A More Perfect Union - Quote of the Week

"If I am shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet."

-Andrew Johnson

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Artistic Diversions

Art lovers attending the Affirmation Conference will find that they have arrived in Washington shortly after the openings of two blockbuster art retrospectives at the National Gallery of Art, located on the National Mall at 4th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, not far from the Hyatt hotel. Admission to the National Gallery is always free, and the museum is open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.



The Edward Hopper exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of Hopper's career to be seen in American museums outside New York in more than 25 years. Focusing on the period of the artist's great achievements—from about 1925 to midcentury—the exhibition will feature such iconic paintings as Automat (1927), Drug Store (1927), Early Sunday Morning (1930), New York Movie (1939), and Nighthawks (1942).



The J.M.W. Turner exhibition is the most comprehensive survey of Turner's work ever presented in the United States. More than 145 paintings and watercolors reveal the astonishing talent and imagination of this artist—whom Alfred, Lord Tennyson called "The Shakespeare of landscape."


For more information about these exhibitions, I have provided a link to the comments made by one of Washington's most insightful bloggers on the arts. For his comments on the Hopper show, please click here, and for his comments on the Turner show, please click here.


Music lovers may also be interested to know that on a few rare occasions each year, the National Symphony Orchestra plays a Friday matinee concert at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, and this coming Friday, October 5, at 1:30 PM, is one of those occasions. (The early starting time of the concert leaves you plenty of time to return to the hotel long before the Conference activities begin on Friday evening.)


This is the opening weekend of the NSO's subscription season, and they're starting things off with a bang - the program includes a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Conductor Leonard Slatkin leads the NSO, a quartet of accomplished soloists, and The Choral Arts Society of Washington. You can find more information here.

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