Sedonaing...

Done with some private family matters... done with some exhausting hiking (more to come)... done with some archeological visiting... done with loads of Mexican food eating (how come no East Coast Mexican restaurant offers nopalitos or carnitas?)... and now ready for some gallery hopping.

Memo to frozen East Coast: It's nice and sunny here.

Wanna go to an artist talk in DC tomorrow?

Artist Talk: Mark Cameron Boyd
Host: Hamiltonian Gallery
Start Time: Wednesday, March 4 at 7:00pm
End Time: Wednesday, March 4 at 8:30pm
Where: Hamiltonian Gallery

Habatat for Healing

Habatat for Healing is running from Thursday, March 05, 2009 to Tuesday, April 07, 2009.

Virginia's Habatat Galleries' wants to make a difference. With help from the art community, they have put together an exhibition that raises money and awareness for Leukemia & Lymphoma.

For more information on how you can help their campaign, please contact Lindsey Scott at 561-213-0793 or lindseyscott@mac.com and check out the exhibition online here.

The Trawick Prize

Deadline: Monday, April 20, 2009

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is now accepting submissions for The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards. The highly respected annual juried art competition awards $14,000 in prize monies to four selected artists. Deadline for slide submission is April 20, 2009 and up to fifteen artists will be invited to display their work from September 4 – September 28, 2007 in downtown Bethesda at Heineman-Myers Contemporary Art.

The Trawick Prize is without a doubt, the key fine arts competition available to DC, MD and VA artists and has already produced some spectaculaer results for its winners.

The first place winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000. A “young” artist whose birth date is after April 20, 1979 may also be awarded $1,000.

Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. Original painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, fiber art, digital, mixed media and video are accepted. The maximum dimension should not exceed 96 inches in any direction. No reproductions. Artwork must have been completed within the last two years. Selected artists must deliver artwork to exhibit site in Bethesda, MD. All works on paper must be framed to full conservation standards.

The Trawick Prize was established by local Bethesda business owner Carol Trawick. Ms. Trawick has served as a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda. She is the Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and past Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership. Additionally, the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation was established in 2007 after the Trawicks sold their successful information technology company.

For a complete submission form, please visit www.bethesda.org or send a self-addressed stamped envelope to the Bethesda Urban Partnership, Inc., c/o The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards, 7700 Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda, MD 20814.

Not sure when the jurors will be announced, as the website still lists the 2008 jurors.

Get yer stimulus loot

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is beginning the application process to award the $50 million appropriated to the NEA as part of the federal economic stimulus packages. By law, 40% of the $50 million will be passed on to the 56 state, territory and regional arts agencies.

The NEA will award the remaining $30 million through competitive grants. Individuals and organizations can apply.

I am hearing that all applicants must be previous NEA award recipients in good standing from the past four years, which doesn't make sense to me, but the NEA's forthcoming Recovery Act grant guidelines will provide details - we hope. If this is indeed a requirement, it is not only unfair, but it is divisive and unless I am missing something, quite perplexing.

Synopses of the guidelines are scheduled to be posted at grants.gov by March 8 with complete application guidelines scheduled to be posted on March 18.

Applicants must be registered at grants.gov.

The NEA urges applicants to verify their registration. If you are not registered please begin the process now as it can take up to two weeks.

To register please click here.

Full text of the latest NEA announcement follows:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides $50 million to be distributed in direct grants to fund arts projects and activities which preserve jobs in the non-profit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn.

Forty percent of such funds will be distributed to State arts agencies and regional arts organizations and 60 percent of the funds will be competitively awarded to nonprofit organizations that meet the eligibility criteria being established for this program.

Application guidelines for two funding programs are being developed and will be posted as soon as completed and approved by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

Synopses will be posted on Grants.gov by March 8; full guidelines on our site by March 18.

Applicants will be required to submit their applications electronically through Grants.gov, the federal government's online application system. All applicants must be registered with Grants.gov in order to submit their application.

If you have already registered with Grants.gov, renew/verify your registration with Grants.gov and make sure that all of your information is current before you apply. Organizations that are not already registered should allow at least two weeks to complete this multi-step process.

See the step-by-step instructions for registering at Get Registered.

Funding Program: Competitive Grants
One-time grants will be awarded to eligible nonprofit organizations including arts organizations, local arts agencies, statewide assemblies of local arts agencies, arts service organizations, units of state (other than state arts agencies) or local government, and a wide range of other organizations that can help advance the goals of the Arts Endowment and this program.

All applicants must be previous NEA award recipients in good standing from the past four years (NEA's forthcoming Recovery Act grant guidelines will provide details). Listings of grantees from the last four years can be found on our web site.

Sedona, Arizona

While I am airborne heading West to Sedona, AZ, I thought that it may be a cool idea to rehash some of my older thoughts on that area for all the newbies to the blog.

While there's no doubt on the planet that Sedona, Arizona is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, as I discovered while visiting there the last two years, it is also one of the key spiritual magnets to a variety of religions and beliefs, including the significant number of people attracted to Sedona as a result of its "energy Vortexes."

Let there be no doubt that this is an area of profound beauty and full of a palpable sense of energy and power. I have loved it for the last two years and will be back many times, as there are dozens and dozens of trails and vistas to explore. This visit may get interesting as far as hiking, as I am nursing a really sore Achilles tendon (too much basketball); let's hope that massive doses of Advil do the trick.

On my last trip in 2008, I focused some time and comments on the Sedona art scene, a "scene" with some national footprint, regardless of where you stand on the planetary scale of the art world. In fact, within a few minutes of anyone discussing that they're going to Sedona, someone will immediately pop in and describe the city's great art scene.

Last year I approached those views with the prejudiced eyes of the artsy Easterner, accustomed to white cube galleries, minimally presented with austere framing, white matting, and where even title and price labels are often eschewed in preference of a discrete price list on the gallerist's white or light wood postmodern design table.

Let start with the Sedona art galleries from the city's dealers' association, which seems to have shrunk a little in membership since last year - probably as a result of the economy.

But first, extrapolating from the city's website, the city probably has around 12,000 people, and about 90% of them are non-Hispanic whites, and last year came in with a median household income roughly $100,000 less than Potomac, Maryland and paradoxically (also last year) with a median house price about $100,000 more than Potomac's pricey homes. I've been watching those house prices dive bomb both places over the last year, but they're still widely discordant between the two places.

But this dollar discordance is the first of many paradoxes about this gorgeous place.

Depending on who you believe, Sodona also gets between four and five million visitors a year.

The Sedona Visitors Guide tells these millions of visitors that Sedona "not too long ago had 300 residents, now has 300 artists and more than 40 galleries." We also learn from the guide that Sedona averages one gallery per 300 residents, and for every dollar spent on art, the art buyers spend $12 on other Sedona stuff.

I often wonder how the granularity on these statistics take place.

The guide also claimed last year that statistics show that approximately 33% of the city's visitors are attracted there by the art, and that these art aficionados thus spend between $200,000 to one million dollars in various Sedona businesses each day. We thus can extrapolate that around $16,666 to $83,333 dollars are spent each day on art in this small town.

One issue appears to be clear: it's the tourists who buy art, not so much the locals (does that sound familiar?). This makes sense, after all, how much art can 12,000 residents buy from 40 galleries?

Another clear issue is that whoever writes this statement has a wider definition of what makes "art" than from the rest of us; I think. Let's say that I would accept the statistic if it had stated that the money is spent on "arts and crafts."

"Locals don't buy any art," told me last year a former Sedona gallerist, who prior to opening a gallery in Sedona had been a dealer in Chicago. "There are a lot of retired people here [the median age is around 55] and although there are some very large multi-million dollar homes, there are also a lot of modular homes [a fancy way to described a souped-up trailer]."

To the prejudiced and minimalist Easterner eye, the riot of color, subjects and presentation that characterizes most Southwestern art is an assault to long-held visual sensibilities created by the black and white world of the East Coast and Left Coast artworlds and its European and Latin American brethren.

I am shocked to discover that perhaps there's something of an elitist in all of us, as the preconditioning of being an artist, an art critic and an art dealer raised in all those aspects, and mostly along the Eastern states, prejudices my eyes to what I've referred previously as "coyote art."

My better half, who many years ago interned in Santa Fe with the legendary Gerald Peters Gallery (and Peters is credited by many as energizing the interest in Southwestern art and placing Santa Fe and the Southwest in general on the art scene), tried over the last couple of years to educate me somewhat as to the different sensibilities between what she labels "an Easterner, with an East Coast vision of what a gallery should look like, looking at a Southwestern space."

It will take time, but then again, at one point in his life Duncan Phillips hated Impressionism and then eventually was seduced by it and became the American champion for it.

On the other hand, Wisconsin farm girl Georgia O'Keefe, even in her Southwest years always kept her austere black and white world where colors were generally reserved for her paintings.

So for the last two years I have proceeded with as open a mind as I can have, maybe somewhere between Phillips' eventual enthusiasm and O'Keefe's steadfast minimalism in personal tastes.

I am curious to see what changes the economic downturn has wrought, but there were a lot of spaces in and around Sedona that sell artwork. I'm not really sure if there really are 40 galleries, unless one includes a lot of spaces that sell a lot of Native American and Mexican crafts.

Sedona itself is sort of divided into two areas, and as one comes to it from Highway 179, Uptown Sedona is to the right and the other Sedona to the left. Most art spaces are either located on 179 itself or Uptown Sedona.

The first set of galleries one comes across on 179 are located on a shopping area to the right as one enters the city, with a spectacular view (from the shops) of the Sedona rocks and the city itself.

And when you drive up Highway 179 into Sedona, one of the first galleries that you come across is the huge Exposures Gallery, which is located on the right side of 179 as one approaches the city.

Over 20,000 square feet, not including the outside sculpture gardens (I assume) make this the largest art gallery in the state, and probably one of the largest in the nation, perhaps the world.

There's no gallery in the world, in the many, many galleries in nearly all continents that I have visited, that I can compare to this place.

Exposures is a perfect example of what makes most Southwestern art galleries so different from most other fine art galleries in the world; galleries which follow the white cube example of white walls and minimalist hanging styles, coupled with total lack of information about prices, etc.

Not so in the Southwest gallery model, and Exposures is a perfect example of this model for Southwest galleries.

Upon entering the huge spaces, the East Coast gallery sensibility is immediately assaulted by a riot of colors and by a fear of empty space that yields a huge gallery space filled to the brim with art, photography, sculpture, crafts and jewelry. The Greeks called it "horror vaccuii."

This is 21st century salon style presentation married to the joy of colors that is the Southwest.

There are probably a few thousand pieces of art hanging and displayed in this gargantuan space. In fact, so much artwork, and so much variety, that the snobbery of the art world would immediately tend to dismiss this gallery as another "art store" filled with "wall decor."

Not so fast.

There are plenty of art galleries in Sedona that offer wall decor, and the same in the Southwest, and for that matter all over the nation.

Don't be fooled by the sheer scale and invasion of the senses that Exposure offers. This is a very successful gallery which offers some very good artists, some so so artists and some mediocre artists. In other words, just like any other reputable art gallery, but definitely not a cheesy art store. This is a very good Southwestern gallery working flawlessly on that model.

Exposures' success is clearly evident not only in its size, but also in the small army of people that it employs, as well as its history, which essentially repeats the usual gallery story: art-loving couple moves to Sedona, open a small gallery; they do well and open a huge one.

And because Sedona's art buying market is comprised mostly of visitors, this gallery has to operate on the model of exhibiting everything that it has to offer all at once.

It works for them.

So once we get past the fact that this overcrowded gallery space has found its formula for success, and we begin to look at the artwork itself, as I stated before, we find the same mix of great, good, average and mediocre that one finds in any gallery in the world because art truly is in the eyes of the beholder -- or in this case the husband and wife team that picks the artists that they choose to represent and sell.

And sell they do...

On exhibit are works by more than 100 artists; yep, 100... and prices, I was informed, range from $29 to $290,000.

The catchy price range seems to have done wonders for both the artists and the owners.

Not everything is about money and sales; but money and sales make most artists, and definitely most gallery owners, happy. Money may not be everything in the world, but to most people it is damned well ahead of whatever is in second place.

About the artwork itself...

Nearly all of it shares a flawless technical skill and delivery that would make most postmodernists elitists raise their noses a few inches higher. As an admirer of technical skill, I have learned to respect technical skill, but also have learned to then look past it and see content, ideas, context and intelligence in the work.

But before I get to the few artists that stood out for me last year, I must note that the one thing that, in spite of over 100 artists, the gallery lacked was monochromatic or black and white works in this wildly colored universe of art. It could really use a few drawings here and there to break up the dominance of color and painting. But I am biased.

As far as I could see there were only two artists working in drawing. Of the two, the two delicate small graphite drawings by Charles Frizzell stood out like little orphans in an ocean of color.

The charcoal and watercolor pieces by an artist named Yuroz also could mostly be qualified as drawing, but the works themselves were rather forgettable, as Yuroz seems to be channelling several of Picasso's periods -- including a rather mediocre stab at cubism -- in his paintings and drawings. There is too much Picasso in Yuroz, but there is also too much of Yuroz in Exposures, which in economic terms means that someone must be buying lots of his work. I didn't like any of it.

Let me tell you what I did like.

There was some very good photography by Scott Peck, and yet I personally test all flower photography to the spectacular work of Andrzej Pluta, or Joyce Tenneson, or Amy Lamb. In fact if Peck's work is doing well in Exposures, then the art dealer in me is sure that Tenneson, Pluta and Lamb would do even better at Exposures.

Upon entering any business in Arizona that sells imagery, one is bound to find photographs of the desert rocks and formations. By the time that you visit a dozen galleries, one is sick and tired of desert photography.

And yet, one of the most memorable artists in Exposures is a photographer named Martii, whose spectacular desert shots, coupled with superb presentations, make his or her photography one of the best finds in the gallery. And in writing this, I think that another photographer whose work would do well here, would be the split reverse image digitally manipulated split desert photographs by John DeFabbio, who works out of the Washington, DC area. For years DeFabbio has been trekking around the world photographing nearly everything that he sees, then digitally mirroring each half of the image to discover amazing new images in the manipulated work.

But back to Exposures.

The best work in this amazing gallery when I visited last year were beautiful abstract pieces by a Brooklyn-born artist named Eric Lee, one of the rare non-representational artists in the space. Lee creates wonderful reverse paintings in glass that are standouts of skill and delivery. They are fresh and beautiful and add a calming effect to the gallery's riot of color.

There are two galleries in Sedona claiming to have been voted the best gallery in Sedona. I'm not sure who the voters were, but of the two, Exposures is by far the best and certainly one of the most amazing art spaces in the entire Southwest.

And now I have used the example of Sedona's huge Exposure Gallery to discuss what I call the Southwest gallery model -- a gallery packed to the gills with art in a riot of color and fear of empty space -- as opposed to the more standard gallery model of a minimalist white cube for a gallery.

There are a lot of art venues in the Sedona area, nearly all of them, with one notable exception, follow this Southwest model. Most of the better spaces are listed in the Sedona Art Gallery Association website.

Of these, last year Kinion Fine Arts seemed to offer a blend of the two gallery models. In 2008 they had recently moved from the Hozho Center (located at 431 Hwy 179 and home to several galleries) to uptown Sedona, relocating the gallery to a former bank building, safe room and all. The Kinions have divided the gallery into two rooms; at the entrance the Southwest model is in place, but the bank's vault is used for solo shows apparently hung in the cleaner, less cluttered style of the white cube. They're also one of the few art spaces in town where not everything is Southwest art centric.

A new gallery just up a few steps from Kinion Fine Arts, located at Hyatt Pinion Point, is the very beautiful space of the Vickers Collection (there are three of these galleries in total and the one in Sedona is called VC Fine Arts), opened just a year ago and by far the only gallery in the area that fits the cleaner white cube model.

Vickers uses the white cube model, and also offers the most diverse set of artists, not just a heavy-handed focus on Southwest art (as most Sedona galleries do, driven by the tourist art market).

It will be interesting to see if Vickers can survive as the sole Sedona gallery (at least that I've seen) that offers a diverse set of artwork; the type of art that could easily be seen in New York, or Philly or DC. I'll let you know later this week after I drop in again.

At VC I quite liked the bronze sculptures of Bill Starke, a refreshing change of pace from all the bronzes of horses, bears, javalinas, Indians, deer and cowboys that inundate most of this beautiful town's galleries.

I also liked Chris Nelson's smart and intelligent reverse paintings on plexi, which upon further examination are more than just paintings, since the artist also routes the verso of the plexi so that the textured reverse plexi interacts with the acrylic paint to actually create grooves and channels that on the front of the work create smart landscapes. As interesting as this work is, this artist has to be careful that he doesn't fall into a repetitive pattern in his work.

Since I have been in the advice-giving mood, an artist that would be a perfect fir and would actually sell like gangbusters all throughout the Southwest are the amazing storm paintings of the Washington DC area's Amy Marx, who recently had her first solo in New York and whose breath-taking, hyper realism captures massive storms and weather patterns like no artist that I have ever seen.

Another East Coast artist who would be an instant hit in the Southwest is Alexandria's Susan Makara, whose beautiful stacked stones series sell as soon as she is finished with them from her studio in Alexandria's Torpedo factory.

Still in uptown, the Sedona Art Center rounds up a very good artists' run membership gallery of local artists.

There are also quite a few galleries located in a faux Mexican village called Tlaquepaque; after two trips to Sedona, I still can't pronounce it. From there you can cross Oak Creek by foot and visit a whole bunch more galleries on Hwy 179, although the ongoing construction on 179 seemed to be really hurting the gallery business on that road.

Last year I also drove up to Jerome and was very pleased with their galleries.

Jerome, Arizona sits straddling the side of a mountain about a mile high from sea level and less than 30 miles from its more famous cousin Sedona.

"America's most vertical city" -- I am told -- is home to about 400 people, but once boasted 16,000 inhabitants and a brothel madam who was Arizona's richest woman.

Although I think that the whores are long gone, today the town still manages to attract a few million tourists a year, not only for the spectacular views that it affords from nearly every vantage point in this tiny and beautiful town, but also because of a budding gallery scene that although seemimgly having fairly established roots, it only seems to be blossoming out recently with a significant number of art galleries and venues and a rather successful monthly art walk on the first Saturday of the month. With 30 galleries and artists' studios participating in the art walk, it reflects the huge impact of the fine arts in a town of 400.

Most of Jerome's art galleries seem to fit the Southwest style of galleries that I discussed earlier in reference to Sedona. However, and very surprising to me, Jerome's art spaces seem more individual and original -- in most cases -- than Sedona's cookie-cutter model of galleries.

There are several cooperatives that I observed, most noticeably the Jerome Artists Cooperative, where the hilarious (and smart) watercolors of Dave Wilder were on exhibit on that day that I visited in 2008. Full of irony and delivered with superb technical expertise, Wilder flexes well-developed observational skills that challenge the genre of "cowboy art" in a new refreshing manner.




The Spirit Art Gallery, although an independent commercial art gallery, seems to be run like a coop as well, with work by 30 artists on display at once, with some very good talent among them. Last year I was quite impressed by the owner, who was full of energy and zeal for the artists that she represents. I hope that she is still doing well as she had just opened last year.

My Mind's Art Gallery, which features the work of its owner, Ukrainian painter Joanna Bregon, a surrealist artist who has found a home in this unusual little town, also stands out from the cookie cutter cluttered gallery model.

It was refreshing to see diversity in art and rugged individuality in each art space, regardless of how one feels about the quality of the art itself, in some cases.

And then, while walking through the various galleries and talking to some of the owners and artists, it dawned on me that the Jerome galleries and shops is what I had expected to see in Sedona: unique, one-of-a-kind shops, art venues and art galleries.

I also discovered that nearly everyone that I talked to in this tiny town seemed to know everyone else, and also seemed to have a grudge against either the land developers and the expansion of homes in nearby areas (and competition for water) and/or against the Jerome city fathers for a variety of reasons, most dealing with construction issues.

Finally I trekked down to the town's former High School, an ancient multi-story set of buildings that has been converted into artists' studios and workshops - 20 of them.

There the work of Michael MacDonald and Derryl Day really stood out, especially some of Day's older portraiture works, which were exquisite color pencil pieces full of personality and grace, as well as tremendous technical skill. But the key here, with an exception here and there, is that these were all artists in the overall, rounded, sense of the adjective -- not just "Southwest art" artists; it was refreshing and interesting.

As small as Jerome is, it's clear that the town's colorful past, coupled with its amazing location and vistas, and more recently married to a creative artistic community and over-protective city fathers, all act as an irresistible magnet to the hordes of tourists that visit it every year.

It's also clear that there's something special about this place; it can be felt in the air, in its people and in its streets, and the dealer in me wonders if this special spot would not be an ideal place for some sort of very specific and focused art fair - a mini model of my "new art fair model."

Sedona and Jerome are like kissing cousins of the Arizona tourist draw. I think that together, they can also become complimentary partners for an art draw of its own.

As the above words are being published, I am airborne and heading West to Arizona, eager to see what changes have taken place, and what new spaces may have emerged, and in the coyote-eat-coyote world of art, which gallery has closed.

Stay tuned... more later.

Someone still has francs

A painting by Henri Matisse sold Monday for $41.1 million — a record auction price for a work by the artist — at an art sale from the estate of Yves Saint Laurent, Christie's said.

The sale came at the start of a three-day Paris auction of art from the collection of the late French fashion designer that some are calling "the sale of the century."

Details here.

Airborne

Heading to beautiful Sedona, Arizona... art galleries, red rocks, vortexes...

Note to airport designers: The fact that in Philly Airport gate A-11 is right across gate A-2, but gate A-9 is nowhere near gate A-8 may make sense to you, but to the rest of the planet it is a perplexing design silliness.

Wanna be in a PostSecret book?

My good friend Frank Warren is the genius whose worldwide art project, PostSecret, is easily the world's largest public art project by a googleplex of factors.

And Frank just told me about the new PostSecret book that will be released later this year - PostSecret Confessions on Life, Death and God.

This book has been two years in the making, but there is still time to contribute your postcards.


Use this link to watch a personal message from Warren about this special fifth PostSecret book and learn how to mail in your deepest secrets today.

Airborne


I know that I just flew back from California last night, but tomorrow morning, really early I am leaving again and heading out West again for a week in Sedona, Arizona.

Loads to come...

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: 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. I will be the juror for this show.

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

Best burrito in the world?

The massive carnitas burro in San Diego's Santana drive through?

There used to be only one Santana - on Rosecrans - but now I think that the little drive through has grown into a chain.

No matter, the food is still great and cooked just as you order it, not pre-cooked, and the carnitas are just amazing.

New Hirshhorn Museum director

Richard Koshalek has been named director of the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, effective April 13.

Koshalek, 67, was president of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., from 1999 until January 2009. Before that, he served as director of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years.

"Richard Koshalek has vast experience in both the education and museum worlds," said Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough. "His creativity brought modern and contemporary art to bear on issues of the day and will help the museum and the Institution reach broad audiences in technologically and aesthetically exciting new ways."

"I am immensely excited to come to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden," said Koshalek. "This institution, more than most, is at the perfect time and place to make a unique contribution not only to the history of modern and contemporary art, but to the larger appreciation of the role of the arts in society. Given its place in the nation's capital, as well as its proximity to a peerless range of cultural, diplomatic and civic resources, the Hirshhorn can be a catalyst for new creative and collaborative energy in many arenas."

We are also hoping that Koshalek discovers the museum's proximity to a large number of world class art galleries and an immense number of DC area artists, both of which, with a few and notable rare exceptions, have been largely ignored by the Hirshhorn in the past.

"In the past it seemed that Hirshhorn curators found it easier to visit Berlin or New York, or any place for that matter, rather than their own city, when looking for emerging artists or new innovative work in commercial galleries," Campello Vulcan-melded into Koshalek's mind. "Not anymore," he added, "there's a new sheriff in town."

PMA Woes

Facing a dramatic downturn in its endowment and waning city support, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is cutting staff, delaying exhibitions, curtailing programs, trimming salaries and — subject to city approval — increasing admission fees.

The cuts will bring the museum’s operating budget down by about $1.7 million to $52 million for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and, the museum hopes, will stave off a deficit the following year forecast as high as $5 million.

The museum will eliminate 30 positions — about seven percent of the staff — in all areas, though no curators are being let go. Of those 30 jobs, 16 are layoffs of current personnel, with the remaining positions lost by not filling vacancies.

Senior staff will take salary cuts of between five and 10 percent, said interim CEO Gail M. Harrity yesterday.

Read the Inky report here.

Dobrzynski on the Art Fairs

The crowd was cordial, happily sipping from glasses of Champagne, white wine, and soda. Big collectors like Marty Margulies, Agnes Gund, Frances Bowes, Don Marron, and Helen Schwab roamed the art-filled aisles. As everyone walked around during the gala opening of the annual Art Dealers Association of America art fair in New York last week, they were smiling, laughing, pausing frequently to chat and to look at the art in the gallery booths.

What they weren’t doing, despite valiant new strategies by some dealers, was buying much art.

Read the Judith Dobrzynski report on The Daily Beast here.

Blows

A blow to the Greater DC area art scene... in the making... unless we all do something.

Arlington County Manager Ron Carlee has proposed the closing of the Ellipse Arts Center in the FY2010 recommended budget. This closing includes a complete budget cut of the Ballston, Virginia area Ellipse Arts Center facility rent, a complete budget cut for visual art exhibition programs and a complete budget cut for visual arts educational programs.

Cynthia Connolly, Ellipse Arts Center Manager & Curator, and LisaMarie Thalhammer, Ellipse Arts Center Education Programmer, are graciously but urgently asking for your written support in proving that Arlington County’s continued funding of the visual arts is a value to our community. Please consider writing a short statement in support of the Ellipse Arts Center program.

I hope you will take a moment before the end of the day tomorrow to send a note of support to Lisa. Please email Lisa Marie at lthalhammer@arlingtonva.us with your supportive statement by the end of the day tomorrow, Thursday, February 26, 2009.

Please call with any questions or concerns at 703-228-1861. You can also contact Ron Carlee directly 703.228.3120, fax: 703.228.3218 or email Ron Carlee - County Manager at countymanager@arlingtonva.us

A Public Thank You to Kim Ward

As we all know by now, the WPA's Kim Ward will soon leave as the head honcho for that terrific artists' organization.

I can’t exactly recall the first time that I met Kim Ward, but the first time that she made a distinct impression on me was back when she was one of the several WPA people working under Annie Adjchavanich’s leadership and the WPA was at the Corcoran and they had just published their first Artists Directory.

They were distributing boxes of the books through galleries in the District and Greater DC area, and I was working that day at my old and first gallery in Canal Square in Georgetown. We had asked for a couple of boxes, and Ward came into the gallery carrying one of the boxes, with that huge smile that she always seems to have.

“I’m illegally parked!” she announced in her hypnotizing Southern accent.

“You’ll get a ticket,” I predicted. “Let me go back with you to the car and I’ll bring the second box over.”

I walked with her across the street and picked up the second box from her car. She zipped away to her next delivery spot.

“Damn,” I said as I struggled with the weight of the box of books, “How’d in the hell did that tiny thing carry this box?”

It was the first of many instances where Kim Ward would show me and others the toughness, resiliency and hard working ethic of a woman in love with her job and the huge number of artists that the WPA represents. I’ve seen this woman scrubbing floors, painting walls, patching up holes, washing dishes, hammering at walls, cleaning spills, serving food… hanging artwork, all the stuff that makes the life of the director of an artists’ organization a glamorous job.

Ward worked her way up the WPA ladder until she became the executive director and new leader of the WPA, and in the five years since that happened she re-crafted that organization into a very important part of what makes the Washington, DC art scene “tick.”

Ward’s accomplishments at the helm of the WPA have been nothing short of spectacular; all the way from guiding the organization to the digital age to guiding it right out of the heavy shadow of the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

It can be probably argued that the Corcoran provided a life line to the WPA after several directors almost ran the organization into extinction. The Corcoran relationship allowed the WPA to rediscover itself, and to breathe a little easier in financial terms.

First under the dizzying leadership of my good friend Annie Adjchavanich and then under Kim Ward’s strong and steady hand the WPA began to rise again, and eventually it regained its independence last year.

And once again, it would be hard to imagine Washington, DC without a WPA. And hard to imagine a WPA without Kim Ward.

I am proud to call her my friend and on behalf of the thousands of WPA artist members, and of the Greater DC area art dealers, and every symbiot of the District’s art scene: Kim Ward, thank you!

If you wear a Che Guevara T-Shirt

Unless it is one like the one on the left, then you are wearing the image of one of the 20th century's worst psychopaths, who (like Hitler) never hid his hate and goals in his writing and speeches, which if you took the time to read, you'd find jewels like this (on the subject of the Cuban missile crisis:

"If the missiles had remained we would have used them against the very heart of the United States, including New York. We must never establish peaceful coexistence. We must walk the path of victory even if it costs millions of atomic victims."

             -- Che Guevara, Interview in London Daily Worker, 1962

Artists' Websites: Kathryn Cook



Kathryn Cook is a North Carolina artist and Kathryn's very cool paintings "provide visual metaphors for the viewer to consider ideas that define different elements of human nature, for better or worse, as well as our response to the age we live in."

Profiler

Art Connect has been profiling all the best art blogs on the web and they've just covered me.

Thanks!