Fellowship

The Bogliasco Foundation's Study Center provides residential fellowships to gifted artists and scholars working on projects of any subject area in the following disciplines: Archaeology, Architecture/Landscape Architecture, Classics, Dance, Film/Video, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Theater, and the Visual Arts.

Details here.

Fact Checking the President's Cuba Speech

Whoever wrote the speech for the President needs a lesson in baseball history. 

The Prez said in his speech: "We share a national past time, la pelota, and later today our players will compete on the same Havana field that Jackie Robinson played on before he made his major league debut." 

That's actually incorrect. 

While Robinson did his 1946 spring training in Cuba while he was with the Montreal Royals, it was not at the same stadium where the Prez and the dictator Raul sat together (back then named El Gran Estadio de La Habana and now called Estadio Latinoamericano).  I believe that Robinson's spring training was at another stadium, perhaps the one known back then as El Cerro?

Later on, after the Dodgers bought his contract from Montreal, Branch Rickey toured the Dodgers and Robinson through some Latin American countries and had Robinson play. However, when they arrived in Havana, as it was the case back then, most Cuban hotels were segregated, and the Dodgers stayed in one hotel and Robinson stayed in a separate one, a blacks only hotel in Havana. 

He got food poisoning at his hotel and wasn't able to play in Cuba - as a Dodger - before his MLB debut in 1947. 

It is ironic that today many Cuban hotels (all of which are owned by the Cuban military - including part ownership in all the foreign corporation hotels from Spain, Canada, France, etc. as the Cuban military own all of Cuba's tourist income) are still segregated - not by race, but now by "Tourists Only" hotels where Cubans are not allowed to stay... in their own country. 

Another brutal "benefit" of the Castro Brothers' Workers Paradise.

NEXT Thesis Exhibition

NEXT Thesis Exhibition
April 20, 6:30pm – 9pm

This annual exhibition showcases work by the graduating students of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University. NEXT includes the thesis work of undergraduate and graduate students.

 The NEXT Thesis Exhibition runs April 6 - May 15 

HOURS:
Wednesdays: 10am - 9pm Thursdays - Sundays: 10am - 5pm

See more of NEXT on this website

Corcoran School of the Arts and Design
The George Washington University
500 Seventeenth Street, NW
         Washington, DC 20006       

Say what?

"in America, there are no cats..."
- Papa Mousekewitz, c. 1986

"in Iran, there are no homosexuals..."
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, September 24, 2007

"in Cuba, there are no political prisoners..."
- Raul Castro, March 21, 2016

Affordable Art Fair New York

As we have been for the last decade, we'll be doing the Affordable Art Fair New York again this Spring (March 30 - April 3 at the Met Pavilion). Because of my recent medical issues, I won't be there, but the gallery will be well-represented by DMV artist Lori Katz and Chicago-based artists Lauren Levato Coyne and Rory Coyne.

We'll be in booth 1.54 on the first floor; if you'd like some free passes to the fair, please send me a note.

Selvedge
Lauren Levato Coyne
22x18 inches, Pencil on Watercolor Paper, c. 2015

Turning Seven
Rory Coyne
36x36 inches, Oil on canvas, c. 2013

Wall of Small Squares
Lori Katz
Ceramics, c. 2015

Cuban by ancestry...

Latest work - this is heading to a museum show...  the show focuses on immigrant artists to the DMV. In this piece, the embedded video component plays a video loop (6.5 minutes) covering my life so far, with a special focus on why my family had to leave the brutal world of the Castro Brothers' Workers Paradise in the 1960s. The small boy to the left is me (as a four year old) running around my grandfather's farm just outside of Guantanamo.

As I usually do, I've used the "cracks" on the background wall to (employing the Navy's Falcon Codes) double encrypt a background message... more on the show later...

"Cuban by Ancestry, But American by the Grace of God."
Charcoal and Conte and Embedded Video. 18x24 inches, circa 2016.

"Cuban by Ancestry, But American by the Grace of God."
Charcoal and Conte and Embedded Video. 18x24 inches, circa 2016.

"Cuban by Ancestry, But American by the Grace of God."
Charcoal and Conte and Embedded Video. 18x24 inches, circa 2016.

"Cuban by Ancestry, But American by the Grace of God."
Charcoal and Conte and Embedded Video. 18x24 inches, circa 2016.

Another example of WaPo suckosity...

Wanna another example of how the Washington Post really feels about the DMV visual art scene?

Mark Jenkins wrote this review (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/in-the-galleries-three-artists-become-one/2016/03/16/e599d20a-e99b-11e5-a9ce-681055c7a05f_story.html)   of a super interesting show at Glen Echo, among others, but the Post chose to publish it solely online.

Fortunately, I have a direct line to the newspaper's new owner, and as soon as he bought the paper, I complained to him about the WaPo's history of diminishing coverage of the area's visual arts.  He told me to compile some samples and feed it to him and to two other folks that he has "working" the WaPo.

This Jenkins example will make the list.