Today's Style section has a large and bright article by WaPo fashion critic Robin Givhan.
It's one of nearly 100 fashion reviews a year that Givhan produces for the Style section. Usually brightly accompanied by a color image of some gaunt, sour faced woman, wearing funny-looking clothes and walking oddly.
And yet, this same Style section, in the world's second most powerful newspaper, deems it acceptable to only offer their readers about 25 gallery review columns a year. That's from a potential pool of around 1,000 visual art gallery exhibitions that occur per year in the Greater Washington, DC region.
If you don't get it, you don't get it.
I sincerely hope that the new Style editor gets it. Her name is Deborah Heard, and her email is heardd@washpost.com.
And the Rare WaPo Praise
An editor who does get it for the most part, is Joyce Jones, who is the editor of the Weekend section of the WaPo.
In fact, I submit that Weekend now offers a much better view of the area art scene than Style. And Michael O'Sullivan certainly is the only WaPo art critic who is actively involved and an integral and knowledgeable part of our area's art scene. By the way, read his excellent take on "Modigliani: Beyond the Myth" at the Phillips here.
Although... Weekend... ehr... could be better. I mean, they do capsule mini reviews for theater, and for movies; why not visual art shows?
Why not?