The work
DCWall is a monumental watercolor installation composed of four ventitych panels, each containing twenty individual watercolors and measuring 7’4″ × 12’6″. Arranged to enclose a room, the four panels create a continuous painted surface 7’4″×50′. The eighty individual watercolors that compose it — twenty to each panel — were painted live on-site in Washington DC between September 2020 and August 2026, during two presidential elections, January 6, the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings, the MAGA marches, the razor wire around the Capitol, both inaugurations, and the monuments through every season.
Two panels are complete. The remaining two are being painted live in Washington DC during the summer of 2026, as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary on the National Mall. The complete installation will be finished by September 2026.
Further information about increasing complexity of the installation here.
The historical case
The period 2020–2026 will be studied for generations — in universities, in museum retrospectives, in democratic history courses, in pandemic and political science research. The visual record scholars, students, and the public will reach for is the one made closest to the events themselves.
DCWall is that record. Every one of its eighty watercolors was made outside, in the street, on the day, as events unfolded — in the press enclosures at the Supreme Court, on the sidewalks outside the Capitol as the razor wire went up, at the National Mall through marches and memorials and celebrations. No other visual record of this period was made this way. Every other significant documentation was produced indoors, behind a screen, or reconstructed after the fact.
Watercolor on paper is among the most fragile and irreversible of mediums. It cannot be restored or repainted. What is in these works is what was seen, on that day, in that light, in that street. The period they document is gone. Both the medium and the moment are unrepeatable.
Conservation and display requirements
DCWall requires museum-grade institutional stewardship. The fragility of watercolor on paper demands conservation-standard framing, climate-controlled display conditions, plexi enclosure, and permanent security. The work cannot be adequately protected in a commercial gallery context. It was made for a museum room — enclosed, lit, guarded, and accessible to the public as a permanent part of the institution’s collection.
As is standard in museum acquisitions, framing, conservation mounting, and installation are the responsibility of the acquiring institution. The artist requires approval rights over framing and display specifications to ensure the work is presented as intended.
The artist requires that the installation be displayed as a complete, indivisible work — all four panels, enclosing a room, as designed. The eighty watercolors will not be separated or sold individually under any circumstances.
Diplomatic provenance
Four of the eighty watercolors in DCWall are currently on loan to the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, selected for the official Embassy Residence in Ottawa through the State Department’s Artist in Embassies program. They will return to the installation within three years and will be included in full in any acquisition. Their diplomatic provenance — selected by a U.S. Ambassador for official residential display — is a permanent part of their record and transfers to the acquiring institution.
Touring
The artist welcomes a shared acquisition model in which two or more institutions jointly hold the work and rotate its exhibition, ensuring DCWall is seen in multiple cities. A presidential library from this era, or a major museum whose mission includes the visual and democratic history of the United States, would be the natural permanent home.
The artist
Katherine Dolgy Ludwig is a Brooklyn-based artist who has worked for over thirty years in the United States, Canada, England, and France. Over twenty solo exhibitions. Recent retrospectives at the American University of Paris and the London Chelsea Arts Club. Work featured in publications such as The New York Times, NYU Humanus, and Los Angeles Times, with honors and fellowships selected by jurors at freeDimensional, A.I.R. Gallery Chelsea, the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, The Brooklyn Rail, NYU Tisch, Art in America, and the London Royal Academy. Her art is in the permanent collections of Mayor Bloomberg, National Arts Club, Pentagon, Playboy, Globe Theatre, Ornette Coleman, and Pete Townshend.
Contact
All acquisition inquiries should be directed to Katherine Dolgy Ludwig directly.
See the complete DC Reportage Series — 450 paintings →