Event Calendar

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the preeminent African American voice of the nineteenth century, is remembered as one of the nation’s greatest orators, writers, and picture makers. Born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1818, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was the son of Harriet Bailey, an enslaved woman, and an unknown white father. He escaped bondage in 1838 and changed his surname to Douglass.

Over six decades, Douglass published three autobiographies, hundreds of essays, and a novella; delivered thousands of speeches; and edited the longest-running Black newspaper in the nineteenth century, The North Star (later Frederick Douglass’ Paper and Douglass’ Monthly). During the Civil War, he befriended and advised President Abraham Lincoln and met every subsequent president through Grover Cleveland. He was also the first African American to receive a federal appointment requiring Senate approval (U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia).

Douglass became the most photographed American of the nineteenth century and remains a public face of the nation. As an art critic, he wrote extensively on portrait photography and understood its power. He explained how this “true art” (as opposed to pernicious caricatures) captured the essential humanity of each subject. True art was an engine of social change, he argued, and true artists were activists: “They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the contradiction."

Open 7 days a week
11:30am – 7pm
Closed Dec. 25

One Life Gallery, 2nd floor 
National Portrait Gallery
8th and G Streets NW

Washington, DC

“Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism” presents some of the key people—scientists, politicians, activists, writers and artists—whose work has influenced attitudes toward the environment in the United States from the late 19th century until today. The exhibition traces a history of the movement from turn-of-the-20th-century conservationism to mid-20th-century environmentalism and its backlash. It also addresses present-day action on environmental justice, biodiversity and climate. Drawing mainly from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, “Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism” features more than 25 portraits of people who have made an enduring impact on public perceptions of the natural world, including the well-known figures Rachel Carson, George Washington Carver, Maya Lin, Henry David Thoreau and Edward O. Wilson. The exhibition will bring together portraiture, visual biography and the sitters’ own words to probe this important—and complicated—history.

Open 7 days a week
11:30am – 7pm
Closed Dec. 25

One Life Gallery, 2nd floor 
National Portrait Gallery
8th and G Streets NW

Washington, DC

Between Worlds: The Art and Design of Leo Lionni is the first major American retrospective dedicated to the art and design work of groundbreaking modernist designer and children’s book illustrator Leo Lionni (1910-1999). “Design is form,” the artist said, “Sometimes it is decorative form, and has no other function that to give pleasure to the eye. Often it is expressive form, related to conceptual content, to meaning. It is always abstract; but like a gesture or a a tone of voice it has the power to command and hold attention, to create symbols, to clarify ideas.” Together with Chief Curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, the exhibition is co-curated by author and children’s book historian Leonard Marcus and illustration and design historian Steven Heller.  The Museum is also working closely with Annie Lionni, the artist’s granddaughter.

As the old distinction between fine and applied art came up for lively reconsideration after the Second World War, Leo Lionni emerged as one of the international design community’s indispensable pathfinders and bridge-builders. Idealistic and globally minded, Lionni viewed pithy, smart, deceptively simple graphic design as a worthy contribution to the post-war effort to reassert democratic values and establish a visual lingua franca to unite people across generations and cultural boundaries. A kind of twentieth-century Leonardo, he pursued his creative vision across several related domains, each of which will be explored in depth in this exhibition, including graphic design and advertising art; his art direction at Fortune and Print magazines; the creation of forty children’s picture books; and personal works including printmaking, photography, drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Thu - Tue 10am - 5pm
Wed CLOSED

Norman Rockwell Museum
9 Glendale Road Route 183

Stockbridge, MA

An exhibition exploring extraordinary materials collected by Walter and Linda Evans now in the Beinecke’s care, “Douglass, Baldwin, Harrington” celebrates three towering figures of Black history, art and culture: Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, and Ollie Harrington. The Evans collections together bring political and cultural history into close engagement with arts and letters. These collections and the figures they feature demonstrate powerful ways creative work may serve as a form of social justice advocacy in ways that continue to inspire. “Douglass, Baldwin, Harrington” honors Walter and Linda Evans and their work advocating for, documenting, and celebrating Black arts in America. Their ongoing leadership in public dialogue about the need for more inclusive American arts and cultural heritage collections, and for greater public access to the work of Black artists, serves as an inspiration to all of us.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University Library
121 Wall Street

New Haven, CT

The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy presents insights into the work of these innovative, early 20th-century artists and their continuing impact a century later. The National Gallery of Art has important holdings of prints and drawings by German expressionists Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Emil Nolde, among others. The exhibition features recent acquisitions as well as works that have rarely, if ever, been on view, including gifts donated by celebrated Washington, DC, collectors Jacob and Ruth Cole Kainen. Among the early 20th-century artists represented in more than 70 prints, drawings, illustrated books, portfolios, and sculptures are Otto Dix, Käthe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and lesser-known artists such as Walter Grammatté.

Through their bold, inventive art, the German expressionists sought to interpret the dramatic changes in the world around them during the tumultuous historical period 1900–1920, marked by world war and revolution. New scholarship following the recent World War I centenary adds depth to our understanding of these artists and their artistic heirs. Post-1950 and contemporary artists shown in the exhibition—Leonard Baskin, Nicole Eisenman, Orit Hofshi, Rashid Johnson, Matthias Mansen, and others—carry on the rich legacy of the German expressionists. These later artists invite us to compare the social, political, and cultural transformations taking place in our own societies today.

Daily 10am - 5pm

Free admission

West Building, Ground Floor, West Outer Tier
The National Gallery of Art
6th St and Constitution Ave NW

Washington, DC