It will be all things ABMB. I'm there Friday, Saturday & Sunday look for daily updates as well as coverage on the Aqua Art Fair - right next door to the cheap-o hotel I'm staying at. I'll be reviwing some work as well as interviewing a few galleries, all in all it should make for some interesting reading.

Labels: Art Basel Miami Beach

This is stolen from Lenny at http://dcartnews.blogspot.com/ my apologies in advance.

DC area art galleries are generally now centered on six loosely gathered gallery concentrations: Dupont Circle, Bethesda, 14th Street area, Georgetown, 7th Street corridor, and Old Town Alexandria.

First Fridays: With 21 member galleries and art venues, the Dupont Circle galleries has the largest number of galleries roughly concentrated around the Dupont Circle area of DC. Many of these galleries host openings and extended hours (generally 6-8PM) on the First Friday of each month.

Second Thursdays: Seven galleries in and around King Street in Old Town Alexandria host openings and extended hours on the Second Thursday of each month. Other galleries in the area, as well as the 83 artists studios inside the Torpedo Factory host different openings ad hoc.

Second Fridays: With 12 member galleries and art venues, the Bethesda Art Walk also has a good number of participating visual art spaces offering openings and extended hours (6-9PM) as well as a free guided tour on the Second Friday of each month.

Third Thursdays: A handful of art galleries and venues are within walking distance of each other around the 7th Street, NW corridor and still host (I think) joint 3rd Thursday extended hours and openings.

Third Fridays: The five galleries inside the Canal Square (31st and M Street, NW in Georgetown) host joint openings or extended hours from 6-9PM each and every 3rd Friday of the month. The other half dozen or so Georgetown galleries within walking distance host their openings ad hoc.

14th Street: Initially anchored by Fusebox Gallery, a handful of very good art galleries and art venues now congregate around the 14th Street, NW area and host openings at various times throughout the month.

In the late Seventies, two revolutionary trends emerged in New York City, public access cable TV and punk rock. Public access was about do-it-yourself television. Punk was about do-it-yourself music (and do-it-yourself everything.) These two phenomena were made for each other and they came together spectacularly in Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party.

Glenn O’Brien’s was to cool downtown Manhattan what Ed Sullivan’s and Walter Winchell’s columns had been decades before, the barometer of what was happening. O’Brien decided to emulate Sullivan (and Johnny Carson and Hugh Hefner) and create a variety show that would spotlight the coolest of the cool. Every week a who’s who of bohemia congregated to “have your party on TV,” as Debbie Harry would sing. Debbie was a regular, along with such luminaries as Jean Michel Basquiat, Robert Fripp, David Byrne, banned SNL-er Charles Rocket, John Lurie, Richard Sohl of the Patti Smith Group, artist David Walter McDermott, Fred Schneider of the B-52s, Nile Rodgers of Chic, Tim Wright of DNA, sax genius Robert Aaron and Fab Five Freddie.

and its now available on dvd at Brink.com

Carol Vogel reports in the New York Times that the Metropolitan Museum has acquired its first painting by Robert Rauschenberg: Winter Pool, 1959, one of the artist's classic combines. Winter Pool is composed of two paintings of equal height but unequal width joined together by a wooden ladder, which stands on the floor against the wall where the canvases hang. It is to go on view at the Met as part of "Robert Rauschenberg: Combines," on December 20. Museum officials said half of the painting's cost was provided by the museum and half was a promised gift from Steven A. Cohen, the hedge-fund manager. Contemporary art experts believe the price was about $15 million.

More info from the New York Times

I'll leave any future description alone for now and just show the work as it is currently. 36" x 36" oil/canvas.

For those of you just arriving, Holly Solomon made notice of herself in the 70's as a collector - then in the 80's her gallery in Soho as well as an uptown gallery, Solomon exhibited artwork from Conceptualism to Pattern & Decoration, and photography. She was crucial in helping Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sigmar Polke, Judy Pfaff, William Wegman, among others.

She recently passed away and her estate was auctioned last week in Los Angeles.

However the questions Michael Duncan asked in this diary to me are fascinating...

• Are Susan Hall's drawings from 1969 any less interesting than Amy Cutler's or Robyn O'Neil's from 2005?
  
  
• Why is Donna Dennis's use of architecture-as-sculpture in the 1970s never referenced in the context of similar efforts today by Jorge Pardo or Rirkrit Tiravanija?
  
  
• Are the cartoonish paintings of Rodney Alan Greenblat and Milan Kunc any less charmingly dopey than those of Takeshi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara?
  
  
• What does Africano lack that Hernan Bas and Elizabeth Peyton have?

I apologize in advance for his "What's it all About Alfie" cuteness - however the article is well worth reading.

The article is at Artforum.com - Story is here

The J. Paul Getty Museum returned three ancient artifacts to the Italian government this week, writes Jason Felch in the Los Angeles Times, marking the end of a legal battle over allegedly looted art that could serve as a test case for future claims by Italy against the Getty and other American museums. In a statement, the Getty said it believed that it had "valid defenses" to oppose the Italian claim but had agreed to return the Asteas krater, a large vase, "in the interest of settling the litigation and demonstrating the Getty's interest in a productive relationship with Italy." A bronze candelabrum and an inscribed gravestone were returned based on evidence presented in informal negotiations with the Getty, U.S. officials said.

All this said, I've gotten a little tired of following this so, this is probably the last post on this for awhile

Full story at the LA Times

I've posted a few of "The Boneyard" images on the site - check the link over to the left called "Photography" for a brief overview...

A panel appointed by the overseers of the J. Paul Getty Museum will look into how it built up its antiquities collection and whether a top official of the J. Paul Getty Trust misused funds.

The trust's board announced the formation of the five-member committee on Saturday, three months after Getty antiquities curator Marion True was charged by the Italian government with conspiring with dealers trafficking in looted items.

True has quit the Getty Trust and her trial resumes next month.

From Reuters

I'm seriously interested in how this will play out on the world stage because for years, nations (Greece, and Italy in particular) have been trying to get "plundered" or stolen artworks back. I'm muddy as to how this really will affect museums and other cultural entities. I'm also not sure to what extent "plunder or stolen" really is? are these "spoils of war"? I really don't know where this line forms. What do you think?