Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: February 1, 2009

Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery/College of Saint Elizabeth. For an exhibition opening on March 15, 2009, The Maloney Art Gallery is interested in receiving digital (jpg) submissions of art in any medium that constitutes a response to Cuba, its art and culture, people, history, landscape, geography etc. Please send up to 5 jpgs labeled with last name and title of work, a one-page resume, an artist's statement about the submitted work, and an object list with title of work, date, size (h x w x d"), weight (if over 10 lbs), owner, location. Please send to Dr. Ginny Butera, Director, by email to: artgallery@cse.edu.

An Old, Bad Idea for the Arts

Many will say (often in a testy voice) that the arts deserve a cabinet-level presence because they are just as important to the country as the Defense Department. While that's something of an apples and oranges comparison, the deeper problem is that it assumes that the country's defense and its arts can be furthered via the same sort of bureaucratic means. But while our nation's defense would collapse in the absence of the centralized power of our Defense Department, having a Department of Culture -- or even a "Cultural Czar," to use that awful label we've apparently become so fond of -- would be neither an effective nor necessary way to guarantee the health of cultural expression in America.

Read David Smith in the WSJ here.

Get Mannie Garcia's Photo at the NPG

By now the story on the fact that DC photographer Mannie Garcia was the uncredited original source for Shepard Fairey's iconic portrait of President Obama has been all over the internets (although curiously out of the dead tree mainstream press as far as I can detect).



The above photo by Joe Tresh captures the unveiling and installation of the Obama portrait by Shepard Fairey at the National Portrait Gallery on Saturday, January 17, 2009. Street artist Fairey is the gentleman in the sharkskin grey suit.

A while back I asked the NPG for clarification on its acquisition policy. It is my understanding that contemporary portraits could only be considered for acquisition if the portrait was done by the artist from the actual living subject. At least that's what I was told by an NPG curator a few years ago when I sold a portrait to the NPG. My recent question to the NPG has been elevated to the curator and I am waiting for a response. The NPG response should be an easy one. They can either say:

(a) Mr. Campello, you are right in that it is the policy of the NPG to acquire contemporary portraits only when the portrait has been done directly from the subject. However, because of the historical importance of this piece, the NPG made an exception to this policy as it would with any important contemporary portraits.

(b) Mr. Campello, you are incorrect when you ask if it is the policy of the National Portrait Gallery to only acquire those contemporary portraits which are done directly from the subject.

In any event, since the Fairey piece is now in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, through the generous donation of the DC area's ubercollectors Heather and Tony Podesta, I think that it is only fair that Garcia's photograph also hang next to Fairey's piece and that the wall text reflect the process via which the ubiquitous Fairey work was created.

After all, the piece is sort of a 21st century collaboration, right? And I bet that I can even help to get one an original photo for the NPG.

And this has nothing to do with any opinions on the issue of Fairey's use of Garcia's photograph. Artists have been "sampling" other artists' works and other people's images for generations (including me) and technically what the brilliant Fairley did is probably legal, as Richard Lacayo in Looking Around writes, "in lawsuits over image appropriation, judges commonly try to decide whether an artist's re-use of earlier material is 'transformative'. If the new image passes that test, the appropriation is protected by the fair use doctrine, which permits limited reproduction of copyrighted material."

And according to Michael Scherer:

"Garcia, who now works at the White House for Bloomberg, says he hopes to get in touch with Fairey so he can talk over the image that has exploded into a pop culture icon. 'Photographers are always getting ripped off,' said Garcia, who quickly added that he was not angry or seeking money from the artist who appropriated his image. 'You see it everywhere. You see it on everything.'

'I'd like to talk to Fairey,' Garcia continued. 'As gentlemen we can work this out. . . . I don't want it to get ugly.'"

It is also clear that at the time that he sampled the Garcia photograph, Fairey had no idea who the photographer was.

But is its also clear to the most casual observer that by now he must know!

That's between them; to me what is also clear, is that this 21st century artistic collaboration, unravelled by 21st century Internet sleuthing, are now and forever intermingled, and the story of the Obama poster now includes the name Mannie Garcia, and Tom Gralish, and Steve Simula, and several others.


Barack Obama photograph by Mannie Garcia
I plan to write Martin Sullivan, the NPG director a letter on this subject and I hope that some of you do as well. Or you can email Mr. Sullivan at SullivanM@si.edu.

Write to:

Martin Sullivan
Director
National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
PO Box 37012
Victor Building–Suite 4100 MRC 973
Washington, DC, 20013-7012

New Conservator at VFMA

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has named Stephen D. Bonadies to be its chief conservator and deputy director for collections management, VMFA Director Alex Nyerges has announced.

A 27-year veteran of museum work, Bonadies comes to Richmond from the Cincinnati Art Museum, where he held positions including chief conservator, director of museum services, deputy director and interim co-director. He will begin work at VMFA March 2, 2009.

I am fascinated by the conservation process and at the same time shocked how little many art schools spend teaching its art students about conservation materials (or about art materials period).

My favorite read on this subject is Jonathan Harr's superb The Lost Painting. The book is the story, told by Harr masterfully as an art detective story of sorts, of the discovery of Caravaggio's The Taking of the Christ in a Jesuit residence in Ireland.

Digital Change

Now that Barack Obama has officially assumed the presidency, the nation anxiously anticipates his fulfillment of his promise of change.

But before the new legislative agenda takes shape, several transformations have already occurred. Former visual representations of our presidents rarely ventured beyond press photos or political cartoons. But Obama artwork has already encroached upon new realms.

For the first time in history, Obama's official presidential portrait was captured by a digital camera. Pete Souza, the White House's new photographer, snapped the shot on Jan. 13. He used a Canon 5D Mark II and took the picture without using a flash.

Read the article by Jennifer Gambrell in The Davidsonian here.

It doesn't make sense to me

The Washington Post's erudite chief art critic is Blake Gopnik, the brother of New Yorker magazine art critic Adam Gopnik.

For some reason, the Washington Post's editors allow their chief art critic to ignore the Greater Washington area art galleries and only focus on museums. By now Washingtonians have grumbled about that odd process for years, but are resigned to it.

But when Gopnik goes through New York City galleries and provides an entire page of mini reviews of NYC galleries, each with a nice color image, something which he has never done for his own hometown art galleries, the message is very clear to the Washington area art galleries.

The message is: "You are not good enough for my time."

And the message that the Washington Post sends to its core readers and hometown is: "Your art scene is not worthy of Blake Gopnik's time."

Shame on the Washington Post, you suck.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: February 15, 2009

The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, PA is currently seeking artists to fill its 2010-2011 Solo Exhibition Schedule. Artists living in the Mid Atlantic region (PA, OH, NY, NJ, MD, VA, W.VA, DE and Washington DC) are invited to apply. Please submit a proposal that includes contact information, exhibition statement, 10-20 images on CD(jpeg format 500kb max) or slides, image list (including title, media and dimensions), resume or curriculum vitae, SASE for return of materials and $30.00 review fee to:

Solo Exhibition Proposals
Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts
124 East Leasure Ave
New Castle, PA 16101