Art Deal of the Week

My pick this week is this almost painterly color digital photograph by American photographer Sandi Croan. She has captured the side of a ship, where the tires (serving as bumpers), have created a painting on the side of the ship's seaborne bulkheads. As a result, at first glance the photo looks like a painting or a watercolor, until closer examination reveal its true details.

It is titled "UMS" and the photograph measures 17.25 x 12.5 inches and then it is matted in a white pH-balanced acid free white museum mat and framed in a black moulding under glass to a framed size of 29x23 inches. Photo is signed by the photographer. The price (including frame): $300. That's an incredible deal for this large photo.

To buy it call 301/718-9651 or email the gallery.

Call for Erotica

Deadline: October 1st, 2006

Erotic Signature has launched the World's Greatest Erotic Art Competition (WGEAC).

With prizes ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 and the opportunity to have your work viewed by the world's leading publishers, curators, artists, academics, collectors, editors, and established masters in the field of erotic art.

This competition will culminate into a coffee table book entitled The World's Greatest Erotic Art of Today. This annual publication will be comprised of each year's 200 WGEAC's winners and all profits from its sale donated to an organization fighting to find a cure for HIV/AIDS.

All entrants are required to submit an entry fee of $45 for the first artwork, another $40 if you submit two and a total of $110 if you submit the maximum entry of three artworks during your initial registration.

Entries can be done via both their website application system online or by mail. Mail-in entries must include payment, CDs and all application forms, and be sent to:

Erotic Signature
P.O. Box 014837
Miami, Florida 33101

Visit www.eroticsignature.com for more details.

Opportunity for Photographers

Deadline: May 15, 2006

My good friend Philip Brookman, who is the Senior Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art will be the juror for the 2006 Photo Review Photography Competition.

The Photo Review, a highly acclaimed critical journal of photography, is sponsoring its 22nd annual photography competition with a difference. Instead of only installing an exhibit that would be seen by a limited number of people, The Photo Review will reproduce accepted entries in its 2006 competition issue. Thus, the accepted photographs will be seen by thousands of people all across the country and entrants will have a tangible benefit from the competition.

Also, the prize-winning photographers will be chosen for an exhibition at the
photography gallery of The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and will be
exhibited on The Photo Review’s website.

Awards include a Microtek i800 scanner, $350 in gift certificates from Calumet Photographic, two Lensbaby 2.0 SLR selective focus lenses with macro kits, two $100 gift certificates from Sprint Systems, a professional level membership in Women in Photography International (worth $235), several Case Envy portfolios from Lost Luggage, and $250 in cash prizes.

An entry fee of $30 for up to three prints, slides, or images on CD and $5 each
for up to two additional images entitles all entrants to a copy of the catalogue. In addition, all entrants will be able to subscribe to The Photo Review for $34, a 20% discount. All entries must be received by mail between May 1 and May 15, 2006.

For a prospectus and details, send a self-addressed, stamped business-size (#10) envelope to:
The Photo Review
140 East Richardson Avenue, Suite 301
Langhorne, PA 19047

The prospectus may also be downloaded from The Photo Review website at www.photoreview.org/compete.htm. For further information call
215/891-0214.

Back from H-M Opening

Just back from the grand opening of the new Heineman Myers Gallery in Bethesda.

Tons of people, including a rare sight: major collectors from Baltimore in a DCish opening. This was a class opening, with uniformed waiters, a beautiful catalog of the exhibition, and the great photography of a proven big name and talented photographer: Connie Imboden (and a magnificent video of how Imboden does her photography on a large screen flat TV).

And also a good warm sight, in seeing all the major gallery owners in Bethesda show up to wish Zoe Myers a warm and auspicious opening. Unfortunately, we also learned that Ozmosis Gallery will soon be closing its doors, and its owner moving to New York in hope of finding greener pastures in the Big Apple.

Pics later...

Openings on 1st Friday

There's a ton of openings tomorrow, being first Friday and all...and most of the Dupont Circle area galleries will have extended hours from 6-8PM. Go see (and buy) some artwork!

And Saturday don't forget to swing by the grand opening of the new Heineman Myers Gallery in Bethesda, just a few minutes from the Bethesda Metro stop.

And also on Saturday, Engineers Without Borders, which is an University of Maryland student group on campus that works with developing communities around the world to improve people's lives through specific projects are hosting an art auction to be held Saturday April, 8th from 5-8pm and Sunday, April 9th 2-4pm. The auction will be held at the Leland Community Center, located at 4301 Willow Lane in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

O'Sullivan on TEXT

The WaPo's art critic Michael O'Sullivan reviews the current Text exhibition at the Greater Reston Arts Center.

Read the review here.

On the Return of Art and Antiquities

You can't pick up a newspaper or visit an art blog these days without running into a story about some country suing an American museum or institution over the return of some artwork or antiquities which may have made their way to the US through either shady means or even forgotten formal agreements.

And now Bloomberg reports that the government of Peru plans to sue Yale University, over hundreds of artifacts taken from the ancient city of Machu Picchu nearly a century ago.

And this may be the straw that breaks the camel's back (or in this case the llama's back).

The artifacts made their way to the US through Yale archeologist Hiram Bingham. One side claims that the artifacts were on loan. Yale contends the artifacts were legally excavated and exported "in line with the practices of the time."

And if these artifacts were sent to the US through some agreement with the Peruvian government nearly a century ago, then Yale has a case for keeping them; otherwise -- in the event that the American archeologists simply found them, crated them and shipped them to the US - all on their own -- then today's courts may well rule in Peru's favor.

And that straw that may break the camel's back may also unlock Pandora's box (which Greece will soon be suing for).

First: let's get one thing clear: Nazi art loot should and must be returned to their original owners or descendants.

But for most of all the other demanding of artwork returns: where does it stop?

Because unless you have some official paperwork signed, stamped and approved (and recognized as valid) then...

Does every Roman artifact in museums around the world have to be returned to Italy? And do Italian museums have to return Roman antiquities that were made in other parts of the Roman Empire to the nations that now exist there? And Italy better start packing the 13 Egyptian obelisks that are all over Rome: Cairo is clearing out some spaces for them.

Every Greek vase back to Greece? But do Greek museums have to return Cypriot antiquities to Cyprus?

Does every mummy have to find its way back to Egypt?

That "official" cadaver of Christopher Columbus in the Havana Cathedral? Sorry... back to Spain; or is it Italy, or Portugal? All three of those nations currently claim him as a native son, although I suspect that the Grand Admiral's descendants, currently living in Spain, have first dibs on Chris' bones.

And the fake Columbus cadaver in the Seville Cathedral? Back to Genoa, even if it's fake (just in case).

After all, that fake Scottish Stone of Destiny has made its way back to Scotland (God only knows where the real one is), but there are probably hundreds of thousands of antiquities (if not millions) from all over the world disseminated... all over the world.

Our own Smithsonian has over 100,000 pre-Columbian antiquities in its inventory (most of which are not even on display). Do the ones that were created by pre-Columbian artisans from north and south of our border have to be returned to the countries that now exist there?

Unless these museums have a provenance with lots of country of origin stamps authorizing the removal of the antiquity, I'd be pretty nervous if I was one of those museums.

And even if you have such a paper, what's to stop today's version of a country's government from saying that they do not recognize the authority of their predecessors to allow the removal of a national treasure from their nation.

And where does it stop?

Frida Kahlo was essentially ignored by Mexico while she was alive, and yet decades after her death she was deified outside of Mexico, and eventually the government of Mexico made her works a national treasure and forbade the export of any of Kahlo's works from Mexico. I think that this is a good (if late) thing for Mexico and Mexicans.

But what's to stop a future Mexican government from demanding the return of any and all Frida Kahlos outside of Mexico back to her mother nation.

It would just be a case of this "return" trend being pushed a little more.

Personally, I think that from now on, when I visit foreign museums, I will be making a list of American Indian artifacts in those museums, and they better damned have a piece of paper somewhere full of stamps and signatures from the Sioux, or the Walla Walla, or the Cheyenne, or the Seminoles or the Oneida or whatever indigenous Native American nation that currenly lives in the USA created them.

Official export paperwork from the United States government is not valid, and will not be accepted, regardless of how many non-Indian Washington, DC officials have signed it.

Of course, that may also mean that every non-Indian museum in the USA itself, would have to return every Native American Indian artifact back to their tribes.

Makes my head hurt...