Lida Moser and the Biennial in the WaPo

There's a great review by O'Sullivan of our current Lida Moser exhibition at Fraser Gallery Georgetown.

The exhibition is well on its way to become our best selling photography show ever.

O'Sullivan also reviews the Corcoran Biennial and picks up on the whole "earnest" issue which was a key component of how the curators discussed the show.

The Thursday Reviews and Faces of the Fallen

The WaPo's Jonathan Padget has a take on "Never Mind The Corcoran" at Warehouse Gallery.

In the City Paper, Louis Jacobson reviews our current photography show in our Bethesda gallery and also reviews Andrea Way at Marsha Mateyka.

Also in the City Paper, Jeffry Cudlin delivers on a hard assignment: William Basinski and Richard Chartier's live electronic sound art at G Fine Art.

And there's also a very good piece by someone named Deborah Burand, who writes a really readable story on how her portrait came to be painted.

But it is the CP's Christ Shott who's got the best art story/review of the week, in discussing "Faces of the Fallen," a massive exhibition co-chaired by Annette Pollan.

A total of 1,678 American military personnel have perished so far in ongoing missions overseas, according to the Pentagon’s latest U.S. Casualty Status update. That’s 1,519 reported dead in Operation Iraqi Freedom plus 118 killed in and around Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and another 41 in other locations.

"Faces of the Fallen," a massive outpouring of portraiture intended "to honor the American service men and women who have died," has room for only 1,327 of them. "There are that many of the fallen represented," says exhibit co-chair Annette Polan, a professor at the Corcoran College of Art & Design who recruited nearly 200 volunteers to memorialize each of the deceased through individual portraits.

The issue that is the core of Schott's article, is that some works have been pulled from the exhibition "on account of their content." This issue has not been (so far) discussed by anyone else from what I can find on the web.

Trying to keep an exhibition (homage?) like this apolitical, as Pollan has apparently tried to do, has to be one of the hardest tasks a curator has to face. She takes quite a bit of heat in the article.

And yet, exploiting a dead soldier's portrait to convey a political point of view (which may not have been shared by that soldier or by his family) is also a very difficult thing to swallow.

If you disagree, then reverse the sentiments of the artists discussed in Shott's article.

Imagine that a couple of the artists were "sooooo pro-war" that they would have submitted imagery glorifying war... say a portrait of one of the dead American soldiers with the inscription "avenge my death and kill 1,000 Iraquis for me and let God sort out the bad guys from the good guys."

We would all of course be horrified and probably no one would protest having that piece removed from the exhibition.

Two sides of a very dividing issue. You cannot support one without supporting the other.

There are no winners in a situation like this, and no art world Solomon can solve this issue. As much as anyone may disagree with the pro or anti war leanings of the artists, we must all support their right to express it; but as much as we may agree or disagree with the task and decisions of the curator, we must also all support his or her right to choose what is included, what gets pulled and how the exhibition ends up.

Read the CBS story here. According to CBS:

"This is to honor these men and women who have died, period," says portrait artist Annette Polan, who organized a couple of hundred artists to paint the portraits.

Read the Seattle Post Intelligencer story here. According to the PI article:

The artists were told to "use your own style" and "be respectful for the soldiers and their families," said Anne Murphy, a volunteer organizer and president of Linkages, a consulting firm specializing in public policy and the arts.

"There will be someone who is unhappy" with a portrayal of their lost loved one, predicted Murphy, also a member of the acquisitions and exhibitions committee of the Corcoran Museum [sic] of Art.

Read the New York Times story here. The Times writes:

Jean Prewitt of Birmingham, Ala., looked for the date of April 6, 2003, so she could find the picture of her son Kelley. He was her baby, all of 24, when he left for Iraq, she said. He was the soccer player, the Auburn University fan, the mischief maker.

Ms. Prewitt said she came to the exhibit with no expectations, but she was touched that someone cared enough to do this for her and the other families. Then, through the jostling in the warm hall, she saw Kelley's portrait.

"I don't like it," she said. She got closer. She took out the photograph the portrait seemed to be based on, and the resemblance between it and the painting by the artist, Tom Mullany, appeared faint at best.

Her voice cracked. "This upsets me a lot," she said of the painting. Then she looked around at the crowd. She had said earlier that she knew everyone else at the hall would be from a family that had been destroyed, too. "But just being here upsets me, too."

The painting of Specialist Gregory P. Sanders, who was 19 when he was killed by a sniper on March 24, 2003, disappointed his family, too. His face is shadowy and gaunt in the portrait by Christine Chernow. His cherished big blue eyes are indeterminately dark.

But guided by the adamant cheerfulness of his mother, Leslie Sanders, his relatives remained gracious. "It doesn't matter," said Pat Knight, Specialist Sanders's grandmother. "It's the thought that counts."

Lots more reviews from across the country here.

The WaPo's jack-of-all-trades cultural writer Phillip Kennicott suddenly becomes a visual arts critic when he wrote about the exhibition yesterday and challenges the notion that if you "take a humble snapshot, turn it into a painting, or a sculpture, or a collage, and [then] it is somehow more than a photograph, more serious and honorable and respectful to the subject portrayed." Kennicott then goes on to get on a high pulpit and preaches to the readers; and in the process he misses the point completely.

But Kennicott's colleage, Libby Copeland, who is not a critic at all, sees what Kennicott's imperial view of art fails to see from the viewpoint of the plebian masses.

Copeland writes (bold effect is mine): "Painted portraits seem not only archaic but also impractical compared with photographs, which are taken in an instant and never drip. A portrait takes devotion, which is why painting a person can be an intimate process, even if you've never met your subject, even if the person died before you ever heard his name."

Bravo Copeland!

It's the thought that counts.

Seattle Gallery Walkthrough

On Tuesday I spent most of a gloriously sunny day in downtown Seattle walking through several of the area's art galleries.

One thing that Seattle and DC share (other than the "Washington") is some of the worst traffic on the planet, and thus after making my way downtown, I parked my car in one of the many multi-story parking lots downtown, and started the day by dropping by the William Traver Gallery, where I had an appointment to talk about Tim Tate with Bill Traver.

The William Traver Gallery has been a Seattle mainstay for over 40 years, and I think it is the largest in the city. In fact, the gallery could easily swallow DC's three largest galleries inside its mammooth second floor space on Union Street, right across from where the addition to the Seattle Art Museum is being built.

I had a most entertaining time with the owner as we were both hypnotized by the construction of this massive skyscraper right in front of the gallery's large windows. I don't know how anyone in the gallery gets anything done with the constant spectacle of seeing a skyscraper being built, one bolt and nut at a time, right in front of their eyes.

One doesn't last that many years in the art business by being a dummy, and it only takes a few minutes of talking to Bill Traver to realize that this is one sharp mind, already well in tune with the revolution being caused in the art world by the growth of the Internet and the guaranteed demise of the newsprint media.

Coming from DC, with our unexplicable lack of a large collecting base in one of the world's largest concentrations of wealth, it is astonishing to see red dots on sculptures that approach the $55,000 range (and more than one). This first visit was one that would set a trend for galleries to follow: Seattlelites appear to be buying art and lots of it.

Traver (like us) has two galleries, one in Seattle and one in Tacoma. The Seattle gallery was featuring the work of local artist Nancy Worden, which consisted of a series of most unsual jewelry (see them here) spectacularly displayed in a ring of beige maniquins in the center gallery. It was a very pleasant visit with a true professional and an opportunity to drool over a truly gorgeous gallery space.

From there I went to get lunch at the Pike Place Market where from 1977-1981 I sold all of my UW art school assignments plus hundreds of local watercolors and drawings, and first cut my teeth on the business side of the arts. At the northern end of the market I went to the Lisa Harris Gallery, which opened a few years (1985) after I left Seattle, and has been doing brisk business since then by concentrating on Pacific Northwest artists and art about the Pacific NW.


On exhibition were painterly landscape works by British-born (and now a local) painter John Cole. The works focused on Northwest landscape imagery, but also brilliantly married a Marsden Hartley "abstract look and feel" to them, so that they became more about the palette and brushwork than truly about the subject, which was elegant enough. There were maybe 25 paintings on exhibit, and I think that all but one or two were sold.

And just like my previous visit, both the gallerina on duty and gallery owner were friendly and warm, immediately joining in a conversation about the local art scene. I also noticed a fact which was to become a trend in nearly every Seattle gallery that I visited, including William Traver: labeling.

It has always been a mystery to me why in some galleries (most NYC and DC galleries by the way), it takes an act of Congress to get a price list or a way to identify the works on display. In our galleries, we always label each and every piece with a wall label by the work itself. Most other DC area galleries do not - prefering the little pin with a number, a minimalist way of making you go and find a master list somewhere, or worse still, no identification at all. Not here; in fact a trend that I noticed is that nearly every gallery that I visited had a wall label by the piece, thereby making it easy to discover title, media, artist and price.

Lisa Harris Gallery is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, succssfully achieved by focusing on local artists, local collectors and Northwest themes.

I visited a few more galleries along this area, including a huge awful place full of paintings of whales and fish, but the gallery that next sticks in my mind was a very clean, minimalist space called Solomon Fine Art which has two levels, including a beautiful space facing the street on First Avenue.

On exhibit on the ground floor was a group show titled Small Tales, which included works by Ellen Garvens, Chris St. Pierre, Nik Tongas, Peter Stanfield, and Linda Welker. Of these, Tongas' wall sculptures stood out, although I also really liked the frenetic drawings of St. Pierre.

The second level gallery had a show titled Evolution featuring a series of really gorgeous abstract paintings by local Seattle artist Fred Holcomb.

This was the first place that I saw abstract work, and I realize that one visit to a limited number of galleries isn't enough to generalize, but at the end of the day I came away with the distinct impression that the Seattle art face that I saw has a definite representational art focus.

Another artist in this group show of interest was Ellen Garvens, whose marriage of technology and art may be of some interest to my business partner Catriona Fraser, who is currently curating a "Art and Technology" exhibition.

A few blocks' walk to Pioneer Square, which when I was an art student here, was home to art galleries, drunks and pigeons. And it's still home to a lot of galleries and pigeons - don't know about drunks.

There are a few gift shop type spaces here, but also a terrific set of spectacular spaces. I walked down Occidental Avenue South, and there are seven or eight good galleries in a row. First was Calix Fine Art, which had an exhibition titled "Happy." According to the text on the invitation, this is a "show of Toys, Girls & Boys, Blooms & Things that Vroom!" - I kid thee not.

There were some silly and badly worked paintings by Dave Howard, but what I liked were the hyper realist oils of Barbies by Judy Ragagli. There were also a couple of minimalist pieces on slim wood panels by an artist named Garland Fielder that J.T. Kirkland would love.

Breezed through a huge gallery with heavy handed surrealism and then at Grover/Thurston Gallery I came across a set of naive paintings by Michael Nakoneczny and a show titled "Cigar Boxes" by Patrick LoCicero, who shows in the DC area with the Ralls Collection and who is a professor at the UW. The works (other than the boxes) consisted of paintings of bikes, cars and tricycles on big canvases with other stuff collaged onto it.

Next was the Glasshouse Studio, which is Seattle's oldest glassblowing studio and shows a wide range of glass artists with an emphasis on Northwest artists.

The huge Davidson Galleries have an emphasis on printmaking, and their antique print gallery upstairs has a superb Kathe Kollwitz exhibition worthy of a small museum show.

The exhibit focuses attention on Kollwit's works that concentrate on faces and figures. In the main gallery, I was pleasantly surprised to run into Art Werger's third solo at Davidson.

Werger, whose work we've exhibited several times in the DC area, most recently at the Printmakers Only exhibition, is in my opinion one of the best figurative intaglio printmakers in the country, with an astounding eye for detail and the sort of technical skills in a demanding media, that few schools teach anymore.

At the first gallery of the ground floor, there were some interesting lit boxes by Jill Weinstock which deliver an interesting marriage of "Dan Flavin meets the Washington Color School."

The second gallery hosted Sally Cleveland with (what else?) technically well-done landscape paintings of the Northwest.

Next came Foster/White Gallery, where I went to many an opening when I was an art student, and where one of my professors (Alden Mason) used to (and still does) exhibit.

Yet another very large space, Foster/White had several concurrent exhibits, including the uniquitous Dale Chihuly room.

The main exhibit was Mark Rediske, who failed to leave an impression on me.

It was however, the glowing and beautiful polymer resin works by Tom Burrows, especially a piece titled "Spectre 3 Blue," that knocked my senses with that unexpected punch to the part of the brain that falls in love with a work of art. Another Northwest artist (but from across the water in Vancouver), Burrows minimalist use of color and his technical wizardry in wedding it to polymer to create these luminous two-dimensional pieces really became a high point for the walk-through. As far as I can tell from his resume, he has never exhibited in the East Coast.

A couple more forgettable (but large) galleries later I came across the Bryan Ohno Gallery, where I spent quite a bit of time chatting with its pleasant young owner, discussing the Seattle art scene, advertising, the art market and art. On exhibit were the ink on mylar paintings of California artist Katina Huston, which were elegant, large pieces that at first tend to be seen as very abstracted pieces, until suddenly the visual clues of a bicycle appear and the theme of the works pops into focus. These works were the second pleasant surprise discovery of the walk for me.

Feet aching I backtracked my way to the Linda Hodges Gallery, another two-level gallery. On the ground floor were the odd paintings and sculptures of Brad Rude, whose super-realistic sculptures seem to take those weird Dali works that put elephants and zebras and such on stilt-like legs and distort them. Rude doesn't do that, but he does create a strange reality where animals walk on bones and sticks and other skinny things. I found the sculptures a little too past cute for me, but I thought that the paintings were quite extraordinary. This is a strange case where an obviously multi-talented artist makes a stronger impression in his two dimensional approach to the same problem. The paintings were superb, while the sculptures (many of which were sold) were just a little too Jumanji for me.

The upstairs gallery had an exhibit of works by Roy de Forest, which appeared to be an awful Crumbesque amalgamation of gaudy-colored stuff with glow-in-the-dark colors and adult-playing-child works that just do not speak to my visual agenda.

One last gallery before I headed for the nearest pub to try some of the local brews, and I stepped into Gallery 110, where yet another pleasant gallery director discussed with me the two photography shows on exhibit: Cindy Bittenfield and Gary Oliveira. Gallery 110 is a cooperative gallery, and Bittenfield's photographs pay homage to her father's service in WWII, while Oliveira's photos, while technically adept, are unfortunately, because of its subject matter (stuff around a hotel room), some of the most boring images that I saw all day.

I eventually ran out of time and energy, as I wanted to visit the Greg Kucera Gallery, where an old friend of mine (Ross Palmer Beecher) exhibits. So I headed to Contour for happy hour, enjoying a couple of pints of some excellent Seattle microbrew and a plate of Calamari.

A beautiful city, great art, great beer and great Calamari; life is good.

Corcoran Biennial Reviews

Thinking About Art has a first hand candid review of the Biennial and J.T. and I agree on two of the top three picks as the best of the Biennial.

Blake Gopnik has another one that makes my top picks, in a somewhat surprising (to me) review by Gopnik.

I wrote my review on the flight here, but will have to wait till I get back to DC and to my computer to finish it, as I don't have the images, etc.

I'll tip my hand by saying that I think that photography stole this Biennial.

Review

Dr. Claudia Rousseau reviews Elaine Langerman and Willie Marlowe at Gallery Neptune.

DCist Arts Agenda

DCist Tuesday Arts Agenda is here.

Seattle first impressions

Spent Tuesday visiting my old alma matter (University of Washington School of Art, Class of 1981) and hoofing it around fifteen or so downtown Seattle art galleries and the Seattle Art Museum (SAM).

More on them later, let's just say that I am dumbfounded at the huge size of most Seattle art galleries (cheaper rent I discovered), the depth and breadth of its art scene, some of the common complaints that we share, and the wealth of its local art collecting scene (red dots everywhere).

And I've been rediscovering what an absolutely beautiful place this city is; today was a bright, sunny day (well, they do get them here once in a while) and the Olympics and Mount Rainier were out in full splendor.

More later...

Walter Hopps

Walter Hopps, a legendary name in the art world and a person who left a deep footprint upon our art scene, died last Sunday.

Update: The WaPo's Paul Richard pens a very eloquent, first-person piece about Hopps here.

Gig Harbor Gallery Walk Through

My daughter Elise lives in picturesque Gig Harbor, a beautiful waterfront small town about 45 minutes from Seattle, and yesterday I walked through its waterfront business district to see what the locals offer in the form of art.

I will admit that I expected to find what one finds in Annapolis: a couple of galleries and other artsy venues selling watercolors of sailboats, sunsets and seagulls.

And I found some of those, but I also found a surprising, and obviously vibrant, local art scene.

For starters, the galleries all have a 20 page full color publication called Art Gig Harbor that puts anything that we have (actually we don't have anything similar) in the DC area to shame.

The second thing: everyone knows that the Pacific Northwest is the center of the universe for fine art glass. And even in a small town like Gig Harbor, in the smallest of galleries located inside a quaint B&B, one finds terrific selections of glass.

The third thing: Sales. In talking to the various gallerists, it is obvious that around here, people are actively buying art. In fact, since most of the art galleries are withing walking distance of each other, during my Sunday afternoon walkthrough, I kept running into the same four or five sets of people. I asked one couple if they were locals, and they answered that they were, and that they came to the galleries once a month or so to buy a piece of original art.

The first place that I visited was The Harbor Gallery, located on the waterfront and kind of the mix of various artists and framing and gifts that one expects in a touristy town.

Almost across the street there's a really nice B&B and inside as one enters there's a tiny gallery called Fire N Light, and here's the first place where one finds some first rate artwork. This is the Pacific Northwest, and this tiny gallery represents and briskly sells the work of Tim O'Niell, whose "Dory Dreams" series made from gaffer glass was an unexpected find in a genre dominated by vessels. O'Neill is the casting coordinator at nearby Pilchuck.

Down the street, Gallery Row is a co-op representing 14 artists. My favorites among these were some of the works of Barbara Patterson and Rebecca Baumgartner.

The Ebb Tide Gallery is also a co-op of 22 local artists, and a naive artist named Emilie Corbin stands out from the work that I saw.

S.C. Elliott Fine Art is probably the best looking gallery in town, in the sense that it doesn't have that cluttered, horror vaccuui sense to its presentation, and the first place that I recall seeing an abstract artist. Here the artists who stood out were W.F. Stone, Jr., some of the landscapes of Mark Farina and the Rothkoish abstracts of Laura Taylor.

Every gallery that visited (there are a few more) had original fine art glass, even the cluttered Birdnest Gallery, more of the typical framing-shop-become-art-gallery space that I had expected to find everywhere. And yet Birdnest Gallery offers a pretty decent range of original glass by an Iraqui artist named Hassan, who apparently is now a local and is currently in Iraq searching for a bride.

Overall a very pleasant and unexpected series of surprises in the art scene in this beautiful seaside town. Their art walk is called "First Saturday Art Walk" and takes place once a month on the first Saturday (duh!) of the month from 1-5PM.

There are also some great cafes and restaurants in the area, and where else can one get a double expresso for 99 cents? (At Kelly's).

My daughter will soon be moving to a new house, and thus to finish the day, I went to a place called Art & Soul Pottery and Painting Studios, one of those pottery and ceramic studios (in this case co-located inside a nice cafe) where anyone can create a piece. I made Elise a ceramic plate for a housewarming gift; my first attempt to ceramics since I finished art school!

Airplanes, Booze and Teenage Drivers

Arrived in Seattle last night after a travel day that started horribly, got a bit better through the introduction of free alcohol and ended in an adrenaline rush.

By the way, in response to my request for anyone with Seattle area gallery knowledge, I've received three emails from local Seattlelites willing to share a beer and a walkthrough of some of the area's galleries. I went to art school here in the 80's but haven't been back here since 1993.

Anyway, I arrived at Dulles yesterday morning at 6:30AM, a little over two hours before my 8:43AM flight to Seattle, only to find the airport packed with families and kids all heading south for the spring break. Although one would figure that the airlines would have by now the a priori knowledge to predict this surge, they hadn't, and it took me nearly two hours just to check in and another 45 minutes to go through security and take the bus to the gates.

Of course I missed my flight (gate C1) and then I had to go to Customer Service (gate C22, on the other side of Northern Virginia), where there's another huge line.

While waiting in the line listening to horror stories about missing ship's movement for all the families going on cruises, I removed my new glasses to clean them, only to have them come undone, and one lens falls out and that miniscule screw disappears into the carpet of Dulles' floors.

Using the camraderie that had developed between the suffering passengers waiting in line (sort of an Airport Stockholm Syndrone, which I've dubbed Airport Stick-it-to-them Syndrome), about four or five of us got on our hands and knees to try to find that tiny screw so that I could attempt to put my glasses back together.

And through a miracle of someone in tune with quantum mechanics, the screw was found and glasses repaired by someone with a lot more finger dexterity than I.

Eventually I make my way to a Customer Service Representative, actually feeling a bit sorry for the hell that these people must catch on a daily basis. I tell her so, and she smiles and tells me how her throat is already sore from talking, and so I hand her a stick of gum, which will have a huge payoff for me later.

As she listens to my story, she taps into her keyboard and with the intensity of a doctor peering into an X-ray, and spends at least ten minutes tapping and searching.

"Mmmm," she says, sounding more and more like my medical analogy.

"What is it Doc, uh I mean miss?" says the patient worried.

"Well.... want the good news first or the bad news first"?

Crap.

"Bad news first," says I bravely.

"The only available flight doesn't leave until 5:45PM, but the good news is that they have one seat left."

Seven hour wait.

"I'll take it," I respond.

I thanked her and ticket in hand I now proceed to finish a couple of books, write a huge review of the Corcoran Biennial (which I had intended to do this week anyway, but I forgot the catalog at home, so unless the Corcoran can FEDEX me one here at my hotel, it will have to wait until I get back for publication) and eat crap food all day.

When finally the boarding takes place, to my surprise I discover that my sore-throated angel has upgraded my cheap seat to first class on a cross country, non-stop flight.

A bottle and a half of a good Sonoma Merlot later, I arrived, tired and boozy, to a gray, rainy and fresh-smelling Washington state night, where my daughter Elise picked me up and immediately revived me thanks to the wonders of the adrenaline charge caused by being driven at night, in the rain, by a 17 year-old-driver.

Airborne today

Somewhat emotionally and physically stressed, I am heading West to spend a week in Seattle for some much-needed rest and relaxation in America's cleanest (and wettest) city, where people don't tan but they rust.

I will keep posting and may even deliver a Seattle gallery walkthrough. If anyone from Seattle reads this BLOG, and would like to email me some info: I'll buy you a beer!

On the flight there I am reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.

Friday Round-up

In the WaPo, O'Sullivan reviews High Fiber at the Renwick and also Andrea Way at Mateyka.

Principle Gallery in Old Town Alexandria has an opening tonight from 6:30-9PM.

In Georgetown, Addison/Ripley has Patricia Tobbacco Forrester' opening tonight from 6-8PM.

And a few blocks away, the five Canal Square Galleries have their joint openings/extended hours from 6-9PM tonight as well.

I received a really solid kick to the side of my jaw last night in Martial Arts class, so it really hurts to open my mouth (yeah, yeah...), so if I sound funny or am not too vocal tonight, now you know why!

See ya there!

Kudos

I've just found out that our own Ethel Kessler of Bethesda, Maryland designed the stamp "Fund the Cure" to help fund breast cancer research.

The usual 37 cents for an ordinary stamp instead costs 40 cents for this stamp.

But the additional three cents goes to breast cancer research. To date, the stamp has raised more than $34 million for breast cancer research.

Is that super cool or what?

Opportunities for Artists

Mary's Center for Maternal and Child Care Annual Art Exhibition
Deadline: April 29, 2005

For the fifth straight year, Mary's Center for Maternal and Child Care is hosting its annual art exhibition, featuring the works of local, national, and international artists. They are seeking paintings, photographs, sculpture, textiles, pottery, jewelry, and more for the 2005 Kalorama Artists' Fair, to be held at Mary's Center at 2333 Ontario Road in Adams Morgan from Friday, May 6 through Saturday, May 7, 2005. There is no charge to participate.

This non-juried show includes an Opening Reception for artists, friends, family, and the public. All works are for sale, and proceeds will go to artists and Mary's Center (health care, social services, and education for low-income DC families).

If you are interested in participating, please call Lisa at (202)-483-8319, ext. 226 or send an email to her here.

Opportunity for Photographers

The Washington School of Photography presents the Third Annual Mid-Atlantic Regional Photography show.

Slides are due April 8, entry is $25 for four entries. Photographers must reside in: DC, MD, PA, VA, DE, or WV. Cash prizes will be presented.

Entry forms can be found here or with SASE to:

WSP/WGP
4850 Rugby Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
301/654.1998

Art Job

The Washington District of Columbia Jewish Community Center is looking for a Gallery Director for the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery (a 600 square foot space in an urban Jewish Community Center).

The Gallery Director will curate three to four shows annually, work collaboratively with other arts professionals to bring related public programming and classes, oversee fundraising, oversee all administrative aspects of the gallery, and develop a long-term exhibition plan. Previous gallery experience required. Knowledge and understanding of Jewish traditions and history preferred. Position start date is April 15th, 2005.

This is a full-time position that includes benefits and free gym membership.

Email resume and cover letter describing experience to josh@dcjcc.org or fax 202-518-9420. No phone calls.

For more info:

DC Jewish Community Center
Joshua Ford, Washington DCJCC
1529 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
f: 202.518.9420 or josh@dcjcc.org

The Thursday Reviews

The WaPo's Jessica Dawson does her 3rd Thursday mini-review thing today in the Style section.

In the WCP, Louis Jacobson's review of Joe Ovelman at Conner Contemporary brings intelligent humor to the review.

Also in the City Paper, Mark Jenkins looks at The Art of Memory/ The Memory of Art at the Goethe-Institut’s Gallery.

Secrets in the WaPo

Frank Warren, whose Post A Secret project at Art-O-Matic was a huge success, is highlighted today in the WaPo's Metro section.

Send Frank your secrets here.

Gallery Openings

Tonight is the 3rd Thursday gallery crawl around the 7th street corridor. From 6-8PM in most places. Especially interesting seems Carolina Sardi: Over/Under, curated by Rody Douzoglou at Flashpoint. Also Numark Gallery has Shimon Attie: The History of Another, which is well-worth the visit tonight.

Tomorrow, it's the turn of the Canal Square Galleries in Georgetown, as we will all have our new shows opening or extended hours and the openings will be catered by our Canal neighbor, the Sea Catch Restaurant. Elsewhere in Georgetown, Addison Ripley will have the wonderfully busy watercolors of Patricia Tobacco Forrester.

Especially interesting in the Canal Square Galleries is MOCA's Erotic Art Show, a jumble of dozens of artists exploring the moist avenues of erotica.

We will have the brilliant photographs of Lida Moser. This is probably our most important photography show of the year.

Opening tomorrow night and through April 13, 2005, our Fraser Gallery in Georgetown will be hosting the first ever Washington, DC solo exhibition of legendary American photographer Lida Moser, who now lives in retirement in nearby Rockville, Maryland.

This 85-year-old photographer is not only one of the most respected American photographers of the 20th century, but also a pioneer in the field of photojournalism. Her photography is currently in the middle of a revival and rediscovery, and has sold as high as $4,000 in recent Christie's auctions and continues to be collected by both museums and private collectors worldwide. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, Moser has produced a body of works consisting of thousands of photographs and photographic assemblages that defy categorization and genre or label assignment.

Additionally, Canadian television is currently in the process of filming a documentary about her life; the second in the last few years, and Moser’s work is now in the collection of many museums worldwide.

A well-known figure in the New York art scene of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s,a portrait of Lida Moser by American painter Alice Neel hangs in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Neel painted a total of four Moser portraits over her lifetime, and I believe that one of them will be included in the National Museum of Women in the Arts' "Alice Neel's Women" coming to Washington, DC this October.

Lida Moser's photographic career started as a student and studio assistant in 1947 in Berenice Abbott's studio in New York City, where she became an active member of the New York Photo League. She then worked for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Look and many other magazines throughout the next few decades, and traveled extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

In 1950 Vogue, and (and subsequently Look magazine) assigned Lida Moser to carry out an illustrated report on Canada, from one ocean to another. When she arrived at the Windsor station in Montreal, in June of that same year, she met by chance, Paul Gouin, then a Cultural Advisor to Duplessis government. This chance meeting led Moser to change her all-Canada assignment for one centered around Quebec.

Armed with her camera and guided by the research done by the Abbot Felix-Antoine Savard, the folklorist Luc Lacourcière and accompanied by Paul Gouin, Lida Moser then discovers and photographs a traditional Quebec, which was still little touched by modern civilization and the coming urbanization of the region. Decades later, a major exhibition of those photographs at the McCord Museum of Canadian History became the museum’s most popular exhibit ever.

She has also authored and been part of many books and publications on and about photography. She also wrote a series of "Camera View" articles on photography for The New York Times between 1974-81. Her work has been exhibited in many museums worldwide and is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, the National Archives, Ottawa, the National Galleries of Scotland, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, the Library of Congress, Les Archives Nationales du Quebec, Corcoran Gallery, Phillips Collection and many others. Moser was an active member of the Photo League and the New York School.

The Photo League was the seminal birth of American documentary photography. It was a group that was at times at school, an association and even a social club. Disbanded in 1951, the League promoted photojournalism with an aesthetic consciousness that reaches street photography to this day.

This will be her first solo exhibition in Washington, DC and it will run from March 18 through April 13, 2005.

An opening reception for Ms. Moser will be held tomorrow night, Friday, March 18, 2005 from 6-9PM as part of the third Friday openings in Georgetown. The reception is free and open to the public.

See ya there!

Koons Job

Courtesy of Todd Gibson's wit, this great gem of a job opportunity for artists:

Computer design
Jeff Koons LLC
(New York NY)

Computer design expert wanted to work with leading contemporary artist. Excellent color correction skills and mastery of mac based design programs including Photoshop and Illustrator required. 3-D rendering skills a plus. Please send resume with images of work to JK92106@yahoo.com with "Computer" in subject line.

Salary: Based on experience.