Lose Yourself in No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man →

The Renwick Gallery might look like your classic, 1800s Smithsonian style building, but it’s a transformative space. Walking through the dimly lit dollhouses of Murder Is Her Hobby, the rooms feel much smaller and more intimate. As you crouch and press your face against the glass, it almost seems as if the ceilings have sunken lower. The gallery’s newest exhibition, No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, has the opposite effect. These pieces tower far above you and almost touch the ceiling. Every piece fills the room to the brim, making full use of the space and playing off of the Renwick’s classic architecture.

“We have this incredible platform of a 1860’s building in this East Coast Smithsonian museum,” said Nora Atkinson, who works as the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft at the museum. This juxtaposition between the old school disposition of the Smithsonian and the wild ephemeral nature of Burning Man is at the heart of the exhibit. Atkinson and her team have worked hard to strike a balance between the two. “[We’re] able to say that this artwork is worthy of being here, while still trying to transport people to the desert,” she explained, “because it’s so important to understand the desert to understand the art, so I think we’re doing a combination of things.” > Brightest Young Things, Read More

Top Reasons to See No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man →

The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum will transform for No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, an exhibit of enormous scale that is sure to create a sustained buzz all over DC and captivate visitors through Jan. 21, 2019.

According to the show’s curator Nora Atkinson, “Burning Man is all about human connection in a time when we’ve gone so fully digital.” While that won’t stop visitors from pulling out their phones to Instagram eye-opening installations, it may challenge museum-goers to identify with a collective experience rooted in human creativity. > Washington Guide, Read More

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man | Smithsonian American Museum of Art

MARCH 30, 2018 - JANUARY 21, 2019 (FIRST FLOOR CLOSING SEPTEMBER 16, 2018)

Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)

Each year in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, a city of more than 75,000 people rises out of the dust for a single week. During that time, enormous experimental art installations are erected and many are ritually burned to the ground. The thriving temporary metropolis known as Burning Man is a hotbed of artistic ingenuity, driving innovation through its principles of radical self-expression, decommodification, communal participation, and reverence for the handmade. Both a cultural movement and an annual event, Burning Man remains one of the most influential phenomenons in contemporary American art and culture.

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man brings the large-scale, participatory work from this desert gathering to the nation’s capital for the first time. The exhibition takes over the entire Renwick Gallery building, bringing alive the maker culture and creative spirit of this cultural movement. Immersive room-sized installations, costumes, jewelry, and ephemera transport visitors to the gathering’s famed “Playa,” while photographs and archival materials from the Nevada Museum of Art trace Burning Man’s growth and its bohemian roots.

In addition to the in-gallery presentation, the Renwick is expanding beyond its walls for the first time through an outdoor extension of the exhibition entitled No Spectators: Beyond the Renwick, displaying sculptures from Burning Man throughout the surrounding neighborhood in partnership with DC’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District (BID).

Large-scale installations—the artistic hallmark of Burning Man—form the core of the exhibition. Individual artists and collectives featured in No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man include David Best, Candy Chang, Marco Cochrane, Duane Flatmo, Michael Garlington and Natalia Bertotti, Five Ton Crane Arts Collective, FoldHaus Art Collective, Scott Froschauer, HYBYCOZO (Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu), Android Jones, Aaron Taylor Kuffner, Christopher Schardt, Richard Wilks, and Leo Villareal. Multiple installation sites have been selected throughout the neighborhood surrounding the museum for No Spectators: Beyond the Renwick, which will include works by Jack Champion, Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson, HYBYCOZO, Laura Kimpton, Mischell Riley, and Kate Raudenbush. > Read More, Smithsonian American Museum of Art

FoldHaus, Shrumen Lumen, 2016. Photo by Rene Smith