Congratulations to Washington, DC painter Maggie Michael, who was just awarded a $20,000 grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

Earlier this year, Ms. Michael was also awarded $5,000 from the the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Maggie Michael is represented locally by G Fine Art.

An Open Letter to the Washington Post

As I've discussed before, the Post's Style section will soon have a new Assistant Managing Editor leading it. Deborah Heard will be the person in charge of Style starting January 1, 2005.

I believe that this offers all of us in the area's visual arts community an opportunity to see if we can convince Ms. Heard to augment the WaPost's tiny coverage of art galleries and area artists and I have asked all of you to write to her, or at least email her, with copies to her boss, Lenny Downie and the Arts Editor, my good friend John Pancake. Ignore the fact that they are all focused on politics and a card-carrying member of the Fake News Industrial Complex.

In this spirit I have written a letter to Ms. Heard, with copies to Downie and Pancake.

December 19, 2004

Deborah Heard
Washington Post Style
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20071

Dear Ms. Heard,

Congratulations on your promotion to Style section editor. It is our sincere wish and that of the artists whom we represent that you not only enjoy this important position, but it is also our hope that you may consider bringing some needed changes with respect to coverage of our area’s art galleries and visual artists.

It is thus why I am writing to you, in the hope that I can bring to your attention the perception by our area’s visual arts community of artists, fine arts galleries, alternative arts venues and artists organizations, of the poor coverage now afforded by the Washington Post to them/us.

As an artist, freelance art critic, radio arts commentator, publisher of DC Art News, and co-owner of the two Fraser Galleries, I believe that I have my finger on the heartbeat of our region’s visual art scene, and as I have discussed many times in the past with my good friend John Pancake, it is also my subjective opinion (but backed by empirical facts), that the Post does a very, very poor job in covering our area’s art galleries and visual artists, especially in comparison to your excellent coverage of the local theaters, area performance venues, as well as movies, fashion, books, etc.

For example, although there are almost twice as many art galleries in the Greater Washington region than theatres, for the last several years, the Style and Weekend section have consistently offered five to six times more print space, in the form of reviews, for theatres than galleries. Even plays in Olney get reviewed consistently (and we applaud you for this), while important visual art shows get ignored, simply because the Galleries column is the only regular column in the Post to cover local area gallery shows, augmented occasionally by the On Exhibit column in the Weekend section.

To make matters worse, the Washington Post is the only major newspaper that I know of, that has a Chief Art critic (Blake Gopnik) who does not review local galleries, and only (with a very, very rare exception) reviews museum shows. In fact, it was quite embarrassing earlier this year, when Gopnik was asked on the air (at the Kojo Nmandi show on WAMU) to discuss his favorite Washington area artist and he could not come up with a single name. In comparison, the chief art critics of major newspapers such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, etc. not only review museums, but also the galleries in their cities. It has been a mystery to our art scene why Mr. Gopnik has been allowed to segregate himself to only review our area and other cities’ museums and other cities’ art galleries and other cities’ artists, but not Washington area art galleries and artists. Does this make any sense to you?

Furthermore, your Thursday Style banner still claims that Thursdays is focused on Galleries/Art News, and yet, and consistently, there have been more theatre reviews on Thursdays than actual gallery reviews. Additionally, as you know, several years ago, the Arts Beat column, which used to be published every Thursday, was reduced to twice a month. Not only that, but that column, which used to often augment visual arts coverage, now has become, under the last two or three writers, a jack-of-all-arts column, more often than not writing about theatre, or music.

The evidence that the Washington Post has unexplainable apathy towards our area’s visual arts community is also highlighted by the recent issue with the reduction of the Galleries column to a twice-a-month column rather than weekly.

While we realize that a final decision has not been made in this issue, and that you are awaiting John Pancake’s return from his teaching sabbatical to finalize the issue, it nonetheless shows and adds evidence to the claim that the Post simply does not care about our city’s regional visual art scene (when it comes to our galleries and artists).

Why? Simply imagine that several of your many theatre critics all quit at once, leaving you with only one theater critic, who could only write one theatre review every couple of weeks. Would you reduce your theatre coverage from its very generous, almost daily occurrence, to twice a month?

I doubt it.

Why? Because it is clear that the Washington Post is dedicated to helping to grow our theatre scene, and this is a great effort that has yielded brilliant gains to our area’s cultural tapestry. Your effort includes not only daily coverage of the theatre, but also (I believe) around $300,000 in pro bono advertising for theatres.

This is great! And we all applaud the great theatre coverage. But what about us?

We also applaud your consistent coverage of our area museums, and as we are lucky enough to have some of the great museums in the world in our city, we are also grateful that the Washington Post affords great coverage through Mr. Gopnik in Style and the Sunday Arts, Mr. Richard once in a while in Style, and through Mr. O’Sullivan in Weekend, with Jacqueline Trescott and Teresa Wiltz also adding news articles and stories also dealing with our museums.

This is great! And we all applaud this informative coverage. But what about us?

And the Style coverage of movies (often then reviewed again by a different writer in Weekend), music (often then reviewed again by a different writer in Weekend), and dance is also adequate and informative, if somewhat repetitive, putting into question one excuse given in the past for not augmenting gallery coverage: "lack of newsprint space."

I will close this verbose letter with one last statistic: In the last couple of years the Style section has had over twice as many reviews and articles about fashion shows in Europe, New York and other cities, elegantly illustrated with color photos of gaunt models on the runways of Rome, New York, London and Paris, than reviews of art galleries in the Greater Washington area.

In my prejudiced opinion, I find it hard to believe that your readers would be more interested in un-wearable fashion from the runways of Europe than on our area’s art galleries and artists.

We welcome the change in command at Style and I sincerely and warmly wish you the best of luck in the job. I also hope that you bring an open mind to this subject, and consider augmenting gallery coverage to a level commensurate with Style’s coverage of the other cultural genres.

Warmest regards,

F. Lennox Campello

Cc: Leonard Downie
John Pancake

I hope that some of you write Ms. Heard as well, and I think that with enough notes and emails, she will realize that some changes need to be made under her leadership.

Last Thursday's Reviews

"[Contemporary] photography no longer bears any resemblance to photography in the past century's sense. If anything, it's a lot closer to the way old-fashioned figurative painting used to be."

Read Jessica's reviews of The Staged Body at Curator's Office, Athena Tacha at Marsha Mateyka and Brandon Morse at Strand on Volta.

And at the WCP, read Jeffry Cudlin's review of Brandon Morse here.

And also at the WCP, Louis Jacobson has three reviews: Christopher Burkett at Kathleen Ewing Gallery, and "Opening on 14th" at Hemphill Fine Arts, and "All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852–1860" at the National Gallery of Art.

Philip Barlow's Top 10 DC Art Shows of 2004

This is the first of about a dozen Top 10 art shows of 2004 that I've received so far. It comes from Philip Barlow, a well-known DC area art collector, board member of several DC art organizations and a knowledgeable member of our visual arts scene. I'll be posting the others during the rest of the week.

Barlow passes that his list is in order and that it was unintentional that he wound up with 10 different galleries in the list.

1. Invisible Things, Dan Treado, Addison/Ripley Gallery, May 15 – June 19

2. Run, Maggie Michael, G Fine Art, September 18 – October 16

3. Evidence, Robin Rose, Numark Gallery, February 27 – April 10

4. Leo Villareal Show, Leo Villareal, Conner Contemporary, May 15 – June 26

5. Concentrics, Craig Dennis, Jae Ko, Kathleen Kucka, Andrea Way, Marsha Mateyka Gallery, June 5 – July 24

6. AM I THE BeST, Carroll Sockwell, Washington Arts Museum (Edison Place Gallery), November 3 – December 17

7. On The Line: machines, maps and memory, Perry Steindel, Sylvie van Helden, Jennifer Swan, Andrew Krieger, Andy Holtin, Katy Uravich, District of Columbia Arts Center, April 30 – May 30

8. These Things Happen, Brandon Morse, Strand on Volta, November 18 – December 18

9. The Out-of-Towners, Laura Amussen, Lily Cox-Richard, Harrison Haynes, George Jenne, Michele Kong, Transformer Gallery, December 13, 2003 - January 17, 2004

10. Thom Flynn, Thom Flynn, Nevin Kelly Gallery, April 21 – May 9

The Sculpture-Stealing Capital of the World

What's going on in Fairfax County? As James W. Bailey points out, in 2004 there were three large sculptures stolen or dumped in Fairfax County!

1. Marc Sijan’s $40,000 "Legs Folded" from the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival. (It was eventually recovered from the apartment of the thief in Fairfax County).

2. Zach Oxman’s sculpture of Robert S. Simon in Reston. (Also recovered from Lake Anne and reinstalled at Lake Anne, Fairfax County).

3. And the PandaMania Panda found dumped in Fairfax County. (Recovered in Fairfax County - In today’s WaPo Metro section there is a picture with a photo caption line of a Fairfax County Police Officer pulling a stolen PandaMania Panda (originally stolen from the corner of Connecticut and Florida Avenues NW) from the Pohick Creek in Lorton.

Top 10 DC Area Art Shows of the Year

I had such an overwhelming response to my call for Artomatic Top 10 artists, that I thought that it may be fun to also have a call for readers' Top 10 DC area art shows.

I will have my top 10 listed soon.

Email me your Top 10 list and I'll post them here. I'd like to restrict the list to the Greater Washington area galleries and museums and other visual arts spaces.

A couple of Florida opportunities for artists

Since I was just there...

Deadline: December 3, 2004
The John S & James L Knight Foundation seeks work for permanent installation at the foundation's Miami headquarters. A total of 26 works will be selected, corresponding to each of the communities where the Knight brothers operated newspapers. For submission guidelines contact: Steven F Greenwald Design.

Deadline: December 3, 2004
The Fifth Annual Florida Outdoor Sculpture Competition, a joint project of Polk Museum of Art and the City of Lakeland, is accepting submissions for a Public Art exhibition in downtown Lakeland. Open to sculptors working in North America. Ten works will be accepted and will receive $1,000 to offset transportation expenses. $3,000 Best of Show. Deadline is December 31, 2004. Non-refundable $15 entry fee.

Artists should submit labeled slides of up to three completed works, with 2-3 views of each work, along with a resume, and one paragraph artist statement. Electronic submissions will be accepted via email or PC compatible CD. Images must be in .jpg format, no larger than 600 pixels wide at 72 dpi; and artist statement should be in plain text, Word, or .pdf format.

Send all materials to: Polk Museum of Art, Att: Outdoor Sculpture Competition, 800 E Palmetto St, Lakeland FL 33801-5529. No incomplete works or project proposals will be considered. All works must be able to be anchored to concrete and maintenance free for the duration of the exhibit. For full prospectus/further details, visit this website or call 863-688-7743 ext. 289.