Blake Gopnik is not going to like this:

Carol Strickland, writing in the Christian Science Monitor makes the case that "painting is back."

"In the past two decades, cutting-edge galleries and museums have focused on everything but painting. The halls were chockablock with installations, photo-based work, conceptual art, new media, and digital and video art.

But a fundamental shift has taken place. For a survey exhibition of contemporary work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Charlotta Kotik and her co-curator looked at thousands of works by emerging artists...

"The taste of the art world is changing," Ms. Kotik says. "Suddenly painting is allowed to exist again."

Read the whole article here, then print it and mail it to every museum curator, museum director and art critic that you know.

The rest of us already knew that no matter what gets written, and no matter what gets exhibited in museums, what truly makes an impact here in the trenches is and has been, and will continue to be painting.

(Thanks to ArtsJournal for the lead.)

Thanks to ArtsJournal for this:

A new for-profit company has formed in New York that will create a first-of-its-kind pension fund for artists. The fund, called the Artist Pension Trust, is designed to offer some retirement security for up-and-coming visual artists who are now in their 20s and 30s.

Instead of contributing money to the fund, the selected artists will contribute their own artwork to a trust. The artwork will be held for a number of years, then sold, with the proceeds going into the trust, from which artists will then draw their pensions.

But at issue is how does one guess who (in the 20s) will be a sellable artist in their 60s. Nonetheless, it is a novel and interesting idea.

There will be regional trusts in New York and Los Angeles. Each trust will have 250 artists. The artists will be chosen by a "prominent" group of artists, art professors and gallery owners in each region. Eventually, this outfit plans to have trusts in London, Berlin, Tokyo, Shanghai or Beijing, and possibly Miami.

Read the whole story here.

It may be fun to come up with a list of, say 25 DC area artists in their 20s and 30s, that we'd nominate for this Artist Pension Trust.... that is, if our area is considered for a trust fund.

Ned Rifkin, director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden passes that J. Tomilson Hill has been elected as the Chairman of the Hirshhorn's Board of Trustees.

Pretty fast move up the chain for Hill, who joined the Board in 1998 and served as Vice Chair two years later. Congratulations!

Some new shows...

Andrea Rowe Kraus has paintings and prints at Studio Gallery at Dupont Circle until June 13.

Paintings and sculpture by Korean artist Nong are on exhibit at Dega Gallery in McLean until July 3.

Richard Whiteley has new landscape paintings at Gallery West in Alexandria.

Mobiles by David Yano and abstract paintings by Marsha Hall share the gallery at Creative Partners in Bethesda.

Addison/Ripley in Georgetown has new work by Dan Treado until June 19.

Wayne Trapp has an Introspective on exhibition at Zenith Gallery downtown until June 6.

Nancy Sausser reviews "Expanding Realities", in today's Post. The show is curated by Sarah Tanguy and is currently on exhibition at the American Center for Physics.

God as an art critic?

As most of you probably know by now, the cream of the Saatchi YBA art collection, not including Chris Ofili's infamous dungwork The Holy Virgin Mary, which survives in the Saatchi Gallery, was destroyed a few days ago in a fire in London.

You can see most of the destroyed collection here.

The destruction of any artwork, no matter one's opinion of the "art" itself, is always to be lamented. However, in the case of the YBA's art lost in this fire, I wonder if it will have an "Elvis" effect on that work, and leave a sort of legendary (if ethereal) footprint on the pages of art history.

I submit that it will, and in fact it may be a brilliant (if unintended) act of marketing!

Since some of the British art world's leading prognosticators think that figurative art may be the "next big thing in art," I wouldn't be surprised to see this master marketeer make an 180 and start a "new" collection of figurative art.

I can hear the howling already...

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In the Post today, Jessica Dawson reviews Leo Villareal at Conner Contemporary and Joe White at Edison Place Gallery.

My posting on galleryphobia has been getting responses from gallerists as far as Canada, Uruguay and the UK!

But best is this one from photographer James W. Bailey from the Greater Reston Arts Center in Reston, Virginia:

I wanted to recognize your scientific identification of galleryphobia. I believe that I have identified a sub-species at the Greater Reston Arts Center.

It just so happens that the most popular cigarette break spot at Reston Town Center is right in front of our largest window. There’s a concrete planter that sits facing our window and the smokers congregate for their isolationist rituals 6 to 8 times a day.

During the course of their smokes breaks, especially when their thin conversations have worn thinner, many of them will walk right up to the glass, plaster their faces against the glass, raise their hands above their heads to block the light so they can see better and stare through the glass while puffing away on their cancer sticks.

But they never come in! There’s this one girl whom I’ve been watching for 2 ½ years through the damn glass! She’s never stepped foot in the gallery.

Yet, everyday she’ll stare inside. I’ve tried opening the door, stepping outside and asking people to come in and take a look and even offered wine to them.

They are terrified of actually walking into the gallery. If you have no objection, I’m naming this sub-species, galleryphobia smokerterrifiedicus.

Funny!!!

By the way, a $38,000 life size statute was brazenly stolen this last weekend from an artist's booth, in front of thousands of art lovers at the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival.