With images of Anacostia, a shipping container-turned-art gallery is on the move

Once again, CulturalDC’s Mobile Art Gallery is on the move, this time to Washington, D.C.’s Southeast neighborhood, Anacostia. A 40-foot shipping container has been renovated with a site-specific installation, created by Baltimore-based artist Amanda Burnham, called “Block Watch.” Here, a tapestry of three-dimensional acrylic paintings will be unveiled with images inspired by the physical landscape and history of the Anacostia community.

As inspiration for Burnham’s collages, community members will be able to submit images of Anacostia by using the hashtag #MyAnacostia.

In a statement, Burnham said, “Cities interest me as teeming containers for everything. As a reflexive, intimate space, the Mobile Art Gallery gives me the ability to reflect the attitudes and lives of the community the gallery inhabits.”

Past venues that have featured Burnham’s works include the Toledo Museum of Art, the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Volta Art Fair. She has also been a professor in the Department of Art+Design, Art History, and Art Education at Towson University since 2007.

The Mobile Art Gallery will be hosted at Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum from April 25 to May 26 with gallery hours from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays.

There will also be “open hours” in the museum on April 14 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and in the gallery on April 18 and April 25 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for visitors to be able to speak directly with the artist. A community kickoff event will be hosted on April 28 from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. with live performances, food, and family-friendly activities.

From October 2017 to November 2017, the mobile gallery was located in Navy Yard, inviting approximately 100 visitors every weekday to enjoy an installation by Marymount University Professor of Interior Design Salvatore Pirrone. From November 2017 through January 1, 2018, the gallery relocated to the National Zoo, near the visitor’s center on the main walkway, with an installation by Maryland-based artist Maggie Gourlay. A new installation by D.C.-based artist JD Deardourff was later exhibited in the space from January 10, 2018 through February 24, 2018, before Baltimore-based artist Noa Heyne’s installation was located in the gallery from March 2018 through April 13, 2018. The plan is for the gallery to eventually visit all of the city’s eight Wards.

• Shipping container-turned-art gallery will come to National Zoo on November 24 [Curbed DC]

• Amanda Burnham [Official Website]