Our Story
WPA supports artist-driven projects, advocacy, and dialogue so that artists can live, work, and flourish.
WPA was founded in 1975 by the art impresario Alice Denney, organizer of the legendary NOW Festival in 1966. Over the past four decades, and under the leadership of nearly a dozen directors, WPA has presented more than 500 exhibitions; 1,000 performances; 700 lectures, workshops, and symposia; 250 screenings; and 58 public art projects. Nearly ever major visual artist in the District between 1975 and today has had some connection with WPA. Many have sat on WPA’s Board of Directors, including William Christenberry, Gene Davis, Sherman Fleming, Sam Gilliam, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, and Maida Withers. Walter Hopps, the legendary curator, was also a board member.
WPA has also brought hundreds of extraordinary artists and curators from outside the area to DC over the years. They include Robert Ashley, Alice Aycock, Eric Bogosian, Chris Burden, John Cage, Ullises Carrion, CoLab, Lucinda Childs, Simone Forti, Hollis Framp- ton, Group Material, Doug Hall, Deborah Hay, Jenny Holzer, David Ireland, Danny Lyon, Meredith Monk, Antonio Muntadas, Steve Paxton, Howardena Pin- dell, Adrian Piper, Nancy Rubins, Allison Saar, Jacoby Satterwhite, Carolee Schneemann, Joyce Scott, Alan Sekula, Nancy Spero, Haim Stainbach, Alan Suicide, Saya Woolfalk, Robert Wilson, among many others.
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The 2nd Latin American Census of Contemporary Art has already begun.
The 2nd Latin American Census of Contemporary Art is a collaborative initiative that takes place between November 1 and 30, 2020 to find out how many Artists and Contemporary Art Workers there are in Latin America, trying to determine where they live and work, what are their working conditions, and how they are organized and related to public and private Organizations and Institutions, and Art Management.
With the 2020 Census data, we will be able to make comparative analyzes on how many artists and art workers make a living from their work through the sale of work or through pedagogy, if they go to other sources of work to support themselves, if they carry out their projects with competitive public funds, etc. We can also estimate the size of regional and provincial Local Art Scenes, which are fundamental in new art practices with the community.
Sharing this information is extremely important to know the number of artists and their working conditions, which will allow the general public, artists and workers, organizations and public and private institutions to understand the effective influence of their work, their editorial lines and forms the organisation.
Know how strong you are - count your numbers!
We all work under the same conditions with the same needs.
There must be a census of artists in every neighborhood, every city, every county, every state, in every country.
Dear Washington Project for the Arts and Wherewithal Recovery Grants, I'm writing to you as an artist that has been adversely economically affected by the effects of COVID-19 in Washington DC. Unfortunately I'm also a tenant of your sponsoring organization the CAFRITZ FOUNDATION who gets its money from owning apartment buildings in the District and surrounding area. You should know that CAFRITZ makes millions of dollars a year off its tenants while treating those tenants as second-class citizens. We’ve had many reports in our buildings about racial disparities, particularly among non-documented persons as well as a general lack of concern about safety and well being of all tenants.
I have to ask, how appropriate is it for WPA to be taking money from this institution that benefits from tax write offs while driving a wedge between progressive organizations like yours and the community at large? Nearly 40 million Americans are out of work and cannot pay their rent or mortgages and are at risk of being evicted or choosing not to eat or tend to their medical care needs. The CAFRITZ FOUNDATION is attempting to squeeze us to pay your grant money while refusing to do anything to help us and ultimately threatening us with evection. We have been asking for some time that they cancel rent but I guess they think they can buy good will with donations to charities that they get a tax write off for, while bleeding us dry. They can throw around money for artists, but refuse to assist hundreds of their tenants who cannot pay their rent due to the crisis.
WPA Wherewithal Recovery Grants has been talked about a lot in tenant association meetings and we are not happy as fellow citizens with the operation as normal between your organization and CAFRITZ. Can you please explain why you collect so much money from CAFRITZ when they have an obligation to help those that make your grants possible, but instead let them go hungry and face eviction?
I am asking that Washington Project for the Arts Wherewithal Recovery Grants inform the CAFRITZ FOUNDATION of this communication and that you are taking a stance with us, that they need to provide real humanitarian help to those that make them wealthy enough to support your efforts as noble as they are and redirect those resources until this emergency is over. I ask that you refuse taking any more funding from CAFRITZ until they have stopped their targeting of minorities and meet with the tenant associations in their buildings to discuss canceling rent.
I'm going to attach a photograph of so my recent light art projections I did on one of their buildings calling for a (Rent Strike) as our entire community needs rent canceled. I hope I win so I can pay my rent next month and don’t end up homeless.
Thank you
Paul Sheehan
Thursday 4-5pm, free, limited tix still available -
Hello artists moms. If you work while having your little artists around. There is an Art Studio space for share at 52 O Street Studios where I work. Please contact me if you're interested (
[email protected]). Thank you!
Not that many jobs in glass? Sure there are! We are currently hiring for a Studio Coordinator right now! Please share with any who may be interested.
This year's WPA Auction Gala is guaranteed to be a wonderful event. I had the pleasure of being one of six individuals to select the art this year...the artists and art are a diverse representation of the best of the region's contemporary art scene. I visited the ULINE Arena venue today, and it is a large, stunning space. If you haven't purchased tickets yet, I strongly encourage you to do so.
Columbia Pike Artists Studios (CPAS) artist Vlad Zabavskiy has solo show at the Suman Sorg Gallery (District Architecture Center), it is on view through Friday, November 17, 2017. The exhibition is organized by AIA|DC and curated by Scott Clowney.
"See the hippest exhibition of the year… “On the Verge of Bizarre: Extraordinary Art by Vlad Zabavaskiy.” Vlad’s work is incredible 2-dimensionally, but it’s also wildly 3-dimensional when viewing with the aid of 3D CHROMADEPTH® Glasses. Trust us – you don’t want to miss the opportunity to experience his “Cubist-like but not Cubist inspired” paintings. They're playful and architectonic - almost other worldly." - AIA DC.
https://www.aiadc.com/Vlad2017
Gallery Hours:
Mon - Wed 10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Thurs - Fri 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sat - Sun Closed
Address:
421 7th Street NW, Washington, DC 20004
To see artworks by Vlad Zabavskiy online or to contact him, please visit:
www.zabavskiy.com
Please allow us to pass along info about our Education Workshops the Artists and Creatives in your networks may find useful. Thank you! -WALA
WALA Creative Entrepreneurs Series @ THEARC
(Legal Issues for Creative Entrepreneurs)
A series for creatives of all kinds who want to take the next step in their professional career by creating their own business. Explore the basics of forming a business for your creative endeavors, from deciding whether to incorporate as a non-profit or for-profit entity, to understanding copyrights and trademarks, to contract and negotiation skills, and finally to taxes and leases.
The series comprises six sessions to be held on consecutive Wednesdays, starting Wednesday October 4th and continuing through Wednesday, November 8th, from 7pm - 9pm at THEARC Theatre.
The series is free for WALA members, and $20 per workshop for non-members.
The complete series includes:
(Register for individual sessions by selecting from the dates below)
Session #1: Wednesday, October 4th ~ Business Formation
Presentation and Q & A with: Hardeep Grover, Tresquire Legal Services PLLC
Session #2: Wednesday, October 11th ~ Copyright/Trademark Protection & Use
Presentation and Q & A with: John D. Mason, Copyright Counselors & WALA Board President
Session #3: Wednesday, October 18th ~ Negotiation Skills
Presentation and Q & A with: Sandra Sellers, Technology Mediation Services
Session #4: Wednesday, October 25th ~ Contracts/Licensing
Presentation and Q & A with: Cynthia Gayton, Esq, Gayton Law
Session #5: Wednesday, November 1st ~ Grants & Leases
Presentation and Q & A with: India Pinkney - General Counsel, National Endowment for the Arts
Session #6: Wednesday, November 10th ~ Tax Strategies
Presentation and Q & A with: Benjamin Grosz, Ivins, Phillips & Barker and Benjamin Takis Tax-exempt Solutions
For more information about the sessions, presenters, and to register please visit:
https://walafallces2017.eventbrite.com or
www.waladc.org/events
Dear Artist,
We're writing about your labor, and how you choose to engage it.
This letter is addressed to you in the singular because you are a worker in the singular. As Artist, you work alone and in competition with your peers. You are a speculator betting on your own unlikely success, and if you fail it’s because you have failed to work hard enough. You have no choice but to exploit not only yourself but also inadvertently all those working along the supply chain. You are a contracted subcontractor, a self-employed employer, and you are often unemployed—but without being anyone's employee your ability to organize is limited.
None of this makes you singular, either as a worker or as a work force. These are the conditions under which many people labor today. What makes you singular is your willingness to work not for a low wage but for free.
Artist, in as much we each enable exploitation we also have the capacity to resist it. And we need to do this now, during what is a critical moment of transition. Because as the slow motion transfer of presidential power has begun, so too has a preemptive nostalgia for a politically progressive art world and the calls to maintain it as such in the face of what's to come.
But before we heed or make any calls in defense of progressive values, we have to come to terms with what’s wrong with the art world insofar as it’s built on and enriches itself through free labor.
As it turns out, what’s wrong with the art world is no different than what’s wrong with the rest of the world. In fact it is the art world’s perception of itself as having a unique form of wrongness, as being other than—as being exceptional—that impedes it from realizing in material terms the political and moral claims it makes for itself in theoretical ones.
The fact that over many decades little to no progress has been made to correct the systemic racism and institutionalized white supremacy that underpins it, despite ongoing attempts to demonstrate otherwise, makes clear just how unexceptional the art world really is.
Even though it is made up of a for-profit and a non-profit sector, the world of art is an industry just like any other. All of its supporting institutions, including philanthropy, contribute to its perpetuation and growth as such, and all those who contribute to its economy by facilitating the production and distribution of art products, including and especially artists, are wholly unexceptional in their support for and exploitation by it. The role of art and artists within this multibillion-dollar industry is to serve capital—just like everyone else.
But there is an important distinction between the role of artists in the art industry and our status. Unlike our role, our status can be described as exceptional. Even though our participation inevitably serves capital, artists are uniquely enabled to work both for and against it at the same time. Today institutions expect artists to question and attempt to subvert the aesthetic, political, material, social, and economic conditions from which we operate. This makes it sound like we get to have it both ways and it appears to be a privilege. But this privilege comes at a cost: our status is only exceptional as long as we don’t get paid.
Here is the problem: we have been led to believe that getting paid to work against the very forces that render our art world an industry just like any other will render meaningless our political potential as artists. But think of it this way, not getting paid by an industry in which you and your work support a billionaire class and a transnational elite is precisely what renders meaningless your political potential as an artist. The demand to be paid is a political one.
Here is what we must do: we must put our exceptionality to work. Putting our exceptionality to work means claiming the privilege of having it both ways. It means dissenting from the industry that we serve by demanding to be paid for the content we provide. And this demand can no longer be made on the basis of being an impoverished, marginalized, and exploited constituency. While there is still steep class stratification between artists, the art field is inarguably an elite one. This means that the demand for compensation must be made on behalf of a broader class struggle that extends well beyond the field’s impossibly high barriers to entry.
W.A.G.E. agitates for the wholesale redistribution of resources within this industry and proposes forms of union building based on individual self-organization grounded in collective struggle that must take place laterally across class. Keep your ear to the ground. WAGENCY is coming.
Most sincerely,
Working Artists and the Greater Economy
