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Selections from the Corcoran Study Collection

 

 

Class of GW students stands in the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery

Richard Rodriguez (b. 1950), Chris's Room, 1979 (printed 1980), dye coupler (chromogenic) print mounted on board. CGA.1980.145. Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Museum Purchase with the aid of finds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C., a Federal agency, and the Polaroid Corporation). © Richard Rodriguez

How do we depict home? Is it just a physical dwelling, a person, or is home really where the heart is? HOME: Selections from the Corcoran Study Collection shows many facets of home through photographic works from the former Corcoran Gallery of Art’s collection, which have recently returned to Corcoran Flagg Building. From works exploring Washington, D.C., the city many of us call home, to more intangible feelings of comfort, these works explore the many facets of home. Reinterpreted within a very personal subject, some of these photographs are unintentionally moving. Joe Cameron’s work showing reflections on the side of the National Museum of American History is imbued with new poignancy, while nearby an image of an open garage by Garry Winogrand becomes a portal to the safe interior of a home for the young child depicted. As you view these works we invite you to consider your perceptions of what ‘home’ means to you.

Since moving to their new home in the Flagg building, the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery has embraced its role to provide hands-on learning opportunities to students at GW. For this exhibition, the Gallery collaborated with students from the graduate course History of Exhibitions, taught by Lisa Lipinski, to produce this exhibition. Drawing inspiration from the works in the Corcoran Study Collection and the theme of home, students researched and wrote the wall labels for the works in this exhibition, adding to the continuing scholarship on the works.

Olivia Kohler-Maga

Assistant Director

 

PART 1: HOME as Place      PART 2: HOME as Feeling

PART 3: Washington, DC as HOME      PART 4: Corcoran as HOME

 

History of Exhibitions class Fall 2019

 

History of Exhibitions (Fall 2019) was taught by Lisa Lipinski, Associate Professor of Art History. After viewing and selecting the works from the Corcoran Study Collection, students in the class consulted the archival documents in the Special Collections of the Gelman Library, from the former Corcoran Gallery of Art, and wrote the wall labels for the exhibition.

Text was contributed by the following students: Natalie Adam, Anna Bowers, Leah Brand, Aseeli Coleman, Jessica Conklin, Cameron Lakin, Dimitrios Lykoudis, Alex Morpurgo, Stefani Oh, Lauren Raffensperger, Jeff Rivers, Paige Sellars, Yueqi Sun, and Anne Wilsey.

 

The Corcoran Study Collection consists of 830 works from the former Corcoran Gallery of Art’s collection and serves as a resource for teaching, study, and research by faculty and students at GW. We would like to acknowledge Sara Berg, Collections Specialist, Corcoran Study Collection, for all of her work on this exhibition.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art was one of the first private museums in the United States established in 1869 by William Wilson Corcoran and expanded in 1880 to include the Corcoran College of Art and Design with the mission “dedicated to art and used solely for the purpose of encouraging the American genius.” In 2014, the Corcoran transferred the college to the George Washington University and distributed the works from its Collection to museums and institutions in Washington, D.C.