Sirius on Tate

Sirius Satellite Radio will be recording a segment on DC area uberartist Tim Tate sometime next week. Details to follow.

Smithsonian to launch TV station

I was reminded today that the Smithsonian Institution will be launching its own television station later this year. It's a joint venture between the SI and CBS/Showtime Networks.

2007 DC Mayor's Arts Awards

The fun, entertainment and presentation of the awards will take place on Monday, March 19, 6:00pm, at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Hizzoner Mayor Adrian Fenty will preside over his first Mayor's Arts Awards, the highest honor conferred by the District of Columbia in recognition of artistic excellence and service among artists, organizations, and patrons in the District.

The 22nd Annual Mayor's Arts Awards will be held on Monday, March 19th at 6:00 p.m. in the Concert Hall at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Grammy Award winning a cappella group, Sweet Honey In The Rock will perform and accept the Lifetime Achievement Award.

My good friend WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi is the evening's Master of Ceremonies. Legendary choreographer, director, producer Debbie Allen, D.C. Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Clifford Janey, and Norman Scribner, Artistic Director, Choral Arts Society of Washington are among the presenters.

The evening will feature an award presentation for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, Outstanding Contribution to Arts Education, Excellence in Service to the Arts, and Innovation in the Arts and others.

Winners will be announced "live" from the stage and receive a statuette specifically commissioned for the ceremony. This event is free and open to the public and I have attended many times over the years and it is a boatload of fun. No tickets are necessary for the award ceremony, but reservations are recommended. The audience should RSVP to artsawards@dc.gov or 202.724.5613.

Grants for Artists

The LEF Foundation accepts grants applications on an ongoing basis. They offer funding for contemporary works in the visual arts, performing arts, literary arts, architecture, design, film and new media. The intent of the grants are to provide opportunities to produce and present new work; to honor creative merit and foster critical discourse; encourage dissemination of work by emerging and under-recognized artists; increase exposure of established artists in regions where they have not been widely represented; to promote new concepts, technologies, and approaches that are experimental or innovative; to support work that may be considered controversial or provocative; and to enhance the voices of marginalized cultures. Interested applicants should send a one page Letter of Intent. For more information or program guidelines, contact:

LEF Foundation
945 Greene St.
San Francisco, CA 94133

Wanna go to nude body painting opening in DC this Friday?

On Friday, March 16, 2007, the five Canal Square Galleries in Georgetown (Parish, Alla Rogers, Rebecca Cross, Anne Fisher and MOCA DC) have their usual 3rd Friday Georgetown openings and MOCA DC is hosting its Erotica 2007 show opening starting at 6 pm until the beer and wine runs out. They will also have a nude body painting event (three females and three males) as part of the festivities.

Oh yeah! The event is free and open to the public.

Jasper Johns and Target

Adam Benforado (identified as "a lawyer and art history buff") writes a really insightful and sensitive piece for the WaPo on corporate sponsorship of art, an issue which has been largely ignored by most art critics, writers and other artworld symbiots.

Currently hanging outside the East Wing of the National Gallery is a large banner of Jasper Johns's 1955 "Target With Four Faces," advertising a show celebrating the first decade of his work. The painting is dominated by the title motif: a blue dot surrounded by four concentric circles of alternating yellow and blue. Walking in recently, I joked to my companion that I was surprised that Target wasn't sponsoring the show.

Out of the mouths of babes . . .

It turns out Target is sponsoring it, "proudly," in fact.

Offering financial backing to the exhibition was undoubtedly a savvy move for Target. After all, the show is filled with paintings that, though they aren't red and white, evoke Target's corporate logo. Johns's targets also appear on the exhibition catalogue and posters for sale in the gift shop. On the busy Sunday I was there, hundreds of people were strolling through, staring intently at various depictions of an image that has been engrained in our heads as standing for one of America's most powerful and successful companies.

And then Adam Benforado offers up a solution:

First, if we care about art -- if we value it as a social good -- we must increase public funding so that museum directors and artists can remain independent. While the United States is unlikely to shift to the centralized European model of art sponsorship, the federal government's stingy arts budget could be increased without any of us feeling much of a bite in our pocketbooks.

Second, we should demand that corporations give money to art galleries without sponsoring particular shows. If Target is really committed to "arts and education," as it says in the Johns show brochure, then it should be just as satisfied with its donation going to support the excellent exhibit on Rembrandt's prints and drawings in the adjoining building.

Or the operating budget for the WPA/C, or finding a place for the Wyeth mural, etc. My kudos to Adam. Read the whole article here.

Sight Scene

Several writers from the WaPo Express have been surveying the DC area art scene including some good postings by SSGT Capps and Kriston & Co. have been doing an excellent job. His most recent survey of some terrific DC area shows is here.