“WONDER” Opens Nov. 13 at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
“WONDER” will debut at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in celebration of the reopening of the historic building after a major two-year renovation. The inaugural exhibition will showcase installations by nine leading contemporary artists—Jennifer Angus, Chakaia Booker, Gabriel Dawe, Tara Donovan, Patrick Dougherty, Janet Echelman, John Grade, Maya Lin and Leo Villareal. “WONDER” will open Nov. 13 and will be on view for six months. The exhibition is organized by Nicholas R. Bell, The Fleur and Charles Bresler Senior Curator of American Craft and Decorative Art.
The artists featured in “WONDER” were selected for their ability to transform spaces through installation, their interest in how visitors experience that space and their focus on process and materials. Each was invited to select a gallery in the Renwick and then to create a site-specific installation for that space. Collectively, these installations turn the building into a major immersive artwork.
“The Renwick was the first purpose-built art museum in the United States, intended to exhibit American art and to celebrate American genius,” said Betsy Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “To celebrate the next chapter in its 156-year history, we will showcase exemplary artists like these nine who are exploring the intersections between art, craft and design. ‘WONDER’ rededicates this landmark museum to the future of art.”
While the nine artists work in strikingly different mediums, they are connected by a shared interest in expressing ideas though the labor-intensive creation of objects by hand and in the nature of making and materiality in a digitally focused age. Their works result from massing, disrupting and altering familiar objects, exploring the potential of unlikely materials and combining traditional techniques with cutting-edge technology.
“The concept of ‘wonder’—that moment of awe in the face of something new and unknown that transports us out of the everyday—is deeply intertwined with how we experience art,” said Bell. “These nine artists are masters of constructing works that startle us, overwhelm us and invite us to marvel—to wonder—at their creation. These elements matter in the context of this museum, devoted for more than four decades to the skilled working of materials in extraordinary ways.”
On the first floor, visitors will encounter works by Dawe, Donovan and Dougherty. Dawe’s textile-based installation is made from thousands of strands of individually hung cotton embroidery thread, which appear as waves of color and light sweeping from floor to ceiling. Donovan’s 10 towers, ranging in height from 8 to 13 feet, are constructed from hundreds of thousands of index cards that have been individually glued together to form irregular, looming spires. Dougherty’s 10 enormous pods of willow osiers, made from countless saplings woven together by hand, engulf the rear gallery.
Works by Angus, Booker, Echelman, Grade, Lin and Villareal will be installed on the second floor. Angus covers gallery walls in spiraling, geometric designs reminiscent of wallpaper or textiles but made using different specimens of shimmering, brightly colored insects. Booker works with discarded construction materials—hundreds of rubber tires, in this case—splicing and weaving them into an enormous, complex labyrinth. Echelman explores volumetric form without solid mass, overtaking the museum’s famed Grand Salon with a suspended, handwoven net surging across its 100-foot length. Grade uses hundreds of thousands of pieces of reclaimed, old-growth cedar to reconstruct a hemlock approximately the same age as the Renwick’s building, based on a complete plaster cast he made of the tree in situ in the Cascade Mountains. Lin’s deluge of green marbles flows across the floor and up walls, recalling the flow of the Chesapeake Bay as part of her investigation into how to express changing natural forms in her artworks. Villareal’s installation—320 steel rods embedded with 23,000 LEDs programmed to display a code written and manipulated by the artist into endless variations, never repeating exactly the same display—will be mounted above the Renwick’s Grand Staircase.
The exhibition will close in two phases to allow for the reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collection. The second-floor galleries will close May 8, 2016, and the first-floor galleries will close July 10, 2016.
Public Programs
A series of free public programs is planned to celebrate the reopening of the Renwick Gallery and the debut of “WONDER.” A morning ribbon-cutting ceremony will precede an open house Friday, Nov. 13; the after-hours program “Handi-hour” returns to the Renwick with “all you can craft,” craft beer, live music and guest artists. A family festival Saturday, Nov. 14, will offer craft activities, artist demonstrations, musical performances and special museum tours. Details will be available on the museum’s calendar, americanart.si.edu/calendar, this fall.
Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog written by Bell, titled “On Wonder.”
Credit
“WONDER” is organized by the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum with generous support from Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Susan and Ken Hahn, Bannus and Cecily Hudson and The James Renwick Alliance.
About the Renwick Gallery
The Renwick is now again rededicated to the future of art and to American genius, reopening for the third time in three different centuries (1874, 1972, 2015). It continues as the branch museum of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, featuring craft and decorative art and a wide range of materials-based art, with special emphasis on contemporary expression. The Renwick Gallery is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. Metrorail station: Farragut North (Red line) and Farragut West (Blue and orange lines). Follow the museum on Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest, iTunes U and ArtBabble. Museum information (recorded): (202) 633-7970. Smithsonian information: (202) 633-1000. Website: americanart.si.edu.
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