A couple of weeks ago Tony Gittens, the executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, announced that he is leaving that post after 11 years.
Mayor Fenty will now appoint a new EA for the DCCAH and we're all hoping that it's not a typical political nepotism appointment for the $110,000 a year job.
In fact we're all hoping for someone who is qualified for this important job and who also cares deeply about the capital arts presence and its artists.
And we’re also hoping that it is someone who continues to work hard to support the visual arts with as much gusto and zest and the Commission supports the area’s ballet and theatre and film.
Want to show in DC?
One of my favorite opportunities for artists is coming up at the District of Columbia’s “Wall Mountables” exhibition. In this show, DCAC marks off its walls into 2 ft x 2 ft squares, which then artists can purchase and hang their artwork. Loads of art sells on opening night – I have done this show and it is a load of fun! This year the show will be from July 18 - August 31, with installation on July 16 3-8pm, July 17 3-8pm, July 18 3-6pm. Call DCAC at 202/462-7833 for info.
Georgetown's Cross MacKenzie Ceramic Arts has an exhibition of the always fascinating theme of trompe l'oeil work, in this case by various artists working the genre in 3D. Go see this show for some really amazing work!
Having just returned from NYC, where I was doing an art fair, one of the side effects of the art fair phenomenon is the fact that through these fairs is that many regional emerging artists are exposed to savvy art audiences in places like New York. Case in point is Norfolk-based painter Sheila Giolitti, and this particular fair was her first exposure to New York's art audiences and she did great and sold about a dozen oil paintings! If you are represented by a gallery, they should really be expanding their business model to do art fairs.
Who are your favorite emerging artists? Go to www.art-tistics.com, click on “Forum” and tell me.
Time for photography lovers to rejoice as the week of November 15-22, 2008 will mark the launch of FotoWeek DC, the first annual gathering of a diverse and wide-ranging photography community in the nation’s capital, including photographers, museums, universities and all those involved in the profession across the metro D.C. area, including Virginia and Maryland.
Unique among American cities, Washington, D.C. is a nexus of artistic, business, political and public sector energy, in which photography plays an integral role. FotoWeek DC seeks to bring together all photographers and imaging professionals from every discipline to join with the public in celebration of the medium. All the details are at www.fotoweekdc.org/index.asp
Finally, there are some terrific shows currently at the Katzen Museum of the American University. You got to drop by and see the installation "Living Without Them" by Lilianne Milgrom/Saul Sosnowski on the museum's first floor.
When I was in my late twenties, I had the honor to wear the uniform of a naval officer in the United States Navy, having worked my way up to a Lieutenant (Junior Grade) from a Seaman Recruit. One of my most memorable images from my naval career resonates with Lilianne Milgrom’s installation on a personal and visual note, and thus why I think that my voice, as a critic, writer, artist and curator, coupled with my own history as a young Navy officer in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983 gives me a special set of eyes to interpret “Living Without Them.”
There is so much stuff in rubble; it all looks so big and solid on television, but until you get your hands on a chunk of cement or twisted steel, and pull, and pull, and pull, to try to move something out of the way, at the same time that you are listening to cries and screams from those trapped below.
You are in shock, and rubble moves.
Milgrom knows this, and her installation shows it. And it is because Milgrom lived in the very volatile Middle East for many years, and like the poet Jose Marti wrote: “I know the monster well, for I have lived in its entrails.”
Milgrom lived in the paradoxical world of the Middle East, where bombings, bombs and their after effects were daily common life. And her psyche and her artistic persona were forever shaped by terrorism and a world where murderers are often heroes to some and demons to others.
Her knowledge shows in the acid perspicacity of her installation, which is coupled with the power of words from Prof. Sosnowski – at first they shock us with a solar plexus punch of destruction.
Then the floating porcelain pages, gently moving in the aftermath of an explosion deliver an anti-punch that is exponentially multiplied over that of the power of the explosion itself. It plants on the mind of the viewer the violence of the act, which maybe sought to kill ideas that went against the bomber’s belief.
“Ideas cannot be killed!” Shouts Milgrom in this work – “you can kill people, you can kill poets, you can kill artists, you can kill women who refuse to hide their faces, but ideas will survive and even dance in the death wind of your violence, and in their dance they will spread and multiply.”
And they will use your terminal actions to ensure their infinity and their germination.
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