George Mason University has a very strong visual arts program, and their 2003 Faculty Show is on exhibition now at GMU's Atrium Gallery until December 17, 2003.
GMU's College of Visual and Performing Arts also has one of the strongest reputations as an art school with a solid (and rare) representational painting focus. This was in part due to the many years that professors such as Margarida Kendall Hull (now retired) put into the effort.
GMU's art faculty now includes what I think are two of the best figurative painters in the nation: Chawky Frenn (who I think is probably the last DC-area artist in my memory to have received a huge review in the New York Times) and Erik Sandberg
Ferdinand Protzman, the Washington Post's former galleries critic has a booksigning going on today at Hemphill Fine Arts in Georgetown.
The book is Landscape : Photographs of Time and Place and signed copies can be obtained from Hemphill Fine Arts.
Among the photographers included in the book are masters like Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz, along with contemporary photographers, such as Richard Misrach and Sally Mann.