A Quick Trip to the Phillips Collection to celebrate Blue Star Museums 2015

This morning we launched another season of Blue Star Museums with an event celebrating military families. Now in its sixth year, museums that participate in the program--a collaboration among the NEA, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense, and more than 2,000 museums nationwide--offer free admission to active-duty military personnel and their families from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Our host for this morning's launch was the Phillips Collection, a Blue Star Museum located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. Founded in the early 1920s by art collector Duncan Phillips as a tribute to his late father and brother, the Phillips Collection is an intimate space in which to explore highlights of both modern and contemporary art. This summer, you'll have the chance to see Jacob Lawrence's Struggle Series and the journals of Duncan Phillips, as well as gems from the museum's permanent collection by artists such as Georgia O'Keeffee, Vincent Van Gogh, Jacob Lawrence, and Richard Diebenkorn. While you could easily spend a whole day exploring the Phillips Collection, we understand that, especially during the work week, you may be pressed for time. So just for you, here are three hyper-quick mini-tours of the museum. As you'll see in this tour, the Music Room at the Phillips Collection is just as much a work of art as the paintings hung on its walls. While the Phillips Collection is known for its holdings of Jacob Lawrence's The Migration Series, his Struggle Series is no less powerful. As noted in the wall text accompanying the Lawrence works, the 12-panel exhibition "provides a rare glimpse into the artist’s narrative invention at mid-century in the midst of civil rights controversy." For our final quick trip through the Phillips, we'll zoom by works by Vincent Van Gogh, Raoul Dufy, Bianca Sforni, William Avery, and many more.  Read more about Blue Star Museums and the 2015 launch event here. Find a participating Blue Star Museum near you here. And stay tuned for lots of informative and fun Blue Star Museums content on the blog throughout the summer!