Tim Tate sets new auction record

I'm pretty sure that a new auction record for a work of art by a living Washington, DC artist was set last night in Philadelphia when two mixed media glass reliquiaries by Tim Tate were auctioned off for $82,000.

That's right boys and girls - Eighty two thousand Samolians.

Buy Tim Tate now.

In the Greater DC area Tate is represented by Fraser Gallery. In Philadelphia you can currently get his work at Wexler Gallery (where's he's currently in a group show). In Chicago his work is available through the Marx Saunders Gallery (where he's currently in a group show). In Charlottesville go to Migrations Gallery. In London his dealer is the Steps Gallery. In Santa Fe he's represented by Jane Sauer (where he currently has a solo show). In Norfolk you can get it through Mayer Fine Art Gallery. In San Francisco it's the Donna Seager Gallery. In Berlin it's Gallery 24, and throughout the US at art fairs and such through the Maurine Littleton Gallery.

See the auction in the video below...

Today: Zoe Strauss Photography Installation Under I-95

Philly photographer and installation artist Zoe Strauss will exhibit 231 new and selected works today, Sunday, May 4th, 2008 from 1pm to 4pm under I-95 at Front St. and Mifflin St. in South Philadelphia.

The exhibition is free and open to the public. Selected pieces of Ms. Strauss's art will be available as color photocopies for purchase at five dollars each. The event will happen rain or shine.

This is the 8th year of Ms. Strauss's ongoing 10-year photo installation in South Philadelphia. Within the last 8 years Ms. Strauss has shown in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, had an acclaimed solo show at Silverstein Photography, is shooting for a book of her photography to be released in October 2008, has been commissioned to create a ramp project at the Philadelphia ICA, had eight prints purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art for their permanent collection, received a Leeway grant and became a member of the Leeway advisory council, shown a slideshow at the Philadelphia ICA and won the "friends of Arcadia award" for her piece in the Arcadia Works on Paper Show.

Zoe Strauss is also the executive director of the Philadelphia Public Art Project. For more information on the May 4 exhibit or on the Philadelphia Public ArtProject please visit this website or contact Zoe Strauss at info@zoestrauss.com or 267.250.4158.

Only two years left in the project! Don't miss it!

New one on me

"Art day trading" is what I am going to call this curious happenstance.

Gallerist tells me of selling a work of art to a collector during a preview of a show. Buyer pays around $30,000 for the piece and then says to the gallerist something along the lines of: "keep it for sale during the show and see if someone buys it for $40,000 by the end of the exhibition."

Never seen this before

We went gallery hopping around Philly's Old City section and the streets were packed with people, performers and artists. All the galleries were packed.

In fact, the opening at Wexler Gallery was so crowded last night, that the owners at one point had to regulate traffic flow into the gallery as people came in and out.

I've never seen a gallery so packed for three solid hours and when they finally closed the doors there were still tons of people outside.

I'll have a video of the openings and the artwork later...

Art for Obama

On Friday, May 23, 6:30-9 PM, Duality Contemporary Art, a new gallery located in Arlington, Virginia, near the Shirlington area, is hosting an "Art for Obama Benefit Reception."

Art for sale is priced from $100 to $800 and there's a silent auction as well. Work by: Deborah Coburn, graffiti artist Tim Conlon, Joy Every, John Gascot, Dirk Herrman, Elizabeth Grusin-Howe, Lucy Herrman, Beverly Ryan, Nancy Sausser, Langley Spurlock, Paula Wachsstock, Angelika Wamsler, and more.

Details here

Healing Arts Gallery Grand Opening

DC's Smith Farm will be hosting the grand opening of its new Healing Arts Gallery on Friday, May 9th from 5:30-8PM.

The Gallery is a first-of-its-kind exhibition space in the US, innovatively designed to provide each visitor with a unique experience of how the arts can enhance wellbeing.

Smith Farm Center, a renowned leader in combining art with health and healing, has leveraged its decade of experience at the forefront of this emerging field to design and construct the facility in the heart of the U Street historic art district in Washington, DC.

The Gallery, recently featured at the Museum of Modern Art’s (MOMA’s) “Value and Importance of Art in Health Care” Conference, is supported by the DC Commission on Arts and the Humanities for its groundbreaking approach. The public is invited to attend the grand opening events.

It’s also a “green” gallery – and I believe it may be the first in the nation. Whenever possible, Smith Farm has chosen to incorporate environmentally sensitive choices into the rehabilitation process. These choices include: compact flourescent lights throughout the space, No-voc paint, a donated, reclaimed brazilian cherry wood floor, low-water flow toilet and energy efficient HVAC system. The Gallery has a "green roof" and two living walls of plants that actually oxygenate the facility. The Gallery’s tenant is a store that focuses on green products.

Details here.

A note from J.W. Mahoney

Corrections from J.W. Mahoney on “Report from Washington, D.C.” Art in America, May 2008

It's always lucky whenever the DC arts community gets any major art magazine coverage, and, with only a few exceptions, noted below, I stand by the edit of the text of this article. My image selection for the piece, however, was largely ignored by the editors. There are images I consider redundant by some Color School artists – the art world knows all these people by now – and, without any disrespect implied to the artists themselves, any images by artists unmentioned in the text were selected by my editors. The piece looks good, but it's not as I designed it to look.

Some textual corrections: Philippa Hughes' name is spelled that way. The gallery representing Tom Downing's estate is the Addison-Ripley Gallery, even as Leigh Conner has often featured Tom's work. And Michael O'Sullivan is noted as "the only DC art critic to be taken seriously by local artists," when the original text was, specifically, "the only Washington Post art critic to be," etc. And the original piece was longer, and included more artists, from Jae Ko to Borf, to Yoko Ono.

What's important is that our arts community continue to wake up to two significant conditions: first, that we're radically, originally, rich aesthetically, however slim or quixotic the validation feels from our greater social community and its media - and its museums. Second, that we have to validate (or keep validating) ourselves and each other first, before and whether or not an art world of 2008 or 2009 ever does.

J.W. Mahoney