Workers at Glenstone Faced Union-Busting Tactics Before NLRB Vote

Hourly Glenstone employees voted to unionize earlier this month, joining a growing trend of museum employees organizing around their labor.

Two days after hourly employees at the private, billionaire-owned Glenstone art museum voted to unionize, a member of the leadership team felt compelled to share his thoughts. In particular, Director of Regional Partnerships Paul Tukey had some choice words for the employees “who don’t feel lucky to work here.” “Glenstone is great because of the…

by Will Lennon

Visual Artist Roderick Turner Shines Light on D.C.’s Past for the Future to Remember

In his Life in DC exhibit, the local painter captures the District’s changes and gentrification through decades-spanning work.

Painting is so integral to local artist Roderick Turner’s life that you’ll hardly ever find him not working on his art. Even in mid-conversation, it’s likely he’ll pull out his supplies and begin a new project—something he did while speaking with City Paper for this article. Sitting on a bench inside Foundry Gallery, where staff…

by Dorvall Bedford

Glenstone Employees Move to Unionize

The museum’s leadership, including billionaire cofounder Mitchell Rales and his wife, Emily Rales, have so far opted not to voluntarily recognize the Glenstone Museum Workers United, prompting a potential union election.

Local unionization efforts, taking place at restaurants, bookstores, and health centers, have officially spread to D.C.-area museums. On Wednesday, May 8, hourly staff at the Glenstone museum in Potomac announced their intent to unionize. As of last week, a supermajority of the bargaining unit had signed union authorization cards to join the International Brotherhood of…

by Sarah Marloff

Driskell and Friends: Reacquaint Yourself With Black American Art History

The traveling exhibit at the Driskell Center through May 24 illustrates how David C. Driskell’s relationship with his contemporaries, mentors, and mentees was pivotal to the development of the African American artistic canon.

David C. Driskell’s story started in Eatonton, Georgia, where he came of age during the Jim Crow era, but when it ended in 2020—he died at age 88 from complications related to COVID—he was a distinguished professor emeritus who served as chair of the University of Maryland’s art department. Driskell earned a bachelor’s degree in…

by Shantay Robinson

What Happens After the Paint Dries? The Thought and Upkeep Behind Outdoor Public Art

From Nekisha Durrett to Tommy Bobo, local artists offer an inside look at making and maintaining public art installations.

On a cloudy, dewy morning at the Congressional Cemetery, unleashed dogs and their human companions roam freely as a man crouches between gravestones and inspects one of his 150 mirror sculptures. In March, D.C.-based artist Tommy Bobo installed the first commissioned public art for the cemetery, featuring mirrors staked into the ground at about shin…

by Nicole Schaller

Undesign the Redline Explores the Racist Housing Policies that Shaped Upper Northwest

The new exhibit is on display at the Cleveland Park Library until July 11

Do you know the story of how the land for Fort Reno Park and Alice Deal Junior High School (now Deal Middle School) was allocated? The land originally housed the Reno community, a majority-Black section of Ward 3. But in the 1930s, D.C. used eminent domain to forcibly remove almost 400 families living in the…

by Cat Sposato

Brothers, Vibrant Colors, and a Shared Abstraction: Two Reasons to Visit Touchstone Gallery

One’s a photographer, the other’s a painter, but these dual exhibits from brothers Tom and McCain McMurray, running through April 28, demonstrate the siblings’ visual echoes.

Making artful aerial photographs of despoiled landscapes is hardly a pathbreaking artistic genre, but damned if Tom McMurray’s color-saturated images of scarred mining landscapes in the sprawling Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia aren’t gorgeous—guiltily so. McMurray is based in Boulder, Colorado, but he was part of a team of photographers and filmmakers who…

by Louis Jacobson

Homme Gallery Opens Its Third Location Inside Union Station

The new location will offer more events and more art, but the inaugural exhibition from Maurice James Jr. pays homage to the station’s trains by putting an Afrofuturist spin on the Underground Railroad.

Commuters traveling through Union Station are about to experience something new. Currently known for its slate of fast food offerings and a handful of shops, it is one of the busiest train stations in the country and it’s about to be the home of D.C.’s third Homme Gallery location. The grand opening takes place on…

by Dorvall Bedford

“Adventures of the Optic Nerve”: Enjoy a Visual Feast of Looking in Bonnard’s Worlds

The Phillips Collection’s latest show is a career-spanning exhibition of Pierre Bonnard, the divisive French painter from the turn of the century.

The painter Pierre Bonnard was a divisive figure in his age, reviled and revered, considered both forward-thinking and hopelessly retrograde, depending on who you asked around the turn of the century. (Henri Matisse loved him, Pablo Picasso couldn’t stand him). Bonnard was a member of Les Nabis, a group of artists who bridged the gap…

by Stephanie Rudig

Remembering Michael Reidy, Musician and Visual Artist

As frontperson for pre-punk band Razz, Michael Reidy rose to local stardom, but the former City Paper illustrator’s art remains equally iconic. He died March 5.

Michael Reidy, visual artist and rock singer from the 1970s D.C. band Razz, died on March 5 from complications of a stroke. This energetic, charismatic musician’s local fame came largely from his fronting role in Razz, which existed on and off from 1971 to ’79. Reidy co-wrote many of the band’s original songs that showed…

by Steve Kiviat

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