Kanchan Balse's first solo

It's always a memorable event in an artist's career when that first solo show takes place, and next Saturday November 4, with an opening from 6:30-8pm at Dumbarton Concert Gallery in Georgetown, Kanchan Balse is doing exactly that! The show runs through Nov. 12, 2006.

Gurus on City Hall Art Collection's Opening

The WaPo's Julia Beizer, who is one of the "Going Out Gurus" for the Washington Post's blog of the same name, has a nice mini review and visit to the City Hall Art Collection's opening last Tuesday.

Read her post here.

Marchand on City Hall Art Collection

Anne Marchand has a terrific report and a ton of photos of the huge opening for the City Hall Art Collection. Read her report and see the photos here.

Katie Tuss makes her debut

Katie Tuss will be writing regularly for Mid Atlantic Art News, covering DC area galleries and museums and any other places that she travels to. Below is her review of "An Impressionist Sensibility: The Halff Collection," at The Smithsonian American Art Museum.

An Impressionist Sensibility
By Katie Tuss

Although the mention of impressionism may be considered a sure way to create record exhibition turnout, Chief Curator Eleanor Jones Harvey explained that the Smithsonian American Art Museum did not choose the title "An Impressionist Sensibility" lightly. Each one of the 26 American Impressionist paintings featured in the exhibition, however diverse, is distinctly dependent on the "modern impulses found in impressionism."

It is this sensibility that collectors Marie and Hugh Halff have focused on while creating their standout private collection of late 19th-and early 20th-century American Art, which makes up the exhibition in its entirety. All of the artists featured studied in France and Europe between the 1870s and the 1920s, providing them with the groundwork to interpret impressionism in a uniquely American way.

Childe Hassam's "Clearing Sunset (Corner of Berkeley Street and Columbus Avenue)" illustrates the emerging modernism of the time with its rising buildings, bustling passersby, and puffs of steam from a distant engine. American art was coming of age and asserting that the US could stand tall next to European progress.

It was these times that launched an "aesthetic revolt," according to Harvey, which shifted the interests of American artists away from the National Academy of Design and moved them beyond subject matter. Artists were freed to focus on the act of painting.

Color and brushstroke are celebrated in William Merritt Chase's "Shinnecock Landscape with Figures." The striking image of his daughter in red serves as the focal point amongst the immediacy of the markings that constitute the landscape.

The Halff Collection also features John Singer Sargent's much sought after "The Sulphur Match" and the rarely viewed Winslow Homer "Houses on a Hillside."

"An Impressionist Sensibility" is on view through February 4, 2007.

Day One

And so last night Washington, DC experienced what was perhaps the largest art opening in its history, and today - the first day after the event - the WaPo is silent about it (as far as I can dig into it any way).

But the WaPo's Style section has a column on George Allen's campaign, ironically someone with the last name Duke writes about Pieter Botha, and David Segal discusses the New York housing market, and there are stories and reviews on The Folger Theatre's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", the other Mark Jenkins has a music review of the Black Cat, there's a piece on the Kennedy Center Concert Hall's tribute to Mary Day, Washington's first lady of ballet, another on neighborhood bars in Baltimore, Chanticleer's performance on Monday night at the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium, a few more theatre reviews by Jane Horwitz, another theatre review of the Washington Stage Guild production of "An Inspector Calls," by Cecilia Wren (note how the Style editor thinks that it is important to have multiple reviews of DC area theatre plays by different writers, but only allows one DC area gallery review by only one freelancer every two weeks), one book review, one dance review, a story about the Day of the Dead, and the usual regular fluff.

But we know that the deadlines for WaPo pieces are a few days before they are published, so perhaps by the end of the week the Style section will have a piece on the new City Hall Art Collection and the huge opening last night.

Breath being held.

Scary

I had a scary Halloween yesterday. On the way to the City Hall Art Collection opening last night, we instead had to rush to the emergency room, where we spent most of the night while emergency room doctors at Suburban Hospital did a terrific job on a suspected blood clot (not me) and decided against it.

Everyone is OK, but we missed the opening. I hear over 1,000 people attended - I'd like to hear some comments, both pro and con, about the collection - email me and I'll post them here.

Liz Spayd for WaPo.com

Liz Spayd, an assistant managing editor in charge of national news for The Washington Post, has been named editor of washingtonpost.com.

Spayd's upcoming editorialship has been called in an official WaPo statement as "another sign that our Web site is a journalistic force that will play a large part in shaping The Post's future."

Spayd joined the WaPo in 1988.

A little history:

When the washingtonpost.com first got started, one of the first things that it did was to augment the galleries and visual arts coverage by adding a group of freelance writers who would write reviews and profiles to augment the print version's scant coverage of the DC area's galleries and artists.

This is how Jessica Dawson first connected with the Washington Post bosses. Previous to that, she used to write for the Washington City Paper as a freelancer working for then WCP Arts Editor Glenn Dixon Brad McKee.

At the washingtonpost.com, under editor John Poole (who was then the site's online Arts Editor), the arts coverage by the WaPo online flourished and there were dozens and dozens of gallery reviews, which have unfortunately mostly disappeared from the WaPo's online presence, as well as many gallery profiles, most of which have also vanished, although a few still remain.

At once point, even the print version critics, such as Jessica Dawson's predecessor for the Galleries column (Ferdinand Protzman) and Michael O'Sullivan, authored online articles and reviews for washingtonpost.com which were only available online.

And for a short period of time, there was happiness in the air, as the WaPo finally appeared to be delivering gallery coverage, if just through its expanded online presence.

And then John Poole got promoted and went on to bigger and better things.

And then it took a looooong time to find a replacement online Arts editor. And by the time she was hired, she had a tight budget and no allowance for online art critics, and a bare bones coverage of the art scene.

And then the WaPo's Chief Art Critic (Paul Richard) retired, and Ferd Protzman got pissed that he didn't get promoted to that job and quit, and Jessica got hired as a freelancer to replace Protzman and back then the Galleries column was a weekly column.

And then Gopnik got hired from some Canadian newspaper where he used to write for after the Post's first choice (a New York Times critic) turned the job offer down and recommended Blake, who apparently was outside the Post's radar at that time.

And the "augmented" online visual arts coverage ended, other than the random Gopnik video here and there.

Liz Spayd, if you read this: can you bring back some other critical voices to the DC art scene and renew the online art reviews?