Free Podcast Tonight at 7PM

I'm going to be doing a free radio podcast tonight at 7PM talking about some of the issues from the Artists' Boot Camp Webminars and answering questions. Click on the image below for details and to sign up for the free webminars.

Obara-rama at Projects Gallery Not unlike the groundswell of support during our recent national election, what began as the bubbling excitement of a few artists has swelled into a tsunami of artistic pro Obama output. Through word of mouth and passing conversations, a wide range of artistic talent and media has enthusiastically embraced the idea of celebrating the historic Presidential event. Perhaps as no other elected official in history, Obama is a canvas on which is projected the hopes and fears of a nation.

  “Obama-rama” brings together many prominent Philadelphia area artists, as well as others, united in the celebration and critique of our nation's new commander in chief, including Elizabeth Bisbing, Jim Brossy, James Dupree, Roberta Fallon, Cheryl Harper, Frank Hyder, Tom Judd, Alex Queral, Libby Rosof, Shelley Spector, Ira Upin and others, including yours truly (I have a couple of drawings of Obama as well as several lithos and etchings done in 2007 and 2008).

 Projects Gallery is located at 629 N 2nd St Philadelphia, PA 19123. Gallery hours are Wednesday & Thursday 4 - 7 p.m. and Friday & Saturday noon to 7 p.m. The show opens with a First Friday's opening reception for the artists on Friday, February 6 from 6-9PM, and continues through February 28th, 2009.

Tax Dollars for the Arts

Singers, actors and dancers can stimulate audiences, but can they stimulate the economy? The authors of the current stimulus package seem to think so — they have included $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts and $150 million for infrastructure repairs at the Smithsonian.

NPR story by Elizabeth Blair here.

Free Podcast Tonight

I'm going to be doing a free radio podcast tonight at 7PM talking about some of the issues from the Artists' Boot Camp Webminars and answering questions. Click on the image below for details and to sign up for the free webminars.

Rosenbaum on Comforti

In early June, when Michael Conforti became president of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), no one could have anticipated the challenges that he and his colleagues would face just a few months into his two-year term.

Read Lee Rosenbaum on the WSJ here.

Manslaughter

The creator of an inflatable artwork ignored safety concerns and blocked its evacuation shortly before the walk-in structure broke free of its moorings and soared into the sky with catastrophic consequences, a court heard today.

Two women fell to their deaths and others were injured when the giant PVC sculpture, hit by a gust of wind, became airborne as members of the public relaxed on a hot summer’s afternoon at a popular park in Chester-le-Street, County Durham.

Maurice Agis, the 77-year-old artist who designed and supervised the multi-coloured Dreamspace installation, is accused of manslaughter by gross negligence over an alleged litany of safety failings.

Read the article by Andrew Norfolk in the Times here.

Free Podcast Tonight and Tomorrow Night

I'm going to be doing a couple of free radio podcasts tonight and tomorrow night at 7PM talking about some of the issues from the Artists' Boot Camp Webminars and answering questions. Click on the image below for details and to sign up for these two free webminars.

Jury Duty

I'm jurying and curating nearly a dozen shows this year, but I wanted to let you know about this very special one that I will be jurying for The Fine Arts League of Cary in North Carolina.

Deadline is March 27, 2009 (postmark).

The Fine Arts League of Cary is seeking entries for its 15th Annual Juried Art Exhibition to be held from May 8th to June 27th, 2009 in Cary/Raleigh, NC. Show awards and purchase awards will total over $5,000. Entries can only be mailed via CD. The postmark deadline for the mail-in registration is March 27, 2009.

Full details and a printable prospectus are available
on the web at www.fineartsleagueofcary.org or call Kathryn Cook at 919-345-0681.

Show Highlights:

Location - Cary/Raleigh, NC
Awards and Purchase Awards total over $5000
Mail-in Registration (Digital images on CD) - Deadline: March 27 Postmark
Notification of accepted work: April 13
Receiving of shipped accepted work: April 27 - May 1
Receiving of delivered accepted work: Sunday May 3
Receiving of delivered accepted work: Monday May 4
Opening Reception and Awards - Friday May 8
Show ends: June 27
Pick up work: Sunday June 28
Pick up work: Monday June 29
Shipped work returned: June 29

Wanna go drawing tonight in Vienna, VA?

The Soundry's figure drawing open studio with a live model is tonight from 8pm-11pm. To register and ensure your spot, please call The Soundry at 703-698-0088. Cost for non-members is $15. They will have a large table or two in the room and a few drawing boards but feel free to bring your own easel if you prefer.

Also, absolutely no cell phones, cameras, or any recording devices allowed in the studio. Must be 18 years or older to attend.

The Soundry
316 Dominion Rd
Vienna, VA 22180
www.soundry.net
703-698-0088

National Portrait Gallery responds

A while back I raised some issues concerning the acquisition by the National Portrait Gallery of the iconic Shepard Fairey portrait of President Obama. Today I received a response from the NPG:

Visual appropriation, a technique for adapting borrowed imagery which Shepard Fairey admits to using, has a long, time-honored tradition. Religious and political graphics have especially relied over the centuries on this sort of repetition. James Montgomery Flagg’s famous “I want you for the U. S. Army,” recruiting poster, for example, was “borrowed” without credit from British artist Alfred Leete’s image of a pointing-finger Lord Kitchener. Appropriation became a common tool of fine art in the 1960s in the hands of Andy Warhol and various pop artists. Fairey’s description for this approach is ““hijacking something with cultural relevance and switching it up.” Of course, wholesale borrowing can violate copyright issues legally and ethically if you are not “switching it up.” But in the case of Fairey’s portrait of Obama, his adaptation and translation of the face into something quite different falls squarely into the “fair use” category.

It is also true that the Portrait Gallery staff values pictures “from life” that represent an artist’s direct interpretation of a known subject. But there are exceptions to that standard. The engravers of George Washington’s day copied paintings for their prints; Currier and Ives’ political cartoons were based on photographic faces; designers of movie posters and political graphics typically adapt film stills and photographs. We consider all these forms valid, authentic expressions produced during the sitter’s lifetime and rich with biographical information.

Therefore, when I was told a few years ago that in order to be considered for acquisition by the NPG, a contemporary portrait had to be done from the live subject, that was wrong.

I thank the NPG for their response, but on a separate issue, I still think that Garcia's photo should accompany the Fairey artwork and that the wall plaque should detail the entire story for future generations.

Congrats!

To Philadelphia-born artist Barbara Steinberg, whose solo shows opens with a private view 19th February 6 - 9pm and an opening on 20th February, 2009 at London's Signal Gallery.

Barbara was born in Philadelphia and she studied at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she won a scholarship to study at Yale University summer school. On graduating from Smith, she received a grant to study sculpture in England, first with Ralph Brown at the West of England College of Art, then privately with Michael Ayrton in London. She returned briefly to America, to teach sculpture and take a Master of Fine Arts Degree at California State University at Long Beach, before settling permanently in London. She has exhibited across the UK in group and solo shows, most notably her solo exhibition at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh. This is her first solo show at Signal Gallery.

Brandeis

Most likely some of you are aware of this news about the decision to close the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, and to sell off their extensive collection.

If you haven't already seen this, and are so inclined, here is a petition circulating in opposition to the decision.

Before you sign the petition, read why Mike Licht doesn't see why everybody else has missed the positive side of the Rose Art Museum closure at Brandeis.

Opportunity for artists with disabilities

Deadline: April 30, 2009

VSA arts, is seeking artwork by artists with disabilities for display at the Smithsonian Institution’s International Gallery in the S. Dillon Ripley Center in Washington, D.C. from June through September 2010. Artists are asked to consider the theme “Revealing Culture” as it relates to their work. Accepted mediums include two- and three-dimensional art, craft, digital art, installation, and time-based media. Work that is not selected for this exhibition will be considered for alternative spaces throughout Washington, D.C. during the 2010 International VSA arts Festival.

VSA arts’ International Festival is the largest arts and disability event in the world attracting thousands of participants. The festival will take place in Washington, D.C., June 6–12, 2010. Venues across the city will play host to artists from all media—visual arts, performing arts, literary arts, and media arts. This signature event features the achievements of people with disabilities, as well as the diversity of the arts and cultures of the participants.

Visit their website for additional information.

Another look at Soderbergh's Che

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Cuban revolution’s grim executioner, put people to death and wrecked Cuba’s economy. Steven Soderbergh’s two-part epic puts people to sleep and wastes their time.

In an interview given to the London Daily Worker in 1962, Che Guevara said that "if the nuclear missiles had remained we would have used them against the very heart of America, including New York City... we will march the path of victory, even if it costs millions of atomic victims... we keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm."

All of the dark side of the man who once urged "atomic extermination" for American "hyenas" is missing from the two current films about his life. I've got another review of the Che movies here.

Museum troubles

After splurging on new facilities, expanded staffs and blockbuster exhibitions that drew millions of new visitors, museums are now confronted by shrunken endowments, less-wealthy benefactors and cuts in government funding, experts say.

The roughly 17,500 museums in the United States receive 850 million visitors annually.

Read Andrew Stern on Reuters here.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: February 1, 2009

Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery/College of Saint Elizabeth. For an exhibition opening on March 15, 2009, The Maloney Art Gallery is interested in receiving digital (jpg) submissions of art in any medium that constitutes a response to Cuba, its art and culture, people, history, landscape, geography etc. Please send up to 5 jpgs labeled with last name and title of work, a one-page resume, an artist's statement about the submitted work, and an object list with title of work, date, size (h x w x d"), weight (if over 10 lbs), owner, location. Please send to Dr. Ginny Butera, Director, by email to: artgallery@cse.edu.

An Old, Bad Idea for the Arts

Many will say (often in a testy voice) that the arts deserve a cabinet-level presence because they are just as important to the country as the Defense Department. While that's something of an apples and oranges comparison, the deeper problem is that it assumes that the country's defense and its arts can be furthered via the same sort of bureaucratic means. But while our nation's defense would collapse in the absence of the centralized power of our Defense Department, having a Department of Culture -- or even a "Cultural Czar," to use that awful label we've apparently become so fond of -- would be neither an effective nor necessary way to guarantee the health of cultural expression in America.

Read David Smith in the WSJ here.

Get Mannie Garcia's Photo at the NPG

By now the story on the fact that DC photographer Mannie Garcia was the uncredited original source for Shepard Fairey's iconic portrait of President Obama has been all over the internets (although curiously out of the dead tree mainstream press as far as I can detect).



The above photo by Joe Tresh captures the unveiling and installation of the Obama portrait by Shepard Fairey at the National Portrait Gallery on Saturday, January 17, 2009. Street artist Fairey is the gentleman in the sharkskin grey suit.

A while back I asked the NPG for clarification on its acquisition policy. It is my understanding that contemporary portraits could only be considered for acquisition if the portrait was done by the artist from the actual living subject. At least that's what I was told by an NPG curator a few years ago when I sold a portrait to the NPG. My recent question to the NPG has been elevated to the curator and I am waiting for a response. The NPG response should be an easy one. They can either say:

(a) Mr. Campello, you are right in that it is the policy of the NPG to acquire contemporary portraits only when the portrait has been done directly from the subject. However, because of the historical importance of this piece, the NPG made an exception to this policy as it would with any important contemporary portraits.

(b) Mr. Campello, you are incorrect when you ask if it is the policy of the National Portrait Gallery to only acquire those contemporary portraits which are done directly from the subject.

In any event, since the Fairey piece is now in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, through the generous donation of the DC area's ubercollectors Heather and Tony Podesta, I think that it is only fair that Garcia's photograph also hang next to Fairey's piece and that the wall text reflect the process via which the ubiquitous Fairey work was created.

After all, the piece is sort of a 21st century collaboration, right? And I bet that I can even help to get one an original photo for the NPG.

And this has nothing to do with any opinions on the issue of Fairey's use of Garcia's photograph. Artists have been "sampling" other artists' works and other people's images for generations (including me) and technically what the brilliant Fairley did is probably legal, as Richard Lacayo in Looking Around writes, "in lawsuits over image appropriation, judges commonly try to decide whether an artist's re-use of earlier material is 'transformative'. If the new image passes that test, the appropriation is protected by the fair use doctrine, which permits limited reproduction of copyrighted material."

And according to Michael Scherer:

"Garcia, who now works at the White House for Bloomberg, says he hopes to get in touch with Fairey so he can talk over the image that has exploded into a pop culture icon. 'Photographers are always getting ripped off,' said Garcia, who quickly added that he was not angry or seeking money from the artist who appropriated his image. 'You see it everywhere. You see it on everything.'

'I'd like to talk to Fairey,' Garcia continued. 'As gentlemen we can work this out. . . . I don't want it to get ugly.'"

It is also clear that at the time that he sampled the Garcia photograph, Fairey had no idea who the photographer was.

But is its also clear to the most casual observer that by now he must know!

That's between them; to me what is also clear, is that this 21st century artistic collaboration, unravelled by 21st century Internet sleuthing, are now and forever intermingled, and the story of the Obama poster now includes the name Mannie Garcia, and Tom Gralish, and Steve Simula, and several others.


Barack Obama photograph by Mannie Garcia
I plan to write Martin Sullivan, the NPG director a letter on this subject and I hope that some of you do as well. Or you can email Mr. Sullivan at SullivanM@si.edu.

Write to:

Martin Sullivan
Director
National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
PO Box 37012
Victor Building–Suite 4100 MRC 973
Washington, DC, 20013-7012

New Conservator at VFMA

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has named Stephen D. Bonadies to be its chief conservator and deputy director for collections management, VMFA Director Alex Nyerges has announced.

A 27-year veteran of museum work, Bonadies comes to Richmond from the Cincinnati Art Museum, where he held positions including chief conservator, director of museum services, deputy director and interim co-director. He will begin work at VMFA March 2, 2009.

I am fascinated by the conservation process and at the same time shocked how little many art schools spend teaching its art students about conservation materials (or about art materials period).

My favorite read on this subject is Jonathan Harr's superb The Lost Painting. The book is the story, told by Harr masterfully as an art detective story of sorts, of the discovery of Caravaggio's The Taking of the Christ in a Jesuit residence in Ireland.

Digital Change

Now that Barack Obama has officially assumed the presidency, the nation anxiously anticipates his fulfillment of his promise of change.

But before the new legislative agenda takes shape, several transformations have already occurred. Former visual representations of our presidents rarely ventured beyond press photos or political cartoons. But Obama artwork has already encroached upon new realms.

For the first time in history, Obama's official presidential portrait was captured by a digital camera. Pete Souza, the White House's new photographer, snapped the shot on Jan. 13. He used a Canon 5D Mark II and took the picture without using a flash.

Read the article by Jennifer Gambrell in The Davidsonian here.