The Phillips Collection is an
art museum
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own Collection (artwork), collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. A ...
founded by
Duncan Phillips and
Marjorie Acker Phillips
Marjorie Acker Phillips (October 25, 1894 – June 19, 1985) was an American Impressionist painter and art collector. She co-founded the Phillips Collection with her husband, Duncan Phillips (art collector), Duncan Phillips.
Early life and educat ...
in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the
Dupont Circle
Dupont Circle (or DuPont Circle) is a traffic circle, park, neighborhood and historic district in Northwest Washington, D.C. The Dupont Circle neighborhood is bounded approximately by 16th Street NW to the east, 22nd Street NW ...
neighborhood of
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
Phillips was the grandson of
James H. Laughlin
James Laughlin (March 1, 1806 – December 18, 1882) was an Irish-American banker and capitalist, a pioneer of the iron and steel industry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He was born near Portaferry in County Down, Ireland, the son of James Laughl ...
, a banker and co-founder of the
Jones and Laughlin Steel Company
The Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation began as the American Iron Company, founded in 1852 by Bernard Lauth and Benjamin Franklin Jones, a few miles (c 4 km) south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. Lauth's interest was bought in ...
.
Among the artists represented in the collection are
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...
,
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...
,
El Greco
Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...
,
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
,
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
,
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
,
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
,
Georges Braque
Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...
,
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist ...
,
Paul Klee
Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...
,
Arthur Dove
Arthur Garfield Dove (August 2, 1880 – November 23, 1946) was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter.. Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinati ...
,
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in ...
,
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
,
Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own ...
,
Augustus Vincent Tack
Augustus Vincent Tack (1870–1949) was an American painter of portraits, landscapes and abstractions.
Early years
Tack was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and moved with his family to New York in 1883. After graduating from St. Francis Xavier ...
,
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Amer ...
,
Karel Appel
Christiaan Karel Appel (; 25 April 1921 – 3 May 2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-gard ...
,
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
,
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...
and
Berenice Abbott
Berenice Alice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her portraits of between-the-wars 20th century cultural figures, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and ...
.
History
![Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Luncheon of the Boating Party - Google Art Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_-_Luncheon_of_the_Boating_Party_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
Duncan Phillips (1886–1966) played a seminal role in introducing America to
modern art
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...
. Born in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
—the grandson of
James H. Laughlin
James Laughlin (March 1, 1806 – December 18, 1882) was an Irish-American banker and capitalist, a pioneer of the iron and steel industry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He was born near Portaferry in County Down, Ireland, the son of James Laughl ...
, a banker and co-founder of the
Jones and Laughlin Steel Company
The Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation began as the American Iron Company, founded in 1852 by Bernard Lauth and Benjamin Franklin Jones, a few miles (c 4 km) south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. Lauth's interest was bought in ...
—Phillips and his family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1895. He, along with his mother, established The Phillips Memorial Gallery after the sudden, untimely deaths of his brother, James Laughlin Phillips (May 30, 1884 – 1918), and of his father, Duncan Clinch Phillips (1838–1917), a
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
window glass millionaire and member of the
South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club
The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was a Pennsylvania corporation which operated an exclusive and secretive retreat at a mountain lake near South Fork, Pennsylvania, for more than fifty extremely wealthy men and their families. The club was ...
, owners of the dam whose failure resulted in the
Johnstown Flood
The Johnstown Flood (locally, the Great Flood of 1889) occurred on Friday, May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylv ...
.
Beginning with a small family collection of paintings, Phillips, a published art critic, expanded the collection dramatically. A specially built room over the north wing of the family home provided a public gallery space. With the collection exceeding 600 works and facing public demand, the Phillips family moved to a new home in 1930, turning the entire 21st Street residence into an art museum.
Duncan Phillips married painter
Marjorie Acker in 1921. With her assistance and advice, Phillips developed his collection "as a museum of modern art and its sources", believing strongly in the continuum of artists influencing their successors through the centuries. His focus on the continuous tradition of art was revolutionary when America was largely critical of
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
, which was seen as a break from the past. Phillips collected works by masters such as
El Greco, calling him the "first impassioned expressionist";
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin because he was "the first modern painter";
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...
because he was "the stepping stone between the Old Masters and the Great Moderns like
Cézanne"; and
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Born ...
, a "significant link in a chain which began with Goya and which
edto
Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetism, Synthetist style that were d ...
and
Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
."
Polly Fritchey, hostess and wife of columnist
Clayton Fritchey
Clayton Fritchey (June 30, 1904 — January 23, 2001) was an American journalist who spent many years in public service.
Early life
Clayton Fritchey was born in 1904 in Bellefontaine, Ohio. At the age of 2 he moved to Baltimore.
Career
His repor ...
, helped the Phillips Collection evolve from a small family museum into a public art gallery and was one of the first trustees appointed from outside the family. Moreover, she helped launch its national fundraising campaign.
Collection
![El Greco - The Repentant St](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/El_Greco_-_The_Repentant_St._Peter_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
The Phillips Collection, opened in 1921, is America's first museum of
modern art
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...
. Featuring a permanent collection of nearly 3,000 works by American and European impressionist and modern artists, the Phillips is recognized for both its art and its intimate atmosphere. It is housed in founder Duncan Phillips’ 1897
Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
Revival home and two similarly scaled additions in Washington, D.C.’s
Dupont Circle
Dupont Circle (or DuPont Circle) is a traffic circle, park, neighborhood and historic district in Northwest Washington, D.C. The Dupont Circle neighborhood is bounded approximately by 16th Street NW to the east, 22nd Street NW ...
neighborhood.
The museum is noted for its broad representation of both
impressionist
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
and modern paintings, with works by European masters such as
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...
,
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist ...
,
Georges Braque
Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...
,
Jacques Villon
Jacques Villon (July 31, 1875 – June 9, 1963), also known as Gaston Duchamp, was a French Cubist and abstract painter and printmaker.
Early life
Born Émile Méry Frédéric Gaston Duchamp in Damville, Eure, in Normandy, France, he came ...
, Paul Cézanne,
Honoré Daumier
Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808February 10, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second N ...
,
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.
Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is es ...
,
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
,
Paul Klee
Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...
,
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
,
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
, and
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
. In 1923, Phillips purchased
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...
's impressionist painting, ''
Luncheon of the Boating Party
''Luncheon of the Boating Party'' french: Le Déjeuner des canotiers is an 1881 painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Included in the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882, it was identified as the best painting in the s ...
'' (1880–81), the museum’s best-known work.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, Phillips re-arranged his galleries in installations that were non-chronological and non-traditional, reflecting the relationships he saw between various artistic expressions. He presented visual connections—between past and present, between classical form and romantic expression—as dialogues on the museum's walls. Giving equal focus to American and European artists, Phillips juxtaposed works by
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in ...
,
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists.
For the length ...
,
Maurice Prendergast
Maurice Brazil Prendergast (October 10, 1858 – February 1, 1924) was an American artist who painted in oil and watercolor, and created monotypes. His delicate landscapes and scenes of modern life, characterized by mosaic-like color, are ...
,
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
, and
Albert Pinkham Ryder
Albert Pinkham Ryder (March 19, 1847 – March 28, 1917) was an American painter best known for his poetic and moody allegorical works and seascapes, as well as his eccentric personality. While his art shared an emphasis on subtle variations of ...
with canvases by
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist ...
,
Peter Ilsted
Peter Ilsted (14 February 1861 – 16 April 1933) was a Danish artist and printmaker. He was most associated with domestic interior scenes.
Biography
Peter Vilhelm Ilsted was born at Sakskøbing in Guldborgsund, Denmark. He was the son of me ...
and
Édouard Vuillard
Jean-Édouard Vuillard (; 11 November 186821 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior s ...
. He exhibited watercolors by
John Marin
John Marin (December 23, 1870 – October 2, 1953) was an early American modernist artist. He is known for his abstract landscapes and watercolors.
Biography
Marin was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His mother died nine days after his birth, ...
with paintings by Cézanne, and works by
van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...
with El Greco’s ''The Repentant St. Peter'' (circa 1600–05). Phillips’ vision brought together "congenial spirits among the artists," and his ideas still guide the museum today.
The Phillips Collection is also known for its groups of works by artists whom Phillips particularly favored. For example, he was overwhelmed by Bonnard's expressive use of color, acquiring 17 paintings by the artist. Cubist pioneer Braque is represented by 13 paintings, including the monumental still-life ''The Round Table'' (1929). The collection has an equal number of works by Klee, such as ''Arab Song'' (1932) and ''Picture Album'' (1937), as well as seven pieces by abstract expressionist artist
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...
.
The Rothko Room, the first public space dedicated solely to the artist's work, was designed by Phillips in keeping with Rothko's expressed preference for exhibiting his large, luminous paintings in a small, intimate space, saturating the room with color and sensation. The Rothko Room is the only existing installation for the artist's work in collaboration with the artist himself.
Phillips was initially attracted to Rothko's work because he saw the use of color as similar to Bonard's.
[
Throughout his lifetime, Phillips acquired paintings by many artists who were not fully recognized at the time, among them ]John Marin
John Marin (December 23, 1870 – October 2, 1953) was an early American modernist artist. He is known for his abstract landscapes and watercolors.
Biography
Marin was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His mother died nine days after his birth, ...
, Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Amer ...
, Arthur Dove
Arthur Garfield Dove (August 2, 1880 – November 23, 1946) was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter.. Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinati ...
, Nicolas de Staël
Nicolas de Staël (; January 5, 1914 – March 16, 1955) was a French painter of Russian origin known for his use of a thick impasto and his highly abstract landscape painting. He also worked with collage, illustration and textiles.
Early life
...
, Milton Avery
Milton Clark Avery (March 7, 1885 – January 3, 1965Haskell, B. (2003). "Avery, Milton". Grove Art Online.) was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City. He was the husband ...
, Betty Lane
Betty Lane (September 30, 1907 – 1996) was an American artist.
Lane's first exhibition was at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in 1931. Lane created figure subjects, portraits, and landscapes executed in watercolor and oil. Her work includes ...
and Augustus Vincent Tack
Augustus Vincent Tack (1870–1949) was an American painter of portraits, landscapes and abstractions.
Early years
Tack was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and moved with his family to New York in 1883. After graduating from St. Francis Xavier ...
. By purchasing works by such promising but unknown artists, Phillips provided them with the means to continue painting. He formed close bonds with and subsidized several artists who are prominently featured in the collection—Dove and Marin in particular—and consistently purchased works by artists and students for what he called his "encouragement collection." The museum also served as a visual haven for artists such as Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he bega ...
, Gene Davis, and Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was though ...
. In a 1982 tribute to the museum, Noland acknowledged, "I’ve spent many hours of many days in this home of art. You can be with art in the Phillips as in no other place I know."
In 2013, the museum opened its second permanent installation, a room covered in wax by artist Wolfgang Laib
Wolfgang Laib (born 25 March 1950 in Metzingen, Germany) is a German artist, predominantly known as a sculptor. He lives and works in a small village in southern Germany, maintaining studios in New York City, New York and South India.
His work has ...
. Though Laib's work is often interpreted as evocative of nature, the piece, which is 6 feet by 7 feet and illuminated by one bare bulb, can also seem harsh and enigmatic. Laib became interested in the site-specific installation, which requires about 500 pounds of wax, after visiting the museum's Rothko Room.
Building
The Phillips Collection is housed in a distinctive space in Washington's Dupont Circle
Dupont Circle (or DuPont Circle) is a traffic circle, park, neighborhood and historic district in Northwest Washington, D.C. The Dupont Circle neighborhood is bounded approximately by 16th Street NW to the east, 22nd Street NW ...
neighborhood. From the beginning, Duncan Phillips exhibited his collection in special galleries at his home. A Georgian Revival house dating to 1897, the Phillips house now forms the southern section of the museum building, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
as Duncan Phillips House.
Over time, the building was adapted to include more galleries and offices, particularly after the Phillips family moved out in 1930. In 1960, Phillips added a modernist wing. This addition was renovated and reconceived in 1989 with the aid of a $1.5 million gift from Japanese businessman Yasuhiro Goh. The addition, now known as the Goh Annex, is named in his honor.
2006 renovation and expansion project
To accommodate its ever-growing collection of art, audiences, and activities, the Phillips completed a major building project in April 2006. With 65 percent of the added located below ground, the expansion preserves the intimate scale and residential quality that distinguishes The Phillips Collection, as well as respects the character of the Dupont Circle neighborhood. The new spaces, known as the Sant Building, incorporate expanded galleries, among them the first to accommodate larger-scale post-1950s work; a 180-seat auditorium for lectures, films, and events; an outdoor courtyard; and a new shop and café. The architect for the new building was Arthur Cotton Moore
Arthur Cotton Moore (April 12, 1935 – September 4, 2022) was an American architect who achieved national and international recognition for his contributions to architecture, master planning, furniture design, painting, and writing.
Moore beg ...
. Two of the most notable elements of the new structure are the winding white interior staircase and the external sculptural stone relief of a bird relating to Georges Braque
Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...
's painting ''Bird'' from the museum's collection.
The University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at The Phillips Collection
The 2006 addition also made possible The Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art. This new museum-based educational model brought together scholars from across academic fields in an ongoing forum for discussion, research, and publishing on modern art. The two-story building, formerly the carriage house
A carriage house, also called a remise or coach house, is an outbuilding which was originally built to house horse-drawn carriages and the related tack.
In Great Britain the farm building was called a cart shed. These typically were open f ...
, is the site of the lively programs and classes on modern and contemporary art and artists. In 2015, the Phillips launched a partnership with The University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the Flagship un ...
with a shared vision to transform scholarship and innovation in the arts. With the launch, the Center was renamed The University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at The Phillips Collection. "The University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at The Phillips Collection is the expansion of the Center for the Study of Modern Art—the museum’s nexus for academic work, scholarly exchange, and innovative interdisciplinary collaborations." Some of the key collaborations of the partnership include developing a new arts curriculum and extended studies courses, postdoctoral fellowships, a biennial book prize, and programming and events.
Education
Since the museum's early years, when art classes were held on the third floor of the house, significant attention has been given to educational outreach. Today, the museum features an active schedule of lectures, gallery talks, classes, parent/child workshops, and teacher training programs. It also reaches out to the community through initiatives such as Art Links to Literacy, combining programs for underserved students at District of Columbia Public Schools
The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is the local public school system for the District of Columbia, in the United States.
It is distinct from the District of Columbia Public Charter Schools (DCPCS), which governs public charter ...
and their parents and caregivers with professional development for their teachers. These and other ventures are facilitated by new exhibition spaces for student art, an art activity room for hands-on education projects, and an art technology lab for developing interactive resources based on the museum's educational programs.
In 2015, the museum joined forces with the University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
. The two institutions will work together to establish the University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at the Phillips Collection.
Programs
Phillips After 5 combines live jazz, gallery talks, modern art, and a cash bar on the first Thursday of every month from 5 to 8:30 pm.
Sunday Concerts, founded in 1941, offer classical chamber music in the intimacy of the museum's oak-paneled Music Room. The concerts have featured ensembles and soloists ranging from Glenn Gould
Glenn Herbert Gould (; né Gold; September 25, 1932October 4, 1982) was a Canadian classical pianist. He was one of the most famous and celebrated pianists of the 20th century, and was renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard works of Johann ...
, Jessye Norman
Jessye Mae Norman (September 15, 1945 – September 30, 2019) was an American opera singer and recitalist. She was able to perform dramatic soprano roles, but refused to be limited to that voice type. A commanding presence on operatic, concert ...
, Jean-Yves Thibaudet
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (born 7 September 1961)Michael & Joyce Kennedy, 2007. is a French pianist.
Early life and studies
Jean-Yves Thibaudet was born in Lyon, France, to non-professional musical parents. His father played the violin, and his mother, ...
, and Emanuel Ax
Emanuel "Manny" Ax (born 8 June 1949) is a Grammy-winning American classical pianist. He is a teacher in the Juilliard School.
Early life
Ax was born to a Polish-Jewish family in Lviv, Ukraine, (in what was then the Soviet Union) to Joachim and ...
to some of the most talented young musicians performing today. Sunday Concerts are held from October through May. They begin promptly at 4 pm.
In December 2009, The Pink Line Project put together a multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
evening called "Art Is _____." Visitors were invited to remix the definition of art, using Duncan Phillips's writings as source material. Guests could send text messages
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible compute ...
to a computer engineer who projected them onto a wall, creating a group art project.
In 2021, the museum hosted a juried invitational exhibition titled ''Inside Outside, Upside Down'', which was described by ''The Washington City Paper
The ''Washington City Paper'' is a U.S. alternative weekly newspaper serving the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The ''City Paper'' is distributed on Thursdays; its average circulation in 2006 was 85,588. The paper's editorial mix is focused ...
'' as forcing "us to remember a time that left us 'confused, battered, and disoriented' through the eyes of 64 D.C.-area artists."
Directors
When Duncan Phillips died in 1966, his wife Marjorie succeeded him as museum director. Their son, Laughlin, became director in 1972. He led The Phillips Collection through a multi-year program to ensure the physical and financial security of the collection, renovate and enlarge the museum buildings, expand and professionalize the staff, conduct research on the collection, and make the Phillips more accessible to the public. In 1992, Charles S. Moffett, a noted author and curator, was named director. Moffett was directly involved with the presentation of several ambitious exhibitions during his six-year tenure, including the memorable "Impressionists on the Seine: A Celebration of Renoir’s ''Luncheon of the Boating Party''" in 1996.
Jay Gates became director in 1998. Under his leadership, The Phillips Collection continued to grow and broaden its presence in Washington, D.C., across the country, and internationally. Dorothy M. Kosinski, previously a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...
, took over as director in May 2008.Jacqueline Trescott, The Washington Post, ''Phillips Collection Taps Dallas Curator To Succeed Director''
Retrieved January 4, 2011
List of directors
*Dorothy M. Kosinski (2008–present)
*Jay Gates (1998–2008)
*Charles Moffett (1992–1998)
*
Laughlin Phillips
Laughlin Phillips (October 20, 1924 – January 24, 2010), also known as Loc Phillips, was an American museum director from Washington, D.C. The son of wealthy art collectors, he managed The Phillips Collection, a museum founded by his parent ...
(1972–1992), son of Duncan and Marjorie Phillips
*
Marjorie Acker (1966–1972), artist and wife of Duncan Phillips
*
Duncan Phillips (1921–1966), founder
Selected highlights
File:Francisco José de Goya - The Repentant St. Peter - Google Art Project.jpg, Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...
, ''St. Peter Repentant,'' 1823-1825
File:Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix 045.jpg, Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
, ''Portrait of Paganini, 1832
File:Honore Daumier The Uprising.jpg, Honoré Daumier
Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808February 10, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second N ...
, ''The Uprising'', 1848
File:Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine 1886-1887 Paul Cezzane.jpg, Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...
, ''Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine'', 1886-1887
File:Paul Gauguin 035.jpg, Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...
, ''The Ham'', 1889
File:Van Gogh Entrance to the Public Park in Arles.jpg, Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
, ''Entrance to the Public Park in Arles'', 1888
File:Van Gogh The Road Menders-1889-Phillips.jpg, Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
, ''The Road Menders,'' 1889
File:Albert Pinkham Ryder - Moonlit Cove - Google Art Project.jpg, Albert Pinkham Ryder
Albert Pinkham Ryder (March 19, 1847 – March 28, 1917) was an American painter best known for his poetic and moody allegorical works and seascapes, as well as his eccentric personality. While his art shared an emphasis on subtle variations of ...
, ''Seacoast in Moonlight,'' 1890
File:Van Gogh Wheat Field at Auvers with House.jpg, Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
, ''Wheat Field at Auvers with House'', 1890
Julian Alden Weir 001.jpg, J. Alden Weir
Julian Alden Weir (August 30, 1852 – December 8, 1919) was an American impressionist painter and member of the Cos Cob Art Colony near Greenwich, Connecticut. Weir was also one of the founding members of "The Ten", a loosely allied group of ...
, ''The Red Bridge,'' ca. 1895
Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - The Judgement of Paris - Google Art Project.jpg, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...
, ''Judgment of Paris
Judgement (or US spelling judgment) is also known as ''adjudication'', which means the evaluation of evidence to decision-making, make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. The term has at least five distinct u ...
'', c. 1908
File:Amedeo Modigliani Portrait of Elena Pavlowski.jpg, Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
, ''Portrait of Elena Pavlowski'', 1917
See also
*
List of museums in Washington, D.C.
This list of museums in Washington, D.C. encompasses museums defined for this context as institutions (including nonprofit organizations, government entities, and private businesses) that collect and care for objects of cultural, artistic, scientif ...
References
External links
*
Washington Post.com: "The Goh Annex"The Phillips Collectionwithin
Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world.
It utilizes high-resolution image technol ...
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phillips Collection
Art museums and galleries in Washington, D.C.
Biographical museums in Washington, D.C.
Museums of American art
Dupont Circle
Embassy Row
Former private collections in the United States
Members of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington
Art museums established in 1921
1921 establishments in Washington, D.C.
Georgian Revival architecture in Washington, D.C.