Alice Neel

I'm looking forward to "Alice Neel’s Women", which will be opening at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on October 28.

Not just because I am a huge Neel fan, but also because the exhibition features a portrait by Neel of our own Lida Moser.

Neel did four portraits of Lida Moser in her lifetime. I am not sure which one(s) is included in this exhibition. I've been writing and calling the NMWA for the last two years (to find out), and so far they've ignored me.

Lida Moser was one of Alice Neel's closest friends, and I love to hear her stories about how in the 40s, 50s and 60s Neel's work was ignored by the critics and art world because she refused to change her work to "fit" the prevailing abstract styles in vogue during those years.

Lida Moser also recalls how, when Neel began to get recognition in the 1970s, especially after her retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974, male artists in the NY art scene openly resented her success because she was a woman.

Moser also experienced this same form of resentment (from male photographers) when she was given photographic assignments by Vogue, Look, Life and other such magazines that she worked for.

Today's female artists stand on the shoulders of both these wonderful women.

See work by Lida Moser here and by Alice Neel here.

The Power of the Web

Thanks to the several lawyers who contacted me offering to help the local artist being ripped off by a NYC gallery.

I'll keep track of the issue and report as warranted.

Sunday openings

"Human Containers" at Target Gallery in Alexandria is having an opening reception and talk by the juror Twylene Moyer (managing editor of Sculpture magazine) this Sunday from 4-6 PM. Tim Tate, Alison Sigethy and Mark Jenkins are among the local artists who will have works on display there. All together there are 20 artists from the US and Canada in the exhibition.

Before you get there, you can also walk across the hall and visit the Art League's opening for their International Landscape Show. That opening is Sunday from 2-4PM.

Both galleries are on the ground floor of the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria.

Friday openings

Loads of gallery openings tonight, mostly around the Galleries of Dupont Circle where neighbors Conner Contemporary, Irvine Contemporary and Washington Printmakers all have excellent group shows.

In Georgetown, our neighbor Anne C. Fisher also has an opening for an excellent show: Beyond Synergy.

All these openings run from 6-8PM.