Galerie Blue Square

Galerie Blue Square at 1101 30th Street NW is a contemporary art gallery in the Georgetown canal neighborhood, on the 30th Street block that runs parallel to the C and O Canal and the K Street commercial waterfront. The gallery at this address serves Georgetown’s contemporary art market from a setting that is distinct from the upper Wisconsin Avenue gallery corridor: the 30th Street position, which is in the canal-adjacent residential and light commercial district, provides the gallery with a quieter and more intimate context than the commercial retail addresses of the main Georgetown galleries.

The contemporary art gallery’s primary function is the exhibition of work by the artists in the gallery’s program, which creates the public presentation that builds the artist’s reputation and provides the collector with the opportunity to encounter the work in a dedicated presentation environment. The Galerie Blue Square’s canal neighborhood location means the gallery visitor who comes to the 30th Street address is arriving at a specific art destination rather than encountering the gallery as part of a general retail experience.

Contemporary painting and works on paper are the categories that the gallery presents in the accessible scale that the residential 30th Street gallery address accommodates: the painting and the work on paper can be evaluated in a gallery of almost any scale, which allows a smaller gallery address to present serious contemporary art without the large institutional infrastructure that sculpture and installation work requires.

The 30th Street address is accessible from M Street above and from the K Street canal-level commercial district below. Hours run Wednesday through Saturday. The Galerie Blue Square program, which presents contemporary painting and works on paper in the canal-adjacent gallery space, draws from the Washington and international contemporary art community for the artists whose work the gallery exhibits. The Georgetown art collector who adds the Galerie Blue Square to the regular gallery visits has access to a different program from the Wisconsin Avenue galleries, which creates the diversity of exhibition that the engaged art collector values.

The canal neighborhood gallery cluster, of which Galerie Blue Square on 30th Street is a part, provides the Georgetown art market with the geographic extension beyond the Wisconsin Avenue corridor and the Pennsylvania Avenue galleries that makes the Georgetown gallery world feel like a complete district rather than a single commercial street. The 30th Street address at 1101, which is a block from the canal towpath and a short walk from the waterfront, situates the gallery visit within the Georgetown waterfront experience. Hours run Wednesday through Saturday. The Galerie Blue Square schedule of Wednesday through Saturday hours reflects the gallery’s position as a destination for the deliberate art visitor rather than the drop-in retail customer. The canal neighborhood setting at 1101 30th Street adds the Georgetown waterfront dimension to the gallery visit, and the gallery’s proximity to the C and O Canal towpath makes the gallery a natural stop for the Georgetown resident who includes the canal walk in the gallery afternoon.