his subject, Anne Hume Shippen, who has a fascinating, if tragic, life story. She was born in Philadelphia in 1763 and grew up during the American Revolution. She went by Nancy. Her family was wealthy. They sent her to finishing school, where she acquired several suitors. The one her father preferred was Col. Henry Livingston, who retired from military service to spend his time pursuing young Nancy. He was obviously a...

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Michele Cormier's life aquatic

If you go Color, Texture and Mood: Acrylic and Mixed Media Paintings by Michele Cormier Where: Touchstone Gallery, 406 Seventh St. NW When: Through Oct. 4 Info: Free; 202-347-2787; touchstonegallery.com Though painter Michele Cormier moved to Bethesda two years ago, her French-Canadian roots come through in her command of both elemental contemporary abstracts and naturalistic landscapes and water paintings. You can find samples of each in Color, Texture, and Mood, her solo exhibition at Touchstone Gallery. Cormier's ancestors in Barachois, a village on New Brunswick's east coast, lived off of the sea and land. Her elegant brushstrokes preserve that sense-memory,...

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Bradley Chriss's 50 last days

If you go Bradley Chriss: Visions from the End of the World at Flashpoint Gallery Where: Flashpoint, 916 G St. NW When: Through Oct. 3 Info: Free; 202-315-1305; flashpointdc.org - "I am not aiming for allegory, just the void," writes 29-year-old Bethesda artist Bradley Chriss in his preface to "Visions from the End of the World," his series of 50 10-by-4-inch gouache-on-paper paintings on view at Flashpoint Gallery. These nightmarish scenes are all the product of Chriss's long ruminations on humanity's inevitable extinction. But the color palette is bright and cheerful. Is he celebrating humankind's brief reign, or mocking us for attempts to sooth our semiconscious...

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'Died Young, Stayed Pretty' chronicles cultural dialogue in four colors

Documentary follows lives of artists who design, hand-print concert posters If you go 'Died Young, Stayed Pretty' Where: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW When: 6:30 p.m. Sept. 24 Info: $12, $10 for museum members; 202-639-1700; corcoran.org Director Eileen Yaghoobian will be present at the screening to introduce the film and take questions. The artists who design and hand-print original concert posters are like no ad men you've ever heard of. It doesn't much matter to them if you buy what they're selling, or even whether or not you can easily tell what the product is. They just want your eyeballs glued to their work, the best specimens of which still...

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Renwick exhibition brings long-unseen paintings to light

If you go Grand Salon Installation: Paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum Where: Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW When: On view indefinitely Info: Free; 202-633-1000; americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2009/grand_salon_installation Everything old is new again. Fifty-one American artists from the 19th and early 20th centuries -- many of them long absent from the public eye -- have recently been resurrected at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery in a vintage salon-style exhibition. Paintings are mounted above and below one another in addition to side by side, obliging them to...

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Deacon, MGMT take stage during D.C.'s Kia Soul Collective

If you go Dan Deacon with The Creepers Where: Kia Soul Collective Warehouse, 3330 New York Ave. NE When: 6 p.m. Saturday Info: Free; kiasoulcollective.com/home/tour/washington-dc The KIA Soul Collective is open noon to 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Wale performs 7:30 Friday. MGMT plays 8 p.m. Sunday. Soon after he moved to Baltimore with group of his college pals in 2004, electronic musician Dan Deacon began putting on shows wherever he could. A cavernous, industrial space -- like the spot on New York Avenue in Kenilworth temporarily (we presume) dubbed the Kia Soul Collective Warehouse, where he'll perform for free Saturday night -- is the natural habitat for his...

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The Eye; John Singer Sargent

If you go Sargent and the Sea Where: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW When: Through Jan. 3 Info: $10; $8 students, seniors or military personnel; free for museum members and ages 6 and under; 202-639-1700; corcoran.org Name: Sarah Cash Occupation: Bechhoefer curator of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art Residence: Arlington The work: John Singer Sargent, "En Route pour la peche (Setting Out to Fish)," 1878, oil on canvas What I want to tell you this piece: One thing that will surprise people when they come to the [Sargent and the Sea] exhibition is that this painting no longer has the title by which it has been known for so long, "The Oyster...

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New bodies, same strange

If you go Strange Bodies: Figurative Works from the Hirshhorn Collection Where: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Seventh Street and Independence Avenue SW When: Through Nov. 15 Info: Free; 202-633-4674; hmsg.si.edu Strange Bodies, the smart presentation of figurative works from the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (though a few are borrowed) that premiered in January, has gotten a bit of a face-and-everything-else-lift. Since the beginning of the summer, new pieces have been introduced to the body-concious-and-them-some show so memorably filling the basement of the Hirsh. Though many of the creators are familiar -- Rene Magritte,...

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'Sargent and the Sea' opens at Corcoran

Artist's beach scenes and marine paintings are some of his less familiar ones If you go "Sargent and the Sea" Where: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW When: Through Jan. 3, 2010 Info: $10; $8 students, seniors or military personnel; free for museum members and ages 6 and under; 202-639-1700; corcoran.org Eighty-four years after his death, John Singer Sargent's reputation as the premier portrait painter of the Gilded Age is undiminished. The striking plein-air seascapes he made as a young man remain less familiar. It's these seminal works that the Corcoran Gallery of Art is showcasing in "Sargent and the Sea." The museum's own...

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The Eye: Mark Newport's 'Batman 2'

If you go "Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009" Where: Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW When: Through Jan. 3, 2010 Info: Free; 202-633-7970; americanart.si.edu/renwick Name: Nicholas Bell Title: Curator, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Residence: Takoma Park The work: Mark Newport, "Batman 2," 2005; acrylic yarn and buttons; courtesy of Greg Kucera Gallery What I want to tell you about this piece: Mark Newport's work makes you laugh and challenges you at the same time. You walk in and see these full-body-sized knit superhero costumes, and you think, "That's funny."...

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A coat of Living Colour

1980s hard rock band kicks off tour at Birchmere to promote new album If you go Living Colour Where: The Birchmere When: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 1 Info: $35; 703-549-7900; birchmere.com You remember "Cult of Personality," of course, especially if you had MTV in 1989. The 10-second preamble from Malcom X. Vernon Reid's million-candlepower vamp, searing instantly onto your brain. Frontman Corey Glover's whirling dreadlocks. His burly soul-singer wail, lithe but authoritative, though he was not yet 25. His unfortunate yellow bike shorts. (Look, it was the 1980s. Axl was wearing them, too.) "Cult of Personality" went to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and...

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The Eye: Romaine Brooks

Name: Robert Johnston Occupation: Special Assistant, Smithsonian American Art Museum Residence: Arlington The Work: Romaine Brooks, Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, 1923; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist What I want to tell you this piece: In my early days at the museum in the late '60s, I had a great job where I got to unpack the works of art. I saw everything that came in. The Romaine Brooks paintings [included in the current "Grand Salon" exhibition] were some of the first shipped over from Paris. You can't imagine the effect of opening these boxes from France. These paintings were so different from anything else in the collection. Brooks really was kind of...

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Smithsonian exhibit is artfully animalistic

If you go Where: Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, 950 Independence Ave. SW When: Through Feb. 21, 2010 Info: Free; 202-633-4600; africa.si.edu This multimedia, multi-era exhibit explores the role of animal imagery in African art. There's a fascinating not-quite-paradox at work here: Animals are often used as representations of different human characteristics, but their depiction is typically based on direct observation of the animals in their natural habitats. The leopard, for example, is often associated with leadership, accounting for its depiction in ceremonial robes for rulers along with thrones, bowls, and -- as we see in one stunning example from Budja...

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Cloaked in might: 'The Art of Power'

If you go "The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain" Where: National Gallery of Art, West Building, Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW When: Through Nov. 1, 2009 Info: Free; 202-737-4215; nga.gov Remember when President Bush famously donned a flight suit and caught a jet to the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln to declare "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq? He was hardly the first ruler to adopt the wardrobe of warfare for a symbolic purpose. The Spanish monarchs Charles V and his son, Philip II, sought to aggrandize perception of their strength, and that of the empire they ruled, by dressing in ornate suits of custom-made armor...

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Future femmes fatale: Take note

'Girls' Guide to Rocking' author ready to rock D.C.'s Comet Ping Pong tonight If you go Jessica Hopper reads from "The Girls' Guide to Rocking," featuring Katie Stelmanis, May from Pree and Lucia Lucia. Where: Comet Ping Pong, 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW When: 7 p.m. Monday Info: $5, kids $3; girlsguidetorocking.com Jessica Hopper knew tons of professional musicians, and had played in punk bands herself for years, but she still made a rookie mistake. "I paid $600 for a guitar that was probably worth about $100," she says from her home in Chicago. She was in her mid-20s then, working as a music publicist and tour manager when she wasn't playing bass and...

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The Eye: Lisa Schumaier

If you go "Traveling Show" Where: The Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 North Union St., Alexandria When: On view indefinitely Info: Free; 703-838-4565; torpedofactory.org Name: Lisa Schumaier Occupation: Artist Residence: Del Ray, Alexandria The work: "Traveling Show," installation, 2009 What I want to tell you this piece: I made this piece for this year's Art-O-Matic. I've been doing mechanical pieces, and I wanted to do a large puppet show, driven by a crank, that would have the figure of the girl interacting with the goat. I always say my ambitions are bigger than what I have time for: Art-O-Matic approached, and I just did a static installation. But I love...

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A 'Horse' of a different original at National Gallery of Art

If you go "The Budapest Horse: A Leonardo da Vinci Puzzle" at the National Gallery of Art Where: West Building, National Gallery of Art, Constitution Avenue between Third and Seventh streets NW When: Through Sept. 7 Info: Free; 202-737-4215; nga.gov Though Leonardo da Vinci's main artistic medium was paint, he is known to have made bronze sculptures of horses. "The Budapest Horse" relates an investigation by the National Gallery of Art's Renaissance Bronze Research Project and the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, Hungary, seeking evidence to support or refute the attribution of "The Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior" to da Vinci -- an...

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Rorschach's 'Denmark' is undead on arrival

If you go 'Living Dead in Denmark' Where: Georgetown University's Gonda Theatre at the Davis Performing Arts Center When: Through Aug. 24 (run time is approximately two hours, including one intermission) Info: rorschachtheatre.com Years ago, when he started making movies in the United States, the great director of Hong Kong action films John Woo enumerated in an interview the many similarities between the brand of hyperkinetic shoot-'em-ups in which he specialized and musicals. There's nothing that revealing in director/fight choreographer Casey Kaleba's production of playwright/fight choreographer -- here we start to see the problem -- Qui Nguyen's "Living Dead in...

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View of Hoorn: A treasure in the closet

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. is in love. “This is so Dutch: A third of the painting is water, two-thirds is sky, and in between is about a quarter of an inch of city, stretching out across the horizon,” he says. “It’s a quiet little painting, but very magical. It has this incredible atmosphere to it.” Wheelock, the National Gallery of Art’s curator of Northern Baroque painting, is drinking in Abraham de Verwer’s “View of Hoorn,” seemingly still as captivated by the 360-year-old painting as he was when he first spotted it in the Netherlands about a year ago. A showstopper in a exhibition not hurting for them (“Pride of Place: Dutch...

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Arthur Wheelock's Dutch Treat

Late in 1995, National Gallery of Art curator Arthur K. Wheelock was looking forward to unveiling the exhibit of his career. That exhibit, Johannes Vermeer, brought together 22 of the enigmatic Dutch genius' 35 known paintings. Three centuries had passed since the last time so many Vermeers could be seen in one place. "That was something nobody ever thought would be possible,Ó says Wheelock, curator of northern Baroque paintings. "You couldn't get the loans.Ó And yet, after eight years of negotiations with museums and private collectors throughout the United States and Europe, he was about to make it happen. It would be the apex of a career that began when he'd...

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Arthur Wheelock » A sharp eye -- and some quick thinking

Abraham de Verwer's "View of HoornÓ is the work of a little-known Dutch artist, a painter Wheelock previously knew of primarily as a draughtsman. "He is a footnote in terms of the art world,Ó Wheelock says. "But as a painting, this is exceptional. The emotional impact of this image was so striking.Ó Indeed, when Wheelock spotted the 360-year-old painting among London art dealer Johnny Van Haeften's offerings at the European Fine Art Fair in Masstricht just more than a year ago, it brought him to his knees. Or it might have, if Wheelock hadn't had to get down on all fours already just to see the painting. Van Haeften apparently didn't think much of...

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A curator discusses his greatest coups

When Arthur Wheelock came to the National Gallery of Art in 1973, its collection was a far cry from what it is today. Marine paintings were all but absent. There were no still lifes. The gallery had nothing from the group of Italian-influenced Dutch painters known as the Utrecht Carvaggisti. Wheelock has spent much of his 34-year tenure as a curator filling those gaps. In the last two years, he's scored major acquisitions of Dutch masterpieces by Salomon van Ruysdael and Hendrick ter Brugghen. Here he discusses some other favorites among the pieces he's added to the nation's art collection, all currently on view. Ludolf Backhuysen, Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, 1667 (acquired...

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The Eye: Hendrick ter Brugghen

If you go National Gallery of Art Where: West Building, National Gallery of Art, Fourth Street and Constitution Ave. NW When: On view indefinitely Info: Free; 202-737-4215; www.nga.gov Name: Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Ph.D. Occupation: Curator of Northern Baroque Painting, National Gallery of Art Residence: Cleveland Park The work: Hendrick ter Brugghen, Bagpipe Player in Profile, 1624 Why I love this piece: Hendrick ter Brugghen was one of a group of artists from Utrecht in the Netherlands who in the early 17th century had gone to Italy and been inspired by Caravaggio, and had brought Caravaggio's ideas back to the north. These people are now called the Utrecht...

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Capital Fringe Festival 2009: 10 shows you won't want to miss

And anyway, how do which are the good ones? No promises, but we've chosen 10 that look, er, promising. Some of them we've even seen already. Admission to all shows is $15; you need a Fringe button ($5, or free with any multiticket pack) in addition to your ticket to enter any venue except the Baldacchino Gypsy Tent Bar. Show run times and audience age advisories come courtesy of the Festival. 1. "Please Listen: A Musical Chaos" Two bandmates abduct a record-label executive and force him to listen to their concept album about an Earth occupied by robots from space. The album's plot unfolds before us as a musical-within-the-musical. Co-stars (and co-writers) Aaron Bliden and...

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The Eye: Tullio Lombardo

If you go An Antiquity of Imagination: Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture Where: West Building, National Gallery of Art, Constitution Avenue between Third and Seventh Streets NW When: Through Nov. 1 Info: Free; 202-737-4215; nga.gov Name: Alison Luchs, Ph.D. Occupation: Curator of early European sculpture, National Gallery of Art Residence: Dupont Circle The Work: Tullio Lombardo (Italian, c. 1455 - 1532); A Couple (signed), c. 1490/1495; marble Why I love this piece: This is a pioneering work where the artist is bursting on to the scene with something completely original; a type of work that had never been seen before, in Venice or anywhere....

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Under the Knife: 'Paint Made Flesh' at Phillips

If you go "Paint Made Flesh" Where: The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. NW When: Through Sept. 13 Info: $12 / $10 for students and seniors 62+; phillipscollection.org Roaming the galleries that comprise "Paint Made Flesh," the Phillips Collection's new survey of figurative painting from 1952 through 2005, it's hard not to think about Michael Jackson. Prior to his sudden death last month, the former pop star had transformed his once-handsome face into something like a mannequin's through a series of elective cosmetic surgeries. The self-crowned King of Pop's habitual self-mutilation handed obit writers a literally on-the-nose metaphor for his long,...

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The Eye: Douglas Gordon

Name: Anne Collins Goodyear Occupation: Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Residence: Arlington Work: Douglas Gordon, Proposition for a Posthumous Portrait, 2004 If you go "Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture" at the National Portrait Gallery Through Aug. 2 National Portrait Gallery 8th and F Streets NW Admission: Free More information: (202) 633-1000; www.npg.si.edu About this piece: Douglas Gordon's "Proposition for a Posthumous Portrait" reflects the fluidity of identity recognized by Duchamp. Gordon is picking up on aspects of Duchamp's self-portraiture, and of...

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Patterson Hood backs up the truck

Info Headline Patterson Hood & The Screwtopians, with special guest Will Johnson Where: Black Cat, 1811 14 St. NW When: 8 p.m. Thursday Info: $15; tickets are available through Ticketmaster at ticket master.com or at the Black Cat box office beginning at 8 p.m. Singer/songwriter Patterson Hood moved to Athens, Ga., the same week in April 1994 that Kurt Cobain shot himself. Hood's marriage and his band, Adam's House Cat, had both collapsed. He knew no one in town except his roommate. But he was writing songs at a furious pace and recording them on a Jambox in his bedroom. He put the best ones on a cassette he titled "Murdering Oscar (and Other Love...

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The Eye: Louise Bourgeois

Name: Valerie J. Fletcher Occupation: Senior curator of modern art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Residence: Springfield What I want to tell you about this piece: It’s a metaphor, or a symbol for a state of mind that is riddled with anxiety, even fear. And yet there is, at its core, reassurance. The entire space is enclosed by a metal cage, the kind of fence that you put around animals or property. But it has three round mirrors that tilt slightly outward. There’s an intimation that you can get in and out, at least psychologically, of this space. At the center, three hands are carved in flesh-pink marble. Two of them are small and frail. Those are the artist’s...

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Philip Guston: Raw at the National Gallery

Fair-weather National Gallery of Art visitors who climb the spiral staircase to the East Building’s Tower Gallery expecting to revisit the Henri Matisse cutouts that resided there for years are in for a shock. But it’s not an unpleasant one. The cutouts — assemblages of hand-cut colored paper made in the final 15 years of the French painter’s long career — have been relocated to the East Building’s concourse level to make way for a series of exhibitions focusing on works made after 1970. The subject of the first of these is Philip Guston, a mutable master who worked in several painterly idioms during the course of a half-century, evolving from Works...

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Walead Beshty’s chroma keys at Hirshhorn

If Rene Magritte hadn’t already claimed “The Treachery of Images” as a title 80 years ago, Walead Beshty could have put it to good use. In his Hirshhorn exhibit opening this week, the London-born, Los Angeles-based sculptor and photo-anachronist revives cameraless techniques developed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray decades ago to create mesmerizing patterns of color. The way Beshty manipulates his photosensitive paper before exposing it to light determines the prismatic geometry of the resulting prints. They’re like paper-cutout snowflakes made in a darkroom. Beshty has built a career of probing the eternal rift between the corporeal world and its...

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Photographer’s exhibit shows viewers the music

“I’m not a professional,” says Kyle Gustafson. “But I play one on the Internet.” The cameraman doth protest too much. Though Gustafson still pays the bills as a Web editor for a publishing company, his hobby-turned-second-career as a music photographer has in recent years made him a fixture of D.C.’s concert venues. But it isn’t his face that’s getting famous‚ it’s his eye. Gustafson began posting his photos on the picture-sharing site Flickr, and on his widely read music and sports blog, Information Leafblower, in 2006. Since then, his images, which manage to evince dynamic composition and painterly lighting while still...

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The Eye: Marcel Duchamp

Name: James W. McManus, Ph.D. Occupation: Professor of art history, California State University at Chico Residence: Chico, Calif. McManus co-curated “Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture” at the National Portrait Gallery with Anne Collins Goodyear. Why I chose this picture: Duchamp, upon his arrival in America in 1915, was charmed by American culture, reading its visual and philosophical aspects into his work. First as a visitor and later a citizen, he wrote about the American fascination with machines; the beauty of her bridges, architecture, and plumbing. Also important to Duchamp was an emerging modernist material culture, whose representation he absorbed...

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Truth, justice and the American Indian way

We’ve long lamented the American confusion of medium and message where comic books are concerned. Though comics are widely read throughout Europe and Asia, only in the United States does the form of comics remain largely synonymous with the genre of superheroes. But a fascinating exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian makes clear that the two Jewish kids from Cleveland who created Superman in 1938 were far from the first people on this continent to tell graphic stories of heroes endowed with otherworldly gifts. This small but engrossing collection of works on paper, figurines and even jewelry examines how American Indians have used what would (much) later be called...

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The Eye: Ilya Bolotowsky

NAME: Ann Prentice Wagner OCCUPATION: Curatorial associate, Smithsonian American Art Museum RESIDENCE: Bethesda WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THIS PIECE: Ilya Bolotowsky was a Russian immigrant in New York City. He’s a major modern artist, known for the abstract geometric work that he was doing not very long after this. He was already going in a very abstract, modernist direction at the time, but he knew that for the [Public Works of Art Program], he had to do some something people would enjoy looking at and know what they were seeing. So on his [application] form, he said, “The problem is to show a typical, average, drab barber shop, and at the same time, get a decorative...

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