There. Are. FOUR. LIGHTS.

an ellsworth kelly painting of five asymmetrical monochrome canvases in yellow, pink, black, and white, form a square. through the door behind it two figures are backlit by a hot white dan flavin fluorescent sculpture that turns the room around it green. at the national gallery of art in washington dc

I went back to the National Gallery of Art today just to photograph the two major lighting WTF going on right now, but also to celebrate the return of Ellsworth Kelly’s Tiger, an early multi-canvas masterpiece from 1953. The work had suddenly disappeared from the 2023 Ellsworth Kelly show at Glenstone, without a word of explanation.

In completely unrelated news, I remember a few weeks ago talking with one of the conservators at the NGA who said how much Ellsworth loved the Gallery, and had even left a bunch of money to research the conservation of contemporary paintings. Which is good, because [counting Tiger as one,] they have 24 Kelly canvases.

Back to the photo, which also shows Lighting Situation #1, or 1-3: a gallery of three white hot Dan Flavin Tatlin Monuments throwing my ccd out of whack.

a giant white barnett newman painting on the left wall is in a pink tinted gallery of all white paintings, as the bright white light of a dan flavin sculpture that turned its gallery green bleeds through the doorway, silhouetting a couple of visitors along the way. the national gallery of art

Which is fine. But there is a white walled gallery next to it, filled with white paintings. That is a Barnett Newman on the left, The Name II, 1950, very rarely seen. There’s also a Mary Corse, Robert Ryman, Freddy Rodriguez, and an Anne Truitt.

the shadow of a grumpy middle aged white guy is cast across a brightly lit all white painting by anne truitt, which has a patch of whiter paint, and a faint graphite line on that, though you wouldn't know it from the lighting. the national gallery

Truitt’s white acrylic and pencil on gesso Arundel XI painting suffers the worst. My phone camera is doing a lot of work here, and the painting is still almost unseeable.

a gallery of all yellow artworks with a yellow geometric olafur eliasson chandelier sphere in the center, includes a yellow shop storefront with canvas on it by christo; a yellow and orange painted square column by anne truitt; an angled mirrored doorway, actually a freestanding, deeply framed doorway-shaped sculpture, by olafur; and a figure on a bright yellow background by usco, at the national gallery

You know, to see these photos of Lighting Situation #2, Yellow Gallery, I feel like I’m being a noodge; they really do seem to color correct a lot, even presenting the range of yellows Christo, Truitt, USCO, Kusama, and Mangold used.

olafur eliasson's yellow sphere chandelier casts its light across all the other yellow objects in the gallery, canceling some of their tone. this includes the giant kusama infinity net, yellow on black, that looks like the one frank stella had for decades; a bunch of small works idek; and a multipart geometric canvas by robert mangold. at the national gallery of art.

Even Olafur’s got two different yellows, in the door and the orb. But it truly is the orb yellow that becomes a collaborator with every other work in the room; it’s really palpable. There is a similar circular pedestal being set up on the mezzanine right now; I wonder what they’ll hang above that one?

I really feel like I can see how these installations came together; the way the curators thought through the challenging situations these light-based objects present; and the factors that brought them to this spot in the first place. And it’s good to remember we really are all going through some stuff right now, as a city, a capital, a nation, and a world.