User:Geraldshields11/sandbox/Renwick Gallery

The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, located in Washington, D.C., and focuses on American craft and decorative arts from the 19th century to the 21st century. It is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that was begun in 1859 on Pennsylvania Avenue and originally housed the Corcoran Gallery of Art (now one block from the White House and across the street from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building). When it was build in 1859, it was known, at the time, as the American Louvre."

History
The Renwick Gallery building was originally built to be Washington, D.C.'s first art museum and to house William Wilson Corcoran's collection of American and European art. The building was designed by James Renwick, Jr. and finally completed in 1874. Renwick designed it after the Louvre’s Tuileries addition.

The building was near completion when the Civil War broke out and was seized by the U.S. Army in August 1861 as a temporary military warehouse for the records and uniforms for the Quarter Master General's Corps. In 1864, General Montgomery Meigs converted the building into his headquarters office.

On May 10, 1869, the building was returned to Corcoran, and, on January 19, 1874, the Corcoran Gallery of Art opened to the public. The gallery quickly outgrew the space and relocated to a new building nearby in 1897. Starting in 1899, the building housed the federal Court of Claims. By the 1950s, in need of more space, the Court of Claims proposed to demolish the building, however, it was saved from demolition by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1963. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of the Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley, proposed that the building be turned over to the Smithsonian.

In 1965, President Johnson signed an executive order transferring the Renwick building to the Smithsonian Institution for use as a "gallery of arts, craft and design." After a renovation, it opened in 1972 as the home of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s contemporary craft program.

Today, it is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, housing the museum's collection of decorative art and crafts.



Exhibits
The first-floor gallery features temporary exhibits that usually rotate about twice a year. On commentator said, the crafts displayed "are high art, not everyday objects."

On the second floor, in the Grand Salon, is one of the most famous art-filled rooms in Washington, it is still hung with 70 paintings, by 51 American artists, painted between 1840 and 1930.

Notable Artists

 * Larry Fuente's Game Fish made from a mounted sailfish and game accessories, such as dice, poker chips, domino tiles, Scrabble letters, yo-yos, badminton shuttlecocks and Ping-Pong balls.
 * Wendell Castle's Ghost Clock cloaks time with trompe l'oeil
 * Arline Fisch's silver Body Ornament
 * Dale Chihuly's famous glass globules float in their sandbox sanctuaries
 * Sam Maloof's furniture
 * x 's A Little Torcher, a stained-glass creation depicting pyromania
 * Kim Schahmann's 1993-99 Bureau of Bureaucracy, which is a "wooden cabinet full of cupboards to nowhere, bottomless drawers, drawers within drawers, hidden compartments, and more, a wonderful metaphor for the labyrinthine workings of government"
 * Maria Martinez
 * Albert Paley

Notable Patrons

 * Lloyd Herman, Renwick Gallery’s founding director
 * Fleur
 * Charles Bresler
 * the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
 * Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
 * John Kotelly
 * Julie Walters
 * Sam Rose

Nearby Notable Features
Nearby is the The White House, Lafayette Square, Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Interior Department Museum.

In Popular Culture
The Renwick Gallery hosted a exhibition called 40 Under 40 Craft Futures, which featured 40 artists in "boundary-pushing interpretations of glass, fiber, ceramic, wood and other materials challenge the traditional process-oriented notion of the craft medium by incorporating performance, interactivity and politics." On January 18, 2013, the museum hosted an event called Handi-hour, which feacured craft beers, a scavenger hunt, and "hands-on art projects themed around the work of exhibiting artist Stacey Lee Webber, who makes sculptural objects out of coins."

2014 Renovation
In 2014, the Renwick Gallery will undergoing major renovations. Applied Minds has been chosen to do major renovations to the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC. Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, said that the "Applied Minds concept is that it encourages visitors to come back again and again to see the many new and ever-changing presentations there." “Applied Minds is honored to be chosen as the winner of this prestigious competition,” said Bran Ferren, co-founder, chief creative officer and lead designer of Applied Minds. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to introduce a unique technology-enabled design concept to the museum environment that will provide both a new palette and performance opportunity for the creative genius of our artists and to inspire new generations of visitors.” Five firms advanced to the final round of the competition were, in addition to Applied Minds: Marlon Blackwell Architect, Studio Odile Decq, Vinci Hamp Architects, and Westlake Reed Leskosky.