Exhibition Overview

Learn more about Washington, DC’s rich art history through The Very Idea! Art of Brian Kavanagh, the first-ever museum survey of one of the most distinctive — and least known — contemporary artists to work in the city. The show offers a core sample of his art and invites you to discover the true breadth and depth of that vital era encompassing the 1980s and ‘90s.

Kavanagh’s achievement was almost entirely in painting and printmaking, yet his art is pervasively informed by his interest in ideation — the thought process itself – which he understood as the most defining trait of humankind. His paintings share a surprising affinity with conceptual art that emerged as an international movement (largely by non-painters) during the years he was most active.