Last night was the grand opening of the Washington Convention Center's public art collection. The center introduced the largest public art collection in Washington, DC. Over 120 works of art, sculpture, paintings, photography, graphics and mixed media. They spent around four million dollars, of which half was allocated to DC area artists.
And the Washington Convention Center art selection committee, and its art advisory program, and the ad hoc community art program committee and all the other many groups, committees or people who had a say, word, vote or check into what gets acquired for a public art collection of this magnitude have done a surprisingly outstanding job. I counted almost sixty names somehow associated with what art was selected for the collection.
Also strange is the fact that apparently, due to security concerns, this public art collection is apparently not open to the public. That is, future convention attendees, official visitors and the people who work there have access to it, but the general public does not. I am trying to confirm this, but if true, some sort of remedy (such as "by appointment tours") should be institutionalized.
But in spite of that, this is overall an excellent collection of art, which manages to showcase some major new pieces by blue chip artists, as well as to provide many of our own well-known and emerging area artists with an opportunity to flex their artistic muscles. Because this is Washington, DC, it also manages (as expected) to avoid displaying a nude figure anywhere in the building, although this will change for two days in August of 2004, when Room 146 of the Center hosts the International Nude Art Expo 2004 from 21-22 August 2004.
In fact, the major problem that I have with the Washington Convention Center is that if they spent four million dollars to acquire the art, then they need to start figuring out how to get a few more million dollars, because this beautiful space is so vast, and the number of huge, empty walls so many, that the current number of artworks adorning the Center is but a minute - I would say 5% - of what truly needs to be there to have the art make the visual impact that I think it must make.
When Kate and I arrived, we ran into Guy Mondo, who had already been there for a couple of hours and knew where everything was located. So with Guy as a guide (no pun intended) we did a couple of miles worth of walking in seeing the collection.
And after all is said and done, I think that my favorite piece is Jim Sanborn's Lingua, which is perfectly located in the Grand Lobby of the center. Sanborn has delivered two sixteen foot columns, like modern standing stones, that flank the visitor as one enters the center. The columns are etched through in eight different languages (with parts of historical texts recalling gatherings (conventions)) and lit from the inside. This projects the words onto the walls, ceilings and people as one walks through. Sanborn has reacted with a very powerful answer to this call for public art for a convention center. The ability of Lingua to marry a modern view of an ancient ritual, in my eyes makes it the most successful piece in the collection.
However, I am a Virgo, and there's one small, but bothersome issue that I must point out, as I suspect that Sanborn may not be aware of it. The eight languages cut through the columns are French, Ethiopian, Greek, Latin, Chinese, Russian, Ononandaga and Spanish. And it is with the Spanish orthography used in the columns that I (and I suspect anyone who can read Spanish) have a nagging issue.
The Spanish paragraph cut through at the top of the left column describes Columbus' triumphant reception in Barcelona. But whoever cut the words through used a generic alphabet to create the words, rather than a Spanish alphabet. Initially, the differences, letter for letter, are small. But once you start assembling words together, Spanish, like all Romance languages, uses a complex set of accents to indicate the correct pronunciation and spelling of a word.
And the column's Spanish text is missing all the accents, and thus is full of misspellings and gibberish. For example, the word "bajo" could mean "short" as in "he was a short man" but if you add an accent to the "o" at the end, as in "bajó," it can translate as "came down" as in "he came down the ladder." I suspect that the French text suffers from the same type of errors.
As I've noted, the placement of Sanborn's Lingua is perfect, and so is the spectacular location of Pat Steir's Red on Blue Waterfall, located on Level 2 at the L Street Bridge. And in fact, nearly all the work is placed in very good locations.
And yet, considering all the empty space all around the center, there are some questionable placements that come to mind. For example, I don't understand why so many photographs have been grouped together in a rather isolated area on Level Two. I do realize that whoever selected the locations thought that by grouping seventeen photographs into a small corridor ("small" is relative in the convention center sense) they were creating a "photo gallery."
It doesn't work. In fact, it doesn't make sense at all considering (at the risk of repeating myself too often) all the great empty locations all around the center. What is does, is to create a feeling of being cramped in, rather than the sense of a gallery wall.
There are two great Maxwell MacKenzie photographs in this area, and knowing that MacKenzie produces these photos in a huge 96-inch length, I found it odd that the center decided two acquire two of his smaller images, when one or two of the vast, mural-sized photos would have had a more spectacular effect on the overall open atmosphere of the center.
But the work that gets my vote as worst placement is the lovely long piece by Rebecca Cross (Variations on the Pear), located at the very end of the Food Court, inexplicably located where it is hard to see it, especially when there's a huge empty wall facing towards the food court, just a dozen footsteps from it.
But enough bitching about location and placement. As I noted, with a few exceptions, most of the artwork has been well placed, and hopefully the Convention Center will consider a few key adjustments as input such as this comes in.
There are a lot of superb sculptures in this collection and well deserved kudos to the selection process for not forgetting sculptors.
Kendall Buster's piece, titled Parabiosis II, is one of my favorite works in the entire collection, and is one of those works that is not only located in a perfect spot, but also responded well to the specific call for art. This was a commissioned piece, and it hangs from the underside of the main escalator, so that viewers walk under it and can truly enjoy Buster's ability to take a steel frame, put a skin on it, and make it into an organic, almost living entity.
Many other excellent 3-D pieces included Wendy Ross' sculpture Millefiore Volvox I and one of the best pieces in the entire collection: Yuriko Yamaguchi's "Politics/Power = Human Nature, Metamorphoses #102-103" (from where are these sculptors coming up with these titles?). The Yamaguchi piece was one of the largest ones that I've seen by this talented artist and it works well and shows that her minimalist simplicity can also work in a larger scale.
And Donald Lipski also came through to the challenge for a commissioned work with "Five Easy Pieces" (hint to Yamaguchi and Ross about titling). Lispski has put together a collection of giant shapes made from common objects. A giant circle made of guitars, a Swiss-cross made of tennis-rackets (and my vote for the first piece that some idiot will bitch about because it's a cross) and other hanging pieces made from kayaks, bar stools and bicycles.
In my opinion, the weak link in an otherwise strong collection of sculptures in the Center is Capital Stars by Larry Kirkland, which was also a commissioned piece. In Kirkland's defense, he apparently had a tall order, as he has produced a hanging star within two spoked circles that tries to combine history, politics and geography into what ends up looking like a giant Christmas decoration. Kirkland, who now lives in DC, tries valiantly to express via this piece the idea of a stateless DC (at the center of the star) surrounded by the "real" states with a star where their capitals are. It's a noble idea, but delivered in a heavy handed manner.
But the true overall dud in this otherwise very good public art collection is Ivan Chermayeff's "Sky, Land, Sea," which also has a powerful location on the main backwall of the street level. His piece betrays the fact that Chermayeff is a very successful graphic designer and ad man, but this venture into fine art smells of Madison Avenue. In fact "Sky, Land, Sea" (which must have cost a bundle to produce and install) is not much different in visual appeal and presentation to one of those lit Metro ads that nearly all the underground train stations around the world now have. All that differentiated "Sky, Land, Sea," from an ad was some lettering advertising Allegra or some other allergy medicine.
Other works that stand out in my notes as being exceptional in a collection full of good works are John Winslow's "What Rooms Reveal" and Al Smith's "Crossings" as well as Chul-Hyun Ahn's "Emptiness" a clever piece that bends perspective through the use of lights.
And (to me) the surprise of the collection (as in "I've never heard of this guy" surprise) was a very good painting by Trevor Young, who is apparently from the DC area titled "Slanted Dark."
The surprise of all surprises (as in "WOW, look who is in this collection" surprise) was a great piece by David Opdyke from his "Taste Test" series which use Coca-Cola imagery on US maps to deliver smart works of art that also require thinking and opinions. It could easily be the hidden jewel in this collection. In fact, I was told that the Corcoran would soon be borrowing it for some future show.
A richly deserved Well Done! to the Convention Center for its public art collection effort and also a very strong recommendation that they must (a) start thinking of convening a yearly committee to continue to acquire more art to augment this strong nucleus and cover up some of those empty walls and (b) figure out a way to let this public art collection be accessible to the public.
Next Friday is the second Friday of the month, which means that it is time for the 
The inaugural issue of artUS, a new national art magazine is currently in distribution.
Scottish artist 
In fact, Gopnik is all over this exhibit when he writes that it "may count as the most significant work of art to come out of Washington since the pioneering abstract painter Morris Louis worked here in the early 1960s. Actually, I've not come across anything quite like Sanborn's installation anywhere, ever." 
