Welcome to Artful Weekend, our guide to fun and interesting ways to enjoy and engage in art as you shelter-in-place or practice social distancing. 

This weekend: Two outdoor exhibits, Cuban youth culture through photography, Ai Weiwei’s new film, and more!

August 2020 Open Exhibit and My Body, Shamed

See the breadth of works created by our member artists in the August 2020 Open Exhibit, on view now in the Gallery. Then step into the solo gallery to view My Body, Shamed, artist Barbara Muth’s series of paintings depicting her journey towards physical self-acceptance. The Gallery’s new hours are 12:00-4:00 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. There is a limit of ten visitors at a time and face masks and temperature checks are required upon entry. You can also view and shop the both exhibits online.

Painter Sally Davies received the August 2020 Open Exhibit Best-in-Show Award for her painting Labyrinth of Life: View From the Top of the Whitney, NYC. Read how this winning work came to be in  Creativity in Action.

If you have been interested in taking one of our online art courses but not quite sure what to expect, have we got a deal for you! Painting instructor Elizabeth Floyd will conduct a free, online Still-Life Oil Painting Demonstration on Tuesday, September 15, from 10 – 11:30 a.m to give you a feel for art classes via Zoom. Don’t miss out! Register today!

Passage

Artist Lynda Andrews-Barry’s 26 large-scale sculptures—created from driftwood, rebar, metal hardware, and canvas sails—are designed to evoke the ships that transported more than 12 million kidnapped and enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean between the 16th and 19th centuries. The artwork skillfully reflects the ways in which Virginia was implicated in, and continues to be impacted by, this history, while also grappling with the legacy of celebrated oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury. See Passages on the lawn of the Arlington Arts Center through December 13; 3550 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA.

Havana Youth

D.C.-based fine art photographer Greg Kahn explores Cuban youth culture and examines how the country’s Millennial and Gen Z generations seek to define themselves as individuals in a nation that emphasizes the collective. Havana Youth is on view through November 24 at Marymount University’s Cody Gallery; 2807 North Glebe Road, Arlington, VA.

Murals That Matter

The National Building Museum, in partnership with the P.A.I.N.T.S. Institute and the DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID), presents Murals That Matter: Activism Through Public Art, an outdoor exhibit featuring D.C. street art created in response to recent social justice protests. On Saturday, July 29, six artists will add to the exhibit, painting murals commemorating the “Big Six” organizers of the March On Washington—John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, Whitney Young, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—to mark the 57th anniversary of the iconic event; located on the Museum’s west lawn, 5th Street NW, between F and G streets.

Coranation

Recently, artist and activist Ai Weiwei did a Beyonce by unexpectedly dropping a new work. Coronation, a film he directed remotely from Europe, illustrates the devastation the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked on Wuhan, China—the world’s first epicenter for the virus—and the measures that the Chinese government took to suppress its severity. Rent and stream it on Vimeo On Demand or Alamo On Demand.

Enjoy your weekend and wear your mask.