Blooming Recklessly

Upper Gallery
Open by appointment only

Exhibition Catalogue

Curated by Dakota Sica

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."
Rainer Maria Rilke

"I like to feel that I work on a painting until something magical happens. Until it becomes something outside of myself, a new vision... You lose a kind of control, but you gain something else."
Emily Mason

"Tempered by blank space, [Saito’s] dissonant  palette—contrasting shades of orange and green, purple and yellow—is an adventure instead of an assault. He sensed when to pull back and let color do its work."
Rachel Wetzler

"[Mason's] quest for color expression and structure was more in tune with the sensitivity and unimposing sincerity of a Mark Rothko. For both of them, painting was not about an experience, it was an experience."
Barbara Stehle

"Upon encountering Emily Mason's early oil paintings on paper, your first impression is of ravishing, simmering color, of a glowing, interior luminosity. This is an art truly of and about color."
Robert Wolterstorff

"What I’ve realised is that color is the only element in painting. It’s the only element there’s ever been."
Larry Poons

"Saito’s mature work is characterized by inventive, often surprising color, which ranges from frankly gorgeous, richly varied intensities to subdued near-monochromes, as well as by eloquent drawings."
Karen Wilkin

Beverly Pepper: My Circle and Clodia Medea

My Circle (2008 - 2026)
Exhibition Catalogue

“I create work to discover it. To make its acquaintance. To sculpt a space. A sudden, energetic space.”

Beverly Pepper

Clodia Medea (2014 - 2024)
Exhibition Catalogue

“In practically everything she touched, Pepper demonstrated an ability to lend presence to cold substance... What is clear is that she has left behind a body of work that will act as a monument to a woman of considerable genius, a marker of something bigger.”

Hall W. Rockefeller

Beverly Pepper: Ten Monumental Sculptures

June 18, 2026 - June 1, 2027
Washington, DC

Beverly Pepper: Ten Monumental Sculptures on New York Avenue is on view through June 2027 in Washington, DC.

The exhibition is presented in partnership with the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the DowntownDC BID, and the New York Avenue Sculpture Project Executive Committee.

Beverly Pepper: Earthworks opens at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in the fall of 2026.

Pepper pictured with My Circle in 2014
Ara Pacis, Rome

“Obviously we can’t rebuild the monuments of the ancient world, but we can aspire to re-evoke, in however modern a world, some of the enduring and perhaps renewable sensations of amazement, even awe.”

Beverly Pepper

Mike Ousley: Wild Rose of the Mountains

The Cabin
Open by appointment

Exhibition Catalogue

“The Wild Rose of the Mountain is beautiful in bloom. It has a seductive scent; but it also has a tangle full of stinging thorns. I love the idea of that many-layered complexity. The culture of these deep, dark hills in Appalachia is very diverse and complex."

Mike Ousley

“There is a duality to everything in Appalachia. It can at once be breathtakingly beautiful, and also darker and more ominous.”

Mike Ousley

“My depictions come from my mamaw Alice Moore Ousley. She used to take me to the Little Philadelphia Old Regular Baptist Church. They had a unique way of singing in that Church. The Smithsonian Folkways came and did many field recordings of them. They preached apocalyptic things, visions of Hell and Heaven. ”

Mike Ousley

“Ousley’s jewel-like paintings tell narratives that are ostensibly playful, even whimsical, like the parables of Heironymous Bosch.”

Michael Rooks

“Egg tempera brings a mystical quality to things. It’s slow, reverent work for a person who has great reverence for this region and its people.”

Mike Ousley

Vera Girivi and Massimo Micheluzzi:
From Genoa to Murano

Lower Gallery
Open by appointment

Exhibition Catalogue

“I always thought of my front door as a true guardian, and when I entered, it would close with medieval power and heaviness behind me, shutting out all the dangers of life. It was an important and historic door; I love it, and every time I pass by, I gaze upon it with affection.”

Vera Girivi

“[Artists like Micheluzzi] research and rework old techniques, sometimes innovating, sometimes inventing anew, and creating their own distinctive pieces. Murano is unique in that all the greatest glass artists come here to make their most important works.”

Alessandro Barbini

"It rarely happens that I imagine a theme and then paint it later. I don't like planning too much. Life surprises you every day, and if you want to make it go one way, the opposite occurs."

Vera Girivi

"The floors of St. Mark's Basilica have always been and still are my greatest source of inspiration."

Massimo Micheluzzi