Art and Sculpture at the REACH
On the Grounds
Milk River
Deborah Butterfield
2019, painted bronze, 87” high
Gift of Samuel G. Rose
Deborah Butterfield assembled pieces of driftwood to create Milk River, then cast each piece in bronze, reassembled the metal pieces, and painted them. The sculpture is named for a river in Montana, where she works. Butterfield's horses are unusual in that they are mares, not stallions as is more common in art. She says she wants to make “big beautiful mares that are as strong and imposing as stallions but capable of creation and nourishing life. It is a very personal statement.” The horse is among the most ancient and persistent images in art, familiar even in the caves at Lascaux. Within this long tradition, Butterfield's mares occupy a special place; they are not work horses, nor transport, nor war horses. Her horses are thrilling and noble reminders of our once-close intimacy with nature.
Located in the Presidential Grove
Brushstroke
Roy Lichtenstein
1996-97, painted aluminum, 32’ high
Lent by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Roy Lichtenstein burst on the art scene in the early 1960s with paintings inspired by comic books; today they look disarming and playful, but when new, they seemed shockingly irreverent. For three decades, he amusingly used an isolated brushstroke as the emblem of high art. Then Lichtenstein created his first Brushstroke sculptures, giving fluid “paint” a free-standing physical presence. The monumentality of this example evokes the heroism of the abstract expressionist painters, while its rapid calligraphic energy belies its static form.
Located on the Lower Lawn
Blue
Joel Shapiro
2019, painted aluminum, 24’ high
Gift of the artist
Joel Shapiro’s sculptures explode with the exuberance of youth. Their simple rectangles are assembled like stick figures that magically come alive. Blue is poised in mid-kick, turning the surrounding landscape into a giant stage as it prepares to pirouette across the grass. Shapiro spent two years in India in the Peace Corps, where he was inspired by the integration of art and culture. His sculptures are installed in scores of cities around the world. They achieve the goal set centuries ago by Egyptian and Greek sculptors—to endow base materials with movement and spirit of life.
Located on the Upper Lawn
President John F. Kennedy
StudioEIS
2021, bronze, 6 feet 9 inches high
Gift of David M. Rubenstein in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Working closely with the Kennedy Center, StudioEIS of Brooklyn, NY, designed an image of President Kennedy that is full of energy and very approachable. The smiling, larger-than-life-sized Kennedy sculpture strides forward in an engaging pose. The extraordinary level of detail in the work even captures the oft-documented image of Kennedy fidgeting with his coat buttons. The bronze sculpture, weighing 660 pounds, is centered on a bluestone paver oval edged by a curved bench capped with a commemorative plaque.
Located in the Lower Gardens
Photo by Margaret Wroblewski
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Peace Corps Gallery
Mokha Laget
Watershed III, 2022–2023
oil on 7 canvas panels totaling 88 x 424
On loan from the artist
Watershed III is Mokha Laget’s largest wall piece, with seven shaped canvases painted in bright colors and rhythmically arranged in configurations that seem as if they could continue forever. Evoking architecture, the ambiguous shapes create an illusory environment where objects appear to jump forward or recede. Laget is fascinated by the lively geometric choreography of these visual maneuvers, with their enigmatic light sources and puzzling planes or volumes. She explores the psychology of perception and our relationship with truth, especially the liminal space between seeing and knowing, questioning and believing.
The artist’s choice of the term “watershed” refers in part to the flow of water in a particular place, both above and below ground; its catchment has the power to connect places and people and to nourish life. Indeed, the Kennedy Center is located within the Chesapeake Bay watershed on the edge of the Potomac River, dedicated to cultural flow and nourishment.
Laget continues to carve out a legacy far beyond her early brush with the Washington Color School and internalized art historical references, to give new life to the shaped canvas idiom.
Mokha Laget, born in Algeria, was first trained in old master painting techniques in southern France. After moving to Washington, DC in 1979, she studied at the Corcoran College of Art and Design (BFA 82) during a prominent influence of the Washington Color School on American art. It was then that Washington artists took the lead nationally, as Morris Louis, Ken Noland, Gene Davis, Tom Downing, Sam Gilliam, and others blew through the angst of Abstract Expressionism to create a more optimistic, forward-looking direction for abstract painting, reflecting the youthful optimism of the new Kennedy administration. Laget absorbed this new, more open direction for her art.
Laget served as studio assistant, and later estate assistant, for the celebrated Color School painter Gene Davis, becoming even more intimately connected to this dynamic abstract movement, while exploring her own directions.
Laget also earned a degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in simultaneous French/English interpreting. She has spent much time in the last two decades translating for American and international organizations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, expanding her global understanding of art and life with every experience. Even within this hugely broadened viewpoint, the qualities of color and light inspired by her youth in North Africa persist as signature elements of her art.
Laget’s expansive exploration of abstraction has led to major gallery representations, museum and private acquisitions, and numerous exhibitions worldwide, including a large 2022 exhibition at the Katzen Arts Center at American University.
Currently, Laget lives off-grid in the New Mexico mountains.
Frederick J. Brown: Music Is My Muse
Frederick James Brown (1945–2012) was born in Greensboro, Georgia and raised on Chicago’s South Side. For much of his career, he lived in New York City, where his SoHo loft studio was a central gathering place for artists, musicians, writers, dancers, and performance artists. He collaborated with jazz musicians Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, the Revolutionary Ensemble, and the Chicago Arts Ensemble, as well as poet Felipe Luciano and multimedia artists Anthony Ramos, Megan Brown, and Virginia Jaramillo. His own art was inspired by his African American and Native American ancestry, as well as art historical traditions, the urban fabric, and spirituality.
Brown began his portraits of jazz and blues musicians in 1980, completing over 200 portraits, many of which were acquired for public and private collections throughout the world. He recontextualized the history of jazz and blues traditions by including primarily Black American figures in the canon of Western art history. Brown recognized that while their music blared through radios and speakers, and while their performances brought audiences to their feet, images of these musicians were missing from the museums and cultural sites that honor cultural contributions. His portraits bring together abstraction and expressionism to evoke intense emotional fields, using brilliant color and gestural strokes to construct the figure, in a detour from usual concerns for likeness. He focused his brush on the moment of performance, improvising in paint the effect of the music itself.
“I was in Copenhagen in 1969, before I went to Paris. I saw a flyer for a blues festival so I went that night and saw a great show: Clifton Chenier, Magic Sam, Earl Hooker, a few others. I went backstage—I had my press pass, I used to work for the Chicago Tribune—and I met Magic Sam. He said, you’re from Chicago? Hey man, you ought to write a book about us. I said, I’m not a writer. He said, you went to college? I said, yeah, I just graduated. He said, well, I got to the 7th grade and I wrote 40, 50 songs; you oughta be able to write a book! He said, we’re dying like flies. We paid a lot of dues, people ripped us off—our music inspired the world but when we die, no one’s gonna remember us. . . I told Magic Sam that night, well, I’m not a writer but I’m gonna do something. I felt chosen as a medium to paint subjects who would be overlooked in western art.”
—Frederick J. Brown
Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)
Portrait of Duke Ellington, 1987
84 x 84, oil on canvas
An outstanding musician, charismatic band leader, and prolific composer, Washington, DC, native Duke Ellington was an innovator across an expansive and eclectic range of styles—from pop and theatrical to swing, fusion, and beyond. Throughout the 2023–2024 season, the Kennedy Center commemorates the Duke’s 125th birthday (b. April 29, 1899) with programs relating to this American icon who changed how the world heard music.
Piece on loan from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts
Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)
Portrait of Billie Holiday, 1995
32 x 30, oil on linen
Billie Holiday is considered one of the best jazz vocalists of all time. Known as Lady Day, her autobiography was made into the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues.
Piece on loan from the Frederick J. Brown Trust
Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)
Portrait of Nat King Cole, 1996
50 x 40, oil on linen
Nat King Cole was a jazz pianist with a soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres. In 1956, Cole became the first African American performer to host a variety television series.
Piece on loan from the Frederick J. Brown Trust
Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)
Portrait of The Music That I Love, 2002
84 x 60, pencil, acrylic and oil on canvas
Piece on loan from the Frederick J. Brown Trust
Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)
Piano Men (Memphis Slim and Count Basie), 1988-89
oil on canvas
John “Peter” Chatman—better known as Memphis Slim—assuredly ranks with the greatest blues pianists of all time. An American blues pianist, singer, and composer, he led a series of bands that reflected the popular appeal of jump blues. One of the greatest band leaders of all time, Count Basie helped to define the era of swing with hits like “One O’Clock Jump” and “Blue Skies.” In 1958, Basie became the first African American male recipient of a Grammy Award.
Piece on loan from the Frederick J. Brown Trust
Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)
Portrait of Bill T. Jones, 1994
48 x 36, oil on linen
Bill T. Jones was a choreographer and dancer who, with Arnie Zane, created the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, which created works that tested the boundaries of modern dance. Jones was a 2010 Kennedy Center Honoree.
Piece on loan from the Frederick J. Brown Trust
Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)
Robert Johnson at the Crossroads, 1989
36 x 30, oil on linen
Robert Johnson is considered to be one of the greatest blues performers of all time. Legend has it that Johnson took his guitar to the crossroads of Highways 49 and 61 in Mississippi, where he made a deal with the devil, who returned his guitar in exchange for his soul.
Piece on loan from the Frederick J. Brown Trust
Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)
Double Portrait of Oscar Peterson, 2005
60 x 84, oil on canvas on plywood
Oscar Peterson is regarded as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time. He was renowned for his remarkable speed and dexterity, meticulous and ornate technique and dazzling, swinging style.
Piece on loan from the Frederick J. Brown Trust
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Inside the REACH
Jackie 1964 (ON RED)
Andy Warhol
1964, reproduction
This glamorous silk screen of a youthful Jackie Kennedy is based on a photograph by Jacques Lowe that was taken during her husband’s 1960 campaign for president. Warhol created two identical images in 1964, one with a red background and another with a blue background. They remain among Warhol’s most popular works, rivaling even his iconic Marilyn Monroe portraits. They present Jackie as a celebrity in her own right, fully equivalent to the movie star.
Just 31 years old in 1960, Jacqueline Kennedy stood on the brink of a tumultuous three years as America’s youngest-ever First Lady. She was revered around the world for her poise, fluency with languages, passion for historic preservation, athleticism, elegant fashions, and fierce protection of her family. Jackie was a full partner to her husband in rejuvenating and reinvigorating public life in the United States during their “thousand days” in the White House, which has been often likened to the magical world of Camelot. Warhol captures Jackie in this charmed moment in her life, creating a new image for women in “modern” 1960s America.
Located outside the Justice Forum on Level A
David M. Rubenstein
Ronald Sherr
2022
A national and international philanthropist without whom the REACH would not have been imagined and created. Commissioned by the Kennedy Center with gratitude, respect, and affection.
Dedicated May 15, 2022
Located outside the Justice Forum on Level B
Moonwalk
(#404, yellow) (#405, pink)
Andy Warhol
1987, screen prints on Lenox museum board, 38 x 38, private collection
Warhol made the two Moonwalk screen prints—one with the astronaut’s suit printed in yellow, the other in pink—just months before he died in 1987, but they have become among his most enduring masterworks.
The prints commemorate the first manned moon landing on July 20, 1969, when astronaut Neil Armstrong photographed Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walking on the lunar surface. Armstrong’s gear is reflected in Aldrin’s visor. Nearby, the flag of the United States appears to flutter; it was fabricated of metal to resemble a flag animated by wind, though there is no wind on the lunar surface.
Warhol made a career of portraying celebrities, but he came late to portraying the celebrity astronauts who captured Americans’ imagination in the 1960s.
Warhol favored making images in multiples, reinforcing the way that contemporary imagery was usually experienced through television or magazines or other media. His “portfolio” of two identical moonwalk images, rendered in different colors, reminds us that Americans “saw” this landmark event on television or in newspapers. The photography of the moon landing was filmed only in black-and-white, leaving Warhol free to choose the colors for his prints.
Located outside the Justice Forum on Level A
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (detail)
Steven and William Ladd
2019, Fiber, ink, metal, wood, adhesive
During the two week Opening Festival of the REACH, Steven and William Ladd’s Scrollathon engaged 750 D.C. participants onsite in the Sardar Classroom and offsite in the community. Each participant made a work of art to keep that they associated with a personal story and shared that story with their peers, demonstrating how contemporary art can become a lens for personal storytelling. Participants then collaborated by contributing scroll components to the collaborative artwork, adding their initials to a small wooden dowel in the center and giving the community permanent representation in the artwork. Inspired by the colors of Potomac River it overlooks, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow spans 20 feet and is created of over 10,000 hand-rolled scrolls.
Located inside the River Pavilion.
In collaboration with: Anacostia High School, BloomBars, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington - Jelleff Club, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington - Richard England Clubhouse 14, Brightwood Education Campus, Columbia Heights Educational Campus, Forest Side Memory Care - Forest Hills of DC, Hearst Elementary School, Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School, Noyes Elementary School, Ross Elementary, Seaton Elementary School, Sitar Arts Center, and School Without Walls High School.
The Courage Within Me
Michelle Angela Ortiz
2019, Acrylic paintings reproduced on plastic panels
In collaboration with:
Anacostia High School students with teaching artist, Cheryl Foster, and teacher, Jeria Carter
Columbia Heights Educational Campus students with teaching artist, Shaunte Gates and teacher, Mandy McCullough
Dunbar High School students with teaching artist, Sera Boeno, and teacher, Zachary Jackson
Eastern High School students with teaching artist, Preston Sampson, and teacher, Zalika Perkins
The Courage Within Me is a multi-panel, moveable, collaborative work of art that answers the following questions: How do you define courage?; What gives you courage?; Why is having courage important in this world?; Who is the most courageous person that you know? In collaboration with the Kennedy Center Education program and students from four classrooms spanning D.C., artist Michelle Angela Ortiz worked with youth in creating a design that demonstrates how they define courage. Over 60 panels were created based on the visual designs of each student guided by Ortiz and the Kennedy Center’s team of teaching artists. This multi-panel work of art that moves to reveal the writings and paintings of the students.
Located outside the Justice Forum on Level B
Six “Peanuts” cartoon strips
Charles M. Schulz
March 10–15, 1969, The Charles M. Schulz Museum, Santa Rosa, CA
The manned Apollo 10 flights that took place in May 1969 were intended as a “dress rehearsal” for the Apollo 11 moon landing. In a spirit of fun, NASA named the Lunar Module “Snoopy,” because it was intended to “snoop” around the moon to look for a suitable landing place for Apollo 11; the Command Module the naturally became “Charlie Brown.” These nicknames, referring to the famed “Peanuts” cartoon characters authored by Charles Schulz, caught the public imagination and made the entire space program feel less intimidatingly technical. Alma Thomas, for one, titled many of her space paintings with a Snoopy reference, as in Snoopy Sees Daybreak on Earth.
From March 10 to 15, 1969—just two months before the Apollo 10 flight—Charles Schulz created a week of six cartoon strips about the forthcoming mission. Each strip features Snoopy, decked out in aviator goggles, a neck scarf, and an astronaut’s helmet, as he fantasizes about flying to and landing on the moon.
Foretelling NASA’s success, Snoopy declares in one strip “I’m the first beagle on the moon. I beat the Russians … I beat everybody … I even beat that stupid cat who lives next door.” This combination of down-to-earth reality with other-worldly aspirations helped make “Peanuts” wildly successful; at its height it appeared in 2,600 papers in 75 countries.
NASA had second thoughts about the huge popularity of these cartoon names, and decided that something more noble and serious would be needed for the Apollo 11 flight, destined to be the most historic space event ever. Hence, “The Eagle has landed.”
Located outside the Moonshot Studio on Level A
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On Loan from Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland
Bloom
Thomas Demand
2014, C print mounted on plexiglas
Thomas Demand meticulously constructs physical models from paper as subjects for his photographs. He destroys these hand-crafted models after photographing them. The photographs, then, are the artworks—elaborate artifices that question our relationship to truth. Bloom shows a lush profusion of cherry blossoms that traditionally signify spring’s arrival and the passing of time. Knowing that every petal was made by hand from paper gives the work a deeper resonance, trading “reality” for “illusion.” Like all Demand’s works, Bloom conceals a disquieting undertone; it shows blossoms seen over a fence at the home of the Boston Marathon bomber. In Demand’s world, beauty and evil co-exist.
Located in PT-109 on Level A
Untitled (America)
Glenn Ligon
2018, neon and paint
Glenn Ligon uses texts by favorite authors to reflect on key fault lines in society, such as race and sexuality. Here the text is a single word, but one rich with myriad meanings for different groups: “America.” Spelled in all capital letters, in glowing red neon, and upside down, it conveys a sign of distress. Ligon’s works often address the aftershocks of slavery in American life and the continuing struggle for social justice. He says, “We always imagine that slavery is something in the past and that we as a society have gotten over it… But if you think about slavery as there when our laws and institutions are being created—when our Declaration of Independence is being written, when our courts are being formed—it is this moral dilemma at the core of our democracy and we still feel its effects.”
Located in the Peace Corps Gallery on Level B
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Also on Display
The Declaration of Independence
Engraving on vellum by William J. Stone, 1823
Lent by David M. Rubenstein
Located outside the Justice Forum on Level A
Representatives from the thirteen American colonies met in July 1776 in Philadelphia to vote on whether to declare independence from Great Britain; eventually the vote was unanimous. The Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, was approved on July 4 and was published to the world on July 5.
The fifty-six signers of the Declaration did not know if the colonies would survive as an independent confederation. Had the American experiment failed, Britain would surely have seized the signers’ property, exiled their families, and executed these patriots. Nonetheless, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “no hand trembled on affixing its signature to that paper.” And John Hancock made his signature so large that no one could doubt his commitment.
The Declaration of Independence went beyond just separating the colonies from Britain. It asserted certain natural rights as the foundation of government and created a moral standard for the new nation, and a creed for our country: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words have inspired Americans and freedom-seekers around the world to work toward greater justice and equality of opportunity.
The original Declaration document was mostly ignored for the next four decades, as the new Americans went about the serious work of forging a nation. But John Quincy Adams—an exceptional diplomat, committed to civic eloquence—was eager to enshrine it for later generations.
While Secretary of State in 1820, Adams ordered an exact facsimile of the then-fading hand-written Declaration from printer William J. Stone of Washington D.C. Stone worked for three years to engrave the large copper plate and make two hundred copies; fewer than fifty of these survive today.
This copy from the Stone Declaration is inscribed at lower left by John Quincy Adams to Thomas Emory of the Maryland Executive Council.
Native Americans and the Declaration of Independence
“He [King George III] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rules of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” —Grievance 27, Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence uplifts liberating democratic ideals while dehumanizing Native Americans as “merciless Indian savages.” This racist positioning of Native peoples as “savages” led to seizing lands, removing entire tribes through Trails of Tears, outlawing cultural practices, and excluding participation in U.S. civic society.
By 1776, numerous Native nations had engaged with competing colonial powers for nearly two centuries. Native Americans defended their homelands through trade, diplomacy, or war. To indigenous peoples, the frontier was the line of defense for their lands and livelihoods. In the American Revolution some tribes allied with the Americans while others sided with the British with desperate intent to maintain their own Native sovereignties. Both the Americans and the British abandoned their respective Native allies at the war’s end. In the era that followed, Native Americans lost more land, lives, and freedoms to United States westward expansion. It was not until the late 20th century that policies restored self-determination to tribes, signaling that the Declaration of Independence’s ideals are still in process for Native Americans.
Native Americans, despite the inequalities suffered over time, remain overwhelmingly patriotic in defending and caretaking this country. They demonstrate the highest rates of U.S. military service of any ethnic group. The Declaration’s most powerful philosophies align with millennia-old Native American concepts of democracy, freedom, and equality. The long road to form a more perfect union with respect and rights restoration continues with tenacity and hope across over 570 tribes in the contemporary United States.
—Dr. Gabrielle Tayac, Piscataway Historian
David M. Rubenstein
Cornerstone of the REACH