Gape at Cai Guo-Qiang's "Traveler" exhibit at the Hirshhorn and Sackler

LOCATION: Hirshhorn Museum, Sackler Museum (on the Mall) TIME: Now: EQUIPMENT: Yourself OPTIONAL: Gunpowder, computer-chip-guided floating rockets, contacts in city government (only if you want to try it yourself)

Cai Guo-Qiang has exhibits at the Hirshhorn and Sackler right now. I've only seen the one at the Hirshhorn: it documents his failed plans for various performance art projects around the world involving gigantic patterned gunpower explosions of symbolic significance in public places.

The exhibit includes conceptual sketches (which he made by laying out gunpowder on pieces of paper and exploding it) and small essays about the plans for the projects, and the reasons that bureaucratic approval was denied: it's the aesthetics of failure (and recovery therefrom).

I particularly liked the description of a tranquil lake in Northern Japan, famous for its spiritual placidity: "4,200 pounds of gunpowder will be exploded at intervals in the air, turning a natural wonder into a man-made wonder." Another project would have illuminated a cheeky quote from the I-Ching in front of a business complex.

The most fun from the exhibit comes when you close your eyes and imagine the explosions - but the conceptual sketches, made by igniting patterns of gunpowder on top of paper, are dynamic and expressive art in their own right. I'd really like to have met Cai Guo-Qiang as a kid... "Honey, he burned through the carpet again!"