Since 2003... the 11th highest ranked art blog on the planet! And with over SEVEN million visitors, F. Lennox Campello's art news, information, gallery openings, commentary, criticism, happenings, opportunities, and everything associated with the global visual arts scene with a special focus on the Greater Washington, DC area.
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| Laura Beth Konopinski |
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| J. Jordan Bruns |
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| J. Jordan Bruns |
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| Tim Vermeulen |
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| Tim Vermeulen |
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| Erwin Timmers |
At 6:22 on Sunday morning Oct. 23, 1983, a 19-ton yellow Mercedes stake-bed truck entered a public parking lot at the heart of Beirut International Airport. The lot was adjacent to the headquarters of the U.S. 8th Marine Regiment’s 1st Battalion, where some 350 American soldiers lay asleep in a four-story concrete aviation administration building that had been successively occupied by various combatants in the ongoing Lebanese Civil War. Battalion Landing Team 1/8 was the ground element of the 1,800-man 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU), which had deployed to Lebanon a year earlier as part of a multinational peacekeeping force also comprising French, Italian and British troops. Its mission was to facilitate the withdrawal of foreign fighters from Lebanon and help restore the sovereignty of its government at a time when sectarian violence had riven the Mediterranean nation.
... Marine sentries initially paid little attention to the Mercedes truck. Heavy vehicles were a common sight at the airport, and in fact the BLT was expecting one that day with a water delivery. The truck circled the parking lot, then picked up speed as it traveled parallel to a line of concertina wire protecting the south end of the Marine compound. Suddenly, the vehicle veered left, plowed through the 5-foot-high wire barrier and rumbled between two guard posts.
By then it was obvious the driver of the truck—a bearded man with black hair—had hostile intentions, but there was no way to stop him. The Marines were operating under peacetime rules of engagement, and their weapons were not loaded. Lance Corporal Eddie DiFranco, manning the sentry post on the driver’s side of the truck, soon guessed the driver’s horrifying purpose. “He looked right at me…smiled, that’s it,” DiFranco later recalled. “Soon as I saw [the truck] over here, I knew what was going to happen.” By the time he managed to slap a magazine into his M16 and chamber a round, the truck had roared through an open vehicle gate, rumbled past a long steel pipe barrier, threaded between two other pipes and was closing on the BLT barracks.
Sergeant of the guard Stephen Russell was alone at his sandbag-and-plywood post at the front of the building but facing inside. Hearing a revving engine, he turned to see the Mercedes truck barreling straight toward him. He instinctively bolted through the lobby toward the building’s rear entrance, repeatedly yelling, “Hit the deck! Hit the deck!” It was futile gesture, given that nearly everyone was still asleep. As Russell dashed out the rear entrance, he looked over his shoulder and saw the truck slam through his post, smash through the entrance and come to a halt in the midst of the lobby. After an ominous pause of a second or two, the truck erupted in a massive explosion—so powerful that it lifted the building in the air, shearing off its steel-reinforced concrete support columns (each 15 feet in circumference) and collapsing the structure. Crushed to death within the resulting mountain of rubble were 241 U.S. military personnel—220 Marines, 18 Navy sailors and three Army soldiers. More than 100 others were injured. It was worst single-day death toll for the Marines since the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima.Aboard USS Virginia, the ship's crew went into action, and within minutes our helo was airborne, carrying our ship's doctor and his Navy corpsmen to help with the wounded Marines. Minutes later the helo came back, looking for people and equipment to help assist with digging out the people from the collapsed building. Because my division was the only one that had an Arabic linguist, they came to us to see if he (Sgt. Bobby Jack Irvin, an amazing linguist and as far as I know the only Marine ever to qualify for the Enlisted Surface Warfare pin) could go ashore to help facilitate our doctor's mission, as he had radio'd that several Lebanese doctors had already come up to help him, and he might need language help.
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| Girl with Golden Earrings by Michael W. Coe |
The Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden have jointly acquired Arthur Jafa's (b. 1960) iconic video "Love is the Message, The Message is Death" (2016). Considered a breakout work when it debuted in 2016, the single-channel video signaled a shift in approach to contemporary American discourse on race and politics through the use of CCTV, documentaries, YouTube and social media footage alongside Jafa's own personal home movies.This is the first joint acquisition between the Smithsonian's two museums most active in collecting contemporary art. Both museums have a long-standing commitment to the acquisition and presentation of contemporary moving-image works. "Love is the Message, The Message is Death" was recently on view as a highlight of the Hirshhorn's exhibition "The Message: New Media Works," which closed in September."Jafa stands as one of the most provocative artists working today, and we are delighted to partner with our colleagues at the Smithsonian American Art Museum to acquire this seminal work for the museums' permanent collections," said Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu. "Unapologetically bold, his work has the unique ability to resonate with viewers of all backgrounds, and it is a testament to the potential of new media to reflect and respond to the issues of our time.""By jointly acquiring Jafa's majestic video, SAAM and the Hirshhorn will build on the unique opportunities for understanding the work that each collection provides to visitors to the Smithsonian," said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "As part of SAAM's collection, Jafa's piece resonates powerfully with more than three centuries of artists engaging with America's racial complexities. Within the context of the Hirshhorn's international contemporary art galleries, it stands as a defining work of 21st-century media art.""Love is the Message, The Message is Death" is a moving montage of original and appropriated footage, exploring the mix of joy and pain, transcendence and tragedy that characterize the African American experience at this historical moment. Set to Kanye West's gospel-inflected song "Ultralight Beam," the seven-and-a-half-minute piece swells with spiritually uplifting but candid lyrics; the music occasionally recedes allowing poignant snippets of dialogue to come to the fore. This tightly controlled editing echoes the intricate rhythmic structures of jazz, soul and hip-hop, while the source selection perfectly captures the range of mediation through which contemporary viewers experience and understand race in America. Getty-watermarked footage nods to the commercial afterlife of civil rights leaders and riots; silent-era film and sensationalized news clips link constructions of blackness across a century of moving images; and camera-phone-recorded YouTube-distributed videos highlight how personal moments can now become shockingly public, whether through choice or necessity.About the ArtistFor 20 years, Jafa has straddled the worlds of filmmaking and fine art. Since serving as director of photography on Julie Dash's groundbreaking Daughters of the Dust in 1991, Jafa has worked as a cinematographer on major films, such as John Akomfrah's Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993), Spike Lee's Crooklyn (1994) and Nefertite Nguvu's In the Morning (2014), as well as on music videos for artists such as Jay-Z and Solange. He started showing work in art contexts in 1999, and was included the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial in 2000.A recent solo exhibition entitled "A Series of Utterly Improbably, Yet Extraordinary Renditions" debuted at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2017 and is currently touring in Europe. A solo exhibition featuring new, commissioned work opens at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Dec. 12. Jafa's work is in private and public collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.Jafa was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, studied at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and currently resides in Los Angeles. He is represented by Gavin Brown's enterprise.
Read the whole article by Peggy McGlone here.On Monday, the city’s arts agency added sweeping language to already approved grants requiring that artists and arts organizations avoid producing work that could be considered lewd, vulgar or political or be at risk of losing their funds.The arts community protested, saying the amended contract infringed on their First Amendment rights. The DCCAH capitulated.
