Creative Aging
Creative Aging is a community exhibition presenting artwork made through The Phillips Collection’s programs for older adults living with memory loss, people with dementia, care partners, and the wider community. Inspired by founder Duncan Phillips’s belief in art’s “joy-giving and life-enhancing” qualities, the exhibition highlights the museum’s commitment to art, wellness, lifelong learning, and meaningful connection.
The works grew out of gallery conversations, close looking, multisensory exploration, storytelling, and hands-on artmaking. The exhibition celebrates curiosity, creativity, resilience, and joy through quilts, watercolors, acrylic and ink paintings, collages, clay reliefs, and other collaborative projects created with local organizations.
When: August 15–November 8, 2026
Venue: The Phillips Collection
Tickets: Included with general admission; free for members
Program focus: The exhibition is designed in part for older adults living with memory loss and includes work created through programs serving people with dementia, their care partners, and the broader community.
Participating organizations: Iona Wellness & Arts Center; Iona Washington Home Center at Congress Heights; Genevieve N. Johnson Senior Day Care Center in partnership with Arts for the Aging; Congress Heights Senior Wellness Center; Capitol Hill Village Memory Studio; and Reframing Care.
Creative process: Sessions typically begin in the galleries with guided observation, discussion of emotions and ideas, and connections to specific works of art. Participants then continue the exploration through artmaking, producing original works in response to what they encountered.
Iona Wellness & Arts Center: Participants visit the Phillips galleries in odd-numbered months for guided conversation, close looking, and multisensory engagement with a work of art. In the following even-numbered month, Phillips educators visit the center to help participants create related artwork. The exhibition includes quilts exploring musicality through fabric and watercolors expressing the feeling of spring.
Iona Washington Home Center at Congress Heights: This partnership follows the same alternating gallery-and-center structure, with participants responding to selected works through guided discussion and artmaking. The resulting pieces include acrylic and ink paintings and a quilt.
Genevieve N. Johnson Senior Day Care Center with Arts for the Aging: Participants explored symbolism and storytelling through music, collage, and watercolor with an Arts for the Aging teaching artist. They drew inspiration from works in the Phillips collection, then visited the galleries to view Howard Hodgkin’s work and make original art there.
Congress Heights Senior Wellness Center: After viewing Sam Gilliam’s work in the galleries, participants created Gilliam-inspired canvases at the center. They used loose canvas and acrylic paint, folding, rolling, and pinning the material so the paint would harden into the forms of the finished works.
Reframing Care: This monthly program serves people living with dementia and their care partners in a supportive museum setting. Led by specially trained museum educators, sessions combine discussion of a different artwork, social connection, and hands-on artmaking. The exhibition includes clay reliefs, watercolors, and ink paintings produced through the program.
Memory Studio at Capitol Hill Village: This grant-funded program welcomes individuals living with dementia or memory loss and their care partners. Trained teaching artists and volunteers lead workshops combining creative storytelling, live music, movement, hands-on artmaking, and reflection. Shared lunches help foster community, while access to the Phillips collection provides inspiration and opportunities to experience art in the galleries.
Support: The Phillips Collection acknowledges Paul and Terri Balaran and the Dosal Family Foundation for supporting the museum’s Creative Aging initiatives, including Reframing Care.
Showtimes: None; this is an exhibition on view during the stated dates.
Run time: Not applicable.