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Experience America, Experience Mingering Mike

The Experience America exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum blends, with a fresh eye, pieces from the museum’s permanent collections – including a number of stars from the Federal Works of Art Program exhibit of a few years ago, featured in my . Others come from private collections. Together these paintings help break down the silos separating images from the 1930s and ’40s and portray America and American realism in a new light. It’s a refreshing and inviting exhibit.

Upstairs, the rooms devoted to Mingering Mike’s Supersonic Greatest Hits reveal a new form of outsider art: the LP oeuvre of a recording artist who never released a disc. The album covers track the career of a soul star from DC’s streets, Mingering Mike. His vision comes complete with liner notes, lyrics and cardboard records hand-painted with grooves suggesting hi-fi tunes the appropriate length. You can also see his platinum hits. The exhibit is a fascinating little gem. There’s a fun piece about the artist on Studio 360.

Enjoy them both.

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