In the spirit of open transparency: As most of you know by now, I am in the middle of organizing a monster of a survey show for 2025 with the aim of not only exhibiting a curated, 4-venue exhibition to survey a snap shot of women artists working in the DMV region, but also (and this is kind of new) to attempt to catalog and document ALL female artists working and living in the DMV (more on that later).
I have also come up with the idea of getting our area museum curators to come and visit the four venues so that their eyes can be exposed to the talent in their own backyard.
Why? Because it has been one of my pet peeves for the last few hundred decades that our area museums (with the notable exception of American University's Katzen Art Museum) tend to ignore their own area artists. In fact, several years ago, while discussing the DMV's art scene in the old Kojo Nmandi radio show on WETA, I put it as (using the Hirshhorn as an example for nearly all DC area museums):
"A Hirshhorn curator would rather take a cab to Dulles to fly to Berlin, or London, or Madrid to visit the studio of an emerging artist in those cities that take a cab to Georgetown, or Alexandria, or Rockville, to visit the studio of an emerging DC area artist."
This letter, with slight adaptations, will go to all area museums, to include university museums:
27 December 2024
Kathryn Wat
Chief Curator
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Ave NW
Washington, DC 20005
Dear Ms. Wat,
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): Next September – October 2025, four visual art venues in the DMV will showcase nearly 200 works of art curated from over 2,000 entries from female artists from the DMV as part of the survey show “Women Artists of the DMV.” I have secured a promise from a major DMV area collector to purchase and then gift to the NMWA one of the exhibited pieces – the work would be selected by the NMWA, not the collector.
Background: According to the research done by the Washington City Paper in 2017, the term “DMV”, which is used to refer to the District, Maryland and Virginia (a.k.a. the Greater Washington Capital region) first appeared in a Daily Campello ART NEWS blog post that I wrote in 2003 – And yes! I therefore do claim that I invented it!
The Greater Washington, D.C., capital region (the DMV) is not only home to some of the best art museums in the world, dozens of art galleries, non-profit art spaces, alternative art venues, and art organizations, but it also supports and fertilizes of the best and most creative visual art scenes in the nation. This scene is kindled and ignited to a large extent by female artists of all ages, races and ethnicities – an artistic female universe significantly more diverse than just about any of other major city on the planet. By the same logic and path, the artwork created by these fertile minds examine every possible corner of the visual arts genres and creative corners. Celebrating this art scene, which spreads across the three geographic areas that make up the DMV, in 2023 I proposed to curate an exhibition of 100+ works by 100+ women artists comprised of both leading and established female artists plus talented emerging contemporary female visual artists who represent the tens of thousands of women artists working in this culturally and ethnically diverse region in order to assemble a group show to showcase the immense power of the visual arts being created by these artists and also document a snap shot in time for the female artists working in the region.
100-200 works of art take a lot of exhibition space, and thus this curated exhibition will be spread across four venues in the DMV:
• The Katzen Museum at American University in Washington, DC
• The Athenaeum in Alexandria
• Artists & Makers Gallery complex in Rockville
• The Galleries at Strathmore Mansion in Rockville
Additionally, I am currently working a deal with Schiffer Press, the publisher of my 2011 “100 Artists of Washington, DC” book which for one glorious day in 2011 was Amazon’s best-selling art book (and which is in the SI collection), to publish a book on the exhibition.
Furthermore, I am also working with the Smithsonian Institution’s Art Archives to archive the exhibition materials as part of a survey snapshot in time for DMV area female artists.
As the date of this letter, I have received over 2,000 emails from area female artists wishing to be considered for the exhibition. As I can only select about 10% of those to physically exhibit a work at one of the four venues, I also plan to include a plan to project ALL artists onto the walls of the Katzen Museum, document that process, and deliver the materials to be archived by the Smithsonian.
As a result of my extensive presence over the last few decades at fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach and dozens of others worldwide, I have cultivated a relationship with major art collectors from all over the planet, and this is where NMWA comes in for this exhibition, as a DMV area collector has offered to buy one work of art from the exhibition to be chosen by the NMWA and then donated to the NMWA for its permanent collection. The attachment has a list of artists who, as of the date of this letter, have agreed to participate in the exhibition; I expect that quite a few more will eventually be added to that list.
Questions? Thoughts? Recommendations? Please feel free to call me at (___)___________ or email me at lenny@lennycampello.com or lennycampello@hotmail.com
Warm regards,
Lenny Campello
CC: Susan Fisher Sterling
Virginia Treanor
Winton S. Holladay
Susan Goldberg
Nancy Nelson Stevenson
