The Renwick Gallery

The Renwick Gallery occupies the eye-catching building at 1661 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, just around the corner from the White House.  I have walked past the Renwick dozens of times and love its red brick facade with the slate gray mansard roof, but until today, hadn't paid it a visit.  The Renwick (named for its architect James Renwick) was commissioned in the 1850's by William Wilson Corcoran to display his private art collection. 

This, the original Corcoran Gallery of Art,  opened its doors in 1874, but by the late 1800s a larger building was needed giving rise to the present day Corcoral Gallery just down 17th street.  The building was used for government offices for several decades and fell into disrepair.  It wasn't until the Jacqueline Kennedy took an interest in preserving the building that it was renamed (for its architect, James Renwick) and established as part of the Smithsonian.   The Renwick opened in its current form in 1972.   Partnered with the Smithsonian American Art museum, it displays primarily crafts and decorative arts, although it also has a small collection of 19th century paintings.

I  picked the Renwick today because it was the last day of the 2009 Renwick Craft Invitational, an showing of the works of 4 up and coming craft artists.   This year's invitees were Christyl Boger and SunKoo Yuh, both ceramacists, Mary Van Cline, who does pieces combining glass and photography, and Mark Newport, knitter extraordinaire. 

This exhibit was just plain fun...even the pieces that weren't my style, made me giggle (who doesn't love grecian style ceramic nudes with inflatable pool toys?).  However, SunKoo Yuh and Mark Newport were the hands down winners as far as I'm concerned. Yuh creates amazing narratives in clay with his large scale sculptures.  Some of the pieces were easily 3 feet tall and were comprised of dozens of people, animals and inanimate objects.  I have no idea how he manages to build sculptures that are so complex and so large that come out of the kiln intact, much less with all of the color and sculptural detail coordinating as well as they do.  

The focus of Newport's work?...superheros.  Or rather, would-be, B-list superheros that will never make it into the League of Justice.  Some of his work was displayed as drawings of the superheros engaged in mundane tasks (knitting a force field, having mom button that top button on the super suit).  The remainder, were giant, ill-fitting, knitted superhero suits.  Batman's suit was there, but also less likely heros like "sweaterman".  As a fan of "The Tick", I was somewhat disappointed not to see a big blue suit included in the showing, but sweaterman would probably be more helpful on a single digit January day like today.   I couldn't take pictures of the pieces in the invitational, but the Renwick has a link with photos from all of the artists.

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2009/craft_invite_2009/

I perused the permanent collection at the Renwick as well.  It is an eclectic collection including jewelry, furniture and textiles.  There are also some crazy large scale pieces like Beth Lipman's "Banquet", a banquet table set entirely in glass (plates, food, drink, candles...all of it) 

My personal favorite for the day, Larry Fuente's GameFish, a swordfish decorated to the nines in yo-yo's, trophy figurines, combs, dominos, and complete with a set of dentures.  Game Fish alone is worth the trip...I would absolutely decorate my house like this, but that might push my house clutter over to the wrong side of crazy.   I'll just have to settle for visits back to the Renwick.