all photos: Franz Mahr
The holiday season in DC is everything you’d expect a holiday season to be in the nation’s capital: shiny and busy and dignified and patriotic and, yes, a little predictable. So, when two years a go Georgetown launched Georgetown Glow, their own variation of Lyon’s Fete des Lumieres, we rejoiced at the prospect of a holiday light installation that would help fix that “a little predictable” part of D.C.’s holiday season decor. Now, in its third reiteration, the training wheels are off, and Georgetown Glow is bigger, more ambitious and just the right mix of local-to-global charm to earn the right to be truly called an essential December tradition, not just for the neighborhood but the city itself.
This year, the install is 10 days long (vs a weekend last year), and goes through December 20th. The artists participating are perfectly mixed bag of street art and architects and installation specialists, all of whom embraced the site specificness of the project, mostly focusing around the Georgetown Canal. This year, the roster includes: Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger (New York, NY), Arthur Gallice and Hervé Orgeas (Shanghai/Washington, D.C.), the collectives SHO + ULR (Pittsburgh/Gainesville, FL/Boston), Kelly Towles (Washington, D.C.), and Hiroshi Jacobs of the trans-disciplinary research and design collaborative HiJAC (Washington, D.C.)
Make the most of this amazing weather and go explore (and yes, instagram. #GeorgetownGlow is the word).
