Millenium Arts Salon presents Breaking Through: Women Leading Museums

Breaking Through: Women Leading Museums
A Panel Discussion Celebrating Women’s History Month 2009

In celebration of Women’s History month, four women who direct museums in Washington, D.C. will candidly explore the role of women in our nation’s cultural life in a panel discussion at the National Museum of Women in the Arts at 6:30 p.m. on March 26, 2009. The program is co-sponsored by ArtTable, the leadership organization for professional women in the visual arts, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, dedicated to recognizing the contributions of women artists.

At the panel, Breaking Through: Women Leading Museums, nationally renowned interviewer and N.P.R. Morning Edition special correspondent Susan Stamberg will moderate a lively conversation with directors whose institutions reflect Washington’s broad range of museums:
• Camille Giraud Akeju, Director, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution
• Leslie Buhler, Executive Director, Tudor Place Historic House and Garden
• Dorothy Kosinski, Director, The Phillips Collection
• Susan Fisher Sterling, Director, National Museum of Women in the Arts

“Women are making extraordinary contributions to our nation’s cultural life, but still face marked challenges, from the gender pay gap to work-life balance,” said Elizabeth Ash, Chair of the D.C. Chapter of ArtTable. “These museum directors will offer their unique perspectives on how to succeed at the highest levels and what they wish they had known sooner.”

During the evening, the panelists will share their professional journeys, offer advice to emerging professionals, and communicate their vision for leading museums today and beyond.

Admission is $20 for ArtTable members, $25 for non-members, and $10 for students (with ID). Tickets are available at www.arttable.org or 212-343-1735 x 25. For general information about the program, call 703-231-5242. The National Museum of Women in the Arts is located at 1250 New York Avenue NW, two blocks north of Metro Center. Additional directions can be found at www.nmwa.org.

Founded in 1980, ArtTable, Inc. is the leadership organization for professional women in the visual arts.ArtTable’s purpose is to increase the effectiveness, visibility and diversity of women in the field. Through activities and initiatives, ArtTable is dedicated to: supporting women in the visual arts at all stages of their careers; documenting outstanding achievements by women past and present; increasing opportunities for women; and in so doing, enriching the nation’s cultural life. For more information, visit www.arttable.org.

National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating the achievements of women in the visual, performing and literary arts. Founded as a private, not-for-profit organization by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay in 1981 and opened in 1987, the museum’s collection features 3,000 works from the 16th-century to the present by more than 800 artists. Highlights include works by Lavinia Fontana, Alma Thomas, Louise Nevelson, Lilla Cabot Perry, Frida Kahlo and Nan Goldin along with special collections of 18th-century silver tableware and botanical prints. NMWA offers multidisciplinary programs for adults, young people, and families, including role model workshops, film, music and literary events. Located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC in a landmark building blocks from the White House, the museum is open Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday, noon–5 p.m. For more information, visit www.nmwa.org.

from my boy Gabe.. Support Youth and Oak Hill

Please join us Wednesday, December 10th for a poetry reading by youth at Oak Hill.

From 5 to 6pm next Wednesday, poets will share their original work with invited guests. This will be a unique and exciting opportunity to hear directly from incarcerated DC youth who have a lot to say, and a lot of insight into the world around them.

Those interested should RSVP to Gabriel at gfeldman@seeforever.org, so that their names can be put on the security clearance list. SPACE is LIMITED, so please RSVP soon if interested, and only if you really think you can make it.

Again, it’s Wednesday, December 10th from 5-6pm at Oak Hill Youth Center (Laurel, Maryland–about 30 minutes from DC.) Details will follow for those who RSVP. There are some very powerful pieces being read, and you won’t regret making the trip!

check this artist: Barkley L. Hendricks

hendricks

First of all big ups to Google Reader because without it I would have never found out about this artist. I was reading John Keene’s blog J’s Theater and the a painting in his post caught my attention because it looked like a Kehinde Wiley ( I won’t link him, there is plenty of info out there about himyou can find it) , but it was actually a portrait done by Barkley L. Hendricks check out more of his work here . The similarities are pretty striking… check out the Fela portrait here to see how striking the similarities are; I like how keene put it on his blog. He said that “His (Hendricks) DNA is all up in Wiley’s and others’ work. ” Apparentely, The Studio Musuem after (w)rapping the Kehinde Wiley show put up Barkley L. Hendricks show and it will be up through March 15, 2009, get more info here

Big ups all the way around to Google Reader, John Keene for posting to J’s Theater, Sarah Ball for her article Battle of the Brushes of Urban Portraiture or Urban Outfitters , and the curators at the The Studio Museum of Harlem for their research in finding and showing Barkley L Hendricks.

Sources for this post.

http://jstheater.blogspot.com/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/169158

http://nasher.duke.edu/galleries/main_gallery/?cat=1&offset=0&pic_id=1

http://www.studiomuseum.org/barkley-l-hendricks-birth-of-the-cool/

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/barkley_l_hendricks/index.html

http://www.newsweek.com/id/169158

RIP Lawrence Wheatley

RIP Lawrence Wheatley, Jazz Pianist
RIP Lawrence Wheatley, Jazz Pianist

Sometimes I feel like “going fishing,”

Like life is just a can of worms.

A lonely musician, sitting here wishin’

You’d listen, but on my own terms.

—Lawrence P. Wheatley

Looking in The Post this afternoon I was a little blown to hear about the passing Jazz Pianist, Lawrence Wheatley. I only recall having heard him play once and before i could a chance to rap to him he had gotten up from the piano and walked out the door.

According to this article he apparently was a poet and called himself the “Bard of Bebop.” I would really have loved to talk to him about the INTERSECTION of jazz and poetry and how he negotiated  that INTERSECTION in his work, if at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/19/AR2008111903942.html

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=12577

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=12577

kind of blue

man i jumped on Google Reader to check one of my new favorite blogs (http://blackclassical.wordpress.com/) only to find that is now a protected blog.. Appearantly some ungrateful jerks really offended the tremendously generous soul who runs the site so he/she put the blog in protected mode..i cannot say I blame him or her..sucks for me and the rest of the world that really dug what they were doing over there. BlackClassical if you are reading this you are appreciated!

fall meditations

inside my room

it’s always winter
cold, blue sheets tangled atop
my solemn bed, some
times a wish for a warm fall
rain washes over me

—–

first fall rain touching
your naked back, the tastes of
winter at your neck

breath of life+Tomasz Stanko

Breath of Life: a conversation about black music, a blog by Kalamu and Mtume ya Salaam did this really awesome piece on this Polish trumpet player that I have been digging on for quite sometime now, Tomasz Stanko.

I am not going to say to much more about it, but i think the following quotes speak volumes not only about the reach, influence and impact of African American culture in general, but jazz in particular.
go over to Breath of Life and read the piece and go out pick up some of Stanko’s music…you won’t be disappointed. While you are over there check out the archives, these brothers are having some really important and sharp convo about not just music by people of African descent but music in general.

The message was freedom. For me, as a Polish who was living in Communist country jazz was synonym of Western culture, of freedom, of this different style of life.
—Tomasz Stanko

I find all attempts to confront and to be against inherited reality to be natural ones and the desirable ones. It’s life. To explore and to learn you can start from any point, it could be as well here and now. If you like jazz you don’t necessary need to know what was in the past, which includes my music. It all depends on one thing – the sensibility of he listener.


Myself, I’ve always been a mix of two extremes:

– Obsession for the innovation

– Love for classically understand concept of tradition and “beauty”. By “beauty” I mean the same approach and esthetics we find in Balthus’ paintings.


I’ve never distinguished between my desire for advance which guided my life and my love of mainstream and modal jazz of Trane and Miles or Chet Baker’s moods. I’ve always listened to diverse music: from Nancy Wilson to Brazilian samba to Keith Jarrett. My sound was inspired by very traditional trumpeter Buck Clayton, who has never played anything close to modern jazz but I was able to incorporate his colors, ambiance and his unique “dirty sound” into my own vocabulary. Free jazz has always been for me a philosophy of life, my way of life. It’s something which determines my personality and who I am; not necessarily what music I play. I love Cecil Taylor stuff but Taylor’s inspirations have never precluded me from listening to say, pop music. After all jazz is primary about the tolerance.
—Tomasz Stanko