Congratulations

Kudos to Bert GF Shankman of Olney, MD who had three of his photographs chosen for the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. They were chosen by Anne Wilkes Tucker Chief Curator of Photography of the museum. This top notch museum has over 22,000 photos in its collection of photography which is the largest and easily amongst the finest in the country.

Bert will be having an Open Studio and Sale on June 7 and 8 from 12-5 PM where you may see the award winning photographs plus others,. Admission is free to this show and sale at his home gallery and open to the public. Call: 301-774-0655.

Top 20 Must-See US Museum Exhibitions for Summer 2008

According to MutualArt.com anyway:

· Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy (Dallas Museum of Art)

· Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections from the Cheech Marin Collection (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

· Gilbert & George (Milwaukee Art Museum)

· Everything's Here: Jeff Koons and His Experience of Chicago (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago)

· The Baroque World of Fernando Botero (New Orleans Museum of Art)

· Calder Jewelry (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

· Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh)

· Frida Kahlo (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)

· Louise Bourgeois (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City)

· Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe (Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City)

Good story!

The CP's Angela Valdez has a really interesting article on DC area ubercollector and museumeister Mitch Rales. Read it here.

Opportunity for DC Artists

Deadline: Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 5:30 pm

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) is purchasing artwork that captures archetypes of Washington DC. Subjects include specific neighborhoods, parks and circles, festivals, gathering places, or cultural events. Less obvious motifs include downtown redevelopment, restaurants, shops and businesses, work places, or Metro stations. Artists should consider a broad range of subject matter as long as the works have an unmistakable subject reflecting life in the District. Artists should also consider submitting images of Washington that depict the changing neighborhoods and the parts of the city that are disappearing. The Committee is very interested in depictions of all wards of the city. The collection serves to honor and embrace life in the District.

This opportunity is open to all artists who reside and have their studio in the District of Columbia.

For more information and to download the Call to Artist, please visit www.dcarts.dc.gov or to request an application in HTML format, email Beth Baldwin or call (202) 724-5613.

Open Studio in Baltimore

Our own Rosetta DeBerardinis will host an open studio on Saturday, June 7th; Time: 1-7 pm at:

School 33 Art Center
1427 Light Street
Studio #201
Baltimore, Maryland 21230

Black Art

Months ago it drove me crazy when Washington Post writer Jacqueline Trescott described Jacob Lawrence a great "African American" artist and now it drives me even crazier when her Washington Post's colleague and that paper's chief art critic writes (in reviewing current shows by American artists Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence in the nation's capital) that:

The surprise isn't that Douglas couldn't overcome all the obstacles there were to making the first fully convincing black art. It's that the young Lawrence, in his "Migration of the Negro," did.

"Black Art"????? Is there really such a genre? If there is, then haven't Africans been making "Black Art" for milennia?

And yes, I do know that there are commercial art fairs that are focused to attract collectors of art about African American subjects, just like there are art fairs focused on Latin American artists, European artists, Australian artists, Asian, etc. They all create art, and their race and ethnicities are part of the processes and cultural contributions to the end commodity, but in the end, it is art.

But Gopnik really means "African-American art," doesn't he?

It's just American art; it happens to depict African American subjects and history, and its talented creators were African American, but the end result is no more "black art" than Andy Warhol's art is "white art" and Morris Louis' art is "Jewish Art" and so on.

It's just "American Art."

Makes my head hurt.

10 Great Towns for Working Artists

10. Oil City, Pennsylvania

What makes it special: The birthplace of the oil industry and former headquarters of Standard Oil, Quaker State and Pennzoil, this northwestern Pennsylvania town is reinventing itself into a lively, committed arts community. With affordable Victorian homes and mixed-use properties (many under $50,000), theater, music, a branch campus of Clarion University, easy accessibility to art markets from Cleveland to Buffalo, and dozens of artists who have already claimed this small town as home, Oil City is one of the best deals on the market.

What it offers: 100 percent fixed-rate financing up to $150,000 on live-work space (when using First National Bank). This includes rehab costs, and mortgage insurance is waived. $7,500 toward down payment and closing costs on a residence through Venango County Affordable Housing (income guidelines apply). Plus there are opportunities for facade grants and loans, tax abatements for commercial properties and tax breaks for certain properties in the Historic District. Downtown studio space is available at $0.49 per square foot, with the first three months rent free.

Read this excellent article by Kim Hall to discover the other nine cities here.