live performance
duration: 3 hours
location: the 14th St Arts District galleries during the winter season openings
"D.C.’s winter season kicked off on Jan. 12, 2008, with a handful of openings on the 14th Street gallery strip, though the modest numbers didn’t mean the fete was dull. There was a person in a panda costume, for instance...
...Down the hall, the pint-sized Curator’s Office space offers a more lighthearted message as 15 artists pay their respects -- via portraits of various sorts -- to one of the nicest nice guys in D.C.’s art world, Philip Barlow. A tie-wearing numbers cruncher by day, the six-foot-four-inch tall longhair collects loyally (252 pieces at last count) and loves to look, look, look, even at the most arcane art openings...There’s another reason why Barlow is a hometown hero. In 2005, he was hired by the Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran to curate that year’s "Options" show but refused to consider any artist who had participated in two earlier, rather embarrassing (but extremely popular) city-wide sculpture festivals. He was canned.
One festival, comically dubbed "Pandamania," called for 150 artists to decorate cast-fiberglass pandas as plop-art for parks and street corners. The other, "Party Animals," featured casts of donkeys and elephants. Get it?
All this is by way of backstory for D.C. performance artist Kathryn Cornelius, who came to the 14th Street openings dressed in a panda costume. The creature -- as kitsch as the decorated sculptures that caused the row in the first place -- circulated through the galleries and occasionally ventured outdoors. "I brake for Philip Barlow," read its punning T-shirt." - Sidney Lawrence, "Capitol Roundup" for Artnet.com February 2008