Arts & Entertainment
Pictures at an exhibition
Season’s gallery exhibits feature bounty of mixed-media wonders
‘The Good Switch’ is part of Rams Brisueño's ‘Conversations with Flowers’ series which will be on display as part of the "Travelin' Shoes" exhibit at Fleckenstein Gallery. It’s one of several gay offerings this fall. (Image courtesy Fleckenstein)
The Washington/Baltimore region, with its bounty of galleries, never ceases to astound with its endless bounty of art. Among the season’s highlights are:
The Fleckenstein Gallery (3316 Keswick Rd.) in Baltimore has a new exhibit, “Travelin’ Shoes” opening Oct. 5 featuring the work of Schroeder Cherry, Kylis Winborne and gay artist Rams Brisueño.
Brisueño portrays male and female figures, some asexual and some with gender-bending qualities. His profile on the Baker Artist Awards website says he uses collage and painting to show layers of experiences and differences.
“By organically letting the work be painted over, rubbed out or scribbled on top of, but with great attention to the surfaces of things … to texture and intuitive response, and with a conscientious distinction between spontaneous doodles and selected text, composition and personal associations come together in themes of mythmaking … and compositional unity through space, shape and color,” Brisueño says of his work.
This exhibit is in affiliation with the Black Male Identity Project and is part of Free Fall Baltimore.
Gallery plan b (1530 14th St., N.W.) has two exhibits scheduled to open this fall. The first, which opens today, will feature paintings by Kevin H. Adams. The second exhibit, which opens Oct. 19, will feature photographs by Kermit Berg and paintings by Delna Dastur.
Industry Gallery (1358 Florida Ave., N.E., Suite 200) presents “Meltdown” featuring new work by Tom Price, which opens Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. This is the British artist and designer’s first U.S. solo exhibition. He specializes in modern furniture products, sculpture and lighting design.
“I like to think of myself as working in collaboration with materials, processes and phenomena and that the final physical outcome is a product of mutual consent,” Price says in a press release.
Zenith Gallery’s newest exhibit, which features monumental and pedestal sculpture and three-dimensional wall art by Julie Girardini, David Hubbard, Joan Konkel, Barton Rubenstein and Paul Martin Wolff, opened Thursday and will run through Jan. 7 at the Eleven Eleven Sculpture Gallery (1111 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.).
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (200 North Blvd.) in Richmond has several exhibits scheduled to open this fall. First up, opening today, is “Vision from the Congo,” a two-part installation of bear sculptures. The first section features four sculptures by artists from the Pende culture, of the Congo’s Kwilu and Kasai regions that relate to the disruptions experienced by the Pende in the early 20th century. The second part features life-size sculptures by Renée Stout and Alison Saar, who draw from African art and culture in creating their works.
Dec. 23 brings the opening of “Elvis at 21,” which features 57 photographs taken by Alfred Wertheimer when Elvis was on the brink of international stardom. For information on these exhibits and more, visit vmfa.museum/exhibitions.
The National Gallery of Art (4th and Constitution Ave., N.W.) has a new exhibit, “Warhol: Headlines” which opens Sept. 25. This is said to be the first exhibition to full examine the works Andy Warhol, who was gay, created on the theme of news headlines by present about 80 works including paintings, drawing, photographs and more based largely on tabloid news.
Warhol’s headline works also chart the shift in mainstream media’s ways of delivering the news from a printed format to an electronic format. The headline motif encompasses Warhol’s key subjects, including celebrity, death, disaster and contemporary events.
The Petal Release Party and Drag Show was held at Spark Social on Friday, July 31. Performers included Tiara-Missou, Labianna and Darcy de la Cuadra.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
Celebrity News
Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam
Kylie Minogue made surprise appearance alongside gay icon
AMSTERDAM — Madonna on Sunday headlined the final night of the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam.
The gay icon took the stage shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday) during Club Confessions, a set that MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, organized.
“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people.
Stuart Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album and “Confessions II,” which debuted on July 2, DJed the set.
Kylie Minogue made a surprise appearance. She and Madonna performed a new remix of “Love Sensation” from “Confessions II.”
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. “With MISTR, (CEO) Tristan (Schukraft) is expanding access to HIV prevention and sexual healthcare for everyone. Through this work, he’s helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”
Minogue in an Instagram post thanked Madonna, Price, Schukraft, and MISTR.
Madonna appeared at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., in April. Madonna in June celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York’s Times Square.
Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced the World Pride Music Festival that also featured Bebe Rexha and Paris Hilton, among others.
“Pride has always been about bringing our community together,” said Resnicow. “At a moment when too many people are being told to hide or make themselves smaller, gathering openly, joyfully, and without apology matters more than ever. I couldn’t be prouder of what this festival brought to life in Amsterdam — one dance floor, completely free.”
Theater
Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth
First five shows a reminder that ‘pressure is a privilege’
Madly talented and preternaturally energetic, Reggie D. White, 38, is about to launch his first season as artistic director of D.C.’s boundary-pushing Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
White brings a lot to the job. As actor, playwright, and director, his varied resume includes a 2019 Broadway acting debut in Matthew López’s Tony Award–winning play “The Inheritance,” his semi-autobiographic play “Fremont Ave.” that opened to acclaim last season at Arena Stage, and a number of exciting regional directing credits.
A longtime admirer of Woolly, the out theater-maker was selected from a pool of candidates before receiving the offer last November and starting work in January. His season of five world premieres kicks off with gay playwright Steve Yockey’s “Venus” (Sept. 9-Oct. 4), a darkly funny study of modern relationships told through two lesbians looking back on their first encounter.
White was introduced to Woolly Mammoth as a pre-law student at Cal State Hayward in the San Francisco Bay Area, long before he foresaw a life in the arts. “As part of a random theater history course, I was assigned to write a paper on a counterculture company called Woolly Mammoth,” he recalls “Strange name. I was like what the hell is that?”
Nineteen-year-old White was intrigued. Research acquainted him with Howard Shalwitz who co-founded Woolly in 1980, and the company’s commitment to living playwrights and new work. He also learned how theater could be used as a tool for difficult conversations and shape the way people thought about social issues by employing imagination and rigor.
“Never in a million years did young me envision that one day I’d be Woolly’s third artistic director in its 46-year history,” says White. “It’s kind of serendipitously insane.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Was there a moment when the enormity of the job hit you?
REGGIE D. WHITE: After I’d signed my contract and finished all the paperwork, I got my keys and sat in the theater by myself in the dark and thought about what an incredible honor it is to be trusted with what happens in this beautiful space [in D.C.’s Penn Quarter]. I might have cried. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember it’s real.
BLADE: Are you curating the upcoming 2026–2027 season?
WHITE: Yes, I am. It’s very rare that an incoming artistic director gets to program their first season, but I was lucky in terms of time. After being hired late last year, I asked Woolly’s managing director Kimberly E. Douglas, if she thought it would be crazy if I programmed the season. She warned me it would be hard.
I invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King’s maxim “pressure is a privilege” and got to work.
These plays [dubbed White’s “first five”] represent both the kind of theater that Woolly can do really well and speak directly to my voice as curator and how I want to contribute to the larger theatrical conversation in the DMV.
Getting here has meant a lot of late nights. But I knew the juice would be worth the squeeze.
BLADE: As a queer artistic director, what makes you unique?
WHITE: When I was playing in “Inheritance” on Broadway, after a performance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer came backstage to meet the cast. She spoke about how her lens on the world as a Puerto Rican woman shapes her decisions. Similarly, because I’m a queer Black man I see through a lens that shapes my work.
I know I’m not the only queer artistic director in town. For me, it influences how I make editorial decisions. Out of this season’s five plays there are explicitly queer characters in four [“Venus,” “Chanukkah Spectacular,” “Ten Grand,” and “Love I Awethu Further”] and I’m directing two [“Venus,” “Ten Grand”].
BLADE: Will we see familiar faces?
WHITE: Every show this season will feature a Woolly Mammoth company member in its cast. Our company also includes designers and directors who we’ll include. I’m invested in continuing to provide a showcase for their work.
BLADE: How do you think queer audiences will receive the season?
WHITE: Very well, I think. For queer people who’ve had to navigate the world subversively and solve problems in unique ways, I think it will be especially interesting. I find theater a potent place for questions.
Like all artistic directors. I’ll show up for the job in my own way. I’m just excited that I’ve been invited to bring the fullness of myself to the role.
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