One of the most beautiful gallery spaces in our area is the Mexican Cultural Institute and until November 20, 2003 they have a great group show titled BLANC.

BLANC is comprised of a group of Hispanic/Latino/Latin American/Spaniards artists of various nationalities, ethnicities and different generations, including Carlos Ancalmo (El Salvador), Margarita Cabrera (Mexico), Alejandro Cesarco (Uruguay), Asdrubal Colmenarez (Venezuela), Christian Curiel (Puerto Rico), Gretel Garcia (USA/Cuba), Marcela Gomez (Argentina), Joan Ill (Spain), Berta Kolteniuk (Mexico), Yucef Merhi (Venezuela), Gean Moreno (USA/Colombia), Yoshua Okon (Mexico), El Perro (Spain), Luis Romero (Venezuela), Irene Szabadics (Venezuela), Odalis Valdivieso (Venezuela) and Eugenia Vargas (Chile).

The exhibition, curated by Odalis Valdivieso, has been "structured as an open invitation for this diverse group of artist to create works of an experimental and/or conceptual nature that reflect, respond, interrogate or explore white and its almost endless array of associations."

The works on exhibition ranges from paintings to a most annoying (and successful) piece of net-art by Yucef Merhi that (if you visit the project website) takes you to a blank screen that changes randomly every seven seconds, and each screen contains a different meaning of the word white.

Problem is that it does turn your computer screen to white and I couldn't figure out how to get out of it and had to re-boot the browser to get back to a normal screen... almost like virus art???

Like any group show, the approaches are as diverse in success and interest as the participants themselves. This is a very good exhibition at one of our best contemporary art spaces.

The show will travel to the other Mexican Institutes of Culture in Houston, Los Angeles, and New York.

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Plug for our gallery: Dr. Claudia Rousseau teaches art history and also writes art criticism for the Gazette newspapers and before that she lived in Latin America for many years where she was the Chief Art critic for several major Latin American newspapers. She's written a very good review of our current John Winslow show in Bethesda.

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DC area photographer Danny Conant is hot! She's recently had a great solo at the Ralls Collection in Georgetown, then a book about her Tibet photographs published and now has a new solo show opening at Touchstone Gallery on November 14, 2003 and a second solo show currently on exhibit at the Mark Palmer Gallery in Kentucky until November 1st.

Danny Conant’s new works are scrolls that are layered pieces comprised of archival digital prints on fabric multicoated with acrylic paint and hung with bamboo pieces. Some of the images are realistic and others are vignettes composited of multiple sites. The photographs are gathered from her many trips to Asia over the last fifteen years. The exhibition runs until December 7. Last year one of her photographs sold for $2600 at Sotheby's.

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Just found this great resource for artists. It is Slides.com and they can make slides from digital files! Most museums reviews and art competitions still require slides, but if you are like me, I'm always losing them, but have plenty of digital files around. It's a good resource for an emergency.

And if you need a postcard made in a hurry from your slides or digital files, we use Modern Postcard. Hard to beat their prices and stellar service.

By the way, artists looking for competitions, local opportunities, essays on the arts and the business of art, etc. should be familiar with both Art Deadlines and locally with Malik Lloyd's FIND ART information Bank. FIND ART distributes free weekly announcements to the arts community from clients that either need the services of artists or offer beneficial services to artists. To get on the email distribution for it, send Malik an email to FINDARTinfobank@aol.com.

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Oct 25 will be the 112th anniversary of Pablo Picasso 's birth (October 25, 1881 - October 25, 2003), in my opinion the most influential and recognized artist in the history of art. Locally "Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier" runs until January 18, 2004 at the National Gallery of Art.

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In art news, the Washington Sculpture Center (WSC) is a newly formed non-profit organization that aims to promote the teaching of sculpture for beginners and advanced students. It is the first public access educational program in the District of Columbia that will offer sculpture classes at all levels, using glass, metal, and stone. The WSC has been formed by Patricia Ghiglino and sculptor Reinaldo Lopez.

Reinaldo is well known in the DC arts community for his contributions in the restoration of the Taft Memorial Bridge Lions. He also made the new bronze lions that guard the main entrance of the Smithsonian National Zoo, the monumental granite sculpture at the entrance of the Patriot Center at George Mason University and many others.

Ms. Ghiglino recently retired from Professional Restoration, Inc.

She was responsible for the restoration of the Smithsonian Castle, Freer Gallery of Art, Fort McHenry, and Jackson Place among many other historic sites. She wants to dedicate her 16,000 sq. ft. warehouse to the teaching of sculpture in the DC area.

Her idea was not only to make the teaching of sculpture more accessible to our community, artists and public in general, but also to provide studio space for a few artists who are willing to teach.

The WSC is located at 1338 Half Street SE Washington DC, a block and a half from the Navy Yard Metro Station (Green Line). The first occupant in the WSC building is the Washington Glass School, formed by glass artists Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers.

The Washington Glass School offers classes in glass fusing, glass casting with and emphasis on sculptural and architectural work combined with many other media.

The Washington Sculpture Center will have a permanent glass flamework studio and is bringing artist Elizabeth Ryland Mears, to teach flamework for all levels. Starting in 2004 we will offer classes in metal arts, glass blowing, bronze casting and stone carving. For more information please contact Patricia Ghiglino, WSC 1338 Half Street SE, Washington DC 20003. Tel: (202)479-6730, fax (202)479-1070, E-mail: WashSculpture@aol.com

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There was a story in the Post a few days ago about a Latino Museum on the National Mall.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) introduced the bill to set up a commission to study the idea's feasibility. The museum would be based in Washington, around the National Mall and "might be under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution."

According to the story by Jacqueline Trescott, "This is one issue that unites our community," said Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza.

Let me be the first one to disagree and state for the record that this is one of the worst, most divisive ideas to have come out of anyone's minds in years.

Why have a separate, segregated museum for Latinos? Why not get more Latinos in the national museums, period.

I note also, the use of the word "Latino" as opposed to the now almost not PC term - "Hispanic." Otherwise we'd have to take all the Picassos, and Dalis, and Miros, and Goyas and Velazquezs out of the mainstream museums and put them in a "Hispanic" museum.... thank God for that.

As it is now, we'll have to take all the Wifredo Lams, Roberto Mattas, Frida Kahlos, etc. out of the other museums and put them in the "Latino Museum."

But ooops! the Frida Kahlo in the DC area is already in a segregated museum - in this case segregated by sex.

The semantic/ethnic/racial debate about Latino or Hispanic is a good, if somewhat silly one.

Anyway... Latino is (I think) now associated with people of Latin American ancestry... it apparently includes the millions of Central and South Americans of pure Native American blood (many of who do not even speak Spanish), and the millions of South Americans of Italian, German, Jewish, Middle Eastern and Japanese ancestry. It also includes the millions of Latin Americans of African ancestry.

It doesn't include Spaniards and Portuguese people.... you Europeans are out!

According to the Post, "Felix Sanchez, the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said, "The museum is really a long-overdue concept. There is a void of presenting in one location a more in-depth representation of the culture and its presence in the mainstream of American consciousness."

Mr. Sanchez: There is no such thing as a single "Latino culture." In fact, I submit that there are twenty-something different "Latino" cultures in Latin America - none of which is the same as the various Latino mini-cultures in the US.

As an example, anyone who thinks that Mexico's rich and sometimes proud Indian heritage is similar to Argentina's cultural heritage is simply ignorant at best. In fact Argentina purposefully nearly wiped out its own indigenous population in an effort (according to the war rallies of the times) "not to become another Mexico."

And the cultural heritage of the Dominican Republic is as different from that of Bolivia and Peru as two/three countries that technically share a same language can be.

And for example, Mexican-Americans' tastes in food, music, and politics, etc. are wildly different from Cuban-Americans and Dominican-Americans, etc.

Would anyone ever group Swedes, Danes, Germans and Norwegians and create a "Nordic-American Museum"? Or how about French, Spaniards, Rumanians and Italians for a "Latin-European-American Museum" - hang on - that doesn't fit or does it? Makes my head hurt.

For the record, I don't believe in segregating artists according to ethnicity, race or religion. How about letting the art itself decide inclusion in a museum. And if not enough African American, or Native American, or Latino/Hispanic or "fill-in-the-blank"-American artists are in the mainstream museums, then let's fight that fight and not just take the easy/hard route of having "our own" museum.

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Nancy Sansom Reynolds, a very talented area sculptor, opened this last Sunday at Addison/Ripley in Georgetown. I've reviewed her work a couple of times in the past, when she used to exhibit at the now defunct Anton Gallery, and have always been impressed by the manner in which she extracts "form" from wood through a most intricate and fragile process. Her exhibition goes on until November 22, 2003.

Also in Georgetown, Annie Gawlak's G Fine Art has "Lost and Found" by Jeff Spaulding opening next Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2003. The show goes until Nov. 29.

Maryland artist Anne Cook is going through an exhibition blietzkrieg. Her new series of paintings titled "Freedom of Speech" were included last month in the Torpedo Factory's "Layers" show in Alexandria, and then at the A. Salon Artists Group Show in Silver Spring and now will be included in Arlington's Museum of Modern ARF "Breaking the Silence: Questioning Authority" show that opens on Oct. 24 and hangs until Nov. 22, 2003.

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The Bethesda Row Arts Festival, featuring over 250 fine artists and crafts people from all over the US is going on today and tomorrow around Woodmont and Elm in Bethesda.

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Colby Caldwell, one of my favorite and also one of the most innovative photographers around, opens at Hemphill Fine Arts on October 23 and his exhibition runs until November 29.

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Today is the Third Friday of the month, and thus it is gallery opening night at the four Canal Square Galleries in Georgetown: Alla Rogers, Fraser, Parish and MOCA

Openings go generally from 6-9 PM and are catered by the Sea Catch Restaurant.

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The Hirshhorn Museum recently announced that its Contemporary Art curator Olga Viso had been promoted to Deputy Director. This is good not only for the museum, but also for Washington area artists, as Viso has been one of the rare few DC area museum curators to show any interest in her own backyard when looking for artists. She will have Dan Steinhilber's first museum show. Steinhilber is without a doubt one of our most talented and hottest artists right now.

Kristen Hileman has also been appointed as the Hirshhorn's new Assistant Curator for Contemporary Art.

Today I was reading the Washington Post, and even though that their own Style Section banner on page C5 announces that Thursdays are supposed to be focused on "Arts News/Galleries," there was no "Arts News" anywhere to be found.

In fact, other than Jessica Dawson's Galleries column, which is published regularly every Thursday, there's rarely any "art news" - certainly little of the visual arts genre, published anywhere in either of our two major newspapers.

So, time permitting I hereby enter the world of online BLOGing in the hope that I will have time to use this BLOG to post art news, gallery openings, events, etc. as I receive and/or discover them.

And there's a LOT to pick from. In co-owning two galleries in the Greater DC area with my wife, plus 20-plus years of freelance art writing and criticism, plus creating and exhibiting my own art, puts me in a place where I get a lot of news releases, insights and notices about our area's art scene.

In fact the Washington art scene is very active, it is just being ignored,

I hope to use this venue to share them with anyone interested in promoting the Greater Washington, DC visual art scene. Please email me at lennycampello@hotmail.com with comments, suggestions, criticism, etc. Anonymous nasty emails will be ignored, but the senders will be tracked down and their asses kicked.