The Power of the Web (local Bloggers do good)

J.T. has a solo show coming, G.P. is on CNN, Green will be curating a gallery show, and that living word-processing machine known as J.W. Bailey, strikes again.

Congrats to all!

The Thursday Reviews

Jessica Dawson has an excellent piece about A Proud Continuum: Eight Decades of Art at Howard University, an exhibition that I was not aware was taking place, and which sounds superbly interesting.

Dawson also writes about David Adamson Gallery's move while she looks at Victor Schrager's book still lifes and four landscape prints by William Christenberry.

And in an unexpected orgy of Thursday visual arts coverage, the usually visual art-stingy WaPo also offers a magnificent profile on area photographer John Gossage, whose last book is by Bethesda-based Loosestrife Editions, which produces beautiful photography books.

This profile of Gossage is extraordinary not only in the sense that it profiles a very important (and very good) area visual artist, but in the sense that it is there (in Style) at all. I hope that it signifies a course correction change by the Style section's new editor (Deb Heard), in doing for visual artists what the section already does for local musicians, dancers and actors.

In the City Paper Louis Jacobson has a very good review of our current Lida Moser exhibition in Georgetown.

Elsewhere in the WCP, Bidisha Banerjee has an excellent review of Prof. Peter Charles at Irvine Contemporary; a show which I quite liked as well.

The CP again comes through with a superb artist profile, in this case by Adam Mazmanian about Alexandria artist Mike Lowery.

In The Gazette, Karen Schafer discusses The Baltimore Watercolor Society 2005 Mid-Atlantic Regional Watercolor Exhibition at Strathmore Mansion.

In The Georgetowner, Gary Tischler reviews Faces of the Fallen.

The Friday Openings

Tomorrow is Bethesda's time to showcase their galleries, and tomorrow is the Bethesda Art Walk, with 17 participating galleries and art venues.

Free guided tours begin at 6:30pm. Attendees can meet their guide at the Bethesda Metro Center, located at the corner of Old Georgetown Road and Wisconsin Avenue. Attendees do not have to participate in tours to visit Art Walk galleries.

Ozmosis Gallery has "A Single Vision" by Deanna Schwartzberg, while Elyse over at Gallery Neptune has an exhibition of artists' made
bookmarks, Marin-Price has paintings by Roxie Munro. Many of her oils and watercolors are views from the roof of her sky-lighted loft studio in Long Island City, just across the East River from her home in mid-Manhattan. And Creative Partners has large watercolors by Valerie Watson.

We have the second solo show by Canadian photographer Andrzej Pluta, who uses a lot of darkroom tricks (like photographing the subject flowers underwater) to deliver some of the most unusual series of flower photographs in contemporary photography.

Read the review of his 2003 solo show here.

Arts Agenda

The DCist Arts Agenda Listing has the best of this week's openings.

Time of the month for the Bethesda Art Walk on Friday.

Kahloprizes

Over the last few months I've been curating a worldwide call to artists for an Homage to Frida Kahlo hosted by Art.com with the sponsorhip of the Cultural Institute of Mexico and the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City.

Like every single one of the hundreds of art shows that I've juried or curated or organized over the years, it was an extremely difficult task. Putting together a group art show, no matter what the subject or focus, is never easy.

I reviewed about 500 entries and selected sixty or so for exhibition at art.com.

Check out the prizewinners here.

National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery is scheduled to reopen in July 2006, and emulating their namesakes in England and Scotland, they are now institutionalizing and sponsoring a major new national competition for painted and sculpture portraits: The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.

One portrait completed since January 1, 2004 may be entered between June 1 and September 6, 2005. Winner will receive $25,000 commission to complete a portrait for the Gallery's collection. Smaller awards for other finalists. Entry fee is $25 for online entries and $35 for snail mail entries.

Up to 500 paper entry forms accompanied by slides of the portrait will be accepted. Submit one or two slides for a painting and up to four slides for a sculpture. A paper entry form must be requested via e-mail from portraitcompetition@npg.si.edu after May 15, 2005. The entry fee will be $35, payable by credit card, certified check, or money order.

The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006 will be judged in two stages. First, a panel of experts will use an online jurying system to select approximately 120 semifinalist works. The Gallery will then arrange to ship these paintings and sculptures to Washington, D.C., where the panel will meet again in early March of 2006 to select the 50-60 finalists. These works will be installed in the National Portrait Gallery’s newly renovated second-floor special exhibition galleries.

Details here. I think that it is a shame that only two genres (painting and sculpture) are being admitted to the competition. That decision leaves out the potential for the NPG to explore other rich and vibrant genres like printmaking, collage, photography, even video.

Insider's Hint: I know one of these jurors quite well, and at least in that juror's perspective, he/she will be looking for portraits that really "expand" the definition of portraiture. I will be really, really surprised if a "traditional" portrait is chosen; but I could be wrong.

Don't Mess with the (Russian Orthodox) Church!

(Thanks Joseph)

"The director of the Sakharov Museum was convicted Monday of inciting religious hatred with a controversial art exhibition that was deemed "blasphemous and profane" by the Russian Orthodox Church.

A federal district court fined museum director Yuri Samodurov and curator Lyudmila Vasilovskaya $3,600 each for organizing the 2003 exhibit, which featured dozens of artists' expressions on the subject of religion."

Read the story here. Password available here.