City Museum Censors "Funky Furniture" Show.

Area artists Chad Alan and Maggie O'Neill have been organizing an interesting exhibition for the City Museum of Washington, DC titled "Funky Furniture."

Several area artists are involved and have been working for the last few months for this exhibition. I have been made aware by several people of a developing controversy now rapidly revolving around this show.

I am told that entries for the show were brought in over this past weekend, and when viewed a couple of days ago, there were at least six adjudged by the museum management to be "not acceptable" because of sexual and/or offensive content. One of the objectionable ones was an end table with "The bitch set me up" carved with on the surface with a razor blade.

The entire show has been removed from the main floor, and some may be allowed in smaller spaces elsewhere, but the offending six will not appear.

There are apparently ongoing negotiations with the museum management, but this has the smell of art censorship.

In a paradoxical way, this brewing controversy could be exactly what the museum needs to increase its visibility and maybe even get some people to visit it.

Look for Washington Post and Washington City Paper stories in the next few days, but you read it here first.

Target Gallery has a Call for Artists

Deadline December 31, 2004.

Open Call for 2005 Exhibition Proposals at the Target Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia. Open to all individual artists and groups in all media in North America.

Jurors: Richard Dana, a well-known and talented Washington, D.C. based artist and arts activist; Millie Shott, Exhibitions Director, Strathmore Hall, Bethesda, MD; and Virginia McGehee Friend, Washington area collector of contemporary Fine Craft.

Deadline for Proposals: December 31, 2004. Exhibition Dates: October 26-December 4, 2005

Fee: $35 for 20 images (slides or JPEG CD) and proposal. For Applications: email them here, or call 703/838-4565 ext. 4, or send SASE to:
Open 2005
Target Gallery
105 N. Union Street
Alexandria, VA 22314

Grammar.police has a really good pre-review preview (police that!) on the Dan Flavin retrospective at the NGA.

Sarah Tanguy is the new head of the Department of State's Art in Embassies program.

Established by the United States Department of State in 1964, the Art In Embassies Program is a global museum that exhibits original works of art by U.S. citizens in the public rooms of approximately 180 American diplomatic residences worldwide. To submit images to their staff for consideration in upcoming exhibitions please e-mail .jpg or .gif images of your works no larger than 50k in size, to this email address.

Pilfered from AJ:

Carmel, the famous little seaside town in California has decided that they have too many galleries and has imposed a moratorium on licensing new art galleries in the city. You can read the story here. This is the same silly town that passed a law in the 80s forbidding eating ice cream in public and then elected Clint as mayor.

61 galleries have opened in Carmel since 2000, bringing the total to about 120. Of the city's roughly 300 retail shops, approximately four out of 10 are art galleries.

When I lived there in the late 80s (I used to review books for the newspaper publishing this story), and I used to exhibit my artwork in a Carmel gallery that has since closed, and during my last visit in the late 90s, one thing was clear: A lot of them were and are crap galleries - that is, they are the type of galleries that sell a lot of reproductions, decorative art, gyclees by the millions, etc. Many others show the work of just one artist, or do not change shows regularly.

Because Carmel's main business is tourism, the galleries aim to tourists. And tourists come to Carmel because of its beauty, to play golf, see the Spanish mission, stroll around the beach, and because of... galleries.

Still, seems silly to pass regulations forbidding what obviously is the town's main attraction.

Locally, we have the same flavor of an issue around Dupont Circle, where the locals have decided that no more "new" galleries can be opened. As a gallery closes (such as Elizabeth Roberts will soon), it can be replaced by a new gallery in the same building, but no new galleries can open in a building that hasn't been a gallery prior to the sale.

And so we're all hoping that Elizabeth Roberts will be able to find a buyer for her building that wants to open a new gallery in that building. I've spoken to Elizabeth and she would prefer for that to happen as well.

A while back I posted a bit about a fiery DC area artist (Marsha Stein), who decided that the reported woes of the City Museum of Washington, DC deserved some hands on action.

So she's taking some action.

Stein has come up with a project to revitalize what the City Museum of Washington, DC does to leave a significant footprint on our city.

Here it is, in her own words:

This project will bring together artists from the Washington, DC area to form "artistic teams" and create collaborative pieces that convey ideas about Washington, DC.

The works of art created by the teams will be displayed in a feature exhibition at The City Museum of Washington, DC.

Visitors will be invited to vote on their favorite piece, as well as describe why they made this choice. The artists will be documented on film while they are in the creative process for educational purposes. These pieces will be auctioned at the close of the exhibit.

The goals of the project are to:

1. Bring the artistic community together
2. Empower DC artists to create an artistic movement
3. Integrate artists with the community

A jury panel will select the teams. The call will invite individuals as well as those who can form teams of two or three to send slides as well as describe why they want to do "team art."

All artists, newspeople and visual art lovers who are interested to participate, learn more, or put in their two cents are invited to:
Karma Restaurant
1919 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
(19th and I, NW)
On Monday, October 18, 2004 from 6 - 8 PM
I'm curious as to what can develop; So.... see you there.

Good week in Washington if you are a lover of the visual arts.

This Friday is the second Friday of the month and thus time for the Bethesda Art Walk with all these art venues participating from 6-9 PM.

We will host the fourth solo show by David FeBland, who has become our best selling artist (and whose solo debut in Europe a few months ago sold out in Germany).

FeBland paints what the New York Times dubs "urban realism" (the Times called him "the leading edge of the new urban realists") and the Washington Post has called "a revival of the Ashcan School."

And Calder Miró, which opens at the Phillips Collection on October 9, 2004, showcases the emergence of a new type of abstraction in the work of these two giants of modern art as seen in the context of their five-decade friendship. That same day, at 11:00 AM, the eminent Spanish art historian Victoria Combalía, will discuss Alexander Calder’s art in the context of Calder's travels to Spain in the early 1930s when he was Miró’s guest in Catalonia. Contact Mary Ann Bader (202) 387-2151 x4235 or Mela Kirkpatrick (202) 387-2151 x4220 for tickets to the lecture.

I have been astonished by the re-emergence of Catalonia and the Catalan language in the last few years. The last time that I was in Barcelona, there wasn't a single ad or street sign in Spanish! Everything was in the native language (again)!

That same day, the Corcoran opens "Inventions: Recent Paintings by Caio Fonseca", which will run until February 14, 2005.