#GWtoDo: Your Curated Arts and Events Agenda
The museum hosts a new exhibition on the mystery of color and meaning of the divine. Plus two concerts featuring bands made at GW, the D.C. Library’s Black Film Festival and more.
Open through July 1 What Color Is Divine Light?
The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum
701 21st St., NW
Scientists have determined that between complementary colors exist colors the eye and brain cannot perceive, called “impossible” colors. “It’s the intangible, the imaginary, the mysterious, unnamed space between…Although our eyes/brains can’t actually see the colors between, we feel them, we sense them,” multimedia artist Anne Lindberg writes. “The divine, like these colors, is unnamable, untouchable, intangible.” The fine chromatic threads making up her new site-specific exhibition at GW create a cloud of color that evokes light itself. Lindberg’s installation invites visitors to reflect: If divinity could be experienced as a physical presence, what might it look like? Sound like? Feel like?
Coming Up:
Ongoing through Feb. 12 Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World
National Museum of the American Indian
4th Street and Constitution Avenue, SW
Free
Focusing on Native cosmology and organized around one solar year, this exhibition explores the annual ceremonies of Native peoples as a window on their ancestral teachings. Under a "night sky" of fiberoptic stars and constellations, discover how celestial bodies shape daily life and establish ceremonial and celebratory calendars for Native peoples today. The exhibition also highlights the Denver March Powwow, the North American Indigenous Games, and the Day of the Dead—seasonal celebrations that bring Native peoples together.
National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden
9th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW
$12, $9 with student ID
Enjoy lights, music and panoramic views of the Sculpture Garden as you glide into winter at this seasonal favorite outing and date spot. Skates are available to rent for $6.
Feb. 6 at 6 p.m. Living and Thinking Under Catastrophe: Combative Decoloniality as Counter-Catastrophic Thinking, Creation and Action
Online
Registration required
With references to decolonial struggle in Algeria, Puerto Rico, South Africa and Palestine, the University of Connecticut’s Nelson Maldonato-Torres will discuss the ongoing effort to engage in counter-catastrophic modalities of being, thinking, creating and acting. This lecture is part of the 2022-23 GW University Seminar, “And the Earth Was Laid Out for All Living Beings: Muslim Epistemologies, Science and Non-Western Ways of Knowing.”
Feb. 7 at 2:15 p.m. The Last Front in the War in Court: Inside the 9/11 Case at Guantanamo
Elliott School of International Affairs, Room 505
1957 E St., NW
Hundreds of legal professionals—JAGs and attorneys from the fanciest corporate law firms, human rights lawyers and solo practitioners, law professors and their students—were galvanized by the human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay to defend the rule of law and join the fight against torture policy in court. The last front is the 9/11 case, in which five defendants were disappeared and tortured by the CIA for years before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006. Author Lisa Hajjar will discuss how that case, which started in 2008 and remains ongoing, is proof that torture and justice are utterly incompatible.
Feb. 8 at 10 a.m. Elliott School Blood Drive
Elliott School, Room 602
1957 E St., NW
Registration required
Blood donation can save lives. Just a few spaces remain open for the chance to donate.
Feb. 7 to Feb. 28 34th Annual Black Film Festival
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
901 G St., NW
This three-week showcase of Black film and culture features a range of genres for all audiences—from the acclaimed James Baldwin documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” to Beyonce’s “Lemonade” to “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
Feb. 8 at 5:30 p.m. Peace: Laying the Foundations for a Settlement in Ukraine
Elliott School, Room B12
1957 E St., NW
Registration requested
Should the United States engage diplomatically with Russia and Ukraine to broker a settlement? If so, what would such a deal look like? George Beebe, former CIA Russia analyst and acting director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft will discuss.
Opening Feb. 9 Intersections: Linling Lu
The Phillips Collection
1600 21st St., NW
Timed tickets required for non-members
Linling Lu’s new exhibition is based on a piano performance of Philip Glass’s “Etude no. 16,” translated from soundwaves into bright, hypnotic circular paintings. The seven notes played on the piano by the left hand are represented by seven paintings on the left side of the gallery, while the five notes played by the right hand are represented by five paintings on the right.
Feb. 9 at 5:30 p.m. Bringing Alumni Black: Navigating Corporate America from a Black Perspective
Duquès Hall, Room 115
2201 G St., NW
Registration requested
Join the Multicultural Business Students Association and a prestigious group of Black GW alumni to discuss their career journeys and social experience in corporate America.
Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. The Crystal Casino Band
9:30 Club
815 V St., NW
$20
The four GW alums who make up the Crystal Casino Band started their career in Thurston's basement. Now they’re indie up-and-comers headlining one of D.C.’s most storied venues.
Feb. 9 at 9 p.m. GW Law Bands show
Public Bar
1214 18th St., NW
Why pass the bar when you could stay there for a drink and a show? (Sorry.) See two bands of GW’s rising legal stars—Attractive Nuisance and International Shoe—in action and learn how to file a real jam-icus brief. (Sorry again.) Must be 21 to drink.
Feb. 10 at 6:30 p.m. Poetry Night
University Student Center, Presentation Space
800 21st St., NW
Join the Black Student Union and GWU QTPOCA (Queer and Trans People of Color) for a lyrical interlude.
Feb. 13 at noon D.C. Mondays: By Broad Potomac's Shore: Great Poems From the Early Days of Our Nation's Capital
Online
Registration required
Explore poems by both well-known and overlooked poets working and living in Washington, D.C., from the city’s founding in 1800 to 1930. Scholar and poet Kim Roberts will present the works of celebrated writers like Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Francis Scott Key and Paul Laurence Dunbar, plus lesser-known poets—especially women, writers of color and working-class writers—and writers who were born enslaved, including Fanny Jackson Coppin, T. Thomas Fortune and John Sella Martin.
Save the Date:
Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. Black Heritage Celebration: Voices of a Renaissance: Open Mic Night
University Student Center, Betts Theatre
800 21st St., NW
This showcase of Black artistry at GW pays homage to the past while creating space for a powerful future.
Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. GW Program Board Gala 2023
National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum
8th and G streets, NW
$25 to $35
Start planning your red carpet outfits now—Program Board’s signature formal event returns this month.