Flashpoint Fracass
DCist reports on a private party at Flashpoint which ended with some artwork being destroyed.
Read it here.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Ariel Rios Building Murals
A few days ago I posted about a memo by Luis A. Luna, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management, who announced a decision to install a temporary screen in two days. The screen will cover up five historical murals (out of 25 in the building) on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building in Washington, DC. These murals were created under a 1934 U.S. Treasury art commissioning program.
I'm still mulling about how to express my opinion on this issue... meanwhile here are a couple of the murals; click on them for a larger view.
Ariel Rios Murals
A few days ago I posted about a memo by Luis A. Luna, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management, who announced a decision to install a temporary screen in two days. The screen will cover up five historical murals (out of 25 in the building) on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building in Washington, DC. These murals were created under a 1934 U.S. Treasury art commissioning program.
The six murals which will be covered up, and which have titles such as "French Explorers and Indians," "Torture by Stake," "The Red Man Takes the Mochila," etc. depict a diverse set of panoramas ranging from spectacular scenes of the often violent interaction between the American West’s native nations and the new settlers, to artistic recreation of historical meetings between European explorers and native Americans.
While it is perhaps understandable that the imagery on some of these murals may be objectionable to some workers or visitors -- perhaps embarrassing to some due to the nudity in some of the murals, and perhaps offensive to others due to its depiction of native Americans, and maybe even more objectionable due to the violence depicted in many of them -- in my opinion it would be even more objectionable to a majority of us to have these historical murals covered up or destroyed.
A nation that chooses to ignore or whitewash its past, is a nation without a historical memory and without a cultural footprint.
Nearly the entire world was aghast when the Taliban destroyed the gigantic Buddha sculptures that were offensive to that repressive regime, and we all condemned the demolition as a vile and barbaric act of cultural ignorance and artistic destruction. And yet here we are almost ready to do the same to an integral, if not proud, part of our historical and artistic past.
Art is perhaps the only vehicle that we have left that crosses all cultural barriers and creates bridges and memories for mankind. Visual art, especially representational historical visual art, has created for our nation an important cultural footprint and a significant record of our past. As such it cannot and must not be now censored or destroyed, lest we forget it.
I have had many opportunities to sit on the advisory board of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and in that process I have help to fund many of the contemporary murals that now adorn our nation’s capital. In that position, I have no doubt in my mind that there is no arts commission or city in our nation that would remotely consider funding these 1930s murals in 2006, much less in a public building. That is just the nature of where we were in 1930 as a people and where we are now.
But it is my hope that decades from now, if someone finds any of the murals that we have funded in the last few years for our nation’s capital objectionable, that our future Americans will have more conviction and more common sense and more guts to stand fast rather than to immediately take the politically-correct and knee-jerk reaction to "cover" them up, or consider removing them.
Keep the murals as they are.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Congrats!
To Min Jung Kim from Chantilly High School, who is The League of Reston Artists (LRA) award recipient of its 2006 Art Scholarship Award in the amount of $1,000.
Conversions
The Ellipse Arts Center and the Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran have teamed up to present "Conversions," which is an exhibition "exploring spatial interpretations juried from three distinct points of view."
The opening reception is tomorrow, July 19, 7 – 9 pm and the show runs through September 29, 2006. It was curated by artist Sam Gilliam, Dennis O’Neil (director of the Hand Print Workshop and printmaking professor at the Corcoran College of Art + Design), and Ubercollectors Heather & Tony Podesta.
They selected works by Renee Butler, Kathryn Cornelius, Susan Eder/Craig Dennis, M. Sedestrom Guthrie, Lisa Kellner, Michelle Kong, Tomas Rivas, Tai Hwa Goh, Joan Sarah Wexler, Ami Martin Wilber and Amy Glengary Yang.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Art Enables
Art Enables is a not-for-profit arts studio for persons with developmental and/or mental disabilities. They work with artists from throughout the region - DC, MD, and VA.
On July 22nd, they are hosting their first-ever regional art event, a one day juried exhibition of outsider/folk/visionary artwork produced in 14 programs located in DC, Baltimore, and the region.
The exhibition features the work of over 60 artists, most of whom have not been exhibited before.
Although Art Enables is the host for the exibition, the show includes work created by outsider artists through a diverse group os organizations, such as Miriam’s Kitchen, Prisons Foundation, Smith Farm for the Healing Arts, Create! For Seniors, Anchor Mental Health, Art for the People, Studio Downstairs, Mitch Snyder Arts and Education Center, Life Skills, Arc of Baltimore, St. Luke’s House, ARTiculate of WVSA arts connection, and Arts for the Aging.
The juried show, on July 22, 2006, is at MOCA DC in the heart of Georgetown. It is a one-day event, 11 am to 8 pm (reception from 6 pm to 8 pm). The exhibit and gala are free and open to the public.
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