Robert Colescott’s Sunset on the Bayou (1993) is part of the new exhibition at Southwest’s Rubell Museum. Courtesy of Rubell Museum
By Southwester Staff
A museum-wide reinstallation at the Rubell on I Street, SW revealed a new exhibition on Sept. 27. American Vignettes: Symbols, Society, and Satire showcases nearly 100 art works spanning painting, photography, sculpture, installation, and mixed media by over 40 emerging and established artists. The works newly on display to the public are drawn from the family collection of Mera and Don Rubell.
The exhibit begins in the museum’s largest gallery, where iterations of flags, eagles, and banners are reimagined, speaking to collective and individual relationships with these symbols and to the artists’ calling to interpret them as their own. The theme of symbols extends to the museum’s lower level, where artists use as metaphor statuary, candle flames, illuminated text, and video to evoke the ephemeral (time) and the eternal (memory). References to historical figures—JFK, John Henry, Sojourner Truth—are attached to several of the works.
The central floor focuses on the theme of society, broken down to its most elemental parts, representing the familial, platonic, and intimate ties that create, enrich, and sometimes bind. Photographic portraits, figurative sculpture, and scenes of gatherings on canvas and paper depict connections, some fleeting and others everlasting, all contributing to the makings of society—one community at a time. The third theme of satire permeates the works presented on the top floor. Via pointed criticism of society’s norms and ills, the artists use text and imagery, at times grotesque, at times more subdued, to edify and inspire change.
American Vignettes will be on view through Fall 2025, and admission is free for DC residents.