Dearest WALA Supporter,
I have some new information to share with you about the previously forthcoming Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA) President's Day Weekend event originally slated for February 17, 2011 at Gibson Guitar. The WALA Board has met and determined that we are postponing the event on Feb. 17th until a date to be determined in May. The event is postponed due to inclement weather projections for this forthcoming Thursday. A new date and venue will be determined in short order (Gibson Guitar, our host venue, unfortunately cannot host a Spring event due to previously scheduled bookings). Professor Susan Jones will still be honored at the May event and other award recipients may also soon be announced.
Because of the resulting short notice, I wanted to make sure we're aggressively getting the word out to you, our supporters and members, and personally apologize for any inconvenience this date change may cause you. Please do help us get the word out to your individual networks, those you may have personally invited or those you know who planned to attend next Thursday.
Thanks for your support of this fundraising event and our organization. We look forward to your attending the forthcoming Spring Affair! Other than the date and venue location, all the other event details announced are expected to remain the same or perhaps even be improved!
We'll get you all the new date the second it is confirmed. We appreciate your patience in the interim and look forward to seeing you in Spring! My contact information is below should you need to directly reach me. Thanks again!
Warmest regards,
L. Michael Gipson
Executive Director
Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts
www.thewala.org
(c) (216)-534-9017
1/17/11
Something To Tide You Over 'Til Feb 17th!
Please Join
SBC IP Law Group
BL Young Law Firm
&
The Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice
at Howard University School of Law
for an
Intellectual Property Law Social
on
Friday, January 21, 2011
from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
at
Howard University School of Law
2900 Van Ness Street, NW
Washington, DC 20008
RSVP:
SPONSORS:
The Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University Law
CIROC premium vodka
SBC IP LAW GROUP
Just 30 Days 'Til We Party With A Purpose!!
In just 30 days, we'll be bringing in the holiday weekend right! Buy an advance ticket and automatically become a WALA member! That's a $35 savings and a year of plenty legal beagle returns! Join WALA, support DC arts, and have an amazing night of music, fashion, and scrumptious cuisine. Wow, how hot is that?
For advance tickets w/ WALA membership just click here!
1/5/11
2011: A Creative Odyssey
2011 – a glorious new year to embark on a mission! The holidays naturally invite us to contemplate “New Year’s resolutions.” And yes, I have a resolution too: I want to put DC’s cultural identity on the map.
As WALA’s president, I spend a great deal of time envisioning our organization's role in D.C.’s cultural landscape. This week, my contemplation happily coincided with a segment on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, The D.C. Area’s Unique (?) Cultural Identity. Amid familiar commentary that DC is a “government town” with a “small town” cultural landscape, Kojo’s guests also made approving nods to what our city has become. We have art, theater, music, film, fashion, and museums (and I am not only talking about the megalith complex we call “America’s Treasure Chest”). We even have food. So it would seem that despite the omnipotent presence of agencies, contractors and other going concerns that drive our nation’s government, we have evolved into a city with cultural distinction.
Still, as guests on Kojo’s show quickly noted, we are not New York. Regrettably, the comparison is unsurprising. Detractors of DC’s cultural scene commonly cast a shadow over our community’s accomplishments, either by drawing comparisons to other cities or by distinguishing DC’s (lack of) attributes (a “small transitory government town”) to justify why culture will never take root.
If our community is to distinguish itself for the cultural attributes that it has -- and not the ones it is lacking -- we must invest in our creative community. Cultural identity is built on community. Community develops a cultural identity through space - places where people come together to exchange ideas – and relationships formed by common experiences. How a community celebrates, how it mourns and simply how it goes about daily routines all define a common cultural identity. The narrators of that cultural identity are a community’s creatives: its artists, storytellers, musicians, designers curators and, yes, culinary masters. Our creatives shape and define our collective identity.
In the coming year, WALA will do its part to invest in our creative community and put DC’s cultural identity on the map. WALA will develop two white papers on legal issues in the creative economy. It will be stepping up efforts to educate and train economically challenged and emerging artists on legal aspects of creative entrepreneurship. It will build upon efforts to raise awareness of legal and regulatory challenges that hinder the development of a vibrant and sustainable creative economy. Finally, it will continue to serve the hundreds of artists and arts organizations in our community that seek legal advice. I invite you to roll up your sleeves and join us. Together, we can put to rest once and for all the question of whether a distinct cultural landscape exists in the District of Columbia, our nation’s (cultural) capital.
12/6/10
WALA Needs You, Art Techies!
New WALA Web and Social Media Committee
Over the last two years, WALA has made a concerted effort to enter the 21st Century by developing communication platforms and utilizing the new technologies to keep you better informed about all things WALA. In the last year alone, we have developed this blog, refreshed our website, and increased our presence on several social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. In 2011, we want to take it even further by creating the first WALA Web and Social Media Committee. It is our hope that the committee will:
Over the last two years, WALA has made a concerted effort to enter the 21st Century by developing communication platforms and utilizing the new technologies to keep you better informed about all things WALA. In the last year alone, we have developed this blog, refreshed our website, and increased our presence on several social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. In 2011, we want to take it even further by creating the first WALA Web and Social Media Committee. It is our hope that the committee will:
- develop exciting new video content and utilize video sharing platforms that allows WALA to further highlight the amazing talents and provocative thinkers of our community;
- advance our blog to grow into the most dynamic and useful art and law blog in the country (or at least our community!) by recruiting fresh new voices and mining the learned experience of more sage ones on matters pertaining to censorship, net neutrality, entertainment law, creative entrepreneurship, and other arts community concerns;
- continue to make the necessary updates, alterations, and improvements on our website, www.thewala.org, and furthering our brand in the public consciousness; and,
- further our brand awareness in the arts and legal communities and in the public consciousness to increase artists access to services and public support of our mission.
12/2/10
WALA Signs On With NACA Against NPG Censorship
The National Coalition Against Censorship has circulated the following statement in response to the National Portrait Gallery's removal of a David Wojnarowicz video. It is jointly signed by the National Coalition Against Censorship, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, AICA-USA, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Association of American Publishers, Catholics for Choice, Defending Dissent Foundation, District of Columbia Advocates for the Arts, Advocates for the Arts District of Columbia Arts Center, The First Amendment Project, Provisions Library: Resources for Arts and Social Change, Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts, Washington Project for the Arts, and The Woodhull Freedom Foundation
The National Portrait Gallery Betrays Constitutional Principles by Censoring Controversial Viewpoints:
A joint statement by the National Coalition Against Censorship, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, AICA-USA,Americans United for Separation of Church and State,Association of American Publishers, Catholics for Choice, Defending Dissent Foundation, District of Columbia Advocates for the Arts, Advocates for the Arts District of Columbia Arts Center, The First Amendment Project, Provisions Library: Resources for Arts and Social Change, Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts, Washington Project for the Arts,and The Woodhull Freedom Foundation
The removal of David Wojnarowicz's 1987 video Fire in My Belly from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in response to pressure from the Catholic League and Republican Members of Congress is a shameful assault on First Amendment principles, which preclude government officials from using their financial and political power to determine what viewpoints should and should not be allowed into a public museum.
The video was part of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, an exhibition exploring issues of sexuality and specifically gay sexuality. After a sensationalizing review of the show published on CNSNews.com (formerly the Conservative News Service, a news website owned by the Media Research Center) the Catholic League objected to the exhibition and specifically David Wojnarowicz' video, a work which is part death elegy about the artist's mentor and lover Peter Hujar and part angry tirade about the AIDS epidemic. The video uses, among many others, images of crucifixes.
The Catholic League called the video "hate speech." Soon Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the presumptive incoming House speaker, and incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), as well as some other Republican legislators, joined the League in demanding the cancellation of the show, as well as threatening future funding to the Smithsonian. Yielding to political pressure, the Gallery's director, Martin Sullivan, removed Wojnarowicz's video from the exhibition on November 30th.
Anybody is entitled to criticize an art show but First Amendment principles bar government officials from suppressing controversial viewpoints andimposing the values held by one religious group on society at large. The National Portrait Gallery cannot and should not tailor its programming to promote the views of certain interest groups at the expense of others. Taxpayer funds go to maintain a vibrant and diverse cultural sphere that serves all Americans not just Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, Christians or Jews. We may differ on cultural or social issues and argue about these issues - in the press, in public spaces, in galleries and performance spaces, but government officials cannot use financial leverage as a threat to silence those with whom they disagree. In 1998, while upholding the so-called NEA decency clause, the US Supreme Court warned that serious First Amendment problems would be raised were the government "to leverage its power" to fund art "into a penalty on disfavored viewpoints."
The Catholic League may insist that religious symbols are its property and others (especially homosexuals) cannot use them, however, a national museum is barred by First Amendment principles, as well as by its mission to serve all Americans, from enforcing those views on the rest of us. As the U.S. Supreme Court stated in 1952, "the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them...It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine."
The National Portrait Gallery's failure to stand up for its own curatorial selection and for the free speech rights of artists and museum visitors is likely to have a chilling effect on future programming. Once the institution has caved in to political pressure from religious groups and suppressed work deemed "sacrilegious" by those groups, it's inevitable, as the Supreme Court warned in 1952, that it will yield to "the most vocal and powerful orthodoxies" and "find it virtually impossible to avoid favoring one religion over another."
The Smithsonian, of which the National Portrait Gallery is part, is a public trust serving the interests of all Americans. It betrays its mission the moment it ejects a work whose viewpoint some dislike.
About the National Coalition Against Censorship
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), founded in 1974, is an alliance of 50 national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups. United by a conviction that freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression must be defended, we work to educate our own members and the public at large about the dangers of censorship and how to oppose them.
National Coalition Against Censorship
725 7th Ave, New York, NY 10001
www.ncac.org
NPG Caves Under Political Censorship: Artists' Rights at Stake
- NPG Caves Under Political Censorship: Artists' Rights at Stake
The implications of NPG's decision on First Amendment rights to the freedom of expression are disturbing. The Smithsonian Institution is a symbolic national forum of artistic and cultural expression. While aspects of the current exhibit may be distasteful, disturbing, or even offensive to some, these images are being displayed in the context of reflection, commentary and exploration of a legitimate topic for public discourse. The works (and the exhibit itself) fall squarely within the definition of protected speech under the First Amendment.
WALA speaks out on matters affecting artists, and political censorship strikes at the core of artists' fundamental rights. We will be following this development closely. If anyone is interested in participating on a position paper, please contact Laura Possessky, WALA Board Chair, directly.
More information: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)