Selected Photographers

These are the photographers and photographs selected by juror Catriona Fraser for the IV Annual Bethesda International Photography Competition.

See them here. The exhibition opens next Friday at our gallery with an opening reception from 6-9PM as part of the Bethesda Art Walk.

See ya there!

Juror

Tonight I'll be jurying an exhibition for the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, a terrific art venue on 7th Street, SE.

More on that later.

Vettriano original nets £290,000

Everytime one of Jack Vettriano's paintings comes up for auction in the UK, it's as if British art collectors spit on the face of British art critics and British museums.

One of Jack Vettriano's most popular paintings, Dance Me To The End Of Love (one of the world's bestselling posters), just sold for nearly 300,000 pounds in Scotland (and way over that once all commissions are added in) - that's a lot of dollars!

Untrained, gruff and very un-PC, Vettriano is perhaps the world's best-selling artist. He has been shunned by the high art world, with major UK galleries refusing to acquire his works. However, this self-taught Scottish artist has huge worldwide popular appeal. His painting The Singing Butler sold for almost £750,000 in 2004, the highest price ever paid for a Scottish painting at auction.

The only example of his work to be featured in a public collection in the world is a painting donated by a collector to the Kirkcaldy Museum in Fife, Scotland, Vettriano's birthplace.

New Photography Curator

Toby Jurovics has been hired as the Smithsonian American Museum's new Curator for Photography.

Previously, Jurovics served as a curator of photography at the Princeton University Art Museum.

As a federal government employee, Jurovics will be now responsible for research, exhibitions and acquisitions related to the Smithsonian American Museum's photography collection.

What Hollywood didn't tell you

Congrats to Philip Seymour Hoffman for winning an Oscar for playing Truman Capote in the movies.

And now for what Hollywood didn't tell you...

Between 1946-1956, around 50,000 Cubans obtained legal permanent visas to emigrate to the United States.

It was during this migration that José Capote migrated to the USA and settled in New Orleans in search of work, met and married Lillie Mae Faulk, and became a father to her young son Truman.

DC Dealer in NYC's DIVA

Hardworking DC art dealer Rody Douzoglou will be participating at the Digital and Video Fair (DIVA) in New York March 9-12, 2006.

Click here for more info on the videos and artists that Rody has been showcasing at art fairs all over the world.

One more

One of the great things about living in an area with a great visual arts presence is the sheer number of good places and venues that exhibit artwork. Here's a new one to me:

DC artist Afrika Midnight Asha Abney will be exhibiting through March 31, 2006 at The Graham Collection, located at 3518 12th St NE in Washington, DC. Contact numbers for Afrika Midnight Asha Abney is 202-455-3773 or Karl Graham, gallery owner of The Graham Collection at 202-832-9292.