New Acquisitions at the NGA

The National Gallery of Art has acquired dozens of new paintings, sculptures and drawings, including its first paintings by 17th-century Dutch Golden Age painter Cornelis Bega and 19th-century French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. The works were approved by the National Gallery of Art’s board of trustees in May and acquired with private money and donations. Among the other acquisitions were two sculptures by Robert Smithson, ambrotype self-portraits by the photographer Sally Mann, and a Florentine wax relief attributed to 18th-century sculptor Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi.

Details here.

Art traded for smiles

Bren Bataclan watched from behind a tree as a young couple approached the fountain in Dupont Circle and studied a small square object leaning against the base of the monument. From his hiding spot, he could see the woman reach down with empty hands, then stand back up clasping a canvas. The duo held a brief conference, their mouths moving but their words too faint for Bataclan to hear. Finally, they reached an agreement that pleased Bataclan: The woman walked off with the artwork, grinning broadly.

The painting was Bataclan’s eighth giveaway of the day and the 114th since he set out this summer on a cross-country expedition supporting his SmileyB project. More important, with this canvas, he released two more smiles into the world.

“I like to help others, and in my own small way, I’m doing that,” said the 44-year-old Boston-based artist.

Read the whole article by  Andrea Sachs in the WaPo here.

Swiss Freeports Are Home for a Growing Treasury of Art

They come for the security and stay for the tax treatment. For as long as goods are stored here, owners pay no import taxes or duties, in the range of 5 to 15 percent in many countries. If the work is sold at the Freeport, the owner pays no transaction tax, either.

(Via) Read this cool article in the NYT - the interesting thing is that I believe that there are several "off-the-grid" such locations around the world, including a massive one just outside of Boston... cough, cough.

Job in the Arts

 Deadline: August 10, 2013

 

The Brentwood Arts Exchange is in need of experienced instructors to teach comic book making for teens, painting and drawing classes for teens and adults and are requesting proposals from individuals interested in teaching those subjects.  Classes should run for 4 or 6 weeks, and be held in the afternoon (for teens) or evening hours (for adults).  Include a class outline and a materials list in your proposal.

 

They're always interested in hearing good ideas.  If you would like to send a proposal on other art related classes and have experience teaching, they will accept those as well.

 

Send to Frannie Payne, Brentwood Arts Exchange, 3901 Rhode Island Avenue, Brentwood, MD 20722 or send to FrannieD.Payne@pgparks.com

Art and Labor in the US

How are artists who have been systematically denied fair wages and access to basic services like healthcare and unemployment protections gaining access to those things today?

Even after reading this article by Alexis Clement, I'm not sure who the systemic denier is/are, but I suspect that (like everything else) it is Bush's fault (not Bush The First, he's now a good guy, but Dubya)... Details here.

Alexis Clement will be facilitating a class on this subject (cough, cough), titled Rights, Demands, and Radical Reimaginings: Art and Labor in the US at the Hyperallergic offices starting August 27. Registration info is here. Hyperallergic readers can get $15 off with the code HYPER.

Art Scam Alert

Beware of this mutant who is currently trying to scam artists and galleries:

From: Gregory Butler <gregbutlergroups.llc@gmail.com> To: Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 10:17 AM

Hi, 

My name is Greg, I recently visited your website and found your Work of arts to be appealing. I am very impressed with it and would be interested in purchasing it for my new apartment I am moving into this month. Please do provide me with the price and details if it is available.

 

Greg

New "Who's a Washingtonian?" Grant

Proposals Due: Sunday, September 1, 2013

Funding Amount: $5000

Match Required: 1:1; cash or in-kind  

Details here.

Head StART in ART program

Visual and performing artists are needed for residencies for the Head StART in ART program for the 2013-2014 school year. Residencies will take place at the Ellicott City Head Start Center or the Tubman Head Start Center in Columbia. Artists seeking a residency must have experience working with children; experience with pre-K is preferred. The performing artist residency will conclude with performances by the Head Start children. The visual artist residency will conclude with the completion of an art project for display at their Head Start Center or individual projects for students to take home. Applications are available online at www.hocoarts.org or at the Howard County Center for the Arts, 8510 High Ridge Road, Ellicott City, MD 21043. The deadline for proposals is August 15, 2013.

 

The Howard County Arts Council coordinates, administers, and funds Head StART in ART, with additional funding from Isadore and Bertha Gudelsky Family Foundation, Inc. and a grant from PNC for the 2013-2014 school year.  HCAC selects the artists and works closely with them and the Head Start staff to create a thematic program.

 

In FY2000, the Howard County Arts Council developed a partnership with the Ellicott City Head Start Center to establish an artist-in-residence program.  This partnership, Head StART in ART, provides the children with an in-depth, hands-on artistic experience they might never have otherwise and ensures them access to the arts.  Participation in such a program during the formative years can have a significant impact on a child’s future appreciation of and involvement in the arts and may also advance language and learning skills.

Jenkins checks in

I know that I've said this before, but the WaPo's Style art critic Mark Jenkins has really brought a fresh, new perspective to the WaPo's coverage of DC visual arts and is a huge improvement over his predecessors.

Read his current set of reviews here.

Celebrities Failing at Art

Allison Meier is a bit unfair to artsy celebrities in this cool article, but then again, it is hard to be a celebrity and then try your hand at art and then expect that people will take you seriously... cough, cough.

If anything the Bronx cheer should go to artists like Marina Abramovic for being part of the celebrity worship.

Announcing DC Artist Exchange (DCax)

Artomatic, in collaboration with several DC-based arts and cultural organizations, has announced the DC Artist Exchange (#DCax). 

 

This kick-off series includes five Panel Discussions on artist space in the city and four Swap Meets. Swap meets provide a forum for the exchange of creative services or materials and the opportunity for community networking. 

 

Best of all, events are FREE to attend. 

 

Come to one session or the whole series. The series kicks off this Saturday, July 20th and runs through the summer season.

View the schedule and sign up today

Becoming a Collector: How to Know What You LIke and Where to Find It

Thursday, July 25, 7pm in the Emerson Gallery at McLean Project for the Arts

MPA Exhibitions Director, Nancy Sausser, will give a talk about collecting art and how to get started.

Free, but reservations are required. Email info@mpaart.org to reserve your spot.

McLean Project for the Arts is located at 1234 Ingleside Avenue in McLean VA

For more information visit www.mpaart.org or call 703-790-1953

2013 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize

Congratulations to Corcoran College of Art and Design faculty member Gabriela Bulisova, who was awarded the 2013 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize on Saturday, July 13.

A faculty member in both the Photography and New Media Photojournalism degree programs, Bulisova was awarded the $25,000 prize for her multimedia project, "Time Zone."

The project - a collection of photographs and 12-minute video - focuses on 39-year-old Washington resident Lashawna Etheridge-Bey's effort to recreate a life after 18 years in prison. "Time Zone" features interviews with Etheridge-Bey, her mother, children and friend.

Gabriela Bulisova is a documentary photographer from the former Czechoslovakia, based in Washington, D.C. She travels to marginalized places such as Chernobyl, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria to give voice to those who have been silenced.

View images from "Time Zone" here. View the video here.

Amazon to Start Selling Fine Art On Line

Reports from the Art Newspaper and the Wall Street Journal say Amazon is making plans to sell fine art online. The reports say the company is working with galleries around the U.S.—perhaps more than 100—to act as an online art market and collect a commission on the sales.

Amazon tried this once before in 2001, but in partnership with Sotheby's. It was very successful, so much in fact that Sotheby's decided to go on their own, broke their contract with Amazon (and paid them a ton of money to do so) and was selling about a million dollars a day at one point.

Ebay noticed this and tried to start doing the same thing via a short-lived venture titled Ebay Premiere; they failed miserably.

Then Ebay started courting Sotheby's and the fools decided to partner up with Ebay and the whole entire thing tanked in record time, forever poisoning the well for online fine art auctions.

The formula for selling fine art online demands a legitimizing name (such as Sotheby's or Christie's or MoMA or such a recognizable "art name") - it fails miserably anytime anyone else tries it.

Woman as Color, Light and Form

Galerie Myrtis located at 2224 North Charles Street in Baltimore has an upcoming exhibition titled Woman as Color, Light and Form that has caught my eye.   The Opening Reception will be held Saturday, July 27, 2013, from 6:00pm – 9:00pm.  The reception is free and open to the public. An Artists’ Talk will take place on Sunday, August 11, 2013 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm and is part of the Tea with Myrtis series of art salons. Fee:  $20 includes tea sampling and sweet and savory treats.  

In challenging the notion of the feminine archetype, artists embrace and reach beyond the boundaries of the female form to express the essence of a woman, figuratively, conceptually and metaphorically. 

As Color, alluring imagery stretches the imagination and explores a woman’s sexual and intellectual power through aggressive gestures and symbolic references to the feminine life-giving force. As Light, provocative photographs portray a woman’s physical strength and ubiquitous presence in nature. As Form, moving two and three dimensional objects, emblematic of the ethereal qualities of a woman, reveal the complexities, convictions and intuitiveness of the feminine expressed as the divine; a ritualistic-based video serves as testimony to one woman’s personal journey of renewal, and others speak to healing, identity, memory and transformation in tableaus that embody a woman’s unbridled spirit.

The sixteen participating artists express their artistic voices through installations, paintings, photography, prints, and videos.




Artists:  Sondra Arkin, Maya Freelon Asante, David Carlson, Phylicia Ghee, Michael Gross, Nora Howell, Ada Pinkston, Edwin Remsburg (that's his powerful image Diapotheque Series 9/22 to the left), Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Rachael Rotenberg, Amy Sherald, Mary Walker, and Sigrid Vollerthun along with Sondheim Semi-finalists: A. Moon and Adejoke Tugbiyele

Washington Studio School Annual Students Juried Show

The Washington Studio School 

is pleased to announce 

the Opening Reception of the Annual Students Juried Show 2013 

Friday, July 19th

From 6-8pm

"The work selected for this year's Juried Student Exhibition displays the progression of learning and skill-building that occurs at the Washington Studio School. The focus on drawing and understanding dynamic spatial relationships is evident in student's artwork of all skill levels.  

From figure drawing studies to sculpture, to drawings, paintings and collage that explore abstraction, to paintings in which one can detect a developing individual aesthetic and intuitive process, we can clearly see evidence of growth and the positive results of a highly focused and directed school environment. This exhibition is a showcase of some of the most dynamic student artwork as well as a wonderful insight into the Washington Studio School teaching approach." 

 Milena Spasic, Juror

How the NSA Cracked the Kryptos Sculpture Code

It took more than eight years for a CIA analyst and a California computer scientist to crack three of the four coded messages on the CIA’s famed Kryptos sculpture in the late ’90s.

Little did either of them know that a small group of cryptanalysts inside the NSA had beat them to it, and deciphered the same three sections of Kryptos years earlier — and they did it in less than a month, according to new documents obtained from the NSA.

Details here.

John Anderson on "Washington Matters"

Read John Anderson's reviews of the Katzen's "Washington Matters" exhibition here. The show is derived from the recently published book Washington Art Matters: Art Life in the Capital 1940–1990 - a terrific book that represents the closing project of the Washington Arts Museum. You can buy the book on Amazon here for less that $11!

Until August 11, the top floor of the American University Museum presents a 50-year retrospective of D.C. art between 1940 and 1989, and it feels much like a multifarious Washington Project for the Arts auction. On view are some muscular works by Jim Sanborn and Robin Rose, as well as a few old standards by Martin Puryear, Sam Gilliam, and Kenneth Noland. But, with more than 80 artists represented in the exhibit—most by a single piece—the show doesn't distill the working careers of the artists involved or offer a coherent sense of identity or movement happening in D.C. The only exception is the featured work from the late 1950s and early '60s, when seemingly every artist in Washington was under the spell of Abstract Expressionism and the so-called Washington Color School. After that, District art hopped all over the map.

Of course, this is an exhibit of some compromise, pulled together in limited time. American University Museum Director Jack Rasmussen, a consistent supporter of D.C. art, found a hole for an exhibit last year when he learned The Washington Arts Museum was publishing Washington Art Matters, a book on local art from 1940 to 1989. Earlier this year, the book's authors gave Rasmussen a list of artists to include in the show, and the museum got to work plucking the relevant art from private collections and three area museums in under 10 weeks (the museum already owned about a third of the work).

Washington Art Matters, written by Jean Lawlor Cohen, Sidney Lawrence, Elizabeth Tebow, and Benjamin Forgey, is, by the authors' own admission, "well intentioned." Unfortunately, it struggles with the same hurdles the exhibit does. This summary of 50 years of Washington art, condensed into 213 pages, often reads like a summary of a summary.

Anytime that a "summary of 50 years of Washington art, condensed into 213 pages, often reads like a summary of a summary" is put into an art show, some art will be blurred.

In fact, at any group art shows, some art will be blurred.

Anderson's piece is a very good read of this show, and showcases this talented critic's finely tuned and wise insights into the DMV visual arts scene... and it also manages to focus on the Pyrrhic task of trying to write a book and then put up an exhibition that tries to sum up 50 years of anything...

If my first of the three planned books on DC visual artists drew so much air intake (every once in a while I still get an email from an artist being pissed off that he/she wasn't included in the first volume, and there's still one included artist who still fumes because he wasn't included on the cover - even though I had zip to do with that part), can you imagine what a book attempting to discuss 50 years of DC area art achieves in that area?

I was once advised that my first volume listing 100 artists would piss off 10,000 unlisted artists... 200 or so will be somewhat tranquilized by the next two volumes, but I can only think of how many 1940-1989 DC artists feel "excluded" from this volume - that's the real Pyrrhic task for the authors (Jean Lawlor Cohen, Sidney Lawrence, Elizabeth Tebow, and Benjamin Forgey), all of whom must be congratulated on the creation of this important and much needed documentation.

 Anderson asks way too much of this show when he writes:

But, with more than 80 artists represented in the exhibit—most by a single piece—the show doesn't distill the working careers of the artists involved or offer a coherent sense of identity or movement happening in D.C.

I'm not sure that it is possible to distill an entire career in such a setting - even retrospectives struggle to show an artist's career if that artists has had a few decades of production. I am also always puzzled why in the visual arts, we're always looking for a sense of order or as he puts it coherence. It is impossible to ask a diverse group of contemporary artists, much less an entire city or region to all collapse into a identifiable and coherent sense of identity - I challenge anyone to show me such a phenomenom in the last 150 years. In fact, the last time that this happened was probably in the 1800s, but we're still using it as a litmus test somehow.

I betcha that even in the halcyon days of the Washington Color School (I loved this part from Anderson's review: "Perhaps the most significant event that separates us from other cities is that Clement Greenberg came here, the colorful staining of canvas was declared a "school," and the recognition made the art-survey books" - the dude is so right!) there was a truckload of DMV artists who weren't staining canvasses or painting lines.

With respect to the latter, I am still astonished to see how many DMV area shows (two will open today/this weekend) include artwork by living artists who are essentially channeling the stripe painters of the 1960s and are yet being shown in 2013. I have never seen a Washington Color Schoolish type artwork in any art fair around the world in the last decade, but here in the DMV both recent graduates and older artists continue to channel Noland, Davis, etc. Somebody should write about that...

Anderson ends his review by stating:

Of course, there's no question that D.C. has contributed to 20th century art in important ways, and nurtured significant artists, as it continues to do. But Washington Art Matters recycles old, whiny arguments to make that point, and the companion exhibit in the AU Museum was afforded too little time and not enough space to give D.C. art the exclamation point it too often seeks.

Sounds like John is challenging American University Museum Director Jack Rasmussen to devote the entire Katzen to a Washington, DC show... cough, cough.

I'm going to see this show, and you have to go see it too... this is Washington, and this is visual art, and visual artists stand on the shoulders of other artists... so go and pay homage to your predecessors. Art school faculties around the region should also all take their classes to this exhibit, and I'd hope that all of our area's museum curators and directors would also take the opportunity to visit and learn about our area's visual arts footprint, but I know that this is asking too much of DMV art curators most of whom who'd rather take a cab to Dulles to fly and go see a group art show by Berlin artists in Germany than take a cab to American University to go see this show... feh!

And thank you to American University Museum Director Jack Rasmussen, whose drive and insight and skill  shows and demonstrates what a museum can do to become more than white walls that show pictures and instead essentially become a key part of a city. And thank you Jean Lawlor Cohen, Sidney Lawrence, Elizabeth Tebow, and Benjamin Forgey, for this intense and important labor of love.

Finally, there's a panel discussion at the Katzen on July 20 - details here.

Washington Art Matters: The 1980s
Saturday, July 20, 3 p.m.
American University Museum
Admission is free
Art Attack project artist Alberto Gaitán; curator-advocate Jim Mahoney; and on-the-scene writer Lee Fleming discuss the aesthetic and political issues of the 1980s. The panel is moderated by Sidney Lawrence, an emerging artist at the time and the Hirshhorn's PR person until 2003, who is one of the Washington Art Matters, Art Life in the Capital: 1940-1990's authors.

And a closing reception on August 10 at 5PM.

At Politics and Prose...

And the world's fattest country is...

Holy enchilada!

Mexico is the world's fattest country!

Que pasa gorditos?

Cough, cough...