The 12th house, the white one, is inside the museum, not in the gardens. There are several compelling reasons for that. One is that Montoya, a Miami-based Colombian artist, hoped to lure visitors from the garden into the galleries in search of the final structure. Another is that the house is coated in white chocolate, which wouldn’t last long if exposed to sun and rain.
Also, where the black buildings set off their surroundings, the white one is designed to fit in. Positioned so that its back wall is parallel to the floor, the house mirrors the shape and color of a fourth-century Roman marble sarcophagus on exhibit in the adjacent gallery. Montoya’s white house serves as an homage to Dumbarton’s collection, but as a different sort of dwelling — for life rather than death.
Unlike the elaborately decorated sarcophagus, Montoya’s houses are stark and unembellished. They’re modeled on the tiny ones used in the Monopoly game, which is not just a design choice. Many of the artist’s inspirations are historical and economic.
The houselike icons invoke the role of homeownership in wealth accumulation, while coal and cacao are both valuable commodities extracted or produced in Montoya’s homeland. (In fact, the artist’s parents used to grow cacao.) Before the gold-obsessed Spaniards arrived, cacao beans were used as currency in Mesoamerica, another link between financial transactions and the artist’s materials.
Despite all the pointed allusions to Colombia and commerce, aspects of “The White House” are intuitive. There are 12 rather than 10 structures, Montoya revealed at a press preview, because “I found 10 to be a boring number.” And although the houses are sleek and largely featureless, the artist was pleased when one roof cracked. The split in the coal-and-resin surface gives a real-world quality to the idealized form.
Among the tricks of the Dumbarton Oaks gardens, largely designed by landscape architect Beatrix Farrand between 1921 and 1947, is that they aren’t as regular as they appear. The great lawn between the back of the museum’s main building and the woods to the north looks to be orderly, yet isn’t exactly symmetrical. Montoya may have sensed this when he placed a trio of black houses on the lawn’s slightly off-kilter axis.
The three structures are similar but not identical; they get progressively taller and skinnier as they move away from the museum. This playful arrangement partly foils the effects of perspective, confusing the eye as to the relative size of each house.
Another elongated structure stands on the front of the building, while smaller ones sit in a pond (near a swimming duck that turns out to be a life-size sculpture) or in the middle of flowers in a cutting garden. That last edifice is the only one that isn’t open at one end, another small variation on the houses’ shared design.
While one of the artist’s goals was to beckon visitors into the museum, his installation primarily highlights the gardens. This is in line with the mission statement of Dumbarton Oaks’ 15-year-old contemporary art program, which notes that the grounds “are dynamic spaces, changing from day to day and season to season.” Viewers of “The White House” may get the historical references, but what they’re most likely to notice is the canny way Montoya has flipped the idea of house and garden. Rather than stand apart from the plantings, his houses sprout within them.
If you go
Santiago Montoya: The White House
Dumbarton Oaks, 1703 32nd St. NW. 202-349-6400. doaks.org.
Dates: Through June.
Prices: Free museum admission; $11 for gardens through Oct. 31. Gardens are free Nov. 1 to March 14.