Artists & Icons

Duke Ellington was born in Shaw in 1899 and went on to compose over 1,000 works. Marvin Gaye grew up around Cardozo and got his start at Howard Theatre. Chuck Brown invented go-go. Roberta Flack lived in DC for years. More recently, Wale put DC hip-hop on the national map and Goldlink carried the torch with 'Crew' in 2017.

The Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Georgetown has trained generations of performers — alums include Dave Chappelle and Samira Wiley. The Kennedy Center anchors performing arts; Arena Stage and Studio Theatre lead the city's robust theater scene.

DC was home to the Washington Color School in the 1950s–60s — abstract painters Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Gene Davis pioneered staining unprimed canvas with thinned acrylics. Their work hangs in the Hirshhorn and the National Gallery.

Street art lives on too: Aniekan Udofia's evolving mural on the side of Ben's Chili Bowl rotates through DC icons — Chuck Brown, Obama, Kamala Harris, Muhammad Ali.

Pulitzer-winning poet Rita Dove served as U.S. Poet Laureate from the Library of Congress (1993–95) — the youngest ever appointed. Frederick Douglass's home, Cedar Hill in Anacostia, is open as a National Historic Site.