As we enter the season when many communities remember and honor their ancestors, DC’s art scene centers its own — both those long celebrated and those overlooked or excluded from the mainstream. The National Museum of Women in the Arts highlights Black women quilters creating across time and space, while the National Gallery of Art explores the history of Black American portrait photographers revolutionizing the field. Roberto Benavidez reimagines the art of piñata-making at the Renwick Gallery, while Ahn Chang-Hong channels Korean historical memory into masks, paintings, and sculptures. The Phillips Collection investigates the friendship between three artists — Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko — and the National Museum of Asian Art displays the handiwork of unknown artists whose objects crossed oceans and centuries to appear before us. As Trump disassembles Washington’s cultural landscape and reshapes it in his own image, artists in DC continue to resist.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Look Alive
Georgetown de la Cruz Gallery, 3535 Prospect Street NW, Washington, DC
September 18–April 11, 2027
In Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s site-specific installation “Pulse Map,” the latest in his Pulse series, a maze of polycarbonate lightbulbs flicker in rhythm with the heartbeat of previous visitors. In the age of biometric tracking, Lozano-Hemmer invites attendees to anonymously record their heartbeat with suspended camera sensors. Their real biorhythms will then create the new soundtrack for future visitors, in essence using their own bodies to create the work with Lozano-Hemmer. Look Alive situates the piece in a series of Lozano-Hemmer’s other installations that adapt alongside visitors’ bodily and sensory experiences.
