The Phillips Collection, Art museum in Dupont Circle, Washington D.C., United States
The Phillips Collection occupies Duncan Phillips's 1897 Georgian Revival house on 21st Street, a red brick building with white-trimmed windows, a dark cornice and two green-roofed dormers. A square brick chimney rises above the roofline, and a recessed columned entrance sits right of centre behind a low stair. Two similarly scaled additions hold the nearly 3,000 works.
Duncan Phillips opened the house in 1921 as a memorial to his father and brother, who had died shortly before. Over the following decades, he expanded the space several times to make room for a growing collection.
The museum takes its name from Duncan Phillips, who opened the family home as a memorial gallery in 1921. He and his wife Marjorie Acker Phillips built the collection together, and he bought early works by then-unknown artists such as John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe and Arthur Dove. The Rothko Room, a small space hung with seven Rothko canvases, was arranged with the artist's own agreement.
The entrance sits on 21st Street, a few blocks north of the DuPont Circle Metro station. On most days the house opens late morning, on Sundays it opens in the afternoon, and it closes in the early evening.
The house displays works side by side from completely different decades and styles, inviting visitors to find connections between them on their own. Regular rehangings mean no two visits look exactly the same.
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