The Phillips Collection

Have you ever found any weird bugs or animals?

Well, a lot of times if you're working in a museum, you know, they're really afraid, because we worked at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, they've got these old masters photos.

They really are.

And so the Phillips Collection in D.C. is one of my favorite museums of all times.

It's small.

They also have a Center for Innovation.

It's a 1922 painting called My Shanty.

It's at the Phillips Collection.

It's been one of my favorite Phillips paintings for as long as I can remember.

What makes that picture autobiographical, other than the title, of course? And what does it really promise about what's coming next about her relationship with architecture and painting?

So it was in that sense a very personal structure, a very personal building for her.

This painting also has another story to it.

In this moment in the early 1920s when O'Keeffe painted My Shanty that's at the Phillips Collection, she was beginning to develop the reputation that she still carries today.

As a really pioneering and visionary painter of modern American style.

He is the recipient of the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Witting Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for Arts, among other awards.

Tope serves as a board member at the Avalon Theater in Washington T- DC, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, the Phillips Collection, as well as a member of the President's Council of Pathfinder.

Please join me in welcoming Richard and Tope this evening.

[audience clapping] Such a pleasure to be here with all of you.

Today on CityCast DC, what does it look like when dozens of local artists try to capture what it feels like to live through this particular moment in Washington? That's the idea behind Tomorrow the Sun Will Rise, a new exhibition at the Phillips Collection featuring 56 works from 48 artists across the DMV.

The exhibit is open now through September 20th.

And today, I sit down with Chie Jojima, the Phillips Collection curator of global contemporary art, and one of the people who had the enormous task of narrowing those 1,500 submissions down to the works on the walls.

Today is Tuesday, September 8th.

I'm Bridget Todd, and here's what DC is talking about.

So you started with over 1,500 applications to an open call back in November of 2024.

For most of us, that was a very specific time in culture and politics and sort of just our climate here in D.C. Trump had just been reelected.

Why did the Phillips Collection believe it was time to put out that call against that backdrop?