V for VeryBadetta

For some reason I'm in some studio's press invite list and I get free press passes to movies all the time, although most of the times I don't have the time to actually get down to the theatre.

But I had some time recently and went to see V for Vendetta as I am sort of a "comic books in the movies" kind of fan.

V for Vendetta was mostly a sleeper for me, as it borrows heavily from too many sources as diverse as Orwell, Batman and even Scary Movie.

For starters, at 132 minutes, the movie is too long.

For midlins, the whole masked hero versus the big bad neo-Nazi government goons is such a tired theme.

For endings, the whole Guy Fawkes tie-in was interesting, but the unfortunate resemblance of Guy Fawkes' masks to Jack Nicholson's Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman sort of screwed it up for me (and it also sort of brought back into my mind the silly mask from Scary Movie).

In this film, they even use the "Why won't you die?" exasperated question that the Joker yells at Batman in the 1989 Batman movie in a very similar context, when the government's police has fired like a million shots at the hero and he's still kicking their ass using nothing but knives and karate kicks.

So essentially in a virusy, terroristic future world (25 years or so into the future) where America is in a Civil War (Red vs Blue I guess), England has been taken over by a neo-Nazi Tory dictatorship with a Chancellor who now rules through fear, a police state and large screen TVs; beer and booze seem to be plentiful, although apparently real butter is very hard to get.

That was hard to swallow for me. I lived in the UK for three years, and the Brits use a ton of butter on everything - imagine a sandwich with a quarter inch of butter on each piece of white bread, and a few slices of cucumbers in between, and you've got one of the prime British dishes on the planet.

A butterless England is impossible to imagine, no matter how sciencefictionish my mind gets.

In any event, our hero (known as V) rescues Queen Amidala from government goons who are about to molest her. V is (I think) some sort of genetic superman created in a government lab, and he is seeking revenge against his creators and also to bring down the English dictatorship by arousing the anger and fire of the English people.

Yeah...

Anyway, after he rescues her, he blows up a major London landmark to Russian music, takes over a TV station and runs his DVD infommercial on the air (I guess they still have DVDs 25 years into the future) telling Londoners that he'll blow up the Parliament building in a year, rescues Amidala from the goons a second time, then tortures her to teach her some sort of lesson about losing fear, and in the process incites an almost bloodless rebellion by thousands of Londoners dressed in the Guy Fawkes outfit that he has FEDEX'd to all of them a few days ahead of the one-year deadline for the rebellion.

The best visual part in the movie is when Padmé is in V's secret hideout, which is full of art treasures which he has "rescued" from the government's banned artwork list. I picked up a Turner landscape, a Vermeer painting, some Greek antiquities and generally pictorial, ah... traditional masters' work. Seems like V passed on attempting to rescue any of the YBA's work, as I didn't see any Emins or Hirsts in his hoard (unless the bed where Natalie Portman sleeps in while she's at V's pad was Emin's "art" bed).

Wait for the video.

Parsons on Wolov

DCist Adrian Parsons makes a studio visit to Nekkid with a Camera's Samantha Wolov.

Read the studio visit here.

See Samantha Wolov's erotica here.

The secret

It's clear from the tons of emails that I've received since the last posting that:

(a) Many of you have no patience
(b) Some of you already know the secret

And some of you, in writing "is the secret the fact that blah, blah, blah..." have also revealed some interesting stuff!

Anyway.

As all of us know, museum curators and good galleries are flooded (and I mean literally overwhelmed) by submissions from artists. I know that by the time that you add up email submissions, snail mail submissions through slides, CD ROMs and photos, and visits, we get probably anywhere between 1,000 to 1,500 artists a year approaching the gallery seeking some sort of exhibition opportunity.

So as you may imagine, museum curators probably get their fair share of submissions from artists seeking to catch that curator's eye.

And it is not that much of a stretch to imagine that because of time and interest, most curators quickly glance at the submission (if even that) and immediately put it in the return file (in the event that the artist enclosed a SASE) or the round file if no SASE was included.

It's hard to blame them - if they looked with depth and interest at every submission sent in, they'd never get anything done!

And I suspect that by the nature of the curatorial world today, rare is the museum curator interested in "discovering" an unknown or emerging artist. Although I suspect that if the curator is working on some thematic group shows, there's a chance that some work may catch the curator's eye.

A good example of that was the fact that the two curators from this year's much maligned Whitney Biennial were technically open to receiving unsolicited proposals from artists. And I am curious to learn (and I have asked the Whitney):

(a) How many unsolicited proposals did they receive?
(b) Did they actually go through all the unsolicited proposals received?
(c) How many of the finalists (if any) were selected from this set of unsolicited proposals?

But back to "our" secret.

To review the issue: Museum curators get a lot of stuff from artists in the mail (snail and email) and they probably seldom look at it in depth, if ever.

And yet our own Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, has an incredibly artist friendly policy (either voluntarily self-imposed or because they are a federally funded museum) that requires that submissions from artists are all reviewed at joint curatorial meetings that are regularly scheduled throughout the year!

So when you send the Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden your slide packet, or CD ROM, and resume, at some point it (one or two images I suppose) is presented and reviewed by the museum's curators!

And as we all know, just in having the work seen by a curator, a huge task has been accomplished!

Even being seen and rejected is better than not being seen at all! Especially by a group of curators.

Witness what happened to John Lehr.

John Lehr is a Baltimore-based photographer (represented locally by the new Heineman Myers Contemporary Art gallery soon opening in Bethesda).

A couple of Trawick Prizes ago, John applied to the prize and his work was reviewed by the three curators and rejected.

But he caught the eye of Jonathan Binstock, one of the curators for that year's Trawick Prize, who is also the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran Gallery and subsequently one of the two curators for the 48th Corcoran Biennial.

And guess what?

Binstock not only picked the work of Lehr for the Biennial, but if my memory serves me right, there were at least three regional artists in the Biennial whose work had also been exposed to the Trawick Prize curators earlier on; none of them won the prize that year, but nonetheless made it to the Biennial!

Even in rejection there's sometimes accomplishment.

It is better to submit and be rejected than not to submit at all.

Enough with the trite sayings; at the very least all of you should enter the Trawick Prize.

And handle the Hishhorn secret carefully, you don't want to waste this golden opportunity if your work is not ready.

Last night's panel

I must admit that I was a little surprised to find around 100 people show up for last night's panel at the Arlington Arts Center, including a few well-known DC area artists... but it was a good topic, and the panel was loaded with good talent.

After a brief introduction by Washington's own glass lordmeister (Tim Tate) and by the fair Claire Huschle, who runs the Center, we all got into the issue at hand very quickly, and soon it was clear that we had an audience that had come ready with a lot of good questions.

And I'm going to reveal the gem that came out of the panel...

A few years ago I was interviewing a curator from the Hirshhorn Museum for some art magazine; that particular curator revealed to me a fact that dropped my jaw with excitement, and she must have noticed, because it was clear that she had just revealed a HUGE secret that few know about.

She must have seen the excitement in my eyes, and also my tonsils, and she gasped, and begged me not to mention the secret that she had just revealed.

And I pondered and struggled -- we were in a Cuban restaurant that (thank God) no longer exists, as it was run by pseudo-Cubans and the food was not only bland and so so, but also culturally incorrect (they actually served the Moros y Cristianos already mixed!) -- and I poked my sweet fried plantains around, and she continued to plead, and I finally said "Fine!!!! I won't mention this in the article!"

"And you can't write about it anywhere else," she demanded.

"OK, OK," I agreed, already thinking that she had not specified "talking about it" (and over the years I've told this fact to the thousands of people who have taken the Success as an Artist Seminar).

And last night, one of the panel members revealed the secret.

I was astonished!

"Did you all heard that?" I almost shouted to the audience. "Write that down! That alone is worth the forty bucks that youse paid to come here!"

A murmur swept through the room as pens and pencils emerged. "What was that?" shouted several voices from the back, "we couldn't hear!"

And she repeated the secret! In a loud voice too! She did look at me a little funny and added that "maybe she shouldn't be revealing that..."

Too late!

Crap! I smell my chicken dinner (boneless chicken breasts, mojito sauce, plantains, olives, yucca, nyame root, sweet potatoes, olives and olive brine, adobo seasoning, onions, carrots, tons of garlic cloves, peas, mushrooms, and salt) in the oven burning!

Gotta run... but I promise to tell you the secret (since now it has been discussed publicly) in the next posting.

Hannah House Auction

Chris Goodwin is auctioning off a painting to benefit Hannah House.

Hannah House of DC is dedicated to serving homeless women and families.

Bid for the painting here. 30% of the final price will go to Hannah House of DC.

More on panel later

Last night's panel went great, with around 100 people packing the Arlington Arts Center.

More later.

Russian art in Reston

Evan Frank tells us about Russian artists at Galerie Europa in the Reston Town Center.

Read the article here.

13,000 a day

My opinions on the power of the new DCist art writers has been getting a lot of attention (and a lot of emails).

And I am told that DCist gets about 13,000 unique visitors a day and the numbers grow weekly.

Case closed.

Tonight: "How to Get Noticed" Panel at the Arlington Arts Center

I'll be leaving soon forthe Arlington Arts Center to take part in the workshop titled "How to Get Your Work Noticed by the press, galleries, and museums." The workshop runs from 7-9:30 pm on Wednesday, March 15, and will be held at the Tiffany Gallery in the Center and is hosted both by the Arlington Arts Center and the Washington Glass School.

The panelists are:
Michael O'Sullivan - Washington Post Art Critic
Lee Lawrence - Contributing Editor for American Style Magazine
Claire Huschle - Executive Director- Arlington Arts Center
Phylis Rosenzweig - Former Curator, Hirshhorn Museum
and Me!

The panel will take questions from the audience, as well as answer the following questions from the moderator (which I think are quite good):

1) In what context(s) do you come across a new artist’s work? (Press release? Gallery visit? Art or craft fair? Referral?) Do you have one way that you prefer?

2) What is the most effective "marketing" tool that an artist can have today, besides high-quality slides and/or images? Website? Blog? Resume? Etc.

3) Is there more than one person at your publication/business/project that covers similar material? How important is it to get the right information to the right person from the start?

4) How aggressive is too aggressive for an artist to be in trying to get a review/ exhibition?

5) The biggest faux pas an artist can make in approaching a reviewer/gallerist/curator is ___?

6) The most important thing an artist should, but probably doesn’t, know about the press, galleries, or museum exhibitions is ___?

7) Do you recognize any trends in your field that artists should pay attention to?

Cost: $40 in advance - $45 at the door. To register, call the Arlington Arts Center at 703-248-6800. They will take credit cards over the phone.

Location:
Arlington Arts Center
Tiffany Theater
3550 Wilson Boulevard
Right across from the Virginia Square subway
Arlington, Virginia

See ya there!

William Safire And Art That's Good for You

That's the title of today's essay in the WaPo by Philip Kennicott.

I've read it twice, and I still haven't got the foggiest idea what Kennicott is truly trying to say or convey in this essay.

New Gallery in Town

Soon we can all go to the grand opening of Heineman Myers Contemporary Art, a brand new art gallery opening next month in Bethesda.

Zoe Myers has been working really hard to find a good, large space to realize her goal of becoming one of the power art galleries in our area.

Their first show is "Re-Formation" by Baltimore-based photographer Connie Imboden, without a doubt one of the most influential photographers in our area.

Opening reception: Saturday April 8, 2006, 5-8pm. The gallery is located at 4728 Hampden Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814.

For more info contact the fair Zoe Myers at 202/415-6547.

See ya there!

Tape Dude's Pandymania

I think that even Blake Gopnik may have liked this panda as tape dude Mark Jenkins goes triple X with an escort Panda (I think) as part of the Itsy Bitsy Bollocks opening event at Transformer.

Itsy Bitsy Bollocks, with artists Mr. Eggs, Mark Jenkins, Travis Millard, and Kelly Towles has an opening reception this Saturday, March 18, 2006, 7-9 pm and runs through April 22, 2006. There's an Artists’ Talk on Sunday, March 19, 2006, at 3PM.

Materia Populi

I know this intelligent art collector in our area who has an amazing art collection, a large number of which is comprised of exceptional work by work by art students, some of which are now well-known artists.

And he is not a super rich guy, but a regular blue collar guy who just loves art. And (with a mistake here and there) he has developed a really good eye for spotting early talent.

This collector has one of the largest art collections in our area - easily pushing 3,000 paintings and a few hundred sculptures. But what makes his collection interesting is the large number of work that he acquires at University student shows and MFA shows.

And one of the best MFA shows is coming up: the Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA) presents Materia Populi, their MFA Thesis exhibition, with an opening reception, this Friday March 24, 5:30-7:30 pm, and Artists' Talks on Wednesday March 29, 2:30-4 pm. The MFA candidates are Laura Amussen, Ian MacLean Davis, Emily Denlinger, Allison Lincoln Turrell and Cory Wagner.

At the Meyerhoff & Thesis Gallery, MICA Fox Building, 1303 Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217. Hours & directions: 410.669.9200 or visit www. mica.edu.

Wanna Have Your Own Solo?

MOCA in Georgetown is renting their "annex" space to artists interested in having a solo there. Cost is $750 for three weeks. There are other options available.

For more info contact Dave Quammen at 202.966.0366, 202.361.3810 cell or email him at figuremodel@verizon.net.

Another Nail in the Coffin

The WaPo's Sara Kehaulani Goo writes that the WaPo plans to eliminate "80 newsroom positions over the next year by offering an early retirement plan to eligible employees and through attrition of full- and part-time workers."

She writes that:

Like many newspapers suffering from declining circulation, The Post's revenue has remained flat for several years. The number of paid subscribers has declined 4 percent a year.

The Post is trying to extend its reach by adding features to its Web site, such as blogs and podcasts, and with the launch of a Washington Post radio venture later this month.

In meetings yesterday with staff members for each section, Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said The Post is doing better, financially, than many of its competitors. "But it is obvious that a significant change is taking place in our readership, with a sizable portion of it migrating to the Internet," he said.

As the WaPo has been already slashing visual arts coverage over the last few years, I think we all know where those those readers have been going. Let's hope that they don't cut the visual arts coverage anymore - if that's even possible.

PostSecret Sweeps the Bloggies

Frank Warren's amazing PostSecret project has won every single category that it was nominated for in the 2006 Bloggies!

It won:

Best American Weblog
Best Topical Weblog
Best Community Weblog
Best New Weblog

and most important: Weblog of the Year!

Frank Warren will be doing a book signing at the Fraser Gallery on Saturday April 29, 2006 from 7pm - 9pm in conjunction with the 2006 Bethesda Literary Festival.

The PostSecret Book, "PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives," is now available from Amazon.

Order the book here or bring your own and Frank will sign it.

Congratulations to Frank Warren!

Bootcamp for Artists

The next seminar will be held on Sunday, March 26, 2006 in partnership with The Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County and will be held at the Round House Theatre Education Center located at 925 Wayne Avenue, Silver Spring, MD from 10:30AM - 6PM. This seminar is open only to Montgomery County residents.

Please visit this website or e-mail us or call 301/718-9651 if you would like more details. Register using this form (limited to 50 attendees).

The seven hour seminar, which has been taken by over 2,000 artists and arts professionals from all over the Mid Atlantic is designed to deliver information, data and proven tactics to allow artists to develop and sustain a career in the fine arts. The seminar normally costs $80 (includes lunch), but this version is done in partnership with The Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County and only costs $50 for county residents.

Sometimes called "Boot Camp for Artists" by the attendees, people as far as Arizona, California, New York and South Carolina have attended, including many, many university level art professionals.

In its seven hour format, the seminar covers a wide range of structured issues including:

1. Materials - Buying materials;strategies for lowering your costs, where and how to get it, etc.

2. Presentation – How to properly present your artwork including Conservation issues, Archival Matting and Framing, Longevity of materials, a discussion on Limited editions, signing and numbering, Prints vs. Reproduction, discussion on Iris Prints (Pros and Cons).

3. Creating a resume - Strategy for building your art resume, including how to write one, what should be in it, presentation, etc.

4. Juried Shows – An Insider's view and strategy to get in the competitions.

5. How to take slides and photographs of your artwork

6. Selling your art – A variety of avenues to actually selling your artwork, including fine arts festivals, corporate acquisitions, galleries, public arts, etc.

7. Creating a Body of Works

8. How to write a news release

9. Publicity – How to get in newspapers, magazines, etc. Plus handouts on email and addresses of newspaper critics, writers, etc.

10. Galleries – Discussion on area galleries including Vanity Galleries, Co-Operatives, Commercial Galleries, Non-profit Art spaces, etc.

11. How to approach a gallery – Realities of the business, Contracts, Gallery/Artist Relationship, Agents.

12. Outdoor Art Festivals – Discussion and advice on how to sell outwork at fine arts festivals, which to do, which to avoid, etc.

13. Resources - Display systems and tents, best juried shows and ones to avoid.

14. Accepting Credit cards – How to set up your art business.

15. Grants – Discussion on how to get grants in DC, Regional and National, including handouts on who and where and when.

16. Alternative Marketing - Cable TV, Local media

17. Internet – How to build your website at no cost, how to establish a wide and diverse Internet presence.

The seminar has been a spectacular success, and the feedback from artists can be read online at here and we continue to receive tremendous positive feedback on the practical success that this seminar has meant for those who have taken it.

Hurry, as the 50 spaces usually book very quickly, and we already have several eople signed up.

Register using this form.

The Power of the Web: Art Bloggers

Update: I was a little unclear in one of my points, so I've clarified and revised it a bit.

---

There has been an online ruckus for a while now because some some bloggers who write about art are understandibly miffed because they are not getting press passes and press invites to some upper crust media events (mostly in NY and at some art fairs).

While this is not a problem here in DC (we all get press invites to nearly everything that goes on in the visual arts scene around here, and so do most other bloggers who write about art, as I see them all at the media events), it is an amazing lack of understanding from anyone in the arts establishment to deny, or most likely, ignore the important presence of some art writers from the Blogsphere.

Granted, at least one of the most vocal complainers is more of a petty, mean-spirited muckracker with a huge inferiority complex who delights in exposing the dirty laundry and woes and flaws and generally the negative side of the art museum scene, and is also somewhat of a regurgitating art writer superbly trained at Google University.

And I'll admit that he's is pretty good at what he has learned to do over the last couple of years in dissecting and exposing the insides of museum's less than kosher dealings and problems. And I'll even add that the cultural tapestry that makes up the visual arts arena, needs a muckracker or two.

Thus, if I was a museum PR person I would be tempted not to invite this Jack Anderson of the artblogsphere either (it would be like a Republican official asking Michael Moore to videotape their wedding, or Halliburton asking for Air America to come do an interview).

But he is still an online arts presence and merits a press pass.

And a sizeable number of the other cyberpeople out there who write about the visual arts, do exactly that: write about art shows, do regular reviews, commentary, etc. And a significant number of them, do add intelligent, and fresh critical, and constructive conversation, and regular reviews to the contemporary arts dialogue.

So it is stupifyingly backwards-thinking to ignore the fact that them/us bring to the artmosphere a refreshing new breath of words -- and here's the main reason why it is stupid to ignore art bloggers as press entity: publicity.

Putting my art dealer hat on: PUBLICITY!

It's all in the numbers, and the new demographics that these cyber writers are now reaching.

Let's take DCist for example.

I don't know how many hits DCist gets a day, as they hide their counter, but I am certain that it is in the thousands. Certainly more than all other visual arts online blogs combined. I repeat: more than ALL of us art writers, art critics, art observers and art muckrackers combined.

This potential fact presents the interesting possibility that Heather Goss and Adrian Parsons may be now the two most widely read art online local writers/critics in the Greater DC area, and (depending how DCist ranks with all the other ists) in cyberspace!

Simple numbers: Goss and Parsons.

Not Campello nor Kirkland or Silverthorne or the rare Capps review or Jack Anderson, or anyone else on the blogroll who may write every once in a while about a DC art art show (although combined we probably all add up to 2-3 thousand hits a day).

And because not everyone who picks up a Washington Post reads Gopnik or Dawson or O'Sullivan, and not everyone who picks up the City Paper reads Cudlin or Jacobson, that immediately seems to put both Goss and Parsons as one of the top seven most-read art writers in the capital city of the United States of America, and I would venture to say that they are (by the virtue of whom they write for) the most widely read Washington-based online art writers on the planet (and they're unpaid!).

And I would submit that (because of the format and demographics of a site like DCist), a large percentage of people who visit the DCist website, read or at least glance at any and all new posts; that's the nature of Blog "reading."

And thus... is it so far of a stretch to realize that DCist's art writers are reaching more people on a daily, immediate basis, than Dawson or Gopnik, et al. do on a twice-a-month basis?

Do they carry the same "umpf"? Not yet.

But "umpf" is often only good for the artist's resume and for the critical standing of a gallery or museum show's attendance numbers, and (in DC anyway) to a lesser extent, for art sales.

And if a museum director or PR person "knew" that a DCist review would get them an extra 200 visitors, or a gallerist knew that the same review would get them an extra 25 visitors and an additional potential sale... would they invite those bloggers to a press preview and/or give them "press passes"?

In DC it's already done, so it's not an issue here.

Somehow, in the center of the art universe, in that little island near Brooklyn, it seems to be an issue.

Wake up.

Art Deal of the Week

Starting this Sunday I will commencing showcasing artwork that I think are great deals. My call and opinion(s), but will gladly take recommendations and submissions; just email me with the details.

The first pick is this intelligent photograph by Russian photographer Aleksei Pechnikov.

It is titled "The Swing" and the photograph measures 20x20 inches and then it is matted in a white pH-balanced acid free white museum mat and framed in a black metal moulding under plexiglass to a framed size of 34x26 inches. Photo is signed by the photographer on verso. The price (including frame): $300.



To buy it call 301/718-9651 or email the gallery.

Still brewing

As the Peter Panse story continues to cause a cyber storm all over the blogartmosphere, it brings forth the quote by Lewis Black that "a child will never be as damaged by seeing a tit as they will be by adults going insane over a child having seen a tit."

Wanna go to a couple of openings today?

Then head down to Old Town Alexandria and there are a couple of openings happening today from 2-4 inside the Torpedo Factory.

One is for the monthly Art League group show on the ground level of the factory and the second one, also from 2-4PM, is for new photographs by Danny Conant (one of the most innovative photographers in our area) and Colleen Spencer at Multiple Exposures Gallery on the upper level of the factory.

Curate Your Own Museum

The WaPo's Linda Hales has an interesting article that describes the project that the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is about undertake. She writes:

The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is about to take its Web site where no museum has gone before.

Where that is isn't absolutely clear, but it merits getting excited about. The so-called "online national design museum" promises to open the museum and its vast collection to visitors anywhere in the world. What's more, if development can keep up with vision, the site will turn museumgoers into participants in a bold cultural experiment.

Essentially, they're putting the power of the curator out to the masses (I already hear the elitists gasp)

The Cooper-Hewitt's existing site offers a glimpse of what's on view at 91st and Fifth Avenue. Exhibitions can be sampled, but only 500 items from the 250,000-piece collection of decorative arts, industrial and graphic design and fine art are viewable.

The revamped site will allow curators to play catch-up. The museum also wants to enable Web visitors to curate shows and build virtual collections, to circulate favorite digital photos. Web visitors also might be able to fill in the blanks on works that have yet to be researched fully. Shifting the curatorial responsibility might seem risky, but in 2002, a visiting researcher helped the museum by discovering an unsigned Michelangelo in a box of drawings.

"There are experts in the field who have spent whole careers studying a single period," says Matilda McQuaid, who, as deputy curatorial director, will have a leading role in online content. "Put it out there. See what comes."

She wasn't worried about an onslaught of bad taste from amateur curators and would-be designers.

"If enough people think they're awful, they get voted out and deleted from the site," she says. "Majority rules."

Hales takes a curious dig at the Smithsonian's blog Eyelevel when she writes:

The Smithsonian's only museum blog, EyeLevel, was launched by the American Art Museum in September. It drew 50,000 visitors over the first three months. But entry after entry is followed by a tally of "0 comments." There is little of the rat-a-tat-tat of cultural engagement that interactivity promises.

Read the whole article here.

The Art of Compromise (or Compromising Art?)

This St. Paul, Minn. school struggled with a quandary: How do they teach art to Muslim students who are not allowed to create human images?

According to this article:

That presented a challenge for Higher Ground Academy, a K-12 school just west of Central High School on Marshall Avenue that has about 450 students. About 70 percent of them are Muslim immigrants from eastern Africa.

Executive Director Bill Wilson said he had concerns for some time about how to reconcile the school's art curriculum with the views of Muslim families, but the departure of the art teacher at the end of last school year gave him a window to act.

This fall, he hired ArtStart, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization, to offer more options for about 150 kindergartners through second-graders, including visual arts and drumming. But parents were still upset that their children were drawing figures, Wilson said, and some pulled their children out of art class altogether.

Wilson then sat down with teacher and parent liaison Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmad, who also is the imam at an Islamic center in Minneapolis, to work with ArtStart in determining how to meet state standards without running afoul of Muslim doctrine.

Part of me is glad that we live in a society that can accomodate and adjust, and respect cultural beliefs that have become religious dogma (and that we can serve as an example to societies that have zero capacity to adjust), and yet, part of me is a little concerned, although I am not really sure why.

Read the whole story here.

Bethesda International

The 4th Annual Bethesda International Photo Competition opened last night and the gallery was packed! Curator Catriona Fraser selected the following photographers as the award winners:
Best in Show: Lee Goodwin
First Prize: Adriana Echavarria
Second Prize: David Myers
Third Prize: Prescott Lassman

See all exhibited photos here. Below are some pics from the opening:

Packed gallery listens as award winners are announced

Another view of the award announcement

Catriona Fraser and the legendary Lida Moser

Main wall of the gallery

"How to Get Noticed" Panel at the Arlington Arts Center

Next Wednesday the Arlington Arts Center is hosting a workshop titled "How to Get Your Work Noticed by the press, galleries, and museums." The workshop runs from 7-9:30 pm on Wednesday, March 15, and will be held at the Tiffany Gallery in the Center.

The panelists are:
Michael O'Sullivan - Washington Post Art Critic
Lee Lawrence - Contributing Editor for American Style Magazine
Claire Huschle - Executive Director- Arlington Arts Center
Phylis Rosenzweig - Former Curator, Hirshhorn Museum
and Me!

The panel will take questions from the audience, as well as answer the following questions from the moderator (which I think are quite good):

1) In what context(s) do you come across a new artist’s work? (Press release? Gallery visit? Art or craft fair? Referral?) Do you have one way that you prefer?

2) What is the most effective "marketing" tool that an artist can have today, besides high-quality slides and/or images? Website? Blog? Resume? Etc.

3) Is there more than one person at your publication/business/project that covers similar material? How important is it to get the right information to the right person from the start?

4) How aggressive is too aggressive for an artist to be in trying to get a review/ exhibition?

5) The biggest faux pas an artist can make in approaching a reviewer/gallerist/curator is ___?

6) The most important thing an artist should, but probably doesn’t, know about the press, galleries, or museum exhibitions is ___?

7) Do you recognize any trends in your field that artists should pay attention to?

Cost: $40 in advance - $45 at the door. To register, call the Arlington Arts Center at 703-248-6800. They will take credit cards over the phone.

Location:
Arlington Arts Center
Tiffany Theater
3550 Wilson Boulevard
Right across from the Virginia Square subway
Arlington, Virginia

See ya there!

Reviews

In the CP, Cudlin reviews "Cézanne in Provence" and also Doug Hall at Numark.

Jacobson reviews Anne Rowland at Hemphill.

Sarah Godfrey reviews Doll Noir IV at Graham Collection.

In the WaPo, the paper's former Chief Art critic discusses the arrival of American Gothic to the DC area.

O'Sullivan checks in with a terrific review of Robert Bechtle's retrospective at the Corcoran.

This last one is a must see show.

Capitol Hill Arts League Show

The show that I juried for the Capitol Hill Arts League opens tomorrow, Saturday at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop with a reception from 5-7PM.

Here are the award winners that I've picked:

Best in Show - Pete Van Riper "Master Drawing Class" Graphite/conté
First Place - Mary Deleyiannis "Figure Study" Chalk
Second Place – Amy Lin "Affinity 3.2" colored pencil
Third Place – Shannon Chester "Vines" Gicleé print

Honorable Mentions
Marcus Lundell - "Sour Sixteen" acrylic reverse painting on glass
Jacqueline Saunders - "Deirdre" Ink
Marilyn Christiano - "Moroccan Lemon" Digital Photo

Goss on Arty Gras

Heather Goss reviews Arty Gras at the Warehouse.

Read the review here.

Me in the CP

Me in the Washington City Paper.

Let's see how many Incas get pissed off at being called Maya.

Openings

Thursday, March 9 - New works by Ed Cooper at Susan Calloway Fine Arts. Opening reception is Thursday, March 9, from 6-8:30pm.

Friday, March 10 - The Bethesda Art Walk from 6-9PM with 12 participating galleries, art venues and studios. Free guided tours begin at 6:30pm. Attendees can meet their guide at the Bethesda Metro Center, located at the corner of Old Georgetown Road and Wisconsin Avenue. Attendees do not have to participate in tours to visit Art Walk galleries. On exhibition we have the IV Annual Bethesda International Photography Competition.

Saturday, March 11 - Open Studios at Load of Fun (formerly Lombard Office Furniture) located at 122 West North Avenue in Baltimore. Includes work by painters Gloria Mack, Jerry Prettyman, Bart O'Reilly, Daniel Stuelpnagel and others. They will have numerous paintings on display and will provide refreshments and information about future events in the Station North Arts District. From Noon until 4:00pm.

Saturday, March 11 - "Little Differences" at 87Florida, which is a new art venue located at 1st and Florida NW, and their grand opening reception is Saturday, March 11 from 5-7 pm.

Saturday, March 11 - "Sweet and Sour" juried art show at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop with a opening reception from 5-7PM.

Sunday, March 12 - Photographs by Danny Conant and Colleen Spencer at Multiple Exposures Gallery (inside the Torpedo Factory) in Alexandria. Opening reception 2-4PM.

Thursday, March 16 - Roxanne’s ARTiques, located at 3426 9th Street NE, on Historic Brookland’s emerging Gallery Row and across the street from the neighborhood landmark Colonel Brooks Tavern, will feature original prints by artist and professor George H. Smith-Shomari. An opening reception will be held from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 16th. A graduate of Howard University and the Pratt Institute, where he worked under Jacob Lawrence, Professor George Smith-Shomari has taught printmaking and African-American art history at the University of the District of Columbia for 26 years.

Saturday, March 18 - Itsy Bitsy Bollocks at Transformer. Featuring the work of artists Mr. Eggs, Mark Jenkins, Travis Millard, and Kelly Towles. Opening Reception on Saturday, March 18, 2006, 7-9 pm. The show runs through April 22, 2006. There's an artists' talk on Sunday, March 19, 2006, at 3 pm.

Saturday, March 18 - "Other Than Art," curated by Milena Kalinovska (who is the Program Manager for the Education Department at the Hirshhorn Museum) and on view at three different District art venues: Provisions Library, at Curator's Office and at G Fine Art. Kalinovska selected the following artists: Siemon Allen, Allora & Calzadilla, Kendall Buster, Richard Chartier, Carlos Garaicoa, Linda Hesh, Virgil Marti, Ivan Navarro, Olaf Nicolai, Lucy Orta, Jorge Pardo, Marjetica Potrc, Elissa Slevy, Do-Ho Suh, and Atelier van Leishout.

Friday, March 24 - League of Reston Artists (LRA) 2005 Award Winners Exhibition at the University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus. This exhibition features award winning artists from 10 exhibitions sponsored by the League of Reston Artists during its 2005 exhibition season. Some of the featured artists include: James W. Bailey (yes that Bailey), Shannon Chester, Pam Coulter, Leo Deege, Helen M. Goodrum, Laura Howell, Susan Isakson, Christine Lashley, Vicki Kirby, Loy McGaughy, Gennara Moore, Edward J. Reed, Irene Renslow, Yelena Rodina, Carla Steckley, and Amie G. Tannenbaum. The exhibition opens Friday, March 17, and runs through Friday, April 28. An opening reception will take place Friday, March 24 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm at the University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus, 11730 Plaza America Drive, Suite 200, Reston, Virginia. For directions, see the LRA’s web site at www.leagueofrestonartists.org.

Here we go

Kriston over at g.p. polices my piece on Pete Panse and writes that it would be "disturbing, if true."

Read his case endorsing Panse's suspension here and my comments as well, as I think that Kriston actually helps my case!

Disturbing, period.

Gazette on the Bethesda Art Walk

The Gazette has a nice piece on tomorrow's Bethesda Art Walk.

Read it here.

A little help

DC you're letting me down!

Yesterday I brought you the case of Pete Panse and asked you to sign an online petition to help this gentleman get his job back.

And yet only a handful of DC, MD and VA signatures appear on the petition so far, and most of them are from fellow bloggers.

C'mon! Go here and sign the damn petition!

Art Teacher Suspended for Recommending Figure Drawing Classes

The case of Pete Panse takes the cake and makes our own DC area's antipathy towards nudity in art seem tame by comparison.

Pete Panse is a High School art teacher in Middletown, NY whom we are told uses traditional techniques to train his students.

Last December Mr. Panse was suspended from his teaching job for apparently recommending (that's right: recommending) that some of his advanced students consider taking figure drawing courses that included nude figure drawings.

Panse was suspended from his teaching job pending hearings. Depending on the outcome of these hearings, he may be permanently fired, ending a 25-year teaching career. Panse is a National Board Certified Teacher (in Adolescent and Young Adult Art), the highest level of certification that a teacher can achieve in America. He is also one of only two National Board Certified Teachers in his New York District, and "is a trained Facilitator for helping teachers explore and pursue the requirements needed to achieve National Board Certification."

According to this excellent summary by Brian Yoder:

"In his discussions with students Mr. Panse mentioned several options for advancing their figure drawing skills; the local community college, a nearby frame shop that sponsors art classes, and the prestigious New York Academy of Art. He also described pre-college figure drawing programs at several other New York City art schools, and a highly successful art college prep program called the Mill Street Loft.

In addition to these established courses, Mr. Panse also indicated that he was considering the possibility of offering an intensive figure drawing program of his own (8 hours a day every Saturday for 35 weeks). This proposed course would also be open to area art teachers, and would have required that parents serve as chaperones to ensure a strong adult presence. Ultimately, Mr. Panse was unable to locate inexpensive space for a studio and was prevented from carrying out his plan because of the controversy that erupted over the proposal.

Panse told his students that if his own figure drawing class materialized, he would be obligated to submit any advertisement to the school principal for approval, and that a denial might preclude him from offering the course to his own students, for their consideration."

It was the mention, or discussion of the "possibility" that Panse would offer an intensive figure drawing class, that apparently got him suspended and may get him fired.

As Brian Yoder points out in the article:

"This seems particularly odd, since the ninth grade art history survey course includes dozens of images of nudes. Mr. Panse's students had completed that unit previously, and are now upperclassmen.

Moreover, art teachers are required to speak of career options in the art field, what training is required, and how students might prepare for art school, so according to the official school policy, art teachers are required to show nude images to their students and are required to tell them about nude figure drawing courses that they might enroll in."

And Yoder further clarifies that:

"Just to be clear about the charges in this case, it is worth mentioning what Mr. Panse is not being accused of.

He is not being accused of recommending that these students attend these classes without parental permission or without proper supervision and chaperones.

He is not even being accused of carrying out any figure drawing courses, only of recommending them and proposing that he offer such a course.

Nobody is accusing him of forcing anyone to go to these sessions and indeed, neither the four students who attended the sessions last summer nor their parents have any complaints at all about the experience.

Nobody is claiming that anything unsavory was going on in any of these figure drawing sessions, involving Mr. Panse, Academy instructors, his students, the models, other artists, or anyone else."

What can we do?

Write Letters of Support: Letters of support (especially if you have some kind of professional qualifications) will help bolster Mr. Panse’s case. In order to prevent a flood of mail from overcoming Mr. Panse, Brian Yoder has volunteered to collect the letters and deliver them to Mr. Panse in bulk. You can send letters to him at:
Brian Yoder
972 Cornell Road
Pasadena, CA 91106

Write to the Board of Education:
Middletown School District Board of Education
223 Wisner Avenue
Middletown, NY 10940

Sign the online petition:
ArtRenewal.org has created an online petition at this website for supporters to sign. Add your name to the petition as I will.

Read the entire Brian Yoder article here.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!

Studio space

The folks over at ArtDC.org have been working hard to get studio space for area artists and Jesse tells me that there is now a great space available.

If you are looking to find studio space and have several artists to work together, then visit 411 New York Ave, NE DC 20002 and ask for Gail on the 4th floor. Be sure to tell them that the ArtDC group with Steve Mead sent you.

It's between 1,000 and 2,000 square feet. Prices up to $1500 a month. It's a great deal for this area. Bathrooms included and space has just been renovated. 4 to 5 artists could fill it well in a building that already has other artists' studios.

Email Jesse for more info.

New art space

87Florida is a new art venue located at 1st and Florida NW, and their grand opening reception is Saturday, March 11 from 5-7 pm.

DC artist Ceci Cole Mcinturff recently purchased the building and it houses her studios upstairs and on the mainfloor she has an exhibition space. There she will host a series of fine art exhibitions, musical events, digital mixed media events, as well as some "Art in Community" events.

The initial exhibition, titled "Little Differences," features the work of Melissa Glasser and runs through March 20, 2006. The reception is Saturday, March 11 from 5-7 pm. There are also viewing hours Fridays 4:30-7:00pm, Saturdays 1-6:00pm, Sundays 1-5pm and Mon-Thurs by appt.

Wanna go to a couple of openings tomorrow?

"Stretchted Tight" is a painting exhibition juried by Dr. Jack Rasmussen, (Director and Curator of the Katzen Arts Center at American University, Washington, D.C) and opening tomorrow at the Target Gallery in Alexandria. The exhibition goes through March 26. The opening reception is Thursday March 9 from 6 to 9 pm.

Dr. Rasmussen selected the following artists for the exhibition: Aaron Bowles, Anna Davis, Francoise Dureese, Heidi Fowler, Kurt Godwin, Pat Goslee, Kimberly MacArthur Graham, Arlette Jassel, Felice Koenig, John Mattson, John Alan Nyberg, Cara Ober, Victor Pytko, Bonnie Ferrill Roman, Amy Royce, Arielle Sandler, and Laura Yang.

Also new works by Ed Cooper at Susan Calloway Fine Arts. Opening reception is Thursday, March 9, from 6 - 8:30pm.

Gordon Parks

I just received word that Gordon Parks passed away today.

He once said that he "picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty."

Las Placitas

Last night I juried the Capitol Hill Arts League show (will post prize winners later) and had two other things happen.

I got there a little early, and I found a primo Doris Day parking spot on the side street just a couple of minutes from the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. And so I parked, as I was (a) early and (b) ravenous, I decided to walk around 8th Street SE and look for a good, and new place to eat.

I ended up at Las Placitas Restaurant and it was superb!

When I got there it was quite early, and I was the only other person in the whole place, so service was immediate and good.

The chips and salsa were OK, and although the salsa was not the best I've ever had, it was fresh and tasty and I did scarf down the whole serving of chips and a second serving of salsa.

I then ordered a plate that they call "El Tipico," which in Spanish means that it is a typical Salvadorean dish. I also had a Tecate and then a Tamarind Juice drink.

I will admit that until I arrived in the DC area (first between 1987-1989 and then again for good in 1993), I had never tasted Salvadorean food.

El Tipico consisted of fried sweet plantains, a chicken papusa, fried yucca, white rice, black beans and Salvadorean style cole slaw (very spicy) and a dollop of sour cream for the plantains. It was a massive plate of food for about $10.

The food was good, plenty and fresh, and while I was there I noted a constant procession of people who had called their order in and were picking it up. It was obvious that La Placita is a "neighborhood" restaurant which does brisk pick-up business.

I also witnessed the sort of business acumen that makes one feel good about hard-working immigrants doing good in our nation.

This tiny lady came in and placed an order of shrimp salad to go. She sat and waited, and while the order was being prepared, the owner (I assume) chatted with her in broken English. It was soon evident that she had never tried "flan" and magically a flan appeared on the house, for her to eat while she waited.

As I listened in to the conversations between the owner, and the wait staff, two things became apparent:

(a) Someone called "El Gordo" had just quit from working in some nearby establishment because that establishment's owner was mistreating the staff.

(b) The restaurant pays $55 for a box of 20 chickens.

The chicken papusa was one of the best I've ever had, and whenever I eat one, I always wonder: just how do you make a papusa?

Essentially it is a stuffed tortilla, right?

I mean: do you make a circle of dough, then spread the stuffing on that disc of dough, and then place a second disc of dough on top, seal the edges and then quick-grill it on the pan? That seems to be a lot of work for essentially getting a papusa for a buck in most places.

But I digress; by the time I left, the place was fairly full of a very diverse crowd of locals eating what looked and smelled like delicious food.

Mine was!

P.S. I almost forgot; by the time I got back to my van, after jurying the show, I found a nice parking ticket from the city, as I had overstayed my two hours on a DC residential street.

Art Donations for BRITE Auction

Irvine Contemporary's Heather Russell is curating artwork donations for a fundraiser for BRITE in NYC.

The event will be held on April 5 at the Scandinavia House at 58 Park Avenue at 38th Street in New York City from 6.30-9:00 pm. You can learn more about BRITE here.

All donations of artwork are to be dropped off to Heather here in DC at Irvine by March 29th. Works on paper, sculpture, painting, photography, digital prints, and original works encouraged in the $500-$1000 retail range. Works can be mailed or hand delivered to her at the gallery. Flat works must be framed or matted. As this is an organization for supporting children, she kindly asks that each artist keep that in mind when selecting a work to submit!

Please email jpegs and bio to Heather directly at heather@irvinecontemporary.com.

She has 17 accepted submissions already, and is limited to about 30-40 works of art, so hurry! All artists are invited for free to the event itself and their personal contact info will be listed that night, available to collectors and patrons.

I intend to donate and hope that many of you do as well.

Kirkland on Manuel

Thinking About Art reviews Nathan Manuel at Flashpoint.

Read Kirkland's review here.

Missing

An alert reader noticed that the Whitney's official list of Biennial reviews is missing both the Washington Post review and the Newsday review as well as ignoring the myriad of art blog reviews.

I've brought it up to their attention. You can read the Whitney's list here.

Update: The Whitney responds and says that "this is an ongoing compilation of selected press reviews and previews. Thanks for mentioning the missing reviews."

It's still a little odd to me; I mean, it's understandable if they want to skip a review such as the Newsday review, which basically trashes the show; but it's odd that they would skip (even initially) the review from the world's second most powerful newspaper.

A Colossal Agglomeration of Ugly Stuff

Is how Newsday art critic Ariella Buddick describes the Whitney Biennial. She adds on:

"Which would be fine, if the sculptures, videos, paintings and installations sacrificed attractiveness for thoughtfulness, profundity, visceral power or wit. But this year's Biennial is depressingly shallow. Oh, yes, and also heavy-handed, humorless, puerile and just plain boring."

I love it when a critic really goes for the jugular of a review! And this degree of passion in writing about art should be applied to both the positive and negative view of a show.

Buddick writes that

"Curators Chrissie Iles and Phillipe Vergne have selected works that conform to their murky concept of what the state of contemporary American art should be...

This vague herd, we are told, has been busily "challenging concepts," "transgressing boundaries," "blurring lines" and "investigating relationships." ...

I have some news for the curators: There are no boundaries left to transgress. Art can't be liminal in the absence of the thresholds. How can you challenge conventions that have already been burned beyond recognition? There's something almost quaint about the use of these cliches. Where have the curators been for the past 20 years?

I know where: Inside museums.

Read the whole review here

Secondsight Meeting

The next Secondsight meeting will be held on Friday, March 24 at 6.30pm. The guest speaker will be one of the areas most successful commercial photographers, Katherine Lambert

Katherine specializes in editorial and corporate portrait photography. Her work has appeared in numerous national publications including Businessweek, Time, Newsweek, People, Bloomberg, Audubon, Fortune and Forbes as well as annual reports and corporate brochures.

Secondsight is an organization dedicated to the advancement of women photographers through support, communication and sharing of ideas and opportunities. Secondsight is committed to supporting photographers at every stage of their careers, from students to professionals. Each bi-monthly meeting includes an introductory session, a guest speaker, portfolio sharing and discussion groups. Each photographer will have the opportunity to present their work within a small group of other photographers, ask for constructive criticism, gain knowledge or simply share their artistic vision and techniques.

Please visit www.secondsightdc.com for all the information you'll need to attend the meeting or contact Catriona Fraser at:

secondsight
PO Box 34405
Bethesda, MD 20827
www.secondsightdc.com
301/718-9651

Ouch!

Check out what happened to Teague in New Orleans. And I think that it has something to do with this?

See it here.

Selected Photographers

These are the photographers and photographs selected by juror Catriona Fraser for the IV Annual Bethesda International Photography Competition.

See them here. The exhibition opens next Friday at our gallery with an opening reception from 6-9PM as part of the Bethesda Art Walk.

See ya there!

Juror

Tonight I'll be jurying an exhibition for the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, a terrific art venue on 7th Street, SE.

More on that later.

Vettriano original nets £290,000

Everytime one of Jack Vettriano's paintings comes up for auction in the UK, it's as if British art collectors spit on the face of British art critics and British museums.

One of Jack Vettriano's most popular paintings, Dance Me To The End Of Love (one of the world's bestselling posters), just sold for nearly 300,000 pounds in Scotland (and way over that once all commissions are added in) - that's a lot of dollars!

Untrained, gruff and very un-PC, Vettriano is perhaps the world's best-selling artist. He has been shunned by the high art world, with major UK galleries refusing to acquire his works. However, this self-taught Scottish artist has huge worldwide popular appeal. His painting The Singing Butler sold for almost £750,000 in 2004, the highest price ever paid for a Scottish painting at auction.

The only example of his work to be featured in a public collection in the world is a painting donated by a collector to the Kirkcaldy Museum in Fife, Scotland, Vettriano's birthplace.

New Photography Curator

Toby Jurovics has been hired as the Smithsonian American Museum's new Curator for Photography.

Previously, Jurovics served as a curator of photography at the Princeton University Art Museum.

As a federal government employee, Jurovics will be now responsible for research, exhibitions and acquisitions related to the Smithsonian American Museum's photography collection.

What Hollywood didn't tell you

Congrats to Philip Seymour Hoffman for winning an Oscar for playing Truman Capote in the movies.

And now for what Hollywood didn't tell you...

Between 1946-1956, around 50,000 Cubans obtained legal permanent visas to emigrate to the United States.

It was during this migration that José Capote migrated to the USA and settled in New Orleans in search of work, met and married Lillie Mae Faulk, and became a father to her young son Truman.

DC Dealer in NYC's DIVA

Hardworking DC art dealer Rody Douzoglou will be participating at the Digital and Video Fair (DIVA) in New York March 9-12, 2006.

Click here for more info on the videos and artists that Rody has been showcasing at art fairs all over the world.

One more

One of the great things about living in an area with a great visual arts presence is the sheer number of good places and venues that exhibit artwork. Here's a new one to me:

DC artist Afrika Midnight Asha Abney will be exhibiting through March 31, 2006 at The Graham Collection, located at 3518 12th St NE in Washington, DC. Contact numbers for Afrika Midnight Asha Abney is 202-455-3773 or Karl Graham, gallery owner of The Graham Collection at 202-832-9292.

Wanna go to an post-opening party tonight?

MOCA in Georgetown opened their Erotica 2006 exhibition yesterday, but tonight they're hosting another social mixer starting at 6PM featuring not only the artwork, but also X-rated videos.

And they're going to be doing this every Saturday at 6PM until the end of the exhibition - they will also host a closing party on March 31 starting at 6PM.

They're also having belly dancers, body painters and live figure drawing throughout the month. Contact them for details and schedule.

This looks like fun!

Deadline July 15, 2006 noon

Second Annual Quick Draw Competition at Plein Air Easton - A painting competition and Arts Festival sponsored by Easton Main Street in historic small-town Easton, Maryland.

Any artist may participate for $10 registration fee. (You do not need to be a juried participant in the week long competition). Cash and product awards to winning artists with exhibition/sale of all participants in the lovely gardens of the Historical Society immediately after the Quick Draw. Artists must paint, any medium, in a four block area in the downtown historical area from 2 - 4 PM July 15, 2006.

Juror: Camille Przewodek, OPA. For more information, go to www.pleinair-easton.com or call Carolyn Jaffe at 410-820-8822 or email them here.

Tierney on Hokusai

The Examiner's art critic Robin Tierney checks in with a piece on Hokusai at the Sackler and also a bit on the Frederick Gallery Walk.

Read it here.

How Art Appreciates

British artist and former Tate Prizewinner Grayson Perry opines on what makes art appreciate in value (thanks AJ). He writes:

"I think by far the most important factor in making art works valuable is what experts say and write about them. Respected figures in the art world hold the power to increase the value of a given artist’s work by bestowing art-historical importance and "specialness" upon them. Academics, curators, critics, powerful gallerists and collectors can give out extremely valuable brownie points. A work purchased by a leading public institution boosts an artist’s stock, which is why dealers will offer considerable discounts to museums.

A write-up in one of the heavyweight art mags such as Art Forum or Art Monthly spreads the consensus. One reason that I was so surprised at winning the Turner was that I had never [been] featured in one of these publications. Maybe this is the art equivalent of climbing Everest without oxygen."

Having lived in Great Britain for many years, I know how Brits are obsessed with "class" in all manners and forms, and so it is no surprise to me that Perry's conclusion has to do with class. Read the entire article here.

WaPo on the Corcoran

The WaPo's David Montgomery compiles a write-up of the Corcoran's Thursday shake-up first reported in the blogsphere yesterday, including here.

The article states at the end that "staff writers Blake Gopnik and Kate Wichmann contributed to this report."

Other contributors didn't know they were contributing.

Affordable Artists Studios

From 190 sq. ft at $206 per month to 970 sq. ft. for $1053 per month, and the utilities are included. Shown Wednesdays 6:00 - 8:00 pm at 6925 Willow NW or call 202-882-0740 or visit here and then click on A.Salon.

Corcoran Director Begins To Plot New Course

The new Corcoran director Paul Greenhalgh announced a few important changes (mostly driven by economic re-structuring) at the Corcoran yesterday.

Departing are chief curator Jackie Serwer, senior curator of education Susan Badder, prints and drawings curator Erik Denker, European art curator Laura Coyle, and traveling exhibitions director Joan Oshinsky, among others.

Update: Both Stacey Schmidt, who is the Corcoran's Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and Margaret Bergen, who has done a great job as the Corcoran's PR guru, are also leaving soon for family reasons.

Irvine in New York

It is art fair time in the Big Apple and Irvine Contemporary has ventured out on their own this time around in NYC, with a program focused on DC/MD/VA trained or based artists. As the fair Heather puts it: "We want to show NY the world-class caliber of the DC and metro area talent here!"

And they have rented a spectacular 3,000 sq. ft Chelsea space for an exhibition, held in conjunction with the opening of the Whitney Biennial, The Armory Art Fair, Scope, Pulse and the LA Artfair-NY.

Irvine exhibition's dates: Friday March 10 - Sunday March 12th, 10:00am - 8:00pm daily. Located at 515 W. 29th Street, 2nd floor (between 10th & 11th Aves).

And (are you NYC bloggers ready for this?) there's a blogger preview Friday, March 10th, from 9-11:00am. VIP Cocktail Reception: Friday, March 10th, 8:00pm-midnight.

The exhibition features new paintings and works on paper by DC/Virginia/Maryland trained or based artists Trevor Amery, Gine Brocker, Ju-Yeon Kim, Peter Charles, Suzanna Fields, Susan Jamison, Christine Kesler, Robert Mellor, Beverly Ress,and Jason Zimmerman.

Also new work by other Irvine artists including Lisa Stefanelli, Kahn & Selesnick, Teo Gonzalez, Dalek, Robert Gutierrez, Frankin Evans, Jenny Laden, Bede Murphy, Amy Ross, Sean Foley and Lori Esposito will be also on view.

Irvine is also working with several prominent artists for the first time (artists that they will show in DC later this year) -- namely New-York based and MICA trained embrodiery artist Orly Cogan, and Brooklyn-based painter Edward del Rosario, (courtesy of Richard Heller Gallery).

They will also feature three surreal videos running simultaneously by CALARTS trained video artist Dane Picard and unique scuptures by MICA trained sculptor Josh Levine, entitled "Trophy Room."

Questions? Email Heather.

Wanna go to an opening tonight?

H Y S T O R I A, curated by my good friend J.W Mahoney and Lisa McCarty and featuring the work of Geoff Bell, Julee Holcombe, Betsy Packard, Jeffrey Smith and Champneys Taylor opens tonight at DCAC with an opening reception from 7-9PM.

There's also an artists' talk on March 12 commencing at 4:00pm.

Beckman on Cupidity

The CP's Rachel Beckman checks in with a nice piece on Neptune Gallery's most interesting Cupidity show.

Read it here.

American Gothic in DC

Grant Wood's iconic painting "American Gothic" travels to our area and will be on view at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum from March 10 through June 11, 2006.

This exhibition marks the first time that the painting (owned by The Art Institute of Chicago) has traveled to Washington, D.C. in more than 40 years.

Gopnik and Kirkland on the Whitney Biennial

The WaPo's eloquent Chief Art Critic depressess us all with his insightful and run-for-the-Xanax review of the Whitney Biennial, and JT Kirkland picks up on the mood and asks some good questions about the meaning of it all.

Gopnik here and Kirkland here.

My message to all of this depressive, cynical art and all the associated whiners? If you think life is tough, then think about all the twentysomethings in West Virginia whose only jobs may be pulling the guts out of turkeys, or worse still, the kids in the P.I. who scour garbage dumps looking for something to eat, and if lucky may find some discarded turkey guts to eat.

Gimme a break...

Parsons on Wallsnatchers

DCist's Adrian Parsons reviews the WPA/C's Wallsnatchers in Georgetown.

Read it here.

Referral Commissions

Artists and art dealers should always remember this rule (especially in a small town such as the Greater DC area is): You reap what you sow.

Recently a well-known DC area curator emailed me to let me know that she had referred to me a collector who was looking for figurative drawings. The usual referral commission in the business of art is 25%, so I emailed her back and asked to verify that percentage and she did.

The collector then came to my studio and bought a couple of drawings, and I immediately sent the curator a check for her commission. She then emailed me back a few days later and thanked me for my promptness.

Conversely, a while back a couple of different curators approached me asking for help in finding some artists for a specific acquisition project. I spent some time with each one of them, and then gave them a list of artists, as well as the artists' contact information.

I then contacted those artists and/or their gallery dealer, and told them that I was referring curator so-and-so to them in order for the curator to view and possibly purchase work from them. There were about 15-20 artists that I referred and who were then contacted by the curators of these two separate projects.

Some of the artists are represented by us, and thus they know (because our contract is very clear on that issue) what a referral commission is.

Several of the other artists (whom are not represented by us, or in some cases by any other gallery) emailed me to thank me for the referral, and subsequently even a few of them emailed me to let me know that the curators had purchased artwork. Some never even emailed or contacted me to thank me for the referral, but most did.

So far only one of those artists has asked what our referral commission is, and I am sure that if/when a sale is made, that the gallery will get a check for that commission from that one artist.

Let's see what happens with the rest of them... you reap what you sow.

Nepotistas Insider Trading at the Whitney Biennial

ANABA highlights some of the damaging information being revealed by comments at Edna V. Harris' blog that appear to indicate a serious degree of conflict of interests and nepotism in the selection of some artists for the Whitney Biennial.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Any curated exhibition, including the ones that I've done, are always marred by some degree of nepotism, although there is generally not so much obvious and amazing conflicts of interests as this Biennial has apparently revealed.

But I am surprised that neither of the two distinguished and verbose Senators from New York haven't (yet) called for Senate hearings on this issue; can you imagine the amount of TV face time they'd get?

Fallon and Rosof have a really good walk-through of the Biennial here.

Frederick's First Saturday Gallery Walk

One of the great things of living around here is that we're surrounded by places that have their own local flavor of art. And nearby Frederick hosts a gallery walk on the first Saturday of every month.

You can enjoy exhibit openings, guest artists and live entertainment designed to showcase the best of downtown Frederick the first Saturday of every month from 5-9 pm. You'll also enjoy extended shopping hours at many of their specialty stores. Details here.

There's a particularly interesting dual exhibit opening at The Artists' Gallery. "Told in High Color," features the art of Amy Connor and "Garden Variety," photography by Palma Allen.

Amy Connor is one of Frederick’s newest emerging artists. Originally raised in the mountains of Virginia, she moved south to study Fine Art at the University of Florida. As her career developed she was represented by several galleries located in the Gainesville and Palm Beach area. She has recently returned to the area, and now where she is the newest member of The Artist's Gallery.

In "Garden Variety," Palma Allen continues evolution of an idea with respect to the subject matter and her new works includes experimentation with digital negatives contact printed onto cyanotype treated cloth and paper.