Wanna go to a McLean Opening?

Let the drinking begin!

Now available everywhere, most notably at Trader Joe's.

Reviews and comments here. For around six bucks it's already getting rave reviews!

Emerge already!

C'mon! Who are your notable emerging artist(s) in your town and area? I give you an opportunity to put a digital footprint for the website of your favorite emerging artist and you folks are hemming me up...

Go here, sign in (it's free) and give us a link to the website of your favorite emerging artist. Then maybe later we'll do a poll and see who emerges as the top 2-3 emerging artists around the nation to keep an eye on...

There may even be a prize or two coming down the road... trust me.

Congrats!

To Philly area artist Charles Burwell a new 2008 Pew Fellowships in the Arts recipient!

Mr. Burwell will receive a $60,000 Fellowship - an increase of $10,000 from previous years -and the largest such grants in the country from which individual artists can apply.

This year the awards went to artists working in folk and traditional arts, painting and playwriting, and were selected from a pool of 323 applicants.

"We are proud to continue Pew's long-standing commitment to the community of artists in Philadelphia and delighted to support this year's Pew Fellows in recognition of their exemplary contributions to the artistic vitality of our city and region," noted Marian Godfrey, Managing Director, Culture and Civic Initiatives of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Burwell is represented in Philadelphia by the Bridgette Mayer Gallery.

The full list of award winners is here. Other visual artists in the list include Matthew Cox, Anne Seidman and Mauro Zamorra.

Congrats to all!

New Virginia Gallery

Ayr Hill Gallery will hold its Grand Opening Celebration on Friday, June 27, 2008, 5 PM to 8 PM, at 141 Church Street, NW, in Vienna, Virginia. Featured artists Armand Cabrera and Kathryn Ellis will attend the reception.

Canapés, confections, and conviviality will be served. To be included on the guest list, please send your name and mailing address to info@ayrhillgallery.com or call 703-938-3880; additional guests will be accommodated as space permits. Free and open to the public.

On the air next week

Next week I'll be on the Kojo Nnamdi Show discussing the Greater Washington area visual arts and artists and art stories as I usually do several times a year.

Tune in to WAMU 88.5 FM around noon; as soon as I have a final date (looks like Thursday, 26 June), I'll confirm it.

If you have any questions or art issues, you can call Kojo during the show at (800) 433-8850 or you can email him questions to kojo@wamu.org.

ICA drops admission cost

Beginning July 1, 2008, entry to Philly's Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) will be free to the public for the first time in its history. This unprecedented initiative was made possible by a generous gift from Glenn R. Fuhrman, who is an ICA Overseer and a contemporary art collector.

Museum Residency

Deadline: Postmarked by Monday, July 14, 2008

Applications are being accepted for three artist-in-residence positions at the Newark Museum Arts Workshop for the month of January 2009. The residency offers three artists the opportunity to use the Museum’s professional facilities for creating new work. A stipend will be paid to selected artists. This year because the Newark Museum is celebrating the 100th year of its founding, artists are being asked to submit proposals that relate to this milestone event.

How to Apply: First, there is no application form to fill out, references to seek or fees to pay. Please send 10 JPEG images at 300 dpi on a CD, or a video/film clip of five minutes or less of your current work along with resume, artist statement, residency proposal and SASE. Do please include a hardcopy list of your images and information about them and how or in what manner they should be viewed.

Stipend: Each artist receives a stipend of $1200.00. This includes artist acting as juror to select the next round of Newark Museum Resident Artists for 2010. In addition, in-kind material and technical support is supplied to each artist depending on project needs. Send application material to:

Stephen McKenzie
Manager
The Newark Museum
Arts Workshop for Adults
49 Washington Street
Newark, NJ 07102-3176

Email address: smckenzie@newarkmuseum.org

Call for 3D artists

Alexandria's Gallery West has a call for 3D artwork. Jurying will be from the artwork itself— no slides or CDs. Jury selection is Monday, July 7, 2008, between 11am – 6pm. The opening reception for selected works will be on Saturday, July 12, 5 – 8pm.

Download the entry form from their website.

Affordable Art Fair: Final Report

Read it here.

Wanna go to a Germantown, MD opening?

Richard Vosseller's "Failure Is An Option" has an opening reception on June 21, 5:30 - 7:30 at the Black Rock Center for the Arts in Germantown, Maryland.

Emerging Artists

Having just returned from NYC, one of the side effects of the art fair phenomenon is the fact that through them many regional emerging artists are exposed to savvy art audiences in places like New York. Case in point is Norfolk's Sheila Giolitti, and last weekend was her first exposure to New York's art audiences and she sold about a dozen oil paintings!

Who are your notable emerging artist(s) in your town and area?

Go here, sign in (it's free) and give us a link to their website. Then maybe later we'll do a poll and see who emerges as the top 2-3 emerging artists around the nation to keep an eye on...

Richard Edson

Annie Adjchavanich returns to the DC area to present Richard Edson photographs from the series "Beyond the Valley of the Micro Bops."

Preview the show here.

The opening is Thursday, June 19, 8 - 11pm and the exhibition goes through June 29, 2008.

Jackie's Backroom Gallery
8081 Georgia Avenue
Silver Spring, MD

Artomatic to close tomorrow

Washington, DC's Artomatic 2008 comes to a close Sunday, June 15 at 10 pm. If you've already been, go again. There's so much to see and do. I've made the rounds half a few times and each time I discover new art, great music and performances. Make sure you drop a few bucks in the Artomatic donation boxes to help with expenses.

Also, there's a Glass Art Tour of Artomatic, on Sunday, June 15 at 2pm. By popular demand, one more tour on the last day of Artomatic! Please meet in the lobby of Artomatic between 1:45pm-2pm for a guided glass tour of Artomatic. Join Washington Glass School artists Cheryl Derricotte, Sean Hennessey and others as they lead you directly to all the great glass on exhibit this year. You will then ride up together to the 11th floor to begin and walk down to the 4th floor so comfortable shoes are suggested. The tour will depart the lobby at 2pm and concludes by 3:30pm.

Derivative Composition

A while back I was honored to be one of three jurors for VSA's "Derivative Composition" juried exhibition at the Kennedy Center.

The Derivative Composition exhibition at the Kennedy Center will be installed this coming Monday. I’m told that it is one of the most ambitious and interesting exhibitions that VSA has produced to date.

The opening is scheduled for Thursday, June 26, beginning at 5 pm. Several of the artists (which come from all over the country) will be attending. In addition, they will host two exclusive performances:

Mark Wittig, from Oklahoma, will present the performance component of his installation, To Have Straights. The performance will emphasize the potential of the physical act as a learning tool.

The Skin, by artist Emily Eifler, will awaken and walk among guests. The textural, full body costume serves to represent a visual boundary that recalls a different, invisible boundary: disability

Steinhauer on the Affordable Art Fair

Artinfo.com's Jill Steinhauer reports on the Affordable Art Fair here.

The Affordable Art Fair New York is one of the least pretentious places to see high-quality international contemporary art in the city. The annual fair, now in its seventh edition, runs June 12–15 at the Altman Building and adjoining Metropolitan Pavilion, and with general admission priced at only $17, it’s cheaper than a trip to MoMA or the Guggenheim.

An affordable art fair may sound amateurish to some, and the art on view here does range in quality, but the gallerists I spoke with yesterday had almost entirely positive things to say about the event, whose self-proclaimed mission is “to serve every kind of art enthusiast.” “This fair is much better than the Affordable Art Fairs in Australia,” said first-timer Peter Gant of Carlton, Australia–based Peter Gant Fine Art.

Read the whole article here. From the reports that I gathered yesterday, almost all galleries were selling well.

DC News

Tony Gittens, the executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, announced a couple of days ago that he is leaving that post after 11 years. Read the WaPo report here.

Memo to Mayor Fenty: Appoint George Koch to the job.

Silly-Matic

Artomatic's odd developments with respect to "the Collector" are chronicled here by the WaPo's Reliable Source.

Affordable Art Fair New York report

The press preview and collectors's night (on Wednesday night) was packed to the gills and the AAFNYC staff told me that it was the largest turnout they've ever had for an opening.

Loads of press people, including a lot of NYC art bloggers, and a significant number of young people drinking the free booze. In our booth, Sheila Giolitti was selling loads of her paintings on this preview night.

Today was the "real" first day of the fair, and when we got there at noon, there was a line of people waiting to get in. I made some quick sales almost immediately of Cirenaica Moreira photos, and Tim Tate's video reliquiaries (as they did the preview night) continued to attract people like moths to a light. At $8,000, they're at the top price scale for this level of art fairs.

Sheila Giolitti continued to sell well, and the anecdotal reports that I received from the other DC, MD and VA galleries in the fair sounded like they were all doing well.

The press was back today to our booth to discuss Cuban art and the state of art fairs; seems like trying to gather if the fair market at this "battle front" level is also putting on the brakes.

More tomorrow...

Fairing

At the Fair in NYC all week with my new Alida Anderson Art Projects venture... more later.

Videos, Movies, Animation & Art at the Whino

National Harbor's Art Whino & Art Outlet will partner up again for the FLIK Movie Festival & Interactive Exhibit.

For FLIK 2008, Art Outlet has partnered with the Art Whino Gallery to expand upon last year’s success by expanding the call out to all mediums of animation and experimental film. There will be more screenings, a larger venue, a coinciding interactive exhibit, and a licensing of the program to allow for screenings both locally and internationally – thus expanding exposure for the selected filmmakers.

Friday, June 21 from 6 – 8pm is the opening reception from 8pm – 12am. On Saturday the sked is as follows:

9am – 3pm Workshops
3pm – 6pm Interactive Exhibit open to the public
6pm – 8pm Reception
8pm – 12am Screening / Performance

On Sunday: 12pm – 6pm Exhibit open to public

She's So Articulate

At the Arlington Arts Center: Black Women Artists Reclaim the Narrative!

Faith Ringgold, Who's Bad?, acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 79.5" X 92.5", 1988
Work by Maya Freelon Asante, Renee Cox, Stephanie Dinkins, Djakarta, Nekisha Durrett, Torkwase Dyson, Faith Ringgold, Erika Ranee, Nadine Robinson, Renee Stout, Lauren Woods at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA.

Opening reception: Friday, June 13, 6:00 to 9:00 pm - the exhibition goes through July 19, 2008.

FotoWeekDC

The week of November 15-22, 2008 will mark the launch of FotoWeek DC, the first annual gathering of a diverse and wide-ranging photography community in the nation’s capital, including photographers, museums, universities and all those involved in the profession across the metro D.C. area, including Virginia and Maryland. Unique among American cities, Washington, D.C. is a nexus of artistic, business, political and public sector energy, in which photography plays an integral role. FotoWeek DC seeks to bring together all photographers and imaging professionals from every discipline to join with the public in celebration of the medium.

Details here. They were really keeping that event a "secret"! This is first heard for me and they've already got a whole series of events planned and an ass-kicking website and seems like almost every key art gallery in the Greater DC and DMV region is in the mix.

When Museum Guards Go Bad

A former Carnegie Museum of Art guard charged with vandalizing a $1.2 million painting simply "snapped" due to life's normal pressures, including impending fatherhood, his defense attorney said.

Read the story here.

Fair State

Art Basel, the largest international fair of contemporary art, wound up Sunday after registering some major sales but with a suggestion that the overall market may be slowing in reaction to the world's financial turmoil.

The show management's final report said the results were "outstanding" and that all participants "considered it a very good year," but it gave no overall sales figures.

Headlines were chiefly made by Roman Abramovich, the Russian multibillionaire and owner of Chelsea soccer club, who topped the list of collectors present.

Abramovich appeared to have stayed below his spending spree last month in New York, where he paid US$120 million (€77 million) at Sotheby's record-breaking auction, including US$86 million (€55 million) for the top lot, a Francis Bacon triptych.

In Basel, he bought one of Alberto Giacometti's elongated woman sculptures for a seemingly modest US$14 million (€9 million), according to The Art Newspaper's special Basel edition.

The sale of a Lucian Freud, "Girl in Attic Doorway," for US$12 million (€7.7 million) to an undisclosed buyer was also confirmed.

The organizers said their surveys showed that "all the exhibiting galleries were able to find buyers for their works."

The 300 participating galleries offered works by more than 2,000 artists, priced between a few thousand and millions of dollars.

It was left to the individual galleries to disclose sales, and many did not.

Despite the positive report of the organizers, the weekend edition of The Art Newspaper headlined, "Market keeps moving, but the brakes start to go on."

You can read the whole AP report here.

The reports that I have been getting directly from dealers have (as always) been mixed. Later this week I will be going to the Affordable Art Fair New York, the art fair that I consider to be at the front battle lines of the art fair world, since it limits prices of work to be sold to a max of $10,000 per piece.

I should be able to discuss what the state of "affordable" art is once I get a feeling how this fair is doing.

Florida Gallery Seeks Street Art

The 621 Gallery, a contemporary exhibition space in Tallahassee, FL, seeks entries for an exhibition dealing with contemporary street art scheduled for July 2009. They are interested in themes relating to contemporary street art including graffiti, murals, stenciling, and guerilla art. Send them a CD of images (at 300 dpi) of your work, your contact info (mailing address, phone, email), and a short statement (1 page maximum) on why you make what you make. Send materials to:

Street Art
c/o 621 Gallery
621 Industrial Drive
Tallahassee, FL 32310

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: July 1, 2008.

The Art Gallery at Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington is accepting submission for exhibitions for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years. The gallery functions as a resource for students, educators, artists and the public-at-large. Submissions are limited to 2-D, 3-D and installation work. This is an open call, but preference will be given to proposals received by July 1, 2008. For more information, go to this website.

Art-In-Architecture Artist Registry

Deadline: July 31, 2009.

The GSA Art in Architecture Program commissions the nation's leading artists to create large-scale works of art for new federal buildings. These artworks enhance the civic meaning of federal architecture and showcase the vibrancy of American visual arts. Together, the art and architecture of federal buildings create a lasting cultural legacy for the people of the United States. For more information, go to this website.

Studio Visit

My studio visit with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is here. Read it and prepare to be impressed by this dynamo of an artist.

“When I am not here/Estoy Alla” c. 1994 by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

Art-O-Sound

Scion and The Pink Line Project present Art-O-Sound!



Thursday, June 12, from 7 - 9:30 pm at the 6th Floor of Artomatic 2008 (1st and M Street, NE).

Artists: Lauren Bender, Bonner Sale, Ding Ren, Matt Sargent.

Video Installation by David London - Imagine

Music by Invisible Flow

Gopnik on Transformer

The WaPo's Chief Art Critic does something that he rarely does: review a Washington, DC art gallery.

And Gopnik does a really good job in showing us what this show is all about, and in making us all wish that he did this more often.

Read it here.

At the Katzen

There are some terrific shows currently at the Katzen Museum in DC and I will be writing about them soon. Meanwhile, you got to drop by and see the installation "Living Without Them" by Lilianne Milgrom/Saul Sosnowski on the museum's first floor.

Lorton Arts

Last month I juried the Lorton Arts Foundation exhibition at the University of Phoenix, Reston Campus. Below is a quick video of that exhibit.

Another AOM Top 10

Melissa Hackmann with her AOM Top Ten here.

Private Museums

Mr Margulies, who estimates he now owns around 4,500 works, is among the more respected of a growing group of collectors who choose to create independent spaces, rather than donating works to public museums, where it might stay in storage “for the first 15 years”, he said.

Read Lindsay Pollock and Georgina Adam discuss why the rise of the private museum is rewriting the rules of the market - in the Art Newspaper here.

Art Fairs

Art Basel, one of the world's largest and oldest contemporary art fairs, opens to the public today; about 55,000 people will throng to it and its satellite events. Whether you consider the crowd lemmings or pilgrims may depend upon your bias -- and your bank account -- but one thing is certain: Fairs are a power shift in the art world. For good or ill, they are changing where you buy art, how you look at it, and even how artists make it.

Alexandra Peers on art fairs at the WSJ. Read it here.

Early Look Video

Last night's opening of Early Look, an exhibition of undergraduate art students selected by me from various schools in the Mid Atlantic, opened at DC's Long View Gallery and below I have a quick video of the opening and artwork.

Several pieces sold, including what I think is perhaps the show's major work, a huge pastel by GMU's Tanya Wilson, which sold to a major Virginia ubercollector. There is a lot of good work at superb prices at this exhibition, make sure to stop by and buy some art!

Come to the Early Look opening tonight

Drop by the Long View Gallery in DC today from 5-8PM for the opening reception of Early Look, my curated exhibition of some outstanding young artists from undergraduate programs along the Mid Atlantic.



You will see work by Moore College of Art & Design students Krista Rothwell, Erika Risko, Lauren Albert, Catherine Badger and Melanie Bergwall, Corcoran College of Art + Design student Marissa Valko, MICA student Anton Merbaum, American University student Caitlin Servillo, Virginia Commonwealth University student Deborah Shapiro, St. Mary’s College of Maryland student Jenny Davis, George Mason University students Aaron Miller, Ryan McCloy and Tanya Wilson, and West Chester University of Pennsylvania student Meghan Buozis.

The Long View Gallery is at 1302 9th ST NW, Washington, DC 20001 (202.232.4788) just a short walk from the Convention Center. This is an excellent opportunity for beginning collectors.

See ya there!

The Collector Strikes at AOM

Read all about this in MeanLouise.com.

Lockheedian Christo

I have never seen these pictures or knew that we had gone this far to protect industrial and defense operations. During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant from Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.

Below is Lockheed before the camouflage was created:



And below are some amazing images after it was hidden away:

Grants for Maryland Artists

Deadline: July 31, 2008

The 2009 Maryland State Fellowship guidelines and applications are now available. The funding categories available for 2009 include:

Dance: Choreography
Music Composition (World, Classical and Non Classical)
Playwriting
Poetry
Visual Arts: Crafts
Visual Arts: Photography
Visual Arts: Sculpture

All applications must be submitted online. Applicants can click here to access the MSAC Individual Artists Fellowships Application. The deadline for 2009 applications is July 31, 2008.

Fallon & Rosof Curate


Philly's Northern Liberties neighborhood is rapidly developing (no pun intended) into one of my favorite areas - it reminds me a lot of Brooklyn when I was a kid.

And Northern Liberty's Projects Gallery today opens their collaboration with curators and uber art bloggers Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof in an exhibition simply titled ID.

This exhibition will put the gallery lights on a number of emerging Philadelphia artists united in pushing the boundaries of myth and persona in contemporary art. From what I know of the show so far, we will see video, performance, sculpture, and photography, as the exhibition explores "broad and self-focused concepts ranging from issues of applied identity to the id of the artist."

As Roberta and Libby put it, "the works are metaphorical in ways that come out of the core of who they are and what they see around them." Artists include:

Samantha Hill - Moore College of Art and Design
Andria Bibiloni and Carl Marin - Tyler School of Art
Jay Hardman, Alex Gartelmann, and Phil Jackson - The University of the Arts
Jamie Diamond, Katy Rose Glickman, and Sarah Zimmer - University of Pennsylvania

And Philadelphia-based artist Diedra Krieger from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

ID opens tonight with an artist reception from 5-8 p.m. and continues through July 26. There will be a performance of artist Samantha Hill’s “Black Iconography” at 7 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.

Funny

Someone emailed me the following:

I came across an artist at Artomatic the other day who listed his painting medium as “gauche” – is that like gouache, only crude and tacky? It was topped only by the guy at Glen Echo who painted in “tempura.”

More Congrats!

Kudos to Silver Spring artist Steve Resnick who was asked by the US State Department to create gifts for President Bush to give out while the Prez was visiting Israel.

Resnick created a six-sided glass "tzedakah" box. The box will be given to the state of Israel and put on permanent display in the Israel Museum.

Congratulations

Kudos to Bert GF Shankman of Olney, MD who had three of his photographs chosen for the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. They were chosen by Anne Wilkes Tucker Chief Curator of Photography of the museum. This top notch museum has over 22,000 photos in its collection of photography which is the largest and easily amongst the finest in the country.

Bert will be having an Open Studio and Sale on June 7 and 8 from 12-5 PM where you may see the award winning photographs plus others,. Admission is free to this show and sale at his home gallery and open to the public. Call: 301-774-0655.

Top 20 Must-See US Museum Exhibitions for Summer 2008

According to MutualArt.com anyway:

· Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy (Dallas Museum of Art)

· Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections from the Cheech Marin Collection (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

· Gilbert & George (Milwaukee Art Museum)

· Everything's Here: Jeff Koons and His Experience of Chicago (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago)

· The Baroque World of Fernando Botero (New Orleans Museum of Art)

· Calder Jewelry (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

· Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh)

· Frida Kahlo (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)

· Louise Bourgeois (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City)

· Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe (Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City)

Good story!

The CP's Angela Valdez has a really interesting article on DC area ubercollector and museumeister Mitch Rales. Read it here.

Opportunity for DC Artists

Deadline: Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 5:30 pm

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) is purchasing artwork that captures archetypes of Washington DC. Subjects include specific neighborhoods, parks and circles, festivals, gathering places, or cultural events. Less obvious motifs include downtown redevelopment, restaurants, shops and businesses, work places, or Metro stations. Artists should consider a broad range of subject matter as long as the works have an unmistakable subject reflecting life in the District. Artists should also consider submitting images of Washington that depict the changing neighborhoods and the parts of the city that are disappearing. The Committee is very interested in depictions of all wards of the city. The collection serves to honor and embrace life in the District.

This opportunity is open to all artists who reside and have their studio in the District of Columbia.

For more information and to download the Call to Artist, please visit www.dcarts.dc.gov or to request an application in HTML format, email Beth Baldwin or call (202) 724-5613.

Open Studio in Baltimore

Our own Rosetta DeBerardinis will host an open studio on Saturday, June 7th; Time: 1-7 pm at:

School 33 Art Center
1427 Light Street
Studio #201
Baltimore, Maryland 21230

Black Art

Months ago it drove me crazy when Washington Post writer Jacqueline Trescott described Jacob Lawrence a great "African American" artist and now it drives me even crazier when her Washington Post's colleague and that paper's chief art critic writes (in reviewing current shows by American artists Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence in the nation's capital) that:

The surprise isn't that Douglas couldn't overcome all the obstacles there were to making the first fully convincing black art. It's that the young Lawrence, in his "Migration of the Negro," did.

"Black Art"????? Is there really such a genre? If there is, then haven't Africans been making "Black Art" for milennia?

And yes, I do know that there are commercial art fairs that are focused to attract collectors of art about African American subjects, just like there are art fairs focused on Latin American artists, European artists, Australian artists, Asian, etc. They all create art, and their race and ethnicities are part of the processes and cultural contributions to the end commodity, but in the end, it is art.

But Gopnik really means "African-American art," doesn't he?

It's just American art; it happens to depict African American subjects and history, and its talented creators were African American, but the end result is no more "black art" than Andy Warhol's art is "white art" and Morris Louis' art is "Jewish Art" and so on.

It's just "American Art."

Makes my head hurt.