The DC Cultural Data Project is going to have a great impact on the artists and arts organizations in DC. These free orientations will help and encourage them to participate and join in the effort to quantify the creative economy and its impact on District residents.

These important orientation sessions will provide you with an overview of the history and goals of the DC CDP, as well as an introduction to the types of data collected. Please feel free to attend this session with more than one representative of your organization, including your executive director, your finance manager/ bookkeeper and your development director. Refreshments will be served at all in-person sessions.

Organizations can register here: http://www.dcculturaldata.org/news.aspx

An initiative to connect the NSO and its musicians to the residents of Washington, D.C., with performances by the full orchestra and small ensembles in untraditional spaces and multi-disciplinary collaborations.

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards is now accepting applications for the annual juried art exhibition and awards

The 2012 competition will be juried by Dawn Gavin, Associate Professor of Drawing and Foundations at the University of Maryland, College Park; Kelly Gordon, Associate Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; and N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums, Virginia.

Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C.  Original painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, fiber art, digital, mixed media and video are accepted.  The maximum dimension should not exceed 96 inches in any direction. No reproductions. Selected artists must deliver artwork to the exhibit site in Bethesda, MD. All works on paper must be framed to full conservation standards. Each artist must submit five images, application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25.

Artists may apply online or download an application at http://www.bethesda.org/bethesda/trawick-application. Please be sure to submit entries to The Trawick Prize (not the Bethesda Painting Awards). I have also attached a PDF version of the application.

The deadline for applications is April 6, 2012. Notifications will be mailed May 7 2012.

The competition honors the artistic excellence of emerging and established DC writers with monetary awards for submissions in poetry, essays, dramatic writing and short story. Awards will be presented at the 29th Annual Larry Neal Writers’ Awards Ceremony on May 4, 2012, in partnership with the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

As part of the citywide celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the DC Emancipation Act, the DCCAH will also award teen and youth writers in a special honorary writing category, DC Emancipation Day: Celebrating Today’s Freedoms. The District celebrates Emancipation Day on April 16, which commemorates the day President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, freeing roughly 3,100 enslaved persons in the District, nine months before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

“Writers of all ages and experiences have an opportunity to be recognized for their artistic excellence. The Commission is dedicated to providing this intergenerational program in support of our rich and diverse community,” states Lionell Thomas, Executive Director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Submission Guidelines
Writers must submit entries online through the DCCAH website here. No hand-delivered copies will be accepted. The deadline for all applications is February 27 by 11:59 pm.

For more information regarding submitting for the competition, please contact Carlyn Madden,  carlyn.madden@dc.gov or (202) 724-5613.

Please note: All applications must strictly adhere to the posted guidelines and criteria. Failure to follow submission guidelines and application instructions may result in automatic disqualification.

The Art Bank Collection is a growing collection of artworks owned by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Works are purchased from D.C. artists and placed in District Government buildings throughout the city. This program helps bring life to office hallways and exposes D.C. artists to wider audiences.

Because most of us can’t get around to view every single work in the collection, we’ve decided to make this year’s collection accessible to everyone. We’ve created wallpapers for your computer desktop and mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc.).

Grab your favorite work from the collection, and take it with you everywhere you go. Grab a new one each week or each day for that matter.

We Need Your Voice at the AEP Spring 2012 National Forum!

Fasten your seat belts and hit the road to Washington, DC for the AEP Spring 2012 National Forum: Are We There Yet? Arts Evidence and the Road to Student Success, April 12-13 at the Renaissance Washington, DC Dupont Circle Hotel. This theme acknowledges a growing body of evidence that learning in and through the arts contributes to educational excellence. We will explore the implications and impact of research on education policy and practice and identify future directions for research.

Two new navigation aids will be previewed to help guide our journey: The U.S. Department of Education’s report on the status and condition of American students’ access to arts learning; and AEP’s new digital clearinghouse, ArtsEdSearch, a kind of 21st-century GPS for education research and policy. These tools will help us keep track of our destination by answering some compelling questions: Do we now have the research to move the needle on education policy? Do advocates and policymakers have the will to steer American education in a new direction? Can children born today expect a complete education that includes the arts? Are we there yet?

Help us shape the discussion by submitting an RFP for a small group discussion session. We’re also looking for talented young artists and graduate student volunteers to make this Forum the best yet!

For a glimpse into an AEP National Forum visit our Facebook page and view the photo album from the Fall 2011 National Forum, Transforming Urban School Systems through the Arts!

Lamont Bishop Gallery
1314 9th N.W Washington, D.C 20001
202.629.4810

West African highlife music permeated American-born Nigerian artist Aniekan Udofia’s household when his family moved from Washington DC to Nigeria in the late 1980s. That was until “The Village B-boys” returned from working in big cities with mix tapes of the latest hip hop. Udofia often recalls tracing the sounds of LL Cool J to the boom-box of an old lady pounding corn with a mortar and pestle to the beat. She would explain, “This, this is just some music my grandson brought back from the Lagos.” Off he would run to the market buying a local musician’s cassette to record over it with the village b-boy’s mix-tape. This is how hip-hop seeped into his world.

Stoically, he recalls his parents’ distaste for Fela Kuti’s international hit Zombie but passive acceptance of KRS-1’s Black Cop. As record shops emerged Udofia’s attachment to hip-hop’s social commentary on issues such as violence, religion, gender wars and conspicuous consumption fully cemented, molding him into an artist who would tackle these same themes within the visual atheistics of both hip-hop and West Africa.

Debuting February 4, 2012 at the Lamont Bishop Gallery in Washington, DC, Udofia’s latest series, The Village B-Boy is destined for 10-story walls in Uyo, his hometown in Nigeria, where its true audience will participate, remember and enjoy. The exhibition of over 20 images captures the exuberance of the United States’ most significant musical export since jazz. Exhibiting a masterful use of graphite, acrylic, paint markers, spray paint and stencils, Udofia epitomizes a sophisticated understanding of the African localization of Western pop culture. With eyes that track, smiles that beguile and iconic gestures, the viewer is instantly transported into the hip-hop culture of Udofia’s in Nigeria. An inmate glimpse into a simple pleasure such as a new cassingle brought from the capital and shared with friends over a tape deck and pigeon cypher, the collection’s use of bold colors is a nod to Nigerian traditional artistry while the techniques ground the works firmly in contemporary style.

In recent years, the art world has rallied around the concept of public art in emerging markets, however the abstract extrapolation of themes seemingly caters to the critic or collector. The Village B-boy is a derivation from this trend. The melding of traditionally inspired wax fabric prints alongside easily identifiable motifs of the golden age of hip-hop give the Western viewer a glimpse into the catholic/ubiquitous spread of slick rhymes over phat beats in beyond US borders. Whether the first time you heard Public Enemy was in Akwa Ibom State, London or New York the textured scenes represented in series will harken cheeky reminiscences days past.

Last night, at a packed-house screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with the Embassy of Sweden, Lionell Thomas, Executive Director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH), announced an extended run of the film at the Lincoln Theatre.

“Originally, this presentation was to be the last day of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but we’re pleased to announce that because of the success of the film, the run is being extended until January 26th,” announced Thomas at the screening.

The run of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo comes at an important time when the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, which has temporary oversight of the theatre, is working to create a sustainable business model for the 90 year-old landmark on U Street. The film at the Lincoln Theatre is one of the strongest runs in the District.

In front of hundreds yesterday, Thomas proclaimed “The lights are on at the Lincoln!”

Patricia Cronin - Memorial to a Marriage - 2012, bronze. Contact gallery for details.

OPENING
EXHIBITIONS

> PATRICIA CRONIN: Bodies and Soul

> DIE VETTERN: Wir packen in unseren Koffer / Packing Our Suitcase

opening: Saturday, February 4th: 6-8pm

to preview: CLICK HERE 

February 4 – March 10, 2012

Conner Contemporary Art is honored to present Patricia Cronin’s first solo exhibition in Washington, DC, Bodies and Soul. The exhibition features Memorial to a Marriage, a new bronze sculpture depicting the nearly life-size, sleeping figures of Cronin and her life mate, artist Deborah Kass, joined in a tender embrace.Cronin’s work is cast after the iconic double funerary portrait she created in 2002 for the couple’s burial plot in the Bronx, NY, at Woodlawn Cemetery. Though Memorial to a Marriage subversively recalls the controversial lesbian imagery of Gustave Courbet’s The Sleepers, its traditional style blends well with Washington’s sculptural monuments, including the memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Rock Creek Cemetery for Marian Hooper Adams, which inspired the title of Cronin’s memorial. The artist explained, “I chose a nationalist form for the work, 19th-century American neo-classical sculpture, to address what I consider a federal failure – not allowing gay Americans the right to marry.”

When Cronin completed her tomb sculpture, in 2002, she stated, “It is a memorial to something that can’t happen. It is created out of grief in being unofficial because we’re two women. I’m resolved: if I can’t have it in life, I’m going to have it in death. I’m basically trying to find a permanent resting place or home.” In 2012, Memorial to a Marriage exemplifies the capacity of art to make a home for revolutionary ideas whose time will come.

“I never thought the law would change within a decade of making the sculpture,” Cronin reflects, “What started out as political art turned out to be prophetic. It is now really a Memorial to a Marriage.” Cronin and Kass married in New York last summer. Recent laws have cleared the way for gays to marry in DC and six states and to serve openly in the military. Yet, much ground remains to be gained for gay rights nationally and the importance of exhibiting Memorial to a Marriage in DC at the outset of an election year resonates in Cronin’s show title. “Bodies and Soul” underscores the work’s mortuary theme, while alluding to the unification of disparate political bodies within the ideal of a national spirit of equality.

Ten years ago, the sculpture that marked a resting place for a couple whose union was unrecognized by the state established a place for Cronin’s art in cultural history. Today, “Memorial to a Marriage” embodies a new home for gay marriage within contemporary society and advocates greater room for diversity in the fluid narrative of American history.

Patricia Cronin has been exhibited extensively internationally at venues including the Brooklyn Museum, NY, Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow, Cobra Museum, Amsterdam, Museo d’ Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome. She is the recipient of grants and prizes from the American Academy in Rome, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the Pollock Krasner Foundation. In addition to numerous private collections, her works are in the permanent collections of The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland.

Conner Contemporary Art is also pleased to present a special *gogo projects installation, Wir packen in unseren Koffer / Packing Our Suitcase, by Die Vettern, an international artist group formed by Lina Vargas De La Hoz, Christine Aue, Evi Leuchtgelb and Christa Aistleitner. In their collaboration, the four artists draw upon individual perceptions of living respectively in the Austrian cities of Vienna and Linz and here, in Washington, DC. Die Vettern reimagined the three cities, exploring themes of growth, tourism and migration through imagery inspired by natural forms, monuments, and rhythms of life to create drawing, sculpture, photography and video. Their installation transforms our second gallery into an immerse environment that offers experiences ranging from introspective to engagingly playful.

This project is generously supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum Washington, Kultur Niederösterreich and Kulturland Oberösterreich.

There will be an opening night reception, Saturday, February 4th from 6 to 8pm. Artists in attendance.

For further information or images, please contact the gallery @ 202-588-8750 / info@connercontemporary.com.

Conner Contemporary Art is located at 1358 Florida Avenue, NE –Washington, DC 20002 in the Historic Atlas/H Street Area. Winter gallery hours are Wednesday – Saturday 10-5pm and by appointment.

Hillyer Art Space is looking for member submissions to our “NIN9″ Gallery space for March! This exciting opportunity, exclusive to our member artists, provides a chance for you to exhibit your work as well as integrate with Hillyer’s own artistic community through members-only programming and benefits.

We welcome proposals from existing members and new members alike!

We would also like to remind you of our current open call for artists to exhibit our main galleries. Further information on submissions can be found HERE.

Proposals for NIN9 should include:

• maximum 5 images (please title jpegs)
• artist statement
• resume (with contact email and mailing address–for membership purposes
• list of works and prices (including title, medium, year, and dimensions)
• all text documents should be formatted in Microsoft Word

Want some more info? Get it here.
Any incomplete submissions will not be considered.

All submissions due by midnight of Sunday February 5th
Please submit above materials to
caral@artsandartists.org
or
Hillyer Art Space
Attn: Cara Leepson
9 Hillyer Court NW
Washington DC, 20008