PhilippaHughes.com

Despite the sluggish economy, four visionaries have opened galleries in the DC area over the past year. Though their offerings are diverse, these curators share a conviction that art transcends the everyday and offers solace in every climate.

 D.C. has lots of embassies, and lots of embassies host cultural events that showcase arts and culture from their countries. The thing is, whenever I go to any of these events, they are filled with people who are from those respective countries. Don’t get me wrong! I love meeting people from other countries. I seek them out. But I think embassies produce this kind of programming because they want to share their culture with Americans. Cultural diplomacy at its best! I’ll highlight a few cultural programs I know about right now and I encourage you to check these out. Many embassies have mailing lists, which is a great way to learn about future programs. No passport required. 

What’s the state of visual arts in D.C.? Four years ago, a contemporary art fair called ArtDC took place at the convention center. Fair organizers convinced all the D.C. contemporary art galleries to participate and enticed numerous non-D.C. galleries to exhibit, including many international galleries. The fair seemed well-organized and contained all the elements of a typical art fair: panel discussions, VIP section, performance art, and lots of other fun fair fanfare. Nonetheless, most in the D.C. art scene proclaimed it a failure for various reasons. For me, it felt sterile (maybe having been organized by non-D.C. art fair corporate organizer types) and there didn’t seem to be any buzz around it at all. It came and went and was quickly forgotten.

When you think of Washington, D.C., you generally think of politics, bureaucracies, and grand monuments. At least that’s what I thought when I first moved to D.C. to be a lobbyist about 10 years ago. After I’d been here a little while, I started feeling a little antsy and boxed in by my desk job so I looked around to see if there was anything else going on beyond the Smithsonians and the Kennedy Center. I discovered a thriving arts scene beyond the National Mall filled with amazing creative people that even D.C. residents didn’t know about, much less tourists. I wanted to tell the world about what I’d found!

It’s such a delight to walk down the street and suddenly stumble on a little artistic gem that pops up out of nowhere and then disappears the next time you walk by. That is the ephemeral nature of street art and that’s what makes it so appealing to me. I feel it’s the perfect temporary public art that takes the art of galleries and museums into the streets and reminds us of what it means to have beauty in the world.