Showing posts with label Smithsonian American Art Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Smithsonian American Art Museum. Show all posts

Monday, October 7, 2019

David Levinthal's little toys mean a lot at the Smithsonian



David Levinthal, Untitled from the series Barbie, 1998, Smithsonian American Art Museum
David Levinthal with his Untitled from the series Barbie, 1998, Smithsonian American Art Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 6, 2019

David Levinthal, Untitled from the series Baseball, 2004, Smithsonian American Art Museum. This is Roberto Clemente, the first Latin American and Caribbean player to be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  A noted philanthropist, Mr. Clemente died in a 1972 plane crash in Nicaragua while on his way to deliver aid to earthquake victims, the label notes. Reflected in the glass are other photographs in the exhibition/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 6, 2019
 David Levinthal, Wagon Train, 2018/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 6, 2019
David Levinthal with his diorama, Wagon Train (in right background)/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 6, 2019
Detail from David Levinthal's Untitled from the series Wagon Train, 2018, Donald S. Rosenfeld Collection
David Levinthal, Untitled from the series American Beauties, 1990, Smithsonian American Art Museum, from creations of what were once deemed "beautiful" by male makers. The black background contrasts with the dancer's image and creates unease, notes the Smithsonian, while the shadowy snake shape at the dancer's feet adds to the tension.
David Levinthal, Helicopter from the series History, 2014, Smithsonian American Art Museum. If this reminds you of the Vietnam war, that's because the lifelike scene stems from the movie, Apocalypse Now.
From left, Joanna Marsh, Smithsonian American Art Museum curator and head of interpretation and audience research, David Levinthal, and Stephanie Stebich, SAAM director, at the opening of American Myth & Memory: David Levinthal Photographs Smithsonian American Art Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 6, 2019
David Levinthal with his Untitled from the series Barbie, 1998, Smithsonian American Art Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 6, 2019
David Levinthal with his Untitled from the series Baseball, 2004, Smithsonian American Art Museum. The photograph is of Lou Gehrig, dead at 37, from what is now known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He played 2,130 consecutive games, and his number "4" was the first to be retired by a baseball team/Photo by Patricia Leslie, June 6, 2019


David Levinthal (b. 1949) is one lucky dude: He's never had to give up his childhood playtime with cowboys and Indians. He's been able to saddle up and ride with them his whole life as they became objects in his lifelong photography career, a portion which is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through Monday.

Mr. Levinthal's photographs of figures from the old West and others cut from popular American history are from his collection of 400 which he's donated to the museum. In the exhibition, American Myth & Memory:  David Levinthal's Photographs, 74 are shown.

Images of past ideals of American post-World War II society, the beauties, the pinups, the ball players, the wild west, and war, or, at least what artists and advertisers who shape our thinking would have us believe, are included. 

At first glance, all seems relatively well in this land of mostly make believe perfection, but not all is beauty and play. Unsettling backgrounds may escape a viewer's first glance.

Look and you shall find more stories and deeper meanings embedded in the images from yesterday's world. 

Today's pictures of ideals have changed dramatically since the last century, and while we may not practice ideal acceptance and tolerance, at least most of us are aware of their concepts and the importance of trying to understand.



 What: American Myth & Memory:  David Levinthal's Photographs

When: Closing Monday, October 14, 2019. The museum is open from 11:30 a.m.- 7 p.m. every day.

Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F streets, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20004

How much: No charge

For more information: 202-633-1000 or visit the website.

Metro station
: Gallery Place-Chinatown or walk 10 minutes from Metro Center

patricialesli@gmail.com



Friday, April 5, 2019

Last weekend to see 'Bill Traylor' at the Smithsonian


Bill Traylor, Self-Portrait With Pipe, 1939-1942; pencil and colored pencil on cardboard, collection of Siri von Reis
.
For those who haven't reached their "pinnacle" or are still searching for it, take heart and learn from a pro, a master, artist Bill Traylor (c.1853-1949) who started his renowned life's work when he was only 86.  (There is hope.) 

Then he started drawing and painting, and now, a quick web search find his works commanding prices from $25,000 to almost $400,000, the fee Christie's reported in January that a buyer paid for Woman Pointing at Man with Cane.
 
 Bill Traylor, Female Drinker, 1939-1942; gouache and pencil on cardboard, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mr. Traylor may be the only known artist who was formerly a slave and an illiterate to see an exhibition of his work while he was alive, a show which was assembled by a white artist captivated by Mr. Traylor whom he found drawing on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama. (Although the exhibition included 100 works, none sold.)

Formerly labeled "outsider" or primitive art, the new definition calls Mr. Traylor's, "modern."  Self-taught, Mr. Traylor lived most of his life as a slave and laborer in Alabama where he was born.
 Bill Traylor, Untitled (Woman With Umbrella and Man on Crutch), 1939; pencil and opaque watercolor on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

When he was about 12 (his birth year is uncertain), he and family members, with about four million of their brothers and sisters, were freed by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which abolished slavery.

Mr. Traylor spent the next 45 years as a laborer.
 Bill Traylor, Untitled (Smoking Man With Figured Construction), 1939-1942; poster paint, crayon, and graphite on cardboard, High Museum, Atlanta

In his mid-70s he moved to Montgomery where he resided on streets, in businesses, and in funeral homes in-between visiting relatives in other states and places until his death.

A few years earlier found him on the sidewalks of Montgomery and later, in his daughter's backyard, drawing and drawing, using recycled materials and pencil, charcoal and watercolors, to make thousands of works, to attract the attention of Charles Shannon who befriended him and began supporting the budding artist with art materials.
Bill Traylor, Cedar Trees, 1939-40; compressed charcoal on cardboard, collection of Dame Jillian Sackler

Traylor's subjects stemmed from his background on the plantation and the sights and sounds he saw from his art perch in Montgomery.


Distinctive stick figures, usually in one or two colors, mark the works, many, reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs and cave art. His rich background provided a springboard to pictures of animals, dogs, snakes, dancers, handicapped individuals in dark silhouettes on flat, one-color, plain landscapes.

 Bill Traylor, Untitled (Radio) 1940-42; opaque watercolor and pencil on printed advertising paperboard,  Smithsonian American Art Museum. An example of Mr. Traylor's usage of discarded cardboard and box tops.  He recycled as an artist long before it became a popular medium.


In 1942 Mr. Traylor's works went on exhibition in New York where Alfred Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, offered $1 to $2 a piece for them. Denied. No museum or person bought any.

But it took the now defunct Corcoran Gallery in Washington and its 1982 exhibition, Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980 to whet interest in Mr. Traylor's depictions and fly away, they started.
Bill Traylor, Untitled (Yellow and Blue House with Figures and Dog), July, 1939; colored pencil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum.  The label copy says Mr. Traylor's seven decades on a plantation served as inspiration for his house scenes.  Ladders to the roof were safety features in case of fire. The figure in the chair on the bottom holds a rifle.


Bill Traylor, Untitled (Man, Woman, and Dog), 1939; crayon and pencil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum. The label copy mentions dancing couples "with wild abandon" often seen in "jook"joints near Traylor's artist's station in Montgomery. Like then, like now, "elders" frowned upon suggestive dancing, considered by some to be the work of the devil and a preface to notorious behavior. Is that their hair or halos on their heads? Is the woman pregnant? The dog has a good time, too. Viewers can "hear" the music!

Bill Traylor about 1939 by Jean and George Lewis, courtesy of Caroline Cargo Folk Art Collection, Cazenovia, NY
The white artists' collective, New South, founded by Charles Shannon who organized the first Traylor exhibition: Bill Traylor, People's Artist, 1940; photograph by Jean and George Lewis, courtesy of Caroline Cargo Folk Art Collection, Cazenovia, NY 


Through Sunday, 155 of Mr. Traylor's works will be on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the first retrospective for an artist born into slavery.
 
In a "hot list" of outsider art published last December at Christie's, art specialist Cara Zimmerman listed Mr. Traylor’s works second.


Not one of Mr. Traylor's 15 to 20 offspring (estimates vary about the number of children he had) were left any of their father's art.

Leslie Umberger, the Smithsonian curator, spent seven years researching the show, according to an article in the Smithsonian, and it shows.  When you see an exhibition like this and understand a little about the artist, you rejoice in his achievements and wish he were still around to receive the accolades.
 

What:  Between Worlds:  The Art of Bill Traylor

When: Closes Sunday, April 7, 2019. The museum is open from 11:30 a.m. - 7 p.m. every day.

Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F streets, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20004

How much: No charge

For more information
: 202-633-1000 or visit the website.

Metro station
: Gallery Place-Chinatown or walk 10 minutes from Metro Center

patricialesli@gmail.com


Saturday, March 17, 2018

Tamayo show closes Sunday at SAAM

 Rufino Tamayo, Pretty Girl, 1937, Private Collection.

The label copy says Pretty Girl was inspired by a photograph of Rufino Tamayo's wife, Olga, with her sister when they were children.  It made a big hit with a critic when it hung in a "blockbuster exhibition" in New York at a time when Tamayo's Mexican colleagues weren't drawing pretty pictures but incorporating issues of the day in their art.
 Rufino Tamayo, Carnival, 1936, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Tamayo drew more than one rendering of Luna Park at Coney Island which the label copy identifies as "a favorite haunt of many New York artists who wanted to capture modern urban life."
 Rufino Tamayo, Factory Workers' Movement, 1935, Collection of Brian and Florence Mahony

The label copy for Factory Workers' Movement says that although Tamayo rejected the injection of politics in art, European fascism and the growth of the violent anti-labor movement in Mexico made him sensitive to workers' needs and their goals. Here he drew them rallying outside a factory, urged on by a man in the distance who calls for action.
 Rufino Tamayo, Lion and Horse, 1942, Mildred Layne Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO

Arts thrive in Mexico which produces not only movie winners but distinctive artists, too, like abstractionist Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) whose time spent in New York was the subject of an exhibition which ended Sunday at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.   

From the late 1920s until 1949, Tamayo lived off and on in New York, a period some consider to represent his greatest artistry output. 
 Rufino Tamayo, New York Seen from the Terrace, 1937, FEMSA Collection, photo by Roberto Ortiz

After Tamayo moved to the Big Apple in 1926, it didn't take him long to establish a following since several galleries hosted shows which heightened his reputation and led to a warm welcome when he returned to Mexico three years later, a contrast to his sendoff, caused by politics and his being called a "traitor." 

He did not support the violent changes erupting in Mexico, unlike  contemporaries such as Diego Rivera. Tamayo believed a more traditional approach to change was the right direction and that politics and art did not mix.
Rufino Tamayo, Women Reaching for the Moon, 1946, Private Collection, Courtesy of Christie's

Hoping to find more tolerance for his conservative views, he moved to New York where he was influenced by Pablo Picasso and was introduced to fauvism, cubism, and impressionism.  These styles were apparent in the Smithsonian show which, it said, was "the first exhibition to explore the influences between this major Mexican modernist and the American art world." The show of 41 pieces traced his development from urban scenes to dreamy landscapes.

After New York, Tamayo and his wife moved to Paris and lived there for ten years before returning to Mexico in 1959 where they opened a museum in Oaxaca.


Tamayo was proud of his Mexican heritage and displayed it, sensitive to perceived contempt on art not made by those of European descent.

He finished his last painting, Moon and Sun, when he was 90, the year before he died in Mexico City.  

What: Tamayo:  The New York Years

When: Closes Sunday, March 18, 2018. The museum is open from 11:30 a.m.- 7 p.m. every day.

Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F streets, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20004

How much: Admission is free

For more information: 202-633-1000 or visit the website.

Metro station: Gallery Place-Chinatown or walk 10 minutes from Metro Center

patricialesli@gmail.com

Sunday, September 17, 2017

JFK photographs leave the Smithsonian today

 John F. Kennedy, 1961, by Shirley Seltzer Cooper (1919-1999)

In celebration of what would have been President John F. Kennedy's 100th birthday on May 29, 2017, the Smithsonian American Art Museum opened a collection of 77 photographs and other remembrances of the man whose spirit, intelligence, appreciation for the arts, and energy captivated America which has never been able to regain its sense of confidence and bravery since his death. 

Today is the last day for the display which is based on the book, JFK:  A Vision for America edited by Stephen Kennedy Smith, President Kennedy's nephew, and Douglas Brinkley, history professor at Rice University.

Most of the images in the exhibition are familiar to those who grew up with the ghost of JFK.  Below are a few of the less well-known pictures.
Kennedy for Congress headquarters, Boston, September, 1946, by Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection, Getty Images
In the galleries of the JFK exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
John Kennedy, center, with his father, Joseph, and brother, Joseph Patrick, Jr., Brookline, MA, 1919/John f. Kennedy Library Foundation
In the galleries at the Smithsonian American Art Museum where JFK's familiar quotations are painted on the walls. This caption from June 14, 1956 reads:  Our Nation's first great politicians were also among the Nation's first great writers and scholars...Books were their tools, not their enemies.
/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Campaigning in Amherstdale, WVA, April, 1960, one of 53 campaign stops candidate Kennedy made in the state in one month.  There he learned something about the lives of coal miners which helped form his anti-poverty legislation when he became president/Life Picture Collection, Getty Images
During an airport campaign stop in Amarillo, TX on Nov. 3, 1960, JFK tried to restrain his running mate, Lyndon Johnson, incensed by Republican pilots revving up their engines to silence Democratic Party speakers/without credit line
Waiting for results the day after the election at Bobby and Ethel Kennedy's home in Hyannis Port, MA on Nov. 9, 1960 are (behind JFK, seated) Bobby and Ethel (in a sweater dress.  Ethel, age 89, is still living.) /Jacques Lowe (the Jacques Lowe Estate)
First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Andre Malraux, the minister of cultural affairs for France, arranged the first tour of the Mona Lisa to the U.S. from the Louvre for a three-week run at the National Gallery of Art. This was taken on Jan. 8, 1963/Abbie Rowe,John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
At the entrance to the JFK exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
 
The U.S. State Department has sent the images to Australia, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Germany, Honduras, Kosovo, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Thailand, and Venezuela where they will travel throughout each country through 2018.


What: American Visionary:  John F. Kennedy's Life and Times

When: Closes Sunday, September 17, 2017. The museum is open from 11:30 a.m.- 7 p.m. every day.

Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F streets, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20004

How much: No charge

For more information
: 202-633-1000 or visit the website.

Metro station
: Gallery Place-Chinatown or walk 10 minutes from Metro Center


patricialesli@gmail.com


Saturday, July 8, 2017

Last weekend to see Smithsonian's 'Greek Slave'

 Model of the Greek Slave, 1843, plaster, metal points, Hiram Powers (1805-1873)/Photo by Patricia Leslie

This life-size plaster cast was completed in Hiram Powers' Florence, Italy studio on March 12, 1843 from a clay model, and it served as the prototype for six marble statues which sculptors, working under Powers' watchful eyes, carved for patrons between 1844 and 1869.
The gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for the Greek Slave/Photo by Patricia Leslie
 
Six million visitors toured the 1851 international fair in London where the Greek Slave rotated on a pedestal, the first time an exhibition allotted a section to the U.S. (The American portion included a teepee, Indians [seen in the background], portraits of presidents, and a cylinder engine.) This rendering is from a hand-colored lithograph at the Library of Congress/Photo by Patricia Leslie
A pointing machine and assistants allowed replicas and copies of the Greek Slave to be made at Hiram Powers' studio /Photo by Patricia Leslie
Life Cast of Left Forearm and Hand, fragment, about 1843, plaster, from the studio of Hiram Powers, Florence, Italy, 1837-1873/Photo by Patricia Leslie. The model for this cast is unknown but using a cast instead of modeling was verboten among sculptors. This model identically matches the Greek Slave's hand's and arm's dimensions and positions.

Catch her before the Greek Slave, "one of the best-known and critically acclaimed artworks of the nineteenth century," leaves display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Sunday.

With his Greek Slave sculpture, Hiram Powers (1805-1873) became the first American to gain international art acclaim. Powers said his statue represented a young woman kidnapped by the Turks during the Greek revolution (1821-1832). U.S. abolitionists adopted her
as a symbol of slavery, and John Greenleaf Whittier and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote poems about her.

One of the six original marble versions of the Smithsonian's plaster statue is at the West Building at the National Gallery of Art, a gift of William W. Corcoran to the Corcoran Collection/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The Greek Slave was the first publicly exhibited fully-figured nude female who, some venues required, demanded separate viewings by men and women, the Smithsonian notes. Even in this century, she continues to draw controversy and cover-up.

In 2004 Wikipedia says Vermont Governor James Douglas (R) ordered her likeness on a small lamp removed from his office, so afraid he was that children might see her, since it's doubtful that not all knew what a naked woman looked like.

 One of the six marble models is at the West Building at the National Gallery of Art, a gift of William W. Corcoran to the Corcoran Collection/Photo by Patricia Leslie

 Attracted by Florence, Italy's marble and carvers, Powers, who was born in Woodstock, Vermont, left the U.S. in 1837, never to return as he planned. The Smithsonian acquired the statue and other pieces from his Florence studio in 1968 and at the Smithsonian, the Greek Slave has occupied her own large gallery for almost two years.  One of the six original marbles stands on the ground level of the West Building at the National Gallery of Art which calls it "arguably the most famous American sculpture ever." 

She is "an emblem of the trial to which all humanity is subject, and may be regarded as a type of resignation, uncompromising virtue, or sublime patience," wrote the tour manager, Miner Kellogg when the statue toured the U.S.  in 1847 or 1848 (two different years listed by Wikipedia) drawing 100,000 viewers.[6]
One of the six marble models is at the West Building, the National Gallery of Art, a gift of William W. Corcoran to the Corcoran Collection/Photo by Patricia Leslie
 

What: The Greek Slave

When: Closes Sunday, July 9, 2017. The museum is open from 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. every day.

Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F streets, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20004

How much: No charge

For more information
: 202-633-1000 or visit the web site.

Metro station
: Gallery Place-Chinatown or walk 10 minutes from Metro Center


patricialesli@gmail.com

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Last day to see Ralph Fasanella, the people's artist, in Washington


Ralph Fasanella, Iceman Crucified #4, 1958, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Estate of Ralph Fasanella, © 1958, Estate of Ralph Fasanella

The director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Elizabeth Broun, described Ralph Fasanella (1914-1997) as "a potent reminder that the power to effect change lies in the heart of every person."

And so it is, an unmistakable message which speaks loudly from the 19 large Fasanella canvases and eight sketches whose last day to hang together at the museum is today.

The exhibition was timed to celebrate the artist's 100th birthday, September 2,1914, Labor Day that year, a more perfect day for the birth of a later spokesperson and artist for the common man, the working class, unknown.


Charmian Reading, photo of Ralph Fasanella, about 1970. American Folk Art Museum, New York. Gift of the Estate of Ralph Fasanella, © 1970, Estate of Ralph Fasanella

Mr. Fasanella was a self-taught artist who quit school before he was a teen and later spent hours, after he got out of reform school, in libraries, educating himself, and visiting art museums in New York where he realized the power of art to communicate with others.

He was born in the Bronx to Italian immigrants who taught him all about hard work, the importance of family, and the necessity to fight for and preserve individual and civil rights. 
Ralph Fasanella, Family Supper, 1972, National Park Service, © 1972, Estate of Ralph Fasanella. This portrait pays tribute to the artist's mother, Ginevra, a socialist activist, later left by her husband to raise their children alone. It shows the duties expected of a mother and is based on Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper.

Before his father abandoned his family to return to Italy, Ralph helped him at his work, delivering ice, becoming aware of the differences between the "haves" and the "have nots," burying growing feelings and emotions which showed up many years later in his art. 

One of Mr. Fasanella's most famous series is the Iceman Crucified, based on Mr. Fasanella's father and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Three of the four Icemans are in the show, including a recent gift to the Smithsonian from the Fasanella family, the last of the series, #4, on which the artist included the phrase, "Lest We Forget," which is the sub-title of the show.  He used "Lest We Forget" often in his art to remind viewers about their origins and rights, borrowing the idea from the initials for Jesus, INRI, Latin for "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

Thirty minutes for each Fasanella piece is not enough time to take in all the parts and messages, as complex, detailed, and fascinating as they are, not only for adults, but the content has much to offer children, too.
Ralph Fasanella, McCarthy Era Garden Party, 1954, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, and the Estate of Ralph Fasanella © Estate of Ralph Fasanella.
This is a close-up of McCarthy Era Garden Party, 1954, one of at least three paintings in the show which feature Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the only American civilians executed by the U.S. government for espionage during the Cold War. Mr. Fasanella passionately believed the couple were government scapegoats, used to convey a message to others, as the government uses Chelsea Manning today, that tolerance is unacceptable when it comes to leaks. Here the Rosenbergs are drawn together in a fiery pit, underneath the dome of the U.S. Capitol where members of Congress, behind them, attend a "last supper."


His pictures present a 20th century popular look at modern U.S. labor history, in a folk art style, reminiscent of Grandma Moses with flat, bright colors, stick figures, and intense purpose. 
Wikipedia says Mr. Fasanella painted large canvases since he thought they would eventually hang in union halls. 

The years he spent in a Catholic reform school turned him bitterly against the church and against organized structure which restricts the human spirit. 

Ralph Fasanella, Pie in the Sky, 1947, American Folk Art Museum, New York, Gift of Eva Fasanella and her children, Gina Mostrando and Marc Fasanella, © Estate of Ralph Fasanella. Represented are what heaven can bring (top) versus reality and tenement life which surrounds the cathedral on both sides. 

As an adult, Mr. Fasanella held blue collar jobs, became a union member, and volunteered for paramilitary duty in Spain where he joined other Americans in the late1930s to fight unsuccessfully against General Francisco Franco.  After he returned to the U.S., Mr. Fasanella became a labor organizer, and painted in his spare time.  About 30 years later, when a dealer discovered him and New York magazine put him on one of its covers in 1972,  Mr. Fasanella gained immediate fame which brought sales, independence, and more time to draw. 

His art helped him expel some of his demons and put on paper his passion to help the working classes survive and advance their knowledge of social injustice and their rights. 

After he saw a Fasanella show in 1974,  Ron Carver, a union organizer, wrote "I was overwhelmed with emotion at     Fasanella's depiction of ordinary people...painted...with such verve and heart."  In 1986 Mr. Carver mounted a campaign, Public Domain, designed to rescue Mr. Fasanella's art from private collections so the works could hang in public spaces, and with the help of many, including the artist, he succeeded.

The Smithsonian's Leslie Umberger curated the exhibition.  In a statement she called Mr. Fasanella's art "a tool to be wielded like a hammer."  He did. 

At a time when the voice of labor in the U.S. continues to weaken, Mr. Fasanella's colors, boldness and imagination present stories and voices of the common people, often not heard or seen in Washington or on Wall Street, unless it is the banks seeking to increase their profits with services for the poor.

We the people are grateful to all and extend appreciation to Tania and Tom Evans, the Herbert Waide Hermphill Jr. American Folk Art Fund, and Paula and Peter Lunder for making the exhibition possible.

The show next moves to the American Folk Art Museum in New York to open on Mr. Fasanella's 100th birthday, September 2, and continue through November 30, 2014. 

Power to the people!


What: Ralph Fasanella:  Lest We Forget

When: Closes Sunday, August 3, 2014. The museum is open from 11:30 a.m. - 7 p.m. every day. 

Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F streets, N. W., Washington, D.C.  20004

How much: No charge

For more information: 202-633-1000 or visit the web site

Metro station: Gallery Place-Chinatown or walk 10 minutes from Metro Center


patricialesli@gmail.com