Opportunities for artists:

Deadline: February 15, 2004
CURRENT WORK 2004: A NATIONAL COMPETITION. Open to all artists 18 and over. 2- Dimensional media only. Exhibition dates: March 19 - April, 2004, $25 entry fee for three slides, $1,200 in awards. Deadline for slides is February 15. To receive a prospectus, send a SASE to:
Rosenthal Gallery
Fayetteville State University
Fayetteville NC 28301.

Or visit the website to enter online or to review the prospectus or email smartin@uncfsu.edu

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Deadline: February 20, 2004
The Tulane Review is looking for submissions of artwork in any medium for the Spring 2004 issue. Slides, please label orientation, or CDs of work should be mailed to:

Tulane Review
Department of Art
Tulane University
New Orleans, LA 70118.

Enclose a SASE for return of submissions. Please include a cover letter with media, dimensions, and titles of pieces, as well as a bio. The submission fee is $15 per 4 pieces and $2 each additional. A $100 prize to be awarded to the single best piece selected by qualified judge. Direct any questions to mroche@tulane.edu, or call (318)572-4374.

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Deadline: February 21, 2004
National Juried Small Works Exhibition at Red Dot Fine Art. The gallery is located on historic Canyon Road in Santa Fe, NM and is one of the cities' 250 galleries. Open to all individuals with two dimensional paintings in any medium and style with a size not to exceed 16" x 16". EXHIBITION DATES: April 1st to April 25th 2004. FEE: $30 for 1-3 images (slides or JPEG 300 dpi) $5 for each additional image submitted. FOR APPLICATION: Visit their website or contact smallworks@reddotfineart.com or send SASE to:
Red Dot Fine Art
Att: Small Works
8 Tapia Entrada
Santa Fe NM 87508

I'm quoted in the current issue of Art & Antiques Magazine on a piece focused on Cuban art.

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day."
- George Carlin (1937 - )

Last night I had the honor and pleasure of being the guest juror at Multiple Exposures Gallery (formerly Factory Photoworks), where I juried a group show from the gallery's 14 members.

Multiple Exposures Gallery is one of the best examples around our area of what a dedicated and accomplished group of artists can do together. Running a cooperative artists' gallery is a difficult science at best, as doing anything by a committee of 14 is by human nature difficult. And yet, year after year this gallery manages to deliver superb photography, and as I have said many times in the past, continues to be one of the key photography galleries in our area.

The jurying process, as always, was difficult, and several pieces were rejected not because they were bad, but because the space also drives how one curates a show. In the end, I selected about two dozen photographs, nearly all black and white (my own prejudice) except for a couple of exceptional color photos by Barbara Southworth and Fran Livaditis. I've been watching Southworth's beautiful panoramic landscapes for a while now, where she fools you into being absorbed by the beauty of the landscape in her images, before one realizes that it is the exceptional, almost magical manipulation of light that really is the magnet in her imagery.

I also selected three pieces by Jim Steele; all exceptional nude studies by one of our area's top figurative photographers. I also included work by Danny Conant and Grace Taylor - both from their extensive travels to Tibet (Conant has recently published a book on the subject - see it here. And there are also some exceptional Cuban portraits by Karen Keating's continuing visits to the island prison.

The exhibition will hang until March 2, 2004.

Somebody in museum-land is screwing around.

After Darin Boville read my posting about DC museum shows, he jumps and points out that "just for fun, the Air and Space Museum (one of the top attractions in the world) gets (they claim) nine and a half million visitors per year--that's over 26,000 people per day!"

Actually, Darin is slightly off.... they claim eleven million visitors a year in 2003!

Is that a fib or is the Air and Space Museum kicking the crap out of the other art museums on the Mall (and the world)? And if they are right, where else are those 11 million visitors "visiting" while they're on the Mall?

Rub it in: "The staggering number of visitors to the National Air and Space Museum is expected to increase by another 3 million starting in December, when the museum’s companion facility at Washington Dulles International Airport opens." Read it here.

Great catch Darin!

Here's a very interesting eye opener...

Here is the list of the visitor numbers for museum shows around the world. It is compiled annually by The Art Newspaper.

What is interesting to me about this list, is the fact that the highest attended show in Washington, DC (highest as defined by average daily attendance, as some shows run longer than others, and thus total attendance is different) was the spectacular retrospective at the Hirshhorn of German painter Gerhardt Richter! (read my review of it here). It averaged around 2,000 visitors a day.

Here are the only Washington, DC museum shows to make the 2004 list:

Gerhardt Richter at Hirshhorn - 158,625 visitors (1,958 daily)
Jean-Antoine Houdon at National Gallery - 243,059 (1,914 daily)
Jacob Kainen's Collection/Trompe l'Oeil at National Gallery - 231,905 (1,645 daily)
Edouard Vuillard at National Gallery - 142, 191 (1,546 daily)
Frederick Remington at National Gallery - 124,145 (1,349 daily)

And lest we forget, all of these museums are free, and also the figures are generally moved one way or the other by the tourist tides to our city, which also influences most major cities around the world, except that our museums are free, and thus (I think) more likely to attract a family of tourists.

It also seems to me that the list is somewhat screwed up, as they list Jacob Kainen's An Artist's Artists: Jacob Kainen's Collection from Rembrandt to David Smith which ran at the NGA from 22 September 2002-9 February 2003 together with the Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil Painting which ran from 13 October 2002-2 March 2003.

At the top of the list was Leonardo's show at the Met in New York, which drew 6,863 visitors a day and a total of 401,004. Not a single show from the Tate Gallery in London made the 2003 list (their Matisse/Picasso show was one of the top ten in the world in 2002) and Matthew Barney's super hyped Guggenheim mess, although it made the list, got beaten by much less publicized events such as a show of Latin American artists at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

A Minneapolis group show beats Barney's hype machine!

Goes to show you that all the hype and money in the world, although it can certainly go a long way to get you there, it still can't guarantee top success - at least as defined by public attendance, and I bet that the Walker Art Center (which had several shows in the list) spent a tiny percentage of what the Guggenheim did in producing and setting up their show.

Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, winner of the 1996 Turner Prize, and prizewinner at the 1997 Venice Biennale comes to Washington when his first American retrospective makes a stop at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden beginning Feb. 12, 2004 and continuing through May 9, 2004.

The Hirshhorn is the final venue for this internationally-touring exhibition organized by LA's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Here's a review of the LA show which gives us a preview of what's coming.

The exhibition will include large-scale projected video installations, text pieces, still photographs and filmed images on video monitors created by the artist from 1993 to 2002. A highlight of the D.C. installation will be the artist's recent work "Play Dead: Real Time" (2002), which makes its U.S. museum debut at the Hirshhorn. A series of public programs will accompany the show, including "24 Hour Access: 24 Hour Psycho," Feb. 28 - Feb. 29. Inspired by Gordon's seminal video piece "24 Hour Psycho," this event will feature 24 consecutive hours of free access to the exhibition and conclude with a "Meet the Artist" interview conducted by Hirshhorn Director of Art and Programs and Chief Curator Kerry Brougher. I will review this show and give my thoughts on the exhibition, and the financial (for the artist and art dealers) relationship between video art (unsellable) and good old fashioned photography - of the video - which is very sellable!

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Transformer Gallery presents "Gleaming the Screen: An Exhibition of Silkscreen Poster Art" starting February 7 through March 6, 2004. Curated by guest curator, Nick Pimentel of Washington, DC’s Planaria Recordings, Gleaming the Screen is a group exhibition featuring work by over twenty of the U.S. and Canadian silkscreen poster artists. Opening reception for the artists: Saturday, February 7, 2004 7-9 pm.

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Conner Contemporary presents the first Washington, D.C. solo exhibition by Dean Kessmann, Coordinator of the George Washington University’s photography program. There will be a reception for the artist Thursday, February 19, 6-8 pm.

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We're lucky in Washington to have one of the true "power galleries" in the world when it comes to fine art glass. Maurine Littleton Gallery is celebrating 20 years of exhibiting Masters in Contemporary Glass with a series of three-artist exhibitions throughout the year. First they will exhibit new works in glass by well-known glass artists William Morris and Judith LaScola as well as new functional work in metal by Albert Paley. The show opens April 6th and continues through April 24th, 2004.

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And the Ralls Collection in Georgetown has the beautiful new work of photographer Michael Kenna on exhibit now until March 6, 2004.