Renwick Gallery: American Crafts Within American Architecture
In our nation’s capitol, no art museum is more befitting to American history than that of the Renwick gallery. As a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Renwick holds the museum’s contemporary craft collection inside a monumental historic building. Visiting it reveals both a stunning architectural and art display that it’s hard to decide which is the highlight.
The Renwick consists of sculptures, installations and decorative arts from the United States. Highlights include Larry Fuente’s “Game Fish” made up of toys, trinkets, ping-pong balls, dice, beads, poker chips, plastic figurines and other small familiar items; Beth Lipman’s “Bancketje (Banquet)” consisting of several hundred pieces of glass on a long oak dining table, recreating formal still-life dining scenes in Dutch paintings; and Wendell Castle’s “Ghost Clock” sculpture of a sheet draped over a grandfather clock.
Exhibits pass through the Renwick often as well. Past and current exhibits include “A Revolution in Wood," featuring turning wood and carved pieces by some of the best wood artists in the country; arts and crafts from the Japanese Internment camps including teapots, furniture, toys and games, musical instruments, decorative pieces and jewelry; and decorative arts from the White House.
Founded in 1859 as the city’s first art museum, the Renwick gallery actually housed the Corcoran Gallery of Art until that museum grew too large and moved out. The Renwick building was created by architect James Renwick Jr. in 1859, in the Paris Second Empire style popular at the time and modeled after the Tuileries addition to the Louvre in Paris. It was nearly torn down in 1950 because its valuable space near the White House, but fought to be saved by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and S. Dillon Ripley, the secretary for the Smithsonian.
In 1972, it re-opened as part of the Smithsonian under the Renwick name (preserving the building’s architect’s name). The museum underwent renovations one more time in 2000, when it received state-of-the-art lighting using recreated natural light, historic laylight, custom drapes and gilding. All art in the Grand Salon is hung on rose-colored, 40-foot walls.
Posted on Jan 10, 2011 by Rin-rin Yu
