Susan Clampitt, executive director at public radio station WAMU, has been fired by American University President Benjamin Ladner.

My favorite WAMU show is the daily talk show by the unflappable Kojo Nmandi. Kojo is one of the rare radio talk show hosts that once in a while actually dedicates air time to our area's art scene. Kojo had me on the air last March discussing DC area art galleries and events, and he's also had the Post's Blake Gopnik a couple of times. Actually, Blake makes a couple of interesting personal observations about his impression on the quality of DC art and artists - listen to it here.

The most disappointing (from a visual arts perspective) WAMU show is Metro Connection, which is well "connected" to music, performance and theatre and loads of DC-centric events, but generally ignores the strong visual arts component of our area's art scene. In fact, so far in 2003 they've done only three shows with some sort of visual art focus. In an ideal world, one would hope that Metro Connection could find air time to do at least one monthly show on a museum show or a gallery show or highlight a DC area visual artist --- in other words, much alike to what they already do for all the other various genres of the arts.

---