We don't have a Artes Mundi Prize equivalent around here, but we do have the $14,000 Trawick Art Prize, and all Virginia, Maryland and DC area artists are eligible to apply for it. Visit this website for details. The deadline is May 21, 2004. Hurry!

The 2003 winners were Richard Cleaver, a sculptor from Baltimore, MD, who was awarded the top honor with $10,000; James Huckenpahler who was named second place and was given $2,000; Linn Meyers of Washington, DC who was bestowed third place and received $1,000 and the “Young Artist” award of $1,000 (and sponsored by us) was given to Jose Ruiz of Washington, D.C.

The 2004 jury members for the Trawick Prize are Jeffrey W. Allison, The Paul Mellon Collection Educator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Peter Dubeau, Associate Dean of Continuing Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Kristen Hileman, Assistant Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Anyone wishing to add funds to this regional art prize structure should contact Stephanie Coppula at (301) 215-6660. Time for some of our area's megacompanies to step up.

Why most modern art sucks:

The winner of the first £40,000 Artes Mundi Prize is a message written in dust. Martin Gaylord, writing in The Telegraph wonders "What has art become? It's hard to answer that question, except to say, "Very weird."

And Ben Issario, writing in the NY Times discusses the fact that "Internet Art" is dead and has reached digital exhaustion. Yet it wasn't that long ago that curators and critics - enamoured of what's new rather than what's good - were labeling Internet Art projects as the "new king of art."

This is what happens when novelty (sometimes coupled with shock or gimmick) is allowed to rule exclusively.

Both above links thanks to ArtsJournal.com.

Jessica Dawson's "Galleries" column in today's Post "scraps the art criticism and talks religion instead."

Jessica reviews Lane Twitchell at G Fine Art, in Georgetown (Annie, please update your website!).

She asks: "After all, religion and art can't occupy the same conversational space, can they?"

Catriona pointed out to me: How about America's best selling "artist"? Now that Thomas Kinkade is having a solo at a "real" art gallery, we've all faced with the question of the legitimacy of America's best-selling painter as an artist. And isn't Kinkade's huge success because of his marriage of art and religion?

I do not like it, will never like it and don't understand people who amass Kinkade's "art," but now that the "artworld" has cracked the door open for him, the ensuing dialogue (and food fight) that will follow, will be both interesting and good for art.

In fact, if any gallerist in Washington (not us, thank you) wants to really make the national headlines, they should contact Kinkade and offer him his first solo in a commercial fine arts space. Then we'd let Blake and Dixon loose on him, and the rest would be great publicity and probably a sell-out show.

Hey! Maybe that's what those missing DC art collectors are buying?

Pilfered from Art Addict: The greatest mistakes of this well-known art collector are the works that she didn't buy!

By the way - Art Addict is a must read BLOG.

So far, it looks like the rest of America thinks that it is a good idea to keep the Whitney Biennial in New York and not infect the rest of us with it.

I disagree.

Read the original idea by Tyler Green here and the responses here.

I was on the radio again today, on Voice of America broadcasting to all of Latin America in Spanish.

I was discussing the impact of Cuban painter Jose Maria Mijares, who died in Miami a few days ago - read the Miami Herald story here.

Mijares, who won the Cuban National Painting Prize in 1950, lived for a while in New York, where the Abstract movement had a tremendous impression on his work.

When he escaped Castro's jailed island in 1968, Mijares returned to representation to express the loss of his homeland and his work became very important to the powerful Cuban footprint on American art.

He will be missed.

Some spectacular (and famous) works of art will be auctioned by Sotheby's on May 15 in New York. They are 44 paintings from the collection of Mr. & Mrs. John Hay Whitney and they have the secondary art world market watering at the mouth. See some of them here.

Some DC area artists in past Sotheby's auctions:

Gene Davis

Sam Gilliam

Catriona Fraser

Maxwell MacKenzie

You can also find a lot of more detailed auction records at Askart.com