Artist & designer who has written art criticism for Washington City Paper, Sculpture, The Washington Times, and Art in America. 2017 Art Writing Workshop recipient through Warhol Foundation/AICA-USA.
We Still Don’t Know Who Painted The Obamas’ Official White House Portraits. But Here Are Some Guesses.
It’s a simple question: who painted the Obamas’ official White House portraits?
We know what you’re thinking: Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald painted the wildly popular portraits of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. They went on display at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018, and are currently on a national tour.
But we’re talking about the official White House portraits. Since the Kennedy Administration, the White House Historical Association has commissioned them for the...
In the Biden White House, art selections come with a personal touch
A glimpse at the artistic tastes of the Bidens.
The Good Listening Project Turns Health Care Workers’ Stories into Poems
A DC-area non-profit transforms the stories of healthcare workers into poetry.
Yuri Schwebler: The Spiritual Plane
Exhibition catalog for the memorial retrospective exhibition, Yuri Schwebler: The Spiritual Plane, a conceptual artist who worked in DC from 1970–1980, and who took his life in 1990.
The exhibition, slated for summer 2020, was a part of the Alper Initiative for Washington Art, American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC.
The link will download the PDF.
At 30, Dark Star Park Marks the Birth of Rosslyn's Public Art Efforts
This past Friday, Arlington County marked the 30th anniversary of Nancy Holt's Dark Star Park, the first since the artist's death from leukemia in February. There was plenty of pomp, with remarks from Arlington County Board Chairman Jay Fisette and Virginia Congressman Jim Moran, but there was very little circumstance: The sun did not shine; it was too dark to play. While the features of Dark Star Park—spheres, reflecting pools, poles, trees—were visible, there were no shadows from the poles ...
Negative Attitude: The Library of Congress Turns the Light Out on Darkrooms
Franz Jantzen doesn’t need to explain what the Library of Congress has lost, now that its consumers no longer have the option of ordering silver gelatin reproductions of images in its collection. He’d rather show you.
He points me toward me a high-resolution digital print of Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” one of the most iconic images of the Great Depression. Look at the range of grays, and you can see subtle differences in the textures of the children’s hair and clothes, and in the worri...
Mark L. Power, 1937–2020
An obituary and remembrance of DC photographer, Mark Power, who started the photography program at the Corcoran College of Art in the 1970s, and influenced photographers Sally Mann and Nancy Rexroth.
How the American Art Museum Acquired and Rehabilitated Nam June Paik's Work
In 2002, when the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired Nam June Paik’s "Electronic Superhighway,” a neon-outlined wall of televisions that forms a map of the United States, it didn't arrive in a truck or a van. Instead, it arrived in a box, in pieces: some electronics, videos, broken neon, and most surprisingly, no televisions.
Turns out, there is more to displaying a Paik than plugging it in and turning it on.
“One thing about [Paik] is that he never curated his career,” says Betsy Broun...
Nam June Paik: Preserving the Human Televisions
Standing behind the 1986 video sculpture Family of Robot: Hi-Tech Baby, Associate curator Michael Mansfield turns it on from his smartphone. It’s one of the robots in the exhibition “Nam June Paik: Global Visionary,” open through Aug. 11 at Washington’s Smithsonian American Art Museum. The museum manages electronic artworks with software on its central server. After logging into the server with a virtual network computing (VNC) app on his phone, Mansfield can operate and monitor every work on...
Rediscovering Paik: A Chat With Smithsonian Curator John G. Hanhardt
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Given the recent opening of an exhibition of Nam June Paik's work at the National Gallery of Art, as well as the long-term commitment to media art the Smithsonian American Art Museum has made its Watch This! exhibition, I thought now would be a good time to talk with SAAM's senior curator for media arts, John G. Hanhardt, about the Nam June Paik archives. SAAM acquired ...
The NeoLucida: Artists Revive an Old Master Tool
When artists Pablo Garcia and Golan Levin launched their latest Kickstarter project on May 7, aiming to raise money to produce an updated camera lucida, the $30 NeoLucida, their big hope was to attract 500 backers before June.
By midmorning on the next day they were fully funded, and they sold out their available stock of 2,500 just 16 hours after their launch. And there was demand for more.
The camera lucida is an optical device that assists artists in drawing by projecting onto a drawing su...
The Missing Archive of Yuri Schwebler
A reflection on my search to find an archive for the nearly forgotten 1970s DC conceptual artist Yuri Schwebler, who transformed the Washington Monument into a sundial in 1974.
Reestablishing Rockne
Rockne Krebs, the father of Laser Art, had his hey-day in the 1960s and 70s. But by the time of his death his importance and reputation had fallen into obscurity. The piece explores how his daughter, Heather, is attempting to reestablish his importance in the art world as she struggles with the management of his vast archive of papers and stuff.
Change Up Artist
Review of a survey of work by Robert Irwin and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC. The piece also explores the various puns inherent in the title, “All The Rules Will Change,” and how the structure of the exhibition evolved.
How the National Gallery is Finally Giving an Unsung Renaissance Painter His Due
Here’s a fun game: Ask your friends to name their favorite Renaissance painters. Friends without artistic backgrounds would probably list the names of Ninja Turtles. Some might include Sandro Botticelli, Dürer, or Bosch. Artists may add Titian, Jan van Eyck, Giotto, or Giovanni Bellini.
A name that would likely make none of those lists is Piero di Cosimo, currently the subject of a monographic retrospective at the National Gallery of Art. Considering that it’s been nearly 500 years since Pier...