At American University's Katzen Museum

Contemporary North Korean Art:
The Evolution of Socialist Realism

Curated by BG Muhn

The forms and structure of contemporary North Korean art, a central and highly developed dimension of the national culture, are largely unknown to the outside world. This exhibition, the first of its kind in the US, seeks to broaden understanding of North Korean art beyond stereotypes of propaganda and kitsch to show sophisticated and nuanced expressive achievements. It investigates previously unrevealed evidence of North Korean artistic experimentation and the evolution of Socialist Realism within this culturally homogeneous context. The works in the exhibition focus on the development of Chosonhwa, North Korea’s predominant painting medium that is revered as the nation’s most refined. The exhibition is curated by BG Muhn, artist and Professor at Georgetown University.

 

 

South Korean Art:
Examining Life Through Social Realities

Curated by GimChoe Eun-yeong

Examining Life Through Social Realities documents and examines life and the social realities of people living on the Korean peninsula through the Realist paintings of ten South Korean contemporary artists. As explained by exhibition curator GimChoe Eun-yeong, definitions of Realism have changed over time, but the Realism of South Korea closely approximates 19th century French Realist painter Gustave Courbet’s use of the term: to manifest artists’ perspectives of the world through expressive techniques and methods.

 

Art Cart:
Honoring the Legacy

Curated by Pamela Harris Lawton and Adjoa Burrowes

This exhibition ties together two cities - Washington, DC and New York City - in an inter-generational, inter-disciplinary project. Professional visual artists aged 62 and older are matched with students of art, healthcare, and aging to document and preserve their artistic legacy. The exhibition includes painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and installation by ART CART artists that highlight turning points in the artists’ lives including the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements.

ART CART: SAVING THE LEGACY is a DC and New York based project that helps older professional artists and provides mentorships to students. ART CART: HONORING THE LEGACY features Alonzo Davis, Cheryl Edwards, Annette Fortt, Cianne Fragione, Pauline Jakobsberg, E.J. Montgomery, Annette Polan, and Terry Svat.

 

 

The Looking Glass:
Artists Immigrants of Washington

Alper Initiative for Washington Art

This exhibition celebrates ten artists who left Latin America for many different reasons over the last sixty years—primarily for safety, freedom, and opportunity—and made their homes, and their artistic careers and contributions, in the Washington region. They include Joan Belmar and Juan Downey from Chile, Carolina Mayorga from Colombia, Ric Garcia, F. Lennox Campello, and Jose Ygnacio Bermudez from Cuba, Muriel Hasbun from El Salvador, Frida Larios from Honduras, Irene Clouthier from Mexico, and Naúl Ojeda from Uruguay. They brought with them artistic traditions that took root and bore fruit here in the United States.

 

 

 

Bandits & Heros, Poets & Saints:
Popular Art of the Northeast of Brazil

Curated by Marion E. Jackson, Ph.D. and Barbara Cervenka, O.P., Curators

Bandits & Heroes, Poets & Saints explores how the ancient cultures of Africa blended with indigenous and colonial Portuguese traditions to form the vibrant and complex cultural mosaic of modern Brazil. This eclectic collection of popular art—photography, sculptures, paintings, religious objects and books of poetry—depicts the vibrant culture of the Northeast of Brazil and the Nordestinos. The exhibition explores the coming together of diverse traditions of the region through work by historical and contemporary artists.

 

 

SAVE THE DATE

 

Opening Reception
June 18, 6-9 p.m.

Bethesda Painting Prize winners

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District announced the top three Bethesda Painting Awards prize winners on Wednesday evening during the exhibition’s opening at Gallery B. Tanja Softic of Richmond, VA was awarded “Best in Show” with $10,000; Richard Levine of Falls Church, VA was named second place and was given $2,000 and Amy Sherald of Baltimore, MD received third place and was awarded $1,000.

 

Tanja Softic studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Sarajevo and earned her Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She works across the media of printmaking, drawing, photography and book arts. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant, National Endowment for the Arts/ Southern Arts Federation Visual Artist Fellowship and Soros Foundation - Open Society Institute Exhibition Support Grant. Tanja’s work is included in numerous collections in the United States and abroad, among them New York Public Library, Library of Congress Print Department and New South Wales Gallery of Art in Sydney, Australia. She participated in 12th International Print Triennial in Cracow, Poland and won a First Prize at the 5th Kochi International Triennial Exhibition of Prints, Ino-cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan in 2002. She completed print projects at Flying Horse Press, Tamarind Institute and Anderson Ranch's Patton Print Studio. She lives and works in Richmond, VA, where she is Professor of Art at the University of Richmond.

 

The eight artists selected as finalists are:

 

John Aquilino, Rockville, MD

Katie Baines, North Chesterfield, VA

Amy Chan, Henrico, VA

Andy Karnes, Baltimore, MD

Richard Levine, Falls Church, VA

Erin Raedeke, Montgomery Village, MD

Amy Sherald, Baltimore, MD

Tanja Softic, Richmond, VA

 

A public opening will be held on Friday, June 10, 2016 from 6 – 9pm in conjunction with the Bethesda Art Walk. Gallery B is located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E in downtown Bethesda. The work of the eight finalists will be on display from June 3-27, 2015. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday from 12 – 6pm.

Entries were juried by Dorothy Moss, Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery and Director of the Triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition; 

Dr. David Park Curry, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts, American Painting & Sculpture at the Baltimore Museum of Art and Megan Marlatt, award-winning painter and Professor of Art and at University of Virginia.

 

The Bethesda Painting Awards was established by Carol Trawick in 2005. Ms. Trawick has served as a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda. She is past chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, past chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership, Inc. and founder of The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards.

".art" domain to launch this fall

UK Creative Ideas Limited (UKCI) signed an agreement with ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, in late March, to launch and be the exclusive operator of the new .ART top-level domain (TLD). Launching in late fall 2016, .ART is new, undeveloped Internet real estate dedicated to serving the arts and culture communities by providing the infrastructure to enhance and preserve the art industry’s online presence. With more name choice, shorter names, exact match for searches, and immediate identification with the arts, the global art world will have a new opportunity to meaningfully connect to their audiences in the digital realm.

“We are very fortunate to have secured .ART for the long-term,” states Ulvi Kasimov, Founder of UKCI. “We are at the beginning of an exciting new phase of innovation for art online, and .ART will be an important facilitator for existing and future players within the arts and culture community.”

“Our goals are to support existing museums, galleries, artists, auction houses and others in protecting and enhancing their brands, to inspire new organizations to build on .ART real estate, and to make domain names available to younger players to the art scene whose names are no longer available in other TLDs and want to immediately be identified with the art world,” states John Matson, CEO of UKCI.

The process of securing .ART began in 2012 when UKCI submitted an application to operate .ART to ICANN, the global nonprofit responsible for regulating and overseeing the Internet’s domain name policy. In 2014, ICANN expanded the number of generic top-level domains including major cities such as .nyc and .london, industry-specific domains such as .luxury and .guru; as well as brands like .axa, .bmw, and .google. Now with this new contract in place, the launch of the .ART domain will take place in late 2016.

To request a .ART domain or to learn more about .ART, please visit the website at www.dotart.domains.