Lots of good stuff happening around the DMV's visual art scene:

Tonite is the Bethesda Art Walk from 6-10 PM.

The Art Museum of the Americas will be hosting “An Architect of Surrealism,” an exhibition of paintings by Roberto Matta, one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. The exhibition includes work ranging from a drawing from the late 1940’s to a pair of etchings from 1985, as well as four paintings and a dozen gouache, etching and lithograph works.

Ten of the pieces have been loaned by Walker Fine Art of San Diego, while the rest of the pieces are from the Art Museum of the Americas' permanent collection. This exhibit will open on Wednesday, November 19 at 6:00 PM with a reception at the Art Museum of the Americas (201 18th Street, NW), and will continue through March 7, 2004.

The third edition of the Guerrilla Film Fest (GFF3) will be held at the Carnegie Institution in DC on Saturday November 22, 2003. The program for GFF3 consists of 8 award-winning short films. You can get program details here or email John Hanshaw for info.

In conjunction with the ongoing citywide arts festival, "Blues and Dreams: Celebrating the African American Experience in Washington, DC," the The District of Columbia Arts Center gallery has an opening tonite from 7-9 PM. It's a four artist group show which includes work by painter Shinique Smith, performance videos by Jefferson Pinder, lightbox-mounted, quasi-documentary photographs by Djakarta Jacobs, and Nekisha Durrett's photographs - confrontational portraits of proud, young African American lesbians.

In reference to my frustration with the Post's galleries' coverage, photographer Jim Steele adds that he'd "hate to think [that] the lack of coverage by the Post implies a lack of respect for local artists, but I suspect this is a large part of the problem."

In the Post today, Style's Friday focus is movies, and appropriately enough, there are four movie reviews in the section. There is also one theater review and three different music reviews by three different writers. Nothing "extra" on the visual arts, of course.

Over in the Weekend section, Michael O'Sullivan reviews Jim Sanborn's great show at the Corcoran and at Numark Gallery. This show was earlier reviewed by Blake Gopnik on October 31.

As it happens almost every Friday, Weekend movie critics manage to review the same movies that the Style section critic reviews.

So three of the movies reviewed in Style are also reviewed, by different critics in Weekend. This is a great way to see how critics can differ - not just in movies but in any genre of the arts. So while Stephen Hunter says that Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World "suffers from what might be called colonitis," and generally dislikes the movie, his fellow critic Desson Howe offers that the movie is not only a "masterful performance" but also that "[the movie] isn't just a fabulous seagoing spectacle. It's one for the ages."

Guess which critic will end up quoted in those one line mini-quotes that movies use in their advertising?

As I've noted at least twice before, wouldn't it be great if once in a while the Post would send Blake Gopnik and Paul Richard to review the same gallery or museum show, and publish it the same day, to give us readers two different perspectives on one show?

This happens (not by planned assignment, but just because the Style section editor and the Weekend editor are different editors and do not "synchronize" who and what will be reviewed) very frequently with movies and theatre. It also happens on a rare ocassion (like today), when O'Sullivan reviews a show that either has already been reviewed, or is later reviewed by either Dawson (if it's a gallery show) or Gopnik (if it is a museum show).

But what this practice of multiple movie and theatre reviews does prove, is that the (sometimes offered) excuse that the reason that the Post does not review more galleries is due to lack of print space is an invalid reason not to expand galleries coverage to the same level as theater, music, and fashion.

Weekend also has an army of contract writers that provide mini reviews of dozens of music and theater events (and of course movies) throughout the area, but not a single contract writer to do mini gallery reviews.

Why not?

I don't know, but I would guess that the Weekend editor, Joyce Jones, does not think that offering the same level of coverage to art galleries and art museums as she gives to our wonderful theaters, night clubs, performance venues and cinemas is as important and that her readers are not interested in a gallery art show in Dupont Circle, Georgetown, downtown or Bethesda to the same level as in a play in Olney or a dinner theatre production in Woodbridge, etc.