The Corcoran tells me that Salvadorean artist Muriel Hasbun, who lives in DC and is a longtime Corcoran faculty member, and who represented El Salvador at the last Venice Biennale, and is represented locally by Conner Contemporary will be having a solo show at the Corcoran opening on March 6, 2004 and curated by Paul Roth, the Corcoran's Associate Curator of Photography and Media Arts. An excellent essay about Hasbun's work by Andy Grunberg can be read online here.

Opportunity for artists:

These are "open" mail art exhibitions (as opposed to "juried"). This means that all submissions will be included in the exhibition. Entries are sent via mail and are usually not returned. Mail art is usually created on a blank postcard and sent through the mail to the exhibition.

Deadline: Dec. 31, 2003
Group 78, Tokyo's English-language local group of Amnesty International, the worldwide human rights organization, will adopt the theme "Violence Against Women" as a major campaign priority next year. To publicize this and to reach out to women's groups, human rights groups and other concerned people, they are appealing to the mail art artists for suitable submissions on the theme. They intend to exhibit in Tokyo and possibly other cities in Japan, and to produce a documentation of the submitted works. Every contributor will receive a copy of the documentation.

MEDIA/TECHNIQUE: free
SIZE: from postcard size to A4 size (29 X 21 cm) 2D only.
DEADLINE: Dec. 31, 2003

Send to:

Chris Pitts
Kyoritsu Women's College
3-27 Kanda-Jinbocho
Chiyoda^ku
101-0051 Tokyo
Japan

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Deadline: February 1, 2004
"Bras for Breast Cancer." Embellish a bra for an exhibit to be held at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas in April of 2004. Bras will be exhibited along with paintings, poetry, videos, installations and assemblages created by women and men who have stories to share about themselves and or loved ones who are coping with Breast Cancer. All entries will be exhibited. No Jury. No Returns.

Send all entries to:
Junanne Peck
P.O.Box 177528
Irving, Texas
75017-7528
Email questions to junannepeck@mac.com

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Deadline: February 1, 2004
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is requesting mail art submissions for an exhibit in February 2004 on the theme "Sense of Place." Artists are encouraged to respond by providing works that examine changing conceptions of place, borders and nationalism on a global scale. How would you represent your sense of place in today's world? What has happened to your sense of place since the rise of globalization? Since 9/11? How has the spread of internet communications altered perspectives on near and far?

Each work should not exceed 20 inches in any direction and may be 3 dimensional. Please include contact information: name, address, email. Due to space limitations, not all submissions can be exhibited. However, all submissions will appear on BMoCA's website and all submitting artists will be acknowledged. Exhibited works will be listed in the catalogue and on the BMoCA website. Submissions will not be returned unless SASE is included. Questions to Brandi Mathis at 303/443-2122.

Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
1750 13th St.
Boulder, CO 80302

British art critic Matthew Collins, who is often credited with helping to launch many YBA's, and modern video and installation art now says:

"We don't live in a great time for art; we live in a time when art is very successful as a leisure activity. Art is very amusing, but within that culture there's still a hierarchy of better and worse. I'm interested in that hierarchy but I recognise that modern art and pre-modern art were very important, and postmodern art is rubbish, really."

Collins has a new TV series on British television that begins next Sunday. Read the whole story in The Observer here.

Blake Gopnik gives us a look at the Havana Bienal today in the Sunday Arts section of the Post.

By the way, I know it's pedantic, but if we call the Venice Biennial the Biennale then we should refer to the Havana Biennial as the Bienal, which is the Spanish word for Biennial, just as Biennale is the Italian word for it.

Although he mentioned it at the beginning, he skimmed lightly over the very important issue of censorship and this was very disappointing to me. More on this issue here and from the Prince Claus Fund, the main financial supporter of the past Bienal. They withdrew support from this Bienal because of Castro's recent human rights abuses and artist censorship.

More on the desperate situation of human rights in Cuba from Human Rights Watch and from Amnesty International.

Otherwise the article was very readable and somewhat predictable, as Blake does not mention a single painter and shows his colors by writing: "A visit to the main art school showed student work as good as you'd get anywhere, even in relatively newfangled fields such as performance and video art."

Newfangled? Hardly. As a child, I recall being dragged to "enjoy" performance art in the 60's in New York by various artsy members of my family, so that's been around for 40 years or more and video art came out as soon as the first video camera came out in the 70s and by the time I went to art school at the University of Washington (1977-1981) in Seattle, my then girlfriend Susie K. was boring us to sleep with her video art, which consisted of her recording the Seattle skyline from the Space Needle Restaurant as it slowly rotated around the Needle.

Same crap that Tacita Dean did decades later at the revolving restaurant atop the TV tower at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Susie K did it in 1979.

Also today, Paul Richards reviews Philip Guston's retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Guston is one of those artists that are very difficult to digest, but the more you talk to people, especially young artists, about him, the more influential he seems.

"If someone bursts out laughing in front of my painting," Richards says Guston wrote in 1973, "that is exactly what I want."

The retrospective, curated by Michael Auping, was organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and will travel to the Royal Academy of Arts, London, after closing in New York.

Terry Teachout, who BLOGs about the Arts for ArtsJournal.com has a very interesting posting about Jennifer Howard, a contributing editor of Washington Post Book World, and an article that she wrote, compalining about the direction that she feels the BLOGosphere is heading.

And further to my post below, what goes for shocking in New York or London is certainly different from what is still considered shocking around Washington, DC.

We're getting a lot of flak from our neighbors and some of the public in Bethesda about Scott Hutchison's large female nude paintings currently on exhibition. Especially this one which is five and half feet tall.

John Rockwell, writing in the New York Times, says that "for centuries new art has offended, challenging the purely pleasurable" and also that "in the end all art must seek to disturb and provoke" and ends with "great art is always shocking."

So because Seward Johnson takes Impressionist paintings and makes sculptures from them, his work is crap. But when the Chapman Brothers take Goya's war etchings and make sculptures out of them, their work may be great - because it's shocking.

I initially thought that they were both crap, but now I get it.

Opportunities for Visual Artists:

Deadline: January 15, 2004. Open Exhibition Competition for a show at the Target Gallery in the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Open to all individual artists and groups in all media in North America. Jurors: Annie Adjchavanich, Executive Director, Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran; B.J. Adams, noted fiber artist; James and Jenna Blalock, Washington area collectors of fine art and craft. Deadline for Porposals: January 15, 2004. Show dates: October 20-November 28, 2004. Fee: $35 for 20 images (slides or JPEG CD) and proposal. For appliocation, contact targetgallery@torpedofactory.org, 703/838-4565 x 4, or send SASE to Open 2004, Target Gallery
105 N. Union Street, Alexandria, VA 22314

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Deadline: December 15, 2003. The Humanities Fine Arts Gallery of the University of Minnesota Morris has a call for exhibition proposals for 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 academic years. Send 10 to 20 slides of recent work, artist's statement, resume, and SASE to be considered for solo or group show. No prospectus and better still: no entry fee. Deadline for Submissions is December 15th, 2003. Send proposal to:

Michael Eble
Division of the Humanities
University of Minnesota Morris
Morris MN 56367

Email questions to meble@mrs.umn.edu

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Deadline February 2, 2004. Ivyside International Juried Exhibition at Penn State Altoona. Open to all visual artists in all media. Entries must have been completed within the last two years. Artists will be selected from slides, CD Rom, or VHS/DVD by a faculty committee. Up to six artists will be awarded annually with a gallery exhibition in one of two gallery spaces (each approximately 13' x 25') at the Community Arts Center at Penn State Altoona. There is no entry fee.

Send:
1. CV - One copy, no more than 2 pages.

2. Artist statement - One copy, no more than 1 page.

3. Slides - A maximum of 12 (24 for three dimensional work) slides may be submitted for review. Clearly label slides with, name, title, date, medium, size (h x w x d) and an indication of top of image. Submit in a plastic slide sheet, in order, with a SASE. Artists are entitled to enter a maximum of 12 slides for review. Two-dimensional work one slide/work may be submitted for consideration. For three-dimensional work two slides per entry are allowed. Provide one copy of a slide list on 1 8 ½ x 11 sheet.

4. Or CD Rom: A maximum of 12 (24 for three dimensional work) jpeg or tiff images may be submitted for review. Submit on a CDR IBM compatible disc in order. Title each image on the disc. Provide one copy of an image list on one 8½ x 11 sheet. Submit with SASE.

5. Or DVD/VHS: A maximum of 10 minutes will be viewed by the gallery committee. Your tape or DVD may be a compilation tape, but one full length piece must be present. Submit with SASE.

Accepted artists will be notified May 1, 2004 and then artwork may be hand-delivered or shipped prepaid to Ivyside Juried Exhibition, Penn State Altoona. Within reason, Penn StateAltoona will return ship, via UPS ground. Each exhibition will have labels, a poster, postcard, gallery reception, and simple checklist.

Ivyside Juried Art Competition
Penn State Altoona, Community Arts Center
3000 Ivyside Park
Altoona, Pennsylvania 16601

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Deadline: December 12, 2003. District of Columbia Art Center 8th Annual Exhibition Raffle. An annual opportunity to win a six-week show in the DCAC gallery. Tickets are only $50 each for DCAC members and $100 for non-members. Note that a year's membership to DCAC costs as little as $30 making it possible to become a new member and enter the raffle for only $80. DCAC also encourages artists to join together with other artists and share the price of a ticket.

Tickets may be purchased at DCAC during gallery and theater hours of Wed-Thurs 2-7 PM; Fri- Sat 2-10 PM. Tickets will also be available at the December 7th's MUSE, hosted by Faith Flanagan.

For more information, please call (202)- 462-7833.

Lots of good stuff happening around the DMV's visual art scene:

Tonite is the Bethesda Art Walk from 6-10 PM.

The Art Museum of the Americas will be hosting “An Architect of Surrealism,” an exhibition of paintings by Roberto Matta, one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. The exhibition includes work ranging from a drawing from the late 1940’s to a pair of etchings from 1985, as well as four paintings and a dozen gouache, etching and lithograph works.

Ten of the pieces have been loaned by Walker Fine Art of San Diego, while the rest of the pieces are from the Art Museum of the Americas' permanent collection. This exhibit will open on Wednesday, November 19 at 6:00 PM with a reception at the Art Museum of the Americas (201 18th Street, NW), and will continue through March 7, 2004.

The third edition of the Guerrilla Film Fest (GFF3) will be held at the Carnegie Institution in DC on Saturday November 22, 2003. The program for GFF3 consists of 8 award-winning short films. You can get program details here or email John Hanshaw for info.

In conjunction with the ongoing citywide arts festival, "Blues and Dreams: Celebrating the African American Experience in Washington, DC," the The District of Columbia Arts Center gallery has an opening tonite from 7-9 PM. It's a four artist group show which includes work by painter Shinique Smith, performance videos by Jefferson Pinder, lightbox-mounted, quasi-documentary photographs by Djakarta Jacobs, and Nekisha Durrett's photographs - confrontational portraits of proud, young African American lesbians.

In reference to my frustration with the Post's galleries' coverage, photographer Jim Steele adds that he'd "hate to think [that] the lack of coverage by the Post implies a lack of respect for local artists, but I suspect this is a large part of the problem."

In the Post today, Style's Friday focus is movies, and appropriately enough, there are four movie reviews in the section. There is also one theater review and three different music reviews by three different writers. Nothing "extra" on the visual arts, of course.

Over in the Weekend section, Michael O'Sullivan reviews Jim Sanborn's great show at the Corcoran and at Numark Gallery. This show was earlier reviewed by Blake Gopnik on October 31.

As it happens almost every Friday, Weekend movie critics manage to review the same movies that the Style section critic reviews.

So three of the movies reviewed in Style are also reviewed, by different critics in Weekend. This is a great way to see how critics can differ - not just in movies but in any genre of the arts. So while Stephen Hunter says that Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World "suffers from what might be called colonitis," and generally dislikes the movie, his fellow critic Desson Howe offers that the movie is not only a "masterful performance" but also that "[the movie] isn't just a fabulous seagoing spectacle. It's one for the ages."

Guess which critic will end up quoted in those one line mini-quotes that movies use in their advertising?

As I've noted at least twice before, wouldn't it be great if once in a while the Post would send Blake Gopnik and Paul Richard to review the same gallery or museum show, and publish it the same day, to give us readers two different perspectives on one show?

This happens (not by planned assignment, but just because the Style section editor and the Weekend editor are different editors and do not "synchronize" who and what will be reviewed) very frequently with movies and theatre. It also happens on a rare ocassion (like today), when O'Sullivan reviews a show that either has already been reviewed, or is later reviewed by either Dawson (if it's a gallery show) or Gopnik (if it is a museum show).

But what this practice of multiple movie and theatre reviews does prove, is that the (sometimes offered) excuse that the reason that the Post does not review more galleries is due to lack of print space is an invalid reason not to expand galleries coverage to the same level as theater, music, and fashion.

Weekend also has an army of contract writers that provide mini reviews of dozens of music and theater events (and of course movies) throughout the area, but not a single contract writer to do mini gallery reviews.

Why not?

I don't know, but I would guess that the Weekend editor, Joyce Jones, does not think that offering the same level of coverage to art galleries and art museums as she gives to our wonderful theaters, night clubs, performance venues and cinemas is as important and that her readers are not interested in a gallery art show in Dupont Circle, Georgetown, downtown or Bethesda to the same level as in a play in Olney or a dinner theatre production in Woodbridge, etc.

Today is "Galleries" focus day at the Post's Style section, and Jessica Dawson reviews a library show in Baltimore.

In the "Arts Beat" column, Chris Richards discusses the Convention Center's art collection. For my opinion on that subject, read my Nov. 11 posting.

And just as I predicted yesterday, there are two music reviews in the paper.

This gets to the heart of the matter of my bitching about the Post's gallery coverage. Because Jessica is the only freelance writer that the Post employs to review galleries, and because not only does she review gallery shows, but also sometimes museums, and also embassy shows, and university shows, and alternative spaces shows, and library shows, and because (as she did today) she sometimes includes Baltimore in her geographical area, there just isn't enough coverage in the newspaper on a par with what the Post does for music, theatre, performance and even fashion!

In fact, a quick check online reveals that since April 25, 2002 the Post has published 146 columns on fashion while Dawson has only written 76 in the same time period.

How can the Post justify having several contract writers for all those other art genres but only one for our area galleries?

I believe that they feel that their gallery coverage is appropriate and see no need to expand it to the same degree of coverage that they provide in Style for music, theatre, fashion, etc. I disagree, but I am certainly not objective about the issue.

Why does the Post feel that way?

Simple: Because no one complains except gallery owners. And of course from our perspective the coverage could always be better and to them it is just sourgrapes.

But do the readers care?

I don't know, but the Post obviously thinks that they don't care. This is clear because once in a while, when Jessica is away or on vacation, they just skip the column.

I guess that we should be grateful that the world's second most powerful newspaper allows one freelance writer to write an (almost) weekly column to cover all of our area galleries, plus Baltimore's, plus embassies, and libraries, etc. And also lucky that over in the Weekend section Michael O'Sullivan has been allowed by his editor to expand his column from just covering museums and also include galleries in his coverage.

Thank you guys.

Today's Style section in the Post has the kind of coverage that one wishes the paper would give the visual arts on their "Galleries/Art News focus" day (Thursdays).

Wednesday is "Pop Music" focus day in the Style section, and there are eight separate columns or reviews by seven different writers (plus three different theatre reviews although Tuesdays is "theatre focus day" not today).

So at least for music and theatre, Style has several different critics and writers who provide us with fairly good coverage, offering a widely ranging set of reviews and opinions - dealing with both national level artists and Washington area artists and venues. Many of these Post writers are "contract" writers (freelance), allowing the Post to hire (and fire them) fairly easily I assume, while saving on having to provide 401K's and medical insurance, etc.

Nonetheless, I applaud the Post's interest in helping to cover our area's rich musical and theatrical scene. It certainly deserves the coverage given.

But on Thursdays - "Galleries and Art News focus day" - Why then only one column on "Galleries" by only one contract writer? And the Arts Beat column, which is published twice a month on Thursdays, often covers the entire spectrum of the "arts" - it is not just a visual arts column by far.

It's not fair to Jessica Dawson, who has to spread her single column all over the region, sometimes as far as Baltimore and often to embassies, and it's not fair to the many, many area galleries, who must all compete for the ear of just one Style critic, it's not fair to the many area artists and other good exhibitions which get ignored because of lack of coverage, and most of all, it's not fair to the readers of Style who must all just read only one critical voice and perspective when it comes to our area's art galleries and who often are also unaware of important exhibitions that go uncovered due to lack of print space allowed by Style to the visual arts on "Galleries" day.

In fact, I am willing to bet that tomorrow's paper, on their assigned "Galleries/Art News" focus day, will have more theatre and music reviews than galleries reviews.

Washington area artist Jae Ko, who shows at Marsha Mateyka Gallery on R Street will be exhibiting (through Dec. 21) at the opening exhibition of the newly renovated Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts.

Next Friday is the second Friday of the month, which means that it is time for the Bethesda Art Walk. Several galleries and art establishments participate, light food and refreshments are provided, as well as a free shuttle bus to take visitors around the galleries.

We will be hosting new paintings by Scott Hutchison and Caroline Danforth.

Public Art Opportunity: Call for Design for 9-11 Memorial, Westchester County, NY.

Westchester County, in conjunction with the Westchester County September 11th Memorial Committee, is issuing a "Request for Proposals" (RFP) for design services in connection with a memorial honoring its 111 citizens who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The memorial is to be located at the Kensico Dam Plaza in Valhalla, New York. Budget $200,000. View complete RFP at www.westchestergov.com. The deadline is January 15, 2004.

I've been hearing good things about Brian Balderston's first solo, which opened last weekend at Transformer Gallery. The exhibition runs through November 29.

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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.

Don't miss today's posting in Ionarts

Art Basel Miami 2003 will take place next month in Miami Beach. Although there are no Washington area galleries (in no small part due to the huge cost of exhibiting) in the list of exhibiting galleries, it's noteworthy to point out that Washington's Fusebox Gallery will be participating in Art Positions, where many other galleries have the opportunity to exhibit art in renovated ships' containers transformed into mobile exhibition spaces on the beach.

This is hard work from a very hard working gallery, and Fusebox, already one of our best galleries, will hopefully get some well-deserved attention for the Washington area artists that they represent from the Miami media (and our own).

Thanks to Arts Journal: The Society for the Appreciation of the Female Nude (SAFN) in praise of the traditional female nude in art has established a new art prize in Britain: The Venus Prize.

It will be presented annually to an artist who "expresses the beauty of a woman wholly at ease with her own body while communicating a female sensuality openly but non-provocatively".

Ulla Plougmand-Turner, a self-taught Danish-born artist, will be the first recipient of the award, being presented by the Marquess of Bath in London tonite.