DCing

I'm in DC all this week.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: October 6, 2006

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities' Art Bank Program has a call for entries as they are purchasing artwork to be part of the District of Columbia's 2007 Art Bank Program.

Works in the collection are owned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and loaned to other District Government agencies for display in public areas. Deadline: October 6, 2006.

For more information and an application, please visit their website to download the Call for Entries application, or call 202-724-5613 to have one sent to you.

The City's Art Bank is a growing collection of moveable works funded through DC Creates Public Art, the District’s Art in Public Places Program.

Works in the collection are owned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and are loaned to other District government agencies for display in public areas of government buildings. This collection helps preserve the city’s past and is an important legacy for future generations. Currently, approximately 1,600 artworks are on display in more than 100 agencies.

9/11 Artwork

Beliefnet artists have put together a 9/11 art scrapbook. See it here.

Wanna go to an opening tonight?

The place to go tonight in the DC area is the opening reception at the Katzen Arts Center at AU.

The Mid-Atlantic's best looking arts venue will host the opening receptions from 6-9PM to welcome:

Life After Death: New Leipzig Painters from the Rubell Family Collection
Eberhard Havekost: New Works from the Rubell Family Collection
Hungarian Revolution, 1956
Mindy Weisel: Words on a Journey
Athena Tacha: Small Wonders

Just the fact that Don and Mera Rubell may be there (they will be at the Katzen on Sept. 19 to discuss "their very personal process of selecting and collecting art") probably means that every art dealer within a 200 mile radius will probably show up.

I am particularly interested in Life After Death: New Leipzig Painters from the Rubell Family Collection. In 1989, the seven artists represented in this exhibition: Tilo Baumgärtel, Tim Eitel, Martin Kobe, Neo Rauch, Christoph Ruckhäberle, David Schnell and Matthias Weischer — all rejected the trendy genres of today's art critics and museum curators: video, photography and installation art, and instead chose to study figurative painting at the Leipzig Art Academy.

The resulting work goes completely against the grain of what a lot of art writers, critics and curators try to force-feed us as the only viable contemporary art forms, and reflects the fact that as long as talent is given room to grow, there is room for all genres and visual interests, including the much maligned realism.

It will be interesting to read what the chief art critic of the Washington Post, a leading town crier for the "painting is dead" mob, writes about this show. However, if his review of fellow German painter Gerhardt Richter's 2003 show is an indication (which Gopnik should have hated), Gopnik won't step out of line and will conveniently join the international applause chorus to the Leipzig boys.

Kudos to the Katzen for bringing a top-notch show to the capital area.

Wanna go to a DC opening this weekend?

The read Heather Goss over at DCist as she has a list of the top shows opening this weekend as the "arts season" kicks in with a bang at the Greater DC area's top galleries.

Read the openings list here.

Signs

I don't know if it is true or not, but a friend of mine told me a while back that some of the subjects in Trawick prizewinner James Rieck send hidden signals/messages via their hands' depictions.

If you know how to read that sort of stuff, go here and tell me if the top two paintings of the little girls are "messaging" anything.