I liken the art scene in DC to dandelions that grow in concrete parking lots: never sure of the future, but always happy to be alive. Despite being left out in the cold by some arms of the mainstream art world, the city’s galleries and institutions alike remain passionate about carrying the energy of the summer into the fall. The National Gallery of Art will premiere a new collection of art from Haiti, while the National Portrait Gallery will host works by late Cuban-American artist Félix González-Torres and the Hirshhorn Museum brings us the Brazilian street art duo OSGEMEOS. Local mural artist Rik Freeman’s highly anticipated solo gallery show, Black Beaches During Segregation, complements these spirited exhibitions. And at the National Archives Museum, Power & Light presents Russell Lee’s survey of the coal and electric workers who built the grid that lights and heats most of our homes.
Rik Freeman: Black Beaches During Segregation
Honfleur Gallery, 1241 Marion Barry Avenue SE, Washington, DC
Through September 28
Rik Freeman’s monumental painting “A Liberdade de Maria Felipa” (2012) honors the titular Afro-Brazilian freedom fighter’s leadership during uprisings in the 1820s, primarily on the beaches of her native Itaparica Island. Since creating the work during a residency in Bahia, Brazil, Freeman has been busy studying beaches as sites of resistance against racial domination. This time, the artist told Hyperallergic in an interview, he is focusing on Black-owned beaches of the Jim Crow era that once lined shores across the United States. For this exhibition, Freeman visited six beaches — five of which are still Black-owned entities — and produced 11 paintings depicting summer gatherings and scenes of those who lived on the beaches year-round because they were liberated spaces of respite. Best known as a DC mural artist, Freeman has developed a painting style that embraces fluid, high-contrast, and figurative compositions that perfectly suit his subject matter. The plethora of gestures and figural positions in paintings like “Chickenbone Beach” emanate a spirit of freedom, with its subjects unrestricted, at least for a time, by the laws and daily hazards of living in a racist and segregated society.
Rosemary Feit Covey: Thanatopsis
Morton Fine Art, 52 O Street NW, #302, Washington, DC
Through October 4
DC-area experimental printmaker Rosemary Feit Covey, who creates large 3D canvases representing imaginary ecosystems, presents playful and layered works that integrate found objects in Thanatopsis, inspired by William Cullen Bryant’s 1817 poem of the same name. Covey’s canvases laden with discarded items offer an alternative view of the global environmental crisis, negating death by embracing new beginnings. In pieces like “Lichens and Other Extraterrestrials” (2024), the artist creates organic shapes that are familiar yet unrecognizable — biological forms that feel both intimate and alien. Other works, such as “Touch Me If You Dare” (2024), challenge the viewer to gather the courage to enter into their alluring unknown. Ultimately, the charm of Covey’s work lies in the eye of the beholder, and what a viewer takes away from these canvases depends on their willingness to engage with them. To quote Bryant’s poem, those who “wrap the drapery of their couch about [them] and lie down to pleasant dreams” will discover endless ways of being and becoming through Covey’s creations.
Conversations: Kerry James Marshall and John Singleton Copley
National Gallery of Art, West Building, 6th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Through January 31, 2025
The second installment of the National Gallery of Art’s (NGA) Conversations series, which invites curators to juxtapose old and new masterpieces from its collections and intimate a historical dialogue, features three paintings in conversation: Kerry James Marshall’s “Great America” (1994) and “Voyager” (1992), and John Singleton Copley’s “Watson and the Shark” (1778). Alongside them is a sketch by Marshall for “Great American,” which gives us an opportunity to peer into his process. The two artists’ shared fascination with bodies of water works as a metaphor for historical memory. Copley’s painting renders the abyss of the sea as monstrous and threatening, capturing the true story of a shark attack on 14-year-old Brook Watson nearly three decades earlier. Meanwhile, Marshall’s two works take a different tack. “Great America” drips with sarcasm in depicting the Middle Passage as a water park ride, while “Voyager” evokes a suffocating stillness in its rendering of the Wanderer, the penultimate ship to bring enslaved people to the US that arrived illegally in 1858. This installation calls to mind French poet Paul Valéry’s famous line: “The abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all.” Make sure to examine such details as the skull in Marshall’s Wanderer and the process sketch that serve as clues rescued from oblivion. The shore remains far off in these works, but at least it is visible.
Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti
National Gallery of Art, 6th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
September 29–March 9, 2025
Last year, the NGA received donations of 15 works that constituted the first pieces by Haitian artists in its collection. Since then, this number has grown to 21 works, which will be presented in Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti. Some DC museumgoers may be familiar with the late painters Rigaud Benoit and Wilson Bigaud, whose works were included in the NGA’s Afro-Atlantic Histories exhibition in 2022. This show will also feature other legendary Haitian painters, such as Hector Hyppolite and Louisiane Saint Fleurant, as well as internationally renowned contemporary Haitian artists like Myrlande Constant and Edouard Duval-Carrié. Exploring a range of subjects, including quotidian scenes, religion and spiritual traditions, popular customs and rituals, portraiture, and history painting, Spirit & Strength promises to be a testimony to the deep roots of Haitian art and its practitioners.
The ’70s Lens: Reimagining Documentary Photography
National Gallery of Art, 6th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
October 6–April 6, 2025
Fifty years on, the 1970s are still regarded as the quintessential decade of cultural transformation in the US. Amid soaring inflation, energy crises, the Vietnam War, the rise of the Black Panther Party, the Watergate scandal, and a burgeoning protest culture, the way the public looked at art also changed. The ’70s Lens sets out to chart this revolution through documentary photography. Artistic experimentation was one of the markers of the period and allowed photographers such as Frank Espada, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Helen Levitt to reimagine their documentary practices. I look forward to seeing original prints by Lewis Baltz and Joe Deal, who reexamined our relationship with the environment and impact on the natural world. With around 100 works by more than 80 artists, The ’70s Lens will surely be a visual feast.
Revolutions: Art From the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 7th Street and Independence Avenue, Washington, DC
Through April 20, 2025
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden encourages us to reconfigure our understanding of the word “revolution” itself through this show, which kicked off the museum’s 50th anniversary season and surveys the titular era through 208 artworks created by 117 artists in its collection. If you’re interested in American and European art surveys that follow well-defined artistic trajectories, you’re in for a treat. The roster includes historical giants such as Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jackson Pollock, among others. And not all the artists are dead White men; Torkwase Dyson, Rashid Johnson, Annette Lemieux, Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota), and Flora Yukhnovich are among the contemporary artists with work on view. Nevertheless, the show doesn’t quite substantiate its argument that 1860 to 1960 was a transformative period in terms of science and philosophy due to increasing mechanization. References to the era’s lasting legacies, such as the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, and the current age of fossil fuel extinction, are few and far between. But the fact that over half of the works are abstract paintings, and seem to look away from the human experience that shapes history, leaves a strange aftertaste. The show’s press release acknowledges that “abstraction, notably through the work of artists interested in engaging the mind, not just the eye,” was one of the trademarks of the museum’s founding. Revolutions suggests that this same focus runs throughout much of the Hirshhorn’s collection today, which now contains over 13,130 pieces.
This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance
National Portrait Gallery, 8th Street and G Street NW, Washington, DC
Through April 20, 2025
This tightly knit show, marking what would have been James Baldwin’s 100th birthday, is a trim ode to an intellectual giant. =This Morning, This Evening, So Soon, which gets its name from a 1960 short story by Baldwin, is primarily dedicated to the writer’s relationships with his contemporaries and his later influence on queer artists and writers. The archival material in the show is rich, and particularly interesting are the documents related to queer Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin, who was a close advisor, mentor, and principal strategist to Martin Luther King Jr. and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Nevertheless, as someone who discovered Baldwin through the lectures of Palestinian scholar Edward Said, I found the show unfinished. Baldwin’s universal literary genius and his contributions to the international political discourse, where he was on par with figures like Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon, are strangely absent. We often remake intellectuals in our own image, reflecting who we are and what we need at a given moment. And even if this Baldwin may not be for you, the exhibition presents an opportunity to steep in his aura once again.
Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey
National Archives Museum, 701 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Through July 6, 2025
One of my favorite pastimes during the COVID-19 lockdown was skimming through the Library of Congress’s photo archives, where I discovered Russell Lee’s work and his famous survey of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, commissioned by the Farm Security Administration in 1936. Along with Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, Lee was one of the foremost documentary photographers of the period who excelled in their use of medium format cameras. Power & Light brings us another remarkable chapter in the history of documentary photography in the US, this time from the collections of the National Archives. It showcases Lee’s work a decade after his coal survey when he embarked on a new series conducted by Navy personnel. Throughout 1946, Lee took thousands of photographs of bituminous coal miners and their families, as well as their homes, medical facilities, and inhumane working conditions. Now preserved in the National Archives, the survey acts as an invaluable record of the mining communities whose labor was an essential building block of the electrical grid we still depend upon today. Among the standout photos are a snapshot of interracial labor gatherings in Kentucky, almost two decades before the end of segregation, and documentation of women working in the mining industry.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return
National Portrait Gallery, 8th Street and G Street NW, Washington, DC
October 18–July 6, 2025
As you make your way through the streets surrounding the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) this fall, expect to see strings of light as part of new installments of Félix González-Torres’s 1994 series “Untitled” (America). Appropriately titled Always to Return, the show is the first major exhibition of the artist’s work in DC since his death due to AIDS-related complications in 1996, during the height of the epidemic. While the minimalist artist isn’t generally associated with portraiture, this exhibition argues that González-Torres was a keen observer of the form and had a lifelong engagement with its role in identity construction. His novel approach to crafting portraits, including one of his father in the form of white mint candies in clear wrappers, will take center stage in Always to Return. The show eschews a formal beginning or end, extending beyond the museum building with the artist’s light string work in three other locations: the NPG facade, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library of the District of Columbia Public Library, and outdoors near the museum.
OSGEMEOS: Endless Story
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Independence Avenue and 7th Street, Washington, DC
September 29–August 3, 2025
While Revolutions highlights the Hirshhorn’s collections built over several decades, Endless Story is an even bigger undertaking. This exhibition will be the largest US display of the work of street art duo OSGEMEOS, comprising Brazilian twins Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo. Endless Story will trace the twins’ emergence as a duo and bring together more than 1,000 objects, many of which have never been exhibited outside Brazil. Their colorful, narrative style resembling graphic novels transformed into surreal installations will be a hit with any visitor. OSGEMEOS are also a bit of a novelty themselves, as DC rarely gets exhibitions of South American contemporary art at such a scale. The artists are accomplished storytellers who count hip hop, graffiti and breakdancing, their mother’s embroidery skills, dreams, and the environment among their main influences. In addition to over 30 paintings on view, the exhibition will include their massive zoetrope, first built in 2014. But what I am truly looking forward to is their site-specific sound and sculpture installation Segredos (2016), which features the piece “Gramophone” that looks like a crossover between a 1980s block party sound system and a stereophonic gramophone.
Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress, 10 1st Street SE, Washington, DC
Through December 2025
Unlike what tech billionaires might have us believe, not all data is collected to be sold to the highest bidder and not all archives monopolize in the name of authority. Keeping up with its long-standing tradition of being an accessible people’s archive, the Library of Congress inaugurated a series of exhibitions this summer centered around the theme of collective memory through personal and intimate records. Thus, Collective Memories highlights the broad strokes of history through the everyday materials of individual people’s lives, showcasing how different cultures within and beyond the United States preserve knowledge and exploring the rich interplay between personal and communal memory. Culled from the library’s collection of items in over 450 languages, the exhibition juxtaposes photos, maps, diaries, books, voice recordings, moving images, and more. And as if to further counter the idea that an archive is merely a sanctuary of precious but lifeless things kept behind closed doors, the centerpiece of this exhibition is a table that allows visitors to interact with the collection.
Unbound: Narrative Art of the Plains
National Museum of the American Indian, 4th Street and Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC
Through January 20, 2026
To highlight the enduring appeal of storytelling through art among Native nations in the Great Plains, the National Museum of the American Indian commissioned 50 pieces from contemporary artists in 2012. Unbound: Narrative Art of the Plains reintroduces this massive acquisition while bringing it into conversation with muslins, historical hides, and ledger books in the museum’s broader collection. Early narrative artists, many of whom were also warriors, used buffalo-hide shirts and robes as canvases to record their stories, a tradition that later evolved into 19th-century works commonly painted on large canvas tipi liners and muslin cloth. Over time, the scenes grew more elaborate and narrative drawings became a mainstay practice, especially as a new generation of artists in the 1970s revived “ledger art” and created works that also reflected contemporary topics. As seen in “Breaking From Tradition, 21st-Century Ledger Drawing # 58” by Chris Pappan (Kaw (Kansa)/Osage), the subjects of these newer works extend beyond battles and ceremonial scenes, delving into contemporary politics and popular culture. The virtue of Unbound lies not only in showcasing an underrecognized artistic genre and tracing its development but also in contributing to its continuum by inviting living artists to engage with it.
