Past Exhibitions

This exhibition presents artifacts collected by his grandson, Ulysses S. Grant III, and donated to the GW Collection. As you view each one, consider: what clues does it offer about Grant as an individual?

View Into the Senses highlights thirteen artists from the GW Collection. Created between 1957 through 1984, the works on paper elucidate how the first abstract expressionist movement shifted the art world’s focus from Europe to the United States, demonstrating new experiments in minimalism.

The large-scale sculpture, Ghost Dance, by the artist Robert Stackhouse was gifted to the George Washington University as part of the Corcoran Study Collection in 2014. The Stackhouse work is a focal point for a juried exhibition of sculptural works by members of the Washington Sculptors Group that celebrate similar themes of renewal, rebirth, and sustainability explored in the Ghost Dance piece.

The exhibition was presented in Galleries 4 & 5 and funded by the Director's Discretionary Fund and the Friends of the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery.

Curated by students in the Fall 2021 History of Exhibitions class, taught by Lynn Matheny, the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery presents Re/presentation.  An exhibition of photographs drawn from the Corcoran Study Collection, it explores how identity is mediated multiple times through the taking of a photograph and how what we present to the world is not always what is received by the viewer.  Images by artists such as Harold Edgerton, Annie Leibovitz, and Garry Winogrand are divided into sections including Gaze|Perception and Athleticism|Physicality.  The exhibition was presented in Gallery 6.

How do our memories reflect what transpired?  How and what do we use to create a physical reminder?  Humanity strives to create memorials and remember in many ways: through memorials, writing, and of course artistic representation.  This Spring Selections show exhibits photographs, prints, and drawings from the GW Collection and Corcoran Study Collection centered around the subject of remembering and was presented in Galleries 4&5.

Concurring Experiences: Together, Apart is an exhibition commemorating the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 national lockdown, showcasing 23 works from the Corcoran Study Collection curated and researched in Fall 2020 by the MA Exhibition Design class History of Exhibitions, led by Dr. Lisa Lipinski. Through the lens of finding and uplifting community in times of isolation, the show follows eight themes.  Originally presented in an online format, with each theme linked to calls-to-actions, social justice organizations, and mutual aid funds, hoping to uplift these missions with larger audiences and community.  This exhibition is presented in Gallery 6.

Presenting works from the Corcoran Study Collection and the GW Collection along with key loans, the exhibition presents little known works from those collections along with a focus on the work of William Christenberry.  This exhibition is presented in Gallery 4 & 5.

Students from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design were given the opportunity to see their works on display alongside pieces from the GW Collection including artists such as Lowell Nesbitt, Alfred McAdams, James Twitty and Franklin White. The exhibition also included two new gifts of artwork by B.K. Adams and John Singer Sargent.

In the first exhibition of works from the former Corcoran Gallery of Art’s collection, recently returned to the Flagg Building, HOME showed the many facets of “home” through photographic works. From works exploring Washington, D.C., the city many of us call home, to more intangible feelings of comfort, these works explore the many different definitions 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 a poignant reflection, 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.

For this exhibition, the Brady Art Gallery collaborated with students from the GW graduate course History of Exhibitions, taught by Lisa Lipinski, to produce this show. Drawing inspiration from the works in the Corcoran Study Collection and the theme of home, students researched and wrote the wall labels for the included works in this exhibition, adding to the continuing scholarship on the works. Artists include Joe Cameron, Vladimir Filonov, Jacob Gayer, Jan Groover, Paul Kennedy, Darrow Montgomery (Corcoran BFA ’87), Richard Rodriguez (GW MFA ’81), Arthur Rothstein, Claudia Smigrod (GW MFA ’78), Nikolai Smilyk, Diana Walker, and Garry Winogrand.

This exhibition showcased a number of well-known designers, models and individuals connected to fashion including Carolina Herrera, Neiman Marcus, Brigitte Bardot and Mick Jagger. Countering the glamorous side of the fashion industry, photographs by Steven Livick drew attention to the slim line between models and their inanimate counterparts: mannequins.

This exhibition was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Fast Fashion/Slow Art. 

A companion exhibition opening to 6.13.89. This exhibition will display paintings, drawings and prints from the GW Collection by artists who registered their protest of the cancellation of the exhibition, Robert Mapplethorpe: A Perfect Moment. Also included are selected reminiscences of artists who were in Washington, D.C. at the time experiencing the upheaval as it occurred. Among these artists are Clark V. Fox, Andrew Hudson, Eric Rudd, Ann Purcell and William Newman.

Collecting since 1821, GW holds many “hidden” treasures ranging from an early painting by the famed painter Fernando Botero, to a trove of over 152 photographs by Andy Warhol.  The GW Collection now numbers over 3800 works with particular strengths in modern and contemporary photography, Washington-area artists and GW-associated artists such as alumni, professors and artists who were exhibited at the Dimock or Brady Art Galleries.  Now located in the Corcoran Flagg Building, the collection continues to represent the university’s long history in the Washington D.C. art scene.

This exhibition displayed four prints from Howard Hodgkin’s 1995 “Venetian Series” from a recent gift of 10 prints from GW alumna Carleen Keating, alongside a rug designed by Mr. Hodgkin and a painting titled “Little Venice.”

Hodgkin (1923-2017), a British painter, completed more than 120 lithographs, etchings and screen prints during his career. This suite of four large-scale prints on Venice, measure approximately 5 by 6 feet each, mirrorring Hodgkin’s paintings in size and the stylistic feeling provided by hand coloring and a brushstroke-like mark. The rug was gifted to GW by the late artist’s partner Antony Peattie and facilitated by Dr. Luther W. Brady. 

A companion exhibition, “Italy Inspiration,” showed photographs and prints from the GW Collection and paintings by GW alumni and a GW professor emeritus depicting the feel of Italy as well as the country’s unique sites.

In the first exhibition in their new space; three galleries in GW’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery paid tribute to the Washington Color School as well as the historic connections shared by GW’s art galleries and collection and the Corcoran.

This exhibition brought to mind parallels between the collection and exhibition histories of GW and the Corcoran. More than thirty works were shown by notable Washington Color School and Color Field artists including Blair Apperson, Leon Berkowitz, Renee Butler, Gene Davis, Tom Downing, Sam Gilliam, Gay Glading, Carol Brown Goldberg, Cynthia Bickley Green, James Hilleary, Darryl Hughto, Sheila Isham, Jacob Kainen, Daniel Yellow Kuhne, Mokha Laget, Morris Louis, Willem de Looper, Howard Mehring, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Ann Purcell, Paul Reed, Alma Thomas, Anne Truitt and Ken Young.