Fact Sheet ​“Donald Sultan: The Disaster Paintings”

Exhibition
“Donald Sultan: The Disaster Paintings”
May 26 – Sept. 4

Where
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Eighth and F streets N.W.

Description
In the 1980s, Donald Sultan (born 1951) began his industrial landscape series the “Disaster Paintings.” He worked with the subject for nearly a decade, using images of actual events drawn from the daily newspaper. Sultan’s “Disaster Paintings” illustrate robust, man-made structures—such as industrial plants and train cars— as fragile constructs that can be undone by catastrophic events. Distinguished for combining this subject matter with industrial materials, such as tar and Masonite tiles, the “Disaster Paintings” exemplify in both media and concept the vulnerability of the most progressive, manufactured elements of modern culture.

This exhibition is the first to focus on the series and includes 12 signature paintings from 1984 to 1990, including “Plant, May 29, 1985” from the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which will be on view only at this venue. The exhibition is organized by Alison Hearst, assistant curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Sarah Newman, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is coordinating the exhibition in Washington, D.C. The museum is the third stop on a five-city national tour for the exhibition.

Catalog
The exhibition catalog, published by Prestel, will be available for purchase in the museum store ($49.95).

Artist Talk
Thursday, June 1, at 6 p.m. in the museum’s McEvoy Auditorium.

Credit
“Donald Sultan: The Disaster Paintings” is organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The presentation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is generously supported by Elizabeth Broun, the Gene Davis Memorial Fund and the James F. Dicke Family Endowment.

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