Friday, June 11, 2004

Blake Gopnik's piece in the Post about the Panda Public Art Project has created an interesting debate. Tony Gittens, Executive Director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, responds to Gopnik's piece here.

Letters to the Editor from other readers, blasting or praising Blake, can be read here.



The Washington Post gives our "Contemporary Photography" exhibition in Bethesda a Hot Pick in today's paper. The show features photography by Hugh Shurley, Viktor Koen, Nate Larson, Heidi Marston, Prescott Lassman, Elena Volkov, Joyce Tenneson, Cirenaica Moreira, Marta Maria Perez Bravo, Grace Weston, Rachel Scheron, Elsa Mora, Deborah Nofret Marrero, John DeFabbio, Jan Saudek and others.

You read it here first:

Button Dr. Carolyn Carr, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the National Portrait Gallery told me last night that the National Portrait Gallery will soon announce a national portrait competition, held yearly and open to American artists. Unlike the annual BP Portrait Prize Award in Britain, this Portrait Prize will be open to US artists of all ages.

Button A Dupont Circle gallerist tells me that the former building where Gallery K was located will soon become a high end furniture store. Too bad; we were all hoping that somehow a "new" Gallery K will emerge from the death of its owners.

Button Another Dupont Circle gallerist tells me that rents around the renovated 14th Street neighborhood have skyrocketed and some gallery moves there have been cancelled as a result.

Button And yet a third gallerist passes that longtime dealer Sally Troyer will be closing her gallery after this current show.

Button Washington Post art critic Michael O'Sullivan returns to the Post's Weekend section to review galleries and museums. O'Sullivan had been reviewing movies for a few months.

Button Heard in the offices of the WCP: Former WCP Arts Editor and critic Glenn Dixon will no longer be writing art reviews for the WCP. Apparently Dixon is busy with other commitments. Hopefully the WCP will find someone to replace Dixon and who will go beyond the two or three museums and four galleries that he usually covered. The WCP's arts coverage, under the guidance of Leonard Roberge, has been doing a consistently outstanding job of covering the arts around town. Interested art critic freelancers should read the guidelines here and then start writing about art!

A viewpoint of the unlikely (and definately surprising) Reagan legacy to the arts can be read here. He brought the NEA funding to an all-time high.

Lou Jacobson comes through with a great review of the Sandra Ramos show in the Washington City Paper.