Smithsonian woes

Yesterday The Art Newspaper broke the story on the 51-page external confidential report (now made public and online here), commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution's Undersecretary of Art, Ned Rifkin, on the state of the Smithsonian Institution's eight museums.

The confidential document, a copy of which has been seen by The Art Newspaper, is the result of an 18-month external review of the art museums and two related art programmes run by the Smithsonian Institution which are collectively known as Smithsonian Arts.

Ned Rifkin, the Smithsonian’s undersecretary for art, appointed a committee to carry out the review in August 2005.

This includes Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Michael Shapiro, director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; John Walsh, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; James Wood, director and president emeritus of the Art Institute of Chicago and, since February, president and chief executive of the Getty Trust, Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown; Vishakha Desai, president and chief executive of the Asia Society in New York, and Susana Leval, director emerita of El Museo del Barrio in New York.

They met in small groups with Smithsonian museum executives and convened five times to draft the report which was submitted to the Smithsonian’s board of regents in January.

The 51-page document and its appendices provides an analysis of each Smithsonian art museum, listing strengths and weaknesses and offering recommendations.

Per the Art Newspaper, among the report's recommendations:

- "Questions the long-term viability of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York because of 'the modest size of audience, ­limited programs and scope of [the] collection.'"

- "Calls for the 'administrative consolidation' of the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum."

- "Warns that leaks in the storage areas of the Freer and Sackler galleries threaten the collection. Leaks are also identified as a problem at the Hirshhorn Museum."

- "Concludes that the National Museum of African Art suffers from a 'lack of visionary leadership' as well as a non-contributing board and a lacklustre curatorial team."

Read the whole Art Newspaper article here, and read the SI report here, and the WaPo's Paul Farhi's take on the subject here, and then a SI response via the SAAM's blog, Eyelevel, here.

It's Boise, Idaho's turn to be embarrassed

In 2002 the District of Columbia went on a crackdown to try to stop the District's art galleries from serving wine (any alcohol) at art openings. Threatening letters from Maurice Evans, the chief investigator for the District's Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, were sent to nearly all of DC's galleries.

As I recall, the letters also stated that galleries must stop serving wine at openings, or obtain a [very expensive and hard-to-get] liquor license, or apply for a temporary license for each opening (at around $100 a day), that would then allow licensed caterers (who would also need to be hired by the gallery for each opening) to pour the wine for the over-21 crowd.

Upon receipt of this letter I called the WaPo and talked to its arts editor, John Pancake, reporting this fact, and a few days later the Style section published this article by Natalie Hopkinson on the subject.

The WaPo's story was picked up by the AP or UPI and then itself picked up worldwide by newspapers as far away as Australia, and the BBC even did a small story on it. It embarrassed Washington, DC on a planetary scale, characterizing the nation's capital as a repressed small town where the time honored tradition of cheap white wine and cheese at gallery openings was in danger of being nixed by an over zealous alcohol enforcement official.

Because of this embarrassment, the City's alcohol board held a quick hearing and several of us gallerists testified to the board about the art of the art opening. It all eventually went away, but not before the nation's capital was embarrassed around the world.

Now it is Boise, Idaho's turn to get its share of planetary shame and I hope to get that ball rolling. Since at least August of 2006, according to Margaret Littman in Art & Antiques:

Though the law has been on the books since the 1930s, Boise City Police, at the direction of the Idaho Beverage Control, are cracking down on the free glasses of wine some galleries offer during monthly First Thursday art openings.

For the Idaho Beverage Control zealot(s) who wasted time orchestrating this: You are an embarrassment to this nation and your zeal had led you down the wrong path in alcohol enforcement and you have made your state and this nation the laughing stock of a planet that seldom agrees on many things, but as history taught us before, seems to think that serving a glass of wine at a gallery opening doesn't deserve a police raid.

Shame on you Idaho.

Update: Read the Boise Weekly article on this subject here.

Wanna go to a DC art opening tonight?

Several of DC leading edge dorktechnical scientartists will be opening an exhibition of their latest work (an interactive media project) at the Warehouse Gallery on 7th Street. Work by Philip Kohn, Thomas Edwards, Brian Judy, and Claudia Vess. The opening is Thursday, March 22 from 6-8PM.

Wanna go to nude body painting party in DC this Sunday?

On Friday Sunday, March 25, 2007, MOCA DC in Canal Square in Georgetown is hosting another nude body painting gala as part of their Erotica 2007 show.

You can come and have your body painted or just come, see the Erotic art show and watch as artists paint other people. Call them for details and times at 202.342.6230 or 202.361.3810.

The event is free and open to the public. Erotica 2007 runs through March 31, 2007.

Congrats

To our very own contributor, Rosetta DeBerardinis, who relocated to Baltimore last week to accept an Artist Studio Residency with School 33 Art Center located on Federal Hill. She will continue to exhibit in the Washington metro area and extend her coverage for Mid-Atlantic Art News to include an even more expanded coverage of Baltimore.

Rosetta also has been selected by Sam Gilliam and Marie Lewis to exhibit her work in Contemporary Color - Contemporary Artists in the Color School Legacy at Montpelier Arts Center, opening April 17th-May 5th. A Conversation with Sam Gilliam, will be held on April 22 at 2 p.m. followed by a reception on May 5th from 3-5 pm.

Twist and Shout, her two-person show with sculptor, Guy Barnard, at Visual Art Studio in Richmond, VA, opens April 6th through May 25th.

She is also contributing to the Lotta Art, School 33’s annual benefit held on Saturday, April 21st with cocktail buffets, open studios, and a lottery-style drawing for art donated by 100 artists.

And Rosetta’s work is currently on exhibit at Design Within Reach in Bethesda, MD, (301) 215-7200 and at the Millennium Arts Salon in DC, 202-319-2077.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow tonight?

The Gallery at Flashpoint has Janis Goodman: Shifting Waters, with an opening reception for one of the District's most visible and talented artists tomorrow night, Thursday, March 22, 6-8pm (and show runs through April 21, 2007). There's also an artist’s talk on Saturday, March 31, 4pm.

Opportunity for WPA/C Members to Exhibit at artDC

Someone at the WPA/C is using their coconut and has come up with a novel way for their members to exhibit at the coming artDC fair in Washington, DC.

All WPA\C members are invited to contribute a small work to INDEX, a miniature “members only” exhibition in the WPA\C booth at ArtDC intended to give the public a glimpse of the artists that make up their membership base. Your submission can express anything you wish. It can reflect your current work, be a self-portrait, or communicate any kind of statement - the ONLY restriction is size.

Create a 4-by-6-inch “index card size” piece out of any mailable material. The image can be horizontal or vertical. Put your image on one side of the “index card size” surface and mail the work (either in an envelope or as a postcard) to:

WPA\C - INDEX
500 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20006

Deadline for Delivery to WPA\C: Monday, April 16,, 2007

On the back of the piece, please include your name and indicate which side is up. (No titles please). You may submit more than one piece.

Note that works will not be sold. Works will only be returned if a self-addressed stamped envelope is provided by the artist.

If you're not a WPA/C member, this is a good reason alone to join.

Dixon responds to ARTifice

Last week, David Waddell over at ARTifice reported on the "Role of Criticism Today," panel discussion that took place at the Provisions Library in Dupont Circle in DC.

The WCP's Mark Athitakis also made a note of Waddell's report here and now Glenn Dixon, one of the participants in the panel, disputes some of Waddell's version of events in a comment here.

In a separate comment at ARTifice, Dixon takes Waddell to task over "all the incomprehension and bad reporting in Waddell's original post."

This should be easy to solve; apparently this panel was videotaped, so hopefully Provisions or Transformer will post the video on their website and the issue will be resolved.

Silverthorne Reviews WPA/C Show

Alexandra Silverthorne checks in with a review of the WPA/C's 9x10 #1 Exhibition in DC.

Job in the Arts

Program Coordinator, Art and Learning Center & Union Gallery: University of Maryland Student Union.

Responsibilities: The Program Coordinator manages two dynamic art venues that are housed in the Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland, College Park. The Art and Learning Center provides non-credit arts opportunities (e.g. painting, drawing, pottery, photography, and ballroom dance) to a campus community of 34,000 students. The Program Coordinator develops the curricula, and allocates resources needed to successfully manage the program. The Center is also responsible for administering a series of summer arts camps for children, arts and crafts fairs, community outreach activities as well as an Art Purchasing Program. The Union Gallery hosts annual exhibits that feature a variety of student, local, regional, and national artists.

Qualifications: Bachelors degree required, Masters degree in College Student Personnel, Arts Administration or related field preferred. Two years of full-time experience that includes budget management grant writing and supervision, in an academic setting is preferred. Gallery management/exhibition installation experience preferred.

Salary: Commensurate with education and experience.

Position Available: June 2007.

For best consideration, submit a letter of application, resume, and three references by April 6, 2007. This information can be sent via e-mail to mjenkins@umd.edu, or mailed to:

Program Coordinator
Art and Learning Center
3100 Stamp Student Union
College Park, Maryland 20742.

Additional information can be found on the UMCP employment web site: www.personnel.umd.edu/employment or call 301-314-8503.

Explorer 7

I've been delaying the unavoidable browser update, hoping that they had worked all the kinks out, but this past weekend I finally downloaded Explorer 7 to all of my computers, and it all seemed OK until my email processes started crashing the desktop.

A few hours of telephonic assistance and the issue seems to be resolved, but I also managed to nuke about 300 recent emails, including around 40-50 that I had not read yet. So if I'm not responding to you, now you know.

Aubrie Mema at DC's Touchstone Gallery

I've been hearing interesting and good things about Aubrie Mema's current exhibition at Touchstone Gallery in DC.

On exhibition Mema has a new series titled "Habit," which consists of mixed media on transparency. According to Mema, "the use of transparency has enabled me to contemporaneously project the show as an installation as well as a regular exhibit. The show is unique for the viewer, given one's ability to view two dimensional art three-dimensionally."

The show will remain on display until April 8, 2007.

New DC arts blog

By artist Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette and it is titled "re/collections." Visit it often here.

Lessons Learned in Public Art

According to this piece in the Sun by Sumathi Reddy, there's an apparently interesting arts issues brewing in the local Baltimore arts community as the Baltimore city council contemplates legislation that would mandate 1% of public construction projects for public art.

The 1% for the Arts is a very old tradition by now in many American cities, and all of the lessons and the how to's and the tried-and-true ways to make public art be first and foremost "public" are by now established and a good way for Baltimore to take the "lessons learned" from other cities and march forward a little better prepared.

I do not think that (as the article explains) that a nine-member Public Art Commission in charge, which would select the artists and artwork, and allocate funds, is the only solution on how to run a 1% for the arts effort.

If implemented as the only way to "approve" public art, then it is in fact elitist and removes all "public" from public art. There, I've said it.

One solution is to introduce the "real" public into the public art selection process.

Such as the way that some states (such as Florida I believe) have adopted for their state-wide percent for the arts programs, which is to have the public art that will be acquired for their state buildings be chosen not by a state arts commission, or an academic arts panel, but by a selection committee drawn from the people who will actually work in the building (and live with the art).

This most egalitarian and democratic of processes for choosing art, by the people who will actually live and work with the art, is a very progressive step towards democratizing the process of public art, and removing it somewhat from the hands of selection committees and people who can be (in some cases) so far removed from "the public" that their decisions often seem to deliver either yawns or astute controversy, but little "public" to public art.

"I would very much not want to see us get timid because of the heat of the controversy that has been generated by the piece in front of the train station," said Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum. "If we intend to make this a place for living art in a public way, we have to accept and welcome the notion that not everybody is going to be happy and that is actually a good sign and we should celebrate that."

I agree with Gary Vikan (his own comments on this subject are here), but in the "everybody" who is not going to be happy, Baltimore should also include arts commissioners, arts panelists, museum directors and even artists, not just the public.

One of the great paradoxes of contemporary art symbiotism in the United States is that while they [we] generally tend to be politically very liberal (and I'm about to step into the dangerous waters of generalizing), they also tend to be very elitist, booswah and neoconcritics when it comes as to how much they "trust" the American public, or the democratization of an arts process (especially if it involves public money), when it comes to the visual arts.

The answer in my opinion is the marriage of both a properly burocratically-qualified arts commission process for some works, and also a more modern and more progressive-minded and less academically conservative process (already used by some cities and states) where the people living and working with the art, choose the art, sans academic minds with arts fields PhDs and personal artistic agendas.

Imagine the street walking, water-fountain-chatting, bus-riding, 9-5, tax-paying, let's-hurry-home-so-we-can-watch-American Idol public, actually having a say in what hangs in the hallways that they must walk through every morning on the way to the office, hurrying so that they can get a cup of coffee before the pot runs out and then they have to make the next pot.

Do it Baltimore, if anyone can and should, it's Baltimore.

Looking for a small gallery space in DC?

In the 14th Street gallery district of DC there's a 300 sq. ft. office available to be leased out to a consultant or arts person (not an artist). It's furnished, has wireless internet, track lights and a small exhibition space, so it can be made into a Curator's Office type of exhibition venue. Three big windows, common kitchen and 2 bathrooms. The landlord is asking $1,000 a month and its month-to-month.

If interested drop me an email and I'll forward it to the landlord.

Wanna go to a Bethesda opening tomorrow afternoon?

Heineman Myers Contemporary Art has the opening reception (from 2-4 PM) and award announcement for The National Society of Arts & Letters Washington Chapter Career Awards Competition 2007. The exhibition goes through March 25, 2007 and was juried by Walter Bartman, Director and Founder of The Yellow Barn, Bethesda, Maryland, Judith Brodie, Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Stephen Bennett Phillips, Curator, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. and DC area artist Nicholas Simmons. The finalists are: Jennifer Davis, Sharon Servilio, Amy Sorensen, Kelly Ulcak, Shelly Vorhees and Marty Weishaar.

Wanna go to an Annapolis opening tomorrow afternoon?

"Art on Paper" opens tonight at the Maryland Federation of Art (18 State Circle, Annapolis, MD). The reception is March 18, 3-6 pm. The show was juried by Helen Frederick of Pyramid Atlantic.

Wanna go to a Baltimore art talk tonight?

George Sakkal leads a discussion on the meaning behind his work (controversial epictions of the War in Iraq) in his current exhibit at Light Street Gallery followed by refreshments on Saturday, March 17, 2007, with discussions beginning on the hour at 6, 7, & 8 PM.

Wanna do some DC music plus art on Saturday?

Heather Levy is opening an exhibition of new paintings this Saturday, March 17th, with an opening reception from 3-6 pm at Breakwell's (900 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001 (202) 289-4601 - it's at 9th and M ...across the street from the Convention Center).

There will be refreshments and live musical performances... from 3-4 PM you can hear the guitar talents of Nancy Lisi and from 4:30-6:00PM you can hear Basso Moderno Duo.

Tate at Fraser

I have been unable to see this exhibition yet, but judging from the press that it is generating, my very biased enthusiasm for District uberartist Tim Tate seems to have some widespread and diverse justification, at least as evidenced by what the critics are saying:

- Michael O'Sullivan in today's Washington Post.

- Chris Hobson in the current Washington City Paper.

- Kevin Mellema in the Falls Church News.

- Kriston Capps in the Washington Post Express.

- GOGs in the Washington Post.

- FiOS TV Sirius Satellite Radio will be recording a segment Tate and his most recent work next week.

Tate will also be giving a talk at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Thursday, March 22nd at 3PM in the Museum's Luce Foundation Center of American Art. Free and open to the public.

Creating Heaven and Hell, Blown and Cast Glass, Video, LCD Screen, 14x6x6 inches