Art Appreciation
Dear Appreciators:
A couple weeks ago, Dorothy and I were in the new Art of the Americas
wing of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. A four-year-old boy walked into
the room we were in and encountered John Singleton Copley’s “Watson
and the Shark” (http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/watson-and-the-shark-30998)
for the first time. He yelled “Whoa” out loud, ran to the painting
and stood in front of it, his mouth agape, staring intently and trying
to take it all in at one time. That’s art appreciation. His parents
tried to hush him, embarrassed by his reaction, but he was right and
they were wrong. “Watson and the Shark” is an action-packed
adventure movie in one still frame, as large as a movie screen (about
six by seven and a half feet). It shows a nude sailor in the sea,
pursued by a shark, and a row boat full of men trying to rescue him and
at the same time fend off other sharks. It’s a painting meant to shock
and excite, to overwhelm, to elicit strong emotions. The boy got it
right.
I thought of this experience again on December 24, when Dorothy and I
went to the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the National Museum of American
Art, http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/rockwell/.
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, who collected the paintings and
drawings in the exhibit, speak of Rockwell as a fellow movie director,
and use the same image I had thought of for “Watson and the Shark,”
of a director who worked in the genre of one-frame stories. They
appreciate how Rockwell cast his paintings and his storytelling skill,
but neither they nor the curators of the exhibit speak much of his
painterly skill, which is evident to audiences but difficult for art
critics to understand. This lack of understanding is obvious in the
commentary that accompanies “The Connoisseur,” which is included in
the slideshow of the exhibit (http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/tellingstories/).
“The Connoisseur” shows a portly gentleman from behind as he stands
before a Jackson Pollock painting in an art gallery. The spectator’s
attitude toward the Pollock isn’t evident from his pose — is he
admiring it or is he puzzled by it, is he awed by it as a work of genius
or is he wondering why it even belongs in a museum exhibit? The
uncomprehending critic says, “It is tempting to speculate that this
painting of a well-dressed older man contemplating a Jackson
Pollock-like drip painting is a metaphorical self-portrait as Rockwell
faces the future.” No, that misunderstanding doesn’t tempt me a bit.
First, Rockwell, who was thin, would never have painted himself as
portly. Second, the painting was done in 1962, when “sophisticated”
art critics dismissed Rockwell as a “mere illustrator” and praised
Pollock as a visionary, when they began to say that only art that
offended or, better yet, puzzled the average viewer was “serious”
art. The painting, the curator doesn’t understand, is the illustrator’s
challenge, his declaration of superiority over the critics’ darling,
his boast. Look at it closely. The imitation Pollock in Rockwell’s
painting is as good as any that Pollock actually painted, and better
than most. Rockwell is saying, not that Pollock is the future that he
can only stand before and give way to, but, “I can do whatever Pollock
does, just as well as he does it; does he have the skill to do what I
can?”
The point? The Rockwell exhibit closes January 2. Get to it this
week.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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For the last seven of its thirteen years, Health Care Now! (HCN) has
implemented community-based, preventive health care programs. However,
following a number of well-intended, but unrealized promises of
collaboration from local health care providers, we are concerned that
prevention doesn’t pay. Clinics, hospitals, emergency departments, and
birthing centers have agreed to conduct a simple series of noninvasive
chronic illness risk factor screenings for residents participating in
HCN’s Preventive Care Households in a Preventive Care Community (PCH)
project. The screenings are a key step in PCH, a preventive health care
behavioral modification program that includes fresh produce, community
exercise, health status surveys, affinity groups for chronic illness
sufferers and a special ER use reduction component.
After the initial burst of enthusiasm during the introduction of the
program, reality began to assert itself. When it becomes clear that our
project succeeded, when residents of medically underserved communities
made informed, sparing use of illness treatment facilities, barriers to
collaboration begin to emerge. HCN suspects what health care providers
are reluctant to admit: they are chagrined to confess that the
prevailing health care provider business model cannot support a program
that actually reduces the number of patients who present themselves for
care. How can hospitals reward HCN for keeping health care consumers out
of the emergency room?
Illness treatment pays the bills. People who don’t use the
emergency room will not pay the higher costs for special or urgent care
— an important revenue generator for many hospitals. The illness
treatment establishment doesn’t encourage competing health maintenance
strategies. A review of preventive health programs indicates that there
is quite a bit more preventive care rhetoric than effective action. In
one of our communities targeted for PCH, residents set 150 of 250
households as their PCH goal. After all members of those households
received the screenings, the community would become a Preventive Care
Community. However, our collaborating health care provider could only
schedule three households per week while maintaining the numbing illness
treatment work load. HCN was again advised to find another partner.
Perhaps prevention can only be pursued through a publicly funded
program. The entrepreneurial model in general use by corporate and
private sector health care providers permits admirable gestures toward
prevention, but cannot underwrite a shift of significant investments
into prevention activities. The undisputed value of prevention to the
community is not easily captured by the health care provider mindful of
the bottom line. Prevention doesn’t pay?
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Child Poverty, Homelessness, Sexual
Exploitation, and a 2011 Prediction
Mai Abdul Rahman, maiabdulrahman@comcast.net
DC’s poverty and homeless rates are highest in the country. In 2008
our city’s poverty rates were third in the country, and so in 2009,
not surprisingly, more than sixteen thousand residents were homeless. Of
those sixteen thousand, more that 37 percent are homeless families with
children, in addition to three thousand stand-alone homeless children
who reside in our city’s streets and abandoned buildings. Since 2006,
the United States Conference of City Mayors warned and predicted a
continued rise in the numbers of homeless families and children: “Homeless
families will increase. . . . Families may have to break up in order to
be sheltered,”, http://usmayors.org/publications.
Our city has done little to address the projected increase in the number
of homeless families and children in DC. Predictably this year DCPS
administrators have noted a substantial increase in the number of school
aged homeless and/or abandoned children attending their schools.
Most alarming, researchers suggest that 30 percent of homeless
children living in shelters are victims of sexual exploitation and that
more than 70 percent of homeless children forced into the streets are
engaging in “survival sex” to secure food, housing, and
transportation. During the past four years, the number of child
prostitutes in DC has seen a huge spike and the city was cited by child
advocacy groups as a hub for sexual exploitation of children, http://tinyurl.com/2d52bvn
Poverty and lack of affordable housing are contributing factors to the
sexual exploitation of poor and homeless children in DC. An increasing
number of DC children are confronted with factors outside and beyond
their control, unable to seek work, secure food or find shelter they are
left with few options other then to sell their bodies. A simple search
of the Washington Examiner web site with the words “child
prostitute” generates tens of stories of children between the ages of
nine and seventeen engaging in prostitution: http://washingtonexaminer.com/search/apachesolr_search/child%20
Homelessness impacts children mentally, socially, and emotionally and
exposes them to great risks. In addition, psychologists and researchers
warn about the impact of homelessness on children’s overall cognitive
and developmental growth, as well as the severe future social impacts on
the homeless children and our society at large. “Many children and
youth experience physical (e.g., blindness, speech problems) and
learning disabilities (e.g., dyslexia) that may make it difficult for
them to reach their full potential” (National Law Center for
Homelessness and Poverty, 2009). The implications of poverty on the high
rates of homelessness and child prostitution in DC continue to be
overlooked by DC legislators. Meanwhile DC legislatures are advancing
cuts in affordable housing programs, low income benefits, and the latest
wage and TANF proposal cuts that will make it more difficult for DC low
income families to stay afloat. Forewarned by federal and city leaders
that a lack of serious planning and attention to this issue will have
devastating impact on the most susceptible children, exposing them “to
exploitation and involvement in illicit activities, such as selling
drugs and prostitution” http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10335.pdf.
Despite the growth in the number of homeless children and the many
well-documented complex issues that have publicly surfaced, including
the rise of young children engaging in survival sex to make ends meet,
DC legislators have yet to consider a constructive long term strategy to
meaningfully address the factors that have exposed the most vulnerable
residents of our city to sexual exploitation — children as young as
nine years old. With little evidence that the high rates of child
prostitution in DC and the factors that contribute to it are of a
concern to most of our legislator, I predict that in 2011 the number of
sexually exploited children in DC will more than likely increase and
surpass the rates found in faraway cities of the poorest nations in the
world.
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End of a Less Than Glorious Year
Jenefer Ellingston, (retired) Statehood Green Party, jellingston@earthlink.net
A note of thanks from one of your dedicated readers. You have been a
trustworthy and timely source of information about the shady doings of
our second-rate local government (maybe third-rate). Thank you for
keeping us up to date and guiding us toward actions or even solutions to
the misguided performance of those elected to serve DC citizens, not
developers.
I live in Ward 6, but I’m horrified by the questionable practice of
developers, through their crony city council members, to dislodge the
City Paper and WPFW, and replace them with condos (nothing new about
that)! What could be worse? What could be less useful, less appropriate,
less feasible than condominiums on tiny Champlain Street? (Answer: build
them on tiny Kalorama Street.) Living on Capitol Hill, I often drive on
Massachusetts Avenue from Union Station to Mt. Vernon Place — an
endless row of condo buildings, on both sides of the Avenue, noticeably
ugly and cheap — and almost empty (for how many years). And now,
Wal-Mart is on the way. No doubt they have “persuaded” the city
council and mayor to pave the way for them. There was a time when this
city was graceful and beautiful. No more. (I was born here, moved away
and returned.)
Back to the main subject: again, thank you for keeping us informed
and guiding us through the maze of city agencies and departments, to
uncover pathways toward solutions (redemption). Special credit to Peter
Tucker, who follows in your footsteps.
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I’m no longer a resident of the city, but I am absolutely against
lifting the ban against skyscrapers [themail, December 19]. I hear all
the arguments about the need for more space, blah, blah, blah, but I
believe that preserving the landscape and the look of the city is simply
more important. Skyscrapers darken a city at an inexplicable cost to the
look of the city. Since DC is such an important city from a historical
perspective, maintaining a certain aesthetic and preserving the beauty
and importance of the historical buildings should remain important.
Nothing needs to be higher than the Monument. Want tall buildings? Go to
Arlington. DC is just fine the way that it is. Once you turn that
corner, you can never go back.
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If DC would be flexible in who can register a vehicle in the city,
you would likely see greater compliance. Up until a few years ago,
co-owners of DC vehicles did not all have to live in the city; only one
owner needed to be a resident. Parents who lived outside of DC could
co-own a car with their adult child who was living in town. (The adult
child could be a student or a young person just starting out who needed
a cosigner on the loan.) The cars were then registered in DC. The same
was true for married couples who live and work in different states. I
had a neighbor a few blocks away who was living and working in DC while
his wife had been offered a position near Cumberland, MD. After a year
of living in hotel apartments, she purchased a home and lives there most
of the year; he is here most of the time. When they traded in the car
they had jointly owned in DC for many years, the city refused to allow
her name on the title of the new car because she no longer had a DC
driver’s license — not a resident, no license. Since they own all
their property together and since Maryland does not care where you live,
they registered the car in Maryland. That makes sense to me. The state
with the least hassles gets the business.
So, instead of allowing out-of-state co-owners on the cars and
earning at least the money from registration fees, DC chases the
business to a neighboring state. Go back to the way it used to be when
DC allowed co-owners from other states and you will get more compliance.
Makes sense to me.
In fact, I would go one step further and allow the owners of any
residence in this city to register a car here. I have a friend who owns
a rather large estate in NY. It is only a part-time summer home. but it
does have a full-time caretaker. They own and have registered two Jeeps
at their summer home, one for use by the caretaker and an extra vehicle
for when they are in NY. NY is getting the registration fees even though
the owners are MD residents. I really believe that if DC stopped trying
to control and limit people as much as it does, good things would
happen.
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Re: Lack of DC Registrations
Richard Stone Rothblum, richard@rothblum.org
The topic of visitors being ticketed for not registering their
out-of-state vehicles [themail, December 21] was a subject of many
recent comments on the Palisades listserv. The problem was not that
residents were cheating or taking undue advantage of their residential
visitors’ parking permits, as suggested by Denise Wiktor, but that
guests were being ticketed despite displaying the RPP permit. At one
point, William O. Howland, Jr., Director of the Department of Public
Works, published a response to clarify the situation: “[A] Visitors
Pass from MPD . . . only applies to the Residential Parking Program (RPP).
The ticket [in question] was issued for a Registration of Out of State
Automobile (ROSA) which requires a resident to register their vehicle
thirty days after moving into the District of Columbia. The Visitors
Pass does not apply to ROSA enforcement.”
Unfortunately, the way in which DPW enforces the ROSA regulations
virtually guarantees that innocent visitors who regularly park overnight
using their host’s RPP permits will be ticketed under the ROSA
program. If the ticket issuers find a car not registered in DC parked
overnight within the District on more than three nights in a given
thirty day period, a warning will be issued stating that the recipient
must register his car in the District. After that, any time the vehicle
is observed to be parked in DC overnight more than twice in the same
thirty-day period will be subject to a $100 fine.
The ROSA enforcement protocol should satisfy the objections
concerning abuse of the RPP raised by Denise, although in my view
enforcement goes way too far. Evidently, lots of innocent out-of-town
visitors who spend several nights a week visiting friends in DC have
been ticketed, and, amazingly, have failed to have the tickets
overturned on appeal. Here are two links provided by Mr. Howland that
state the official DMV (but not DPW) position on the ROSA and the RPP: http://dmv.washingtondc.gov/serv/registration/ROSA.shtm,
http://dmv.washingtondc.gov/serv/parking/RPP.shtm
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I realize from Mr. Rothblum’s note that I was not entirely clear. I
live in Mt. Pleasant, which has had one of the “pilot” visitors
parking permit programs. the passes are mailed to each residence
(including each apartment) and are good for a year. We are in year two
of the pilot. On the pass it says such things as, “can not use for
more than thirty days,” etc. However, since the program is
administered by DDOT, parking enforcement has taken the position they
have no authority to ticket under it. These permits have been sold, some
to local business who park in the area, and many residents who have
moved in since the program have opted not to register their cars since
they can use this permit.
The second issue was about MPD visitors’ permits. A local business
person who lives in the ward gets permits for all of her employees.
After dealing with the substation commander it was clear these permits
were not being issued properly — some were as long as six weeks, none
had signatures, and the tracking numbers were missing from all of them.
I believe I know what officer(s) are assisting this person in obtaining
them, but the internal controls are lax o n them.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Challenges Facing DC, January 4
Vic Miller, millervic@hotmail.com
Vincent Gray takes the helm in the District of Columbia January 2 as
its sixth mayor. The District’s unique role as a state and a city
means he will have to contend with both the challenges facing many
big-city mayors — such as citizen concerns about crime and public
safety, and a tumultuous housing market in which many hard-pressed
families face foreclosure — and the big fiscal and policy issues of
health care and budget balancing that confront new governors. And unlike
any other city, county, or state leader, the District’s chief
executive must deal with the additional layer of congressional oversight
and veto. Join us just two days after the Gray administration’s debut
for a fact-filled discussion about what recent research has to say about
the District, its residents, local programs and services, and ways to
make life better for the 600,000 people who call the District of
Columbia home.
You are cordially invited to attend, “Mr. Mayor! Here’s What
Research Says About the Challenges Facing the District of Columbia, on
Tuesday, January 4, at noon-1:30 p.m., at the Urban Institute, 2100 M
Street, NW, 5th Floor. Lunch will be provided at 11:45 a.m. The forum
begins promptly at noon. To attend in person, RSVP online at http://www.urban.org/events/FirstTuesdays/rsvp.cfm
or E-mail publicaffairs@urban.org
To watch the video web cast, go to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/urban-institute-events.
Discussions panelists will be Jocelyn Fontaine, deputy director,
District of Columbia Crime Policy Institute, Urban Institute; Olivia
Golden, Institute fellow, former director of the Child and Family
Services Agency, District of Columbia, and author of Reforming Child
Welfare (moderator); Barbara Ormond, senior research associate,
Health Policy Center, Urban Institute; Alice Rivlin, senior fellow,
Brookings Institution, director, Brookings Greater Washington Research,
and former chair, District of Columbia Financial Management Assistance
Authority; Peter Tatian, senior research associate, Metropolitan Housing
and Communities Policy Center, Urban Institute and director,
NeighborhoodInfo DC.
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National Building Museum Events, January 6
Tara Miller, tmiller@nbm.org
January 6, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Smart Growth: What Makes Great Public
Squares? Robert F. Gatje, FAIA, author of Great Public Squares,
explains the essential elements of successful public squares and how
they contribute to the livability of cities. A book-signing follows the
program. Free, registration required. Walk-in registration based on
availability. At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW,
Judiciary Square Metro station. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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