Pictured above: “Stories From My Soul”, Mixed Media, 2025 by Dianne Bugash
By Kevin Mellema
Exclusive breaking art news. We can now report that the mammoth “Women Artists of the DMV (District, Maryland, Virginia) Survey Show” is adding yet another venue to the list. Namely, the Falls Church Arts gallery. Founded in 2003, they have been quietly growing, and gaining strength, with multiple moves along the way. Now occupying the ground floor gallery space at 700-B West Broad St., in the Kensington Building, in of course the heart of Falls Church City. With this show, they formally step out of the local and onto the greater DC area arts scene.
Getting back to the show…The “Women Artists of the DMV (District, Maryland, Virginia) Survey Show” has surpassed all expectations, hopes, and fantastical imaginations. It’s blown past the 600 artists exhibited mark, and now resides alone at the top of the mountain. Nobody can recall anything of this scale on the D.C art scene, and with good reason. It’s now considered the largest curated fine arts show in American history. The glass ceiling broke on this puppy a long time ago. We’re in volcanic eruption territory. More like an entire side of the mountain is now missing.
The brainchild of Lenny Campello (this column’s regular author) has suddenly found himself lashed to the front of a runaway train that somehow keeps getting cars and passengers added onto it. It’s tempting to call Lenny the ‘Genghis Khan of the DC art scene’, but he didn’t exactly set out to be the unifying leader conjoining 19 disparate fiefdoms into one all-consuming art attack. Rather, it happened organically. Mind you, this didn’t exactly materialize out of the ether either. It’s a bit of a layered story and involves a handful of key factors.
Firstly, we should point out that Lenny has been a major figure on the D.C art scene for decades. He’s an artist, critic, writer and art dealer. For the past 22 years he has also written one of the world’s most visited art blogs on earth, Daily Campello Art News (dcartnews.blogspot.com) with some 7 million customers served.
To call Lenny Campello ‘qualified’ to put on this event is a wee bit of an understatement. It’s fairly obvious at face value, but worth pointing out that few if any are more connected to the local D.C area art scene.
How did we get here? Well, back in 2011 Lenny wrote a survey art book featuring 100 of the best artists in the D.C area. So, when he approached Jack Rasmussen, the director/curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, the obvious target was to showcase 100 women artists from the greater D.C area.
Funny thing happened on the way to the opera. Other venues around town caught wind of such, and just like that, it was game on. Three added venues totaled 4. Which begat another batch, and another batch, and another batch, and another batch. Until the entire project blew up to never-before-seen proportions. Today the 19 venues stretch from Front Royal, VA to Annapolis, MD. It’s become a bit like holding a small rock concert on Max Yasgur’s farm.
But this story goes much deeper than a rolling snowball becoming an avalanche. You have to step back in time. Stating the brain dead obvious, professional artists have always had an extremely rough road to travel. They don’t call them ‘starving artists’ for nothing. Not only do you have to endure financial hardships, you have to endure societal rejection and outright abuse from ‘straight and narrow’ folks that haven’t a clue what makes you tick, but see you as dangerous crazy people that must be quashed, and those are the men. Historically speaking, the women have had it manifoldly worse than that. Some, literally thrown into insane asylums.
Rembrandt…Vermeer…Go ahead, name any woman artist that was their contemporary…any.
Virtually everybody will have to Google that to come up with even one name.
In the early 1980s the feminist movement got around to fuming about this cultural dichotomy. The now famous Guerrilla Girls formed in 1985, and protested anonymously by wearing Gorilla masks, and refusing to name members names. An iconic protest against the Metropolitan Museum of Art had them asking the semi-rhetorical question ‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?’ The point being that paintings of nude women were plentiful in the museum, but not the work of women artists. The Guerilla Girls made up posters saying exactly that, and had them put on the sides of NYC buses. To be sure, it was a high-profile ad campaign that frankly was both audacious, and brilliant. Forty years later, people still remember it.
Somewhere between then and now, things changed. Today, you can travel around the various nonprofit art venues in the D.C. area, it won’t take you long to notice that the majority of local art spaces are now run by women. Fine ladies. Sharp art people. They deserve their positions. But you’d have a rough time calling the local art scene a ‘boy’s club’ now. That’s saying the quiet part out loud.
Recalling the entirety of women’s art historical experience, and the fact that women now pull a lot of the art levers around town, putting up a show of the best women artists of the DMV, is a bit like smoking while pumping gas into your car. You could get more than you bargained for.
Tacking into the wind, there are another couple of pieces to this puzzle that are D.C. specific. Washington is a great art town. Nothing short of a world class art town. We have an embarrassment of riches in art museums. All but a few of them are completely free, and only closed for holidays like Christmas and New Years. You couldn’t ask for more if you’re an art viewer, or an artist…well…dead artist.
Yes, D.C. is often referred to as a town for ‘dead art’. Good luck trying to both breathe and make art here. The Corcoran made efforts to acknowledge living artists in town, as befits a teaching institution. They’re gone *poof* so much for that.
Jack Rasmussen has been on the D.C. art scene since the 70s. He’s another well-connected guy in town. He’s also done a stellar job at AU’s art museum. You see, the AU Museum runs international, national, and local contemporary art shows, often all at the same time. It’s a seriously big venue, and one of DC’s best kept secrets. Jack also has the wind at his back in the form of the ‘Alper Initiative for Washington Art’, an endowment courtesy of Carolyn Small Alper. The Initiative specifically states its intention to be used to “promote an understanding and appreciation of our region’s art and artists from our past, present, and future” – the care and feeding of living artists. What a novel idea. Hey, invest in the future as well. Brilliant. All that dead art around town doesn’t make itself…not yet anyway.
If you’re on your toes and fast with math, you’ll have already noticed a glaring omission here. Namely the National Museum for Women in the Arts, on New York Ave in D.C. which tags themselves as ‘The first museum in the world dedicated to championing women through the arts’. Reportedly, they initially were unable to be a part of this event, as their schedule was understandably pre-planned for years. However, in my opinion, no matter how packed their schedule is, they have a huge atrium that could easily accommodate artists from this major survey show. Would it be rude of us to point out that on September 28th this venue closed a 5 month long retrospective exhibit of the…Guerrilla Girls movement? Umm…failure to get the memo, or ‘read the room’ is one thing. Failure to get your own memo, or read your own room? Maybe we should just let that lay there. Stunned silence seems the most prudent response.
As a final note, we must say, don’t be shocked when you see other cities imitate this format. The model is far too successful to be a one-and-done flash in the pan. Would be great to see this sort of unified thing on a biennial basis in D.C. Do that a few times, and the marble facades might even start to take notice. Imagine having a D.C. Biennial! One thing is for sure, it wouldn’t be known as a ‘town for dead art’ any longer, and that would be great for everybody.
