Breaking It Down
Conversations from the Vault
The Phillips Collection, Washington
November 2, 2024 - January 19, 2025
Flour Mill II, 1938
Oil and wax emulsion on canvas
29 1/8 x 19 1/4 in.
The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1934
Image courtesy of The Phillips Collection
George Chavis, 1984
Acrylic and oil pastel on Masonite
49 1/2 x 49 1/2 in.
The Phillips Collection
The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions, 2024
Image courtesy of The Phillips Collection
9.2.96, 1996
Pastel on paper, 40 x 60 in.
The Phillips Collection
Gift of BJ and Carol Cutler, 2009
Image courtesy of The Phillips Collection
Life Readings (For Nathan Lyons), 2017
Acrylic on latex on panel, 36 x 48 in.
The Phillips Collection
Gift of Sean Scully, 2020
Image courtesy of The Phillips Collection
Girl with Plant, 1960
Oil on canvas, 80 x 69 1/2 in.
The Phillips Collection
Acquired 1961
© The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation
Image courtesy of The Phillips Collection
The Phillips Collection presents Breaking It Down: Conversations from the Vault, an exhibition showcasing works from the permanent collection that emphasizes the museum’s historic and ongoing dedication to championing living artists. Featuring over 90 works, including paintings, works on paper, photographs, and sculpture, the exhibition presents an in-depth look at artists who are cornerstones of the collection, alongside a growing collection of works by contemporary innovators. Breaking It Down employs the museum’s legacy strategy of fostering visual dialogues between artists across diverse styles, generations, and cultural backgrounds. Organized by The Phillips Collection.
“The Phillips Collection has advocated for living artists from its founding, through early-career acquisitions, exhibitions, and direct financial support. Breaking It Down celebrates this rich legacy as we look to the museum’s future and imagine new ways to support the artists of our time,” says Vradenburg Director & CEO Jonathan P. Binstock. “We hope the exhibition will inspire guests and new generations of artists by offering a space for discovery, learning, and joy.”
From its inception, founders Duncan and Marjorie Phillips envisioned the museum as a place to test new approaches to collecting and exhibiting art, arranging works by aesthetic affinities rather than chronology or geography. At the core of this approach was their enduring support and encouragement of artists; the two nurtured vital relationships with many artists who today are mainstays of the collection. Over time, the museum developed what Duncan Phillips called “units,” or groups of works that survey an artist’s career or represent key aspects of an artist’s voice, vision, or creative development. The “unit” is the key organizing principle of the permanent collection, which enables the Phillips to convene artists in visual conversations, independent of any particular school or movement, with the hope of sparking new ways of seeing, experiencing, and understanding art. Breaking It Down explores these novel visual exchanges as well as connections between patron, museum, and artist.
The exhibition highlights several foundational artists from the collection, including Georges Braque, Richard Diebenkorn, John Marin, Sam Gilliam, Paul Klee, and Georgia O’Keeffe, alongside works by contemporary artists to showcase how more recently assembled “units” continue to shape the museum. Several acquisitions have their exhibition debut at the Phillips, including works by William Christenberry, Walker Evans, Sam Gilliam, Joel Meyerowitz, Sean Scully, Aaron Siskind, Sylvia Snowden, Renée Stout, and Joyce Wellman.
“The featured artists work across representational and abstract styles, with a personal language of expression,” says Phillips Associate Curator and exhibition curator Renée Maurer. “Well-known artists are juxtaposed with a growing collection of works, reinforcing the museum’s active engagement with living artists, several of whom are grounded in the D.C. community.”
The exhibition also examines creative exchange between artists across generations and the museum’s role in fostering these connections. Works by Richard Diebenkorn and Kate Shepherd are shown alongside examples by Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian, respectively. Matisse and Mondrian served as guideposts for the younger artists who ventured into new chapters of artmaking upon responding to the works in the collection. Dedicated galleries spotlight the Phillips’s early support of artists such as Georges Braque; Arthur G. Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe of the Stieglitz Circle; Augustus Vincent Tack; Sam Gilliam, whose work the museum was the first in the US to acquire; and Paul Klee, whose narrative imagery remains a source of inspiration and study for artists such as Joyce Wellman. The vibrant expression of works by Sylvia Snowden and Wellman conveys the power of color, which is a driving force of the permanent collection more broadly.
The exhibition includes archival materials, including letters, photos, and other ephemera, to contextualize the relationships between the artists and patrons Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, foregrounding the stories that are foundational to The Phillips Collection’s ethos and that inspire its future
ARTISTS: Karel Appel, Georges Braque, Sharon Core, Henri-Cartier Bresson, Paul Cezanne, William Christenberry, Arthur G. Dove, Richard Diebenkorn, Walker Evans, Sam Gilliam, Sadakichi Hartmann, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Paul Klee, John Marin, Henri Matisse, Joel Meyerowitz, Piet Mondrian, Georgia O’Keeffe, Lucy T. Pettway, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Sean Scully, Kate Shepard, Toko Shinoda, Aaron Siskind, Sylvia Snowden, Afred Stieglitz, Renée Stout, Augustus Vincent Tack, Joyce Wellman
THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION, WASHINGTON DC
1600 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009
