“And let us run with endurance the course that God has set before us.”
Category: Art
Finding Art in Washington, D.C.
written for City Living Magazine (I’ll link when it goes up) October 24, 2009
For a city of just over 600,000 residents Washington, D.C. has an amazing amount of cultural activity. The District hosts 16 million visitors each year, many of whom enjoy our local cultural activities. Almost 20% of city revenue is generated through arts and culture. With such depth of activity, even long-time residents can have difficulty finding the art that they really connect with.
There are actually three local art scenes. Many visitors only see the ‘national local’ art scene. Most of the ‘national local’ art scene exists on the mall. The Smithsonian Institution (www.si.edu) represents 19 world-class museums, in addition to which there are our political memorials. This ‘national’ part of the local art scene rightly includes the Kennedy Center (which is actually a national monument.) While the Kennedy Center will program local artists, the majority of the performers share the biggest stages in cities around the world.
Many of the District’s most prominent residents are only here for a few years. Similarly, in the art scene, many of our most prominent artists weren’t born here. These artists create in the ‘northwest local’ art scene. The District’s Theater scene is the only part of our community that carries a national reputation, as a whole. There are lots of ways to connect into the local theater scene; I appreciate D.C.’s version of New York City’s Ticket Booth (www.ticketplace.org) which offers discounted theater tickets daily. For visual arts I recommend checking out D.C.’s yearly un-curated art show, Artomatic.
The ‘local local’ art scene is organized around geographic, ethnic, and practice communities. Examples are the Ward 7 arts collaborative, and Gala Hispanic Theater. There is – of course – some crossover between the ‘national local’, ‘northwest local’, and ‘local local’ art scenes. The District is tremendously rich culturally, and regardless of the type of art you enjoy, there is an excellent chance you can find the art you love here.
Rob Bettmann is a local choreographer, writer, and arts advocate. To see more about his work visit www.dayeight.org. To get involved with the DC Advocates for the Arts visit www.dcadvocatesforthearts.org. Rob is also the editor of the arts magazine Bourgeon. Image is of Robert Bettmann performing at Galapagos Arts Space, Brooklyn, New York, April 2009 (photo credit: Steven Schreiber for 60×60 Dance.)
Jim Carroll (1949-2009)
Jim Carroll passed away on September 11th, 2009. Around that time a friend shared this video on Facebook. Jim is clearly weak, and it takes a few minutes for him to warm up. I think the video is worth the watch.
Jim Carroll is fascinating. Reminds me of a city version of Everett Ruess. I learned of Jim through reading his Basketball Diaries, which Norton re-published when I was working there. There is a good film – starring Leonardo DiCaprio – of the diaries that I’ve seen since. The biographical information below was taken from CatholicBoy.com:
Descended from three generations of Irish Catholic bartenders, Carroll was born in New York City in 1950. He spent his childhood living on the city’s Lower East Side, attending Catholic schools, and at age 12, shortly before his family moved to Upper Manhattan, he began keeping the journal that would eventually be published as The Basketball Diaries (1978). In this diary he recorded the ins and outs of his remarkable adolescence. A star basketball player and excellent student, he won a scholarship to Trinity, an elite private school on Manhattan’s posh upper West side.
While leading the Trinity Tigers to victory as an “All Ivy” player, Jim led a double life. He had first experimented with heroin at age 13, unfortunately thinking marijuana was the addictive stuff; he was soon a junkie, supporting his habit by hustling gay men.
By age 15, he was still hooked, but he was also writing poems and attending poetry workshops at St. Mark’s Poetry Project. His diaries immediately attracted the attention of the literary crowd around him. When he published Organic Trains, his first collection of poetry, at age 16, and excerpts from The Basketball Diaries were printed in Paris Review, he was firmly established as a genuine prodigy and a literary talent to be reckoned with.”
The image in this post is of Carroll at Andy Warhol’s Factory overlooking Union Square in 1970 (by Gerard Malanga.) I took the image from a gallery at CatholicBoy.com, where they have a lot of his work, reviews, and music clips. They also have this poem, titled “Poem”, on the homepage.
There will always be a poem
I will climb on top of it and come
In and out of time,
Cocking my head to the side slightly,
As I finish shaking, melting then
Into its body, its soft skin
–Jim Carroll
For some reason his life, his art, makes me think: there are millions of ways to be different, and just as many ways to be the same. RIP.