Latest News

Robert Devaney • April 9, 2015

The Jackson Art Center at 3050 R St. NW has successfully negotiated with the District government an extension of its lease until 2018 of a 1890 building, which closed as a D.C. public school in 1970. The artist collective began renting the building during the 1980s and now pays a monthly rent of $12,850, according to D.C. General Services Department. The current lease was set to expire in June of next year. The artists would like to get a longer lease with the city for the property, which recently had new windows installed. The space allows for 45 artist studios.

Caitlin Franz • March 31, 2015

A Latino man was attacked and robbed near 34th Street and Volta Place around 8 p.m., Sunday, March 22, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

The alleged suspects punched the victim, leaving a gash on the left side of the victim’s face. Additionally, his DSW Shoe store and T.J. Maxx shopping bags containing clothing and shoes were stolen. However, the bags were recovered near the scene of the incident.

The suspects are three black males, ranging in age from 20 to 25 years old, police said. The men were wearing dark clothing and seen fleeing southbound on 34th Street.

The age and name of the robbery victim have not been released.

This incident is similar to a robbery that occurred March 15, during which three men punched a victim and stole his iPhone and wallet near 42nd Street NW.

Residents of the neighborhood around Volta Park are requesting increased police presence and use of security cameras.

Gary Tischler • March 30, 2015

There’s an old saying that goes something like “by his deeds shall you know him” with regard to summing up a person’s life.

A. James Clark, the chairman and founder of Clark Enterprises, which became Clark Construction, died last week. For him, it was more like we knew him by his cityscape.

Clark, who died at 87, was probably the key player and builder in Washington’s construction boom, leaving a large finger print and foot print on the region.

There was a time—and to some degree it still exists—that the Clark Construction Group with its familiar logo seemed to have planted its cranes like flags on many of the most significant, life-and-landscape altering in the city and the region. Look around you today and you can say, “there was somebody who changed his surroundings, who made a difference.” The company was involved in hundreds of high-impact construction projects: the Verizon Center (which proved to be the engine for downtown revival), FedEx Field and Nationals Park, Washington Harbour, the new Arena Stage in Southwest (another harbinger of change in Southwest Washington).

Let’s not forget that the company built 28 Metro Stations, and it’s still making waves in the region with the Silver Line extension, as well as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History.

Clark wasn’t exactly a recluse, but he shied away from publicity and from being a visible public figure, preferring to try to snare major construction projects for his company out of the public eye.

When all is said and done, Clark was a builder who became a billionaire and who believed in giving back, making significant philanthropic contributions to Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, George Washington University, and the Samaritan Inns. Bearing his name is the University of Maryland School of Engineering, and the James Clark Engineering Scholars Program at George Washington University.

The company, according to the Washington Business Journal, contributed $16 million to charity groups in 2013 alone.

The Clark Construction Group came out of the George Hyman Construction Company where Clark was hired in 1950. He became general manager in the 1960s and bought the company in 1969.

Washington National Cathedral, which Clark did not build, will host a memorial service for Clark April 8, at 10 a.m.. The service will be open to the public.

Sallie Lewis • March 26, 2015

Each spring, the National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates the Japanese gift to the United States of more than 3,000 cherry trees. People from around the world come to Washington to see the unforgettable blooms. Interestingly, visitors leave with not only a memory of these flowering trees, but also with a budding appreciation for Japanese culture.

Paul MacLardy is the owner of Arise Bazaar in Clinton, Maryland, one of the largest Japanese textile emporiums in the nation. Arise also has a large selection of Japanese ceramics and antiques, but MacLardy’s textiles are what set him apart. With upwards of 8,000 pieces – traditional Japanese kimonos, fireman’s coats, obis, workers jackets and Happi coats – he is a leading collector of Japanese textiles.

On Saturday, April 11, he will be displaying a portion of his collection at Sakura Matsuri.

Sakura Matsuri (which means Cherry Blossom Festival) is Washington’s annual Japanese street festival, the largest one-day celebration of Japanese culture in the U.S. Vendors and performers from all over the world fill nearly a mile of downtown D.C., sharing their love for Japanese custom and history.

Arise Bazaar will have a large, three-booth set-up with about 800 kimonos and textiles, along with Japanese ceramics, furniture and small gifts – all of which are for sale. There will also be three people present to do tying demonstrations and help attendees dress in a traditional kimono ensemble. The team takes pride in educating people about the many variations and details that go into these dressing ceremonies. With the large range of kimonos available, MacLardy has something for everyone, and his price points are accessible as well. Most kimonos cost between $40 and $100, but he also has a number of vintage kimonos, some of which are 19th-century collector’s pieces that can cost up to $5,000.

For MacLardy, the buying and selling of Japanese textiles is a passion that goes beyond business; it’s a mission to preserve a legacy.

In 2001, MacLardy published his book, “Kimono: Vanishing Tradition.” In it, he acknowledges that the art of making kimonos by hand has been slowly disappearing. The master kimono makers were reaching the end of their lives without passing on their skills. Young people who might take up the craft were uninterested. Furthermore, over the 20 years that MacLardy had been visiting Japan, he noticed that people weren’t wearing kimonos nearly as often.

“Ironically, since we’ve written that book, that’s all changed,” he said. “When we started the company, people weren’t wearing kimono traditionally. Most people were buying long kimono or fabric to hang on a wall. Now, more and more people are buying kimonos to wear.” His forthcoming, second book, “Kimono: Symbols and Motifs,” will highlight this change in attitude.

The older generations have long understood the sophistication of Japanese textiles, but they are increasingly fascinating to younger people. MacLardy travels across the nation attending Japanese festivals and anime conventions, where he’s found a resurgence of interest in traditional Japanese textiles among young people. He’s also found that they are being reinvented in a modern way through experimental, untraditional styling. The kimono’s influence was evident in the 2015 fashion shows by designers such as Tracy Reese, Thakoon, Duro Olowu and Tibi, suggesting a heightened worldwide appreciation for these age-old garments.

For Paul and his team at Arise Bazaar, preserving the ceremonial dress of Japan is more important than ever in a changing 21st-century landscape. Stop by the Arise Bazaar booths at Sakura Matsuri on April 11 to take home a symbol of Japanese culture. The event, which takes place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. will close the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

Arise Bazaar is open Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment — 7169 Old Alexandria Ferry Road., Clinton, Md. — 301-806-0337.

Georgetowner •

Just a few yards separate the remembered from the forgotten: the distance might as well be miles. The politics of race don’t stop when the heart does.

Gentrification of the dead is alive and well in Georgetown. Stand in just the right spots among the sloped and manicured lawns, towering monuments and gleaming headstones of Oak Hill Cemetery and you can see past a rusted chain-link fence to a massive pile of tumbled and crumbling concrete markers.

Buried somewhere beneath the weeds at the three-acre Mt. Zion & Female Union Band Society Cemetery is Clement Morgan, the first African American to graduate from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He isn’t the only one whose grave is lost to time. Also somewhere in Mt. Zion Cemetery are the unmarked remains of hundreds of slaves and freemen, whose stories of injustice died a second death when the ravages of time, inattention and disrespect turned their final resting place into a dog park and a sometime garbage dump.

Reverence for the dead of color at Mt. Zion has long been a distant second to the demands of money and development. Now that landmark status guarantees that the land can never be sold, the present state of this appalling wasteland remains an unseemly reminder of Georgetown’s failure to honor those who were an integral part of the community, but who lived and died as third-class members of a society that thought little of them when alive and nothing of them after death.

The old burial ground is located near the corner of 27th Street and Q Street NW in a muddy alley behind a row of apartment buildings. A walk through the debris-littered space generally means stepping through deep soil or mud while pushing past dumpsters or maneuvering around parked cars. The two adjoining cemeteries – one black and one white – provide a stark reminder that the earthly barriers of color and class persist even after the surly bonds of earth are severed.

Despite the daunting challenges that await any effort to reverse the ravages of time and neglect, there are murmurs of hope, accompanied by a newfound desire to address with honesty the failures of conscience that ruled Georgetown’s racist past and honor those who endured lives in the shadows.

On many lists of historic places in the District, the cemetery is recognized as an important part of the collective history of Georgetown. But its future is still unclear.

The owner of the land, Mt. Zion Church, is seeking outside resources to restore the site. Dr. Thornell Page, leader of the congregation’s preservation committee and charged by the church to find a possible future path, said his church “has entered into an agreement with the Historic Preservation Office about two months ago. They’ve agreed to match $5,000 to the Mt. Zion Church’s $5,000.” Clearly understanding that the anticipated $10,000 is just a drop in the bucket, Dr. Page is hoping that it may be enough to publicize the present state of things and bring in resources to help kick-start what will be a major – and ultimately very expensive – restoration. The actual cost to restore the site is thought to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

While trying to look past the obvious hurdles ahead, Dr. Page is realistic about the future. It is an emotional issue for him, knowing that the goal of honoring the dead while educating the living will be a costly and taxing endeavor requiring the efforts of many. “It takes people who are interested in preservation and culture … to energize the community,” he said. Though it is probably the strongest push in decades, this is not the first time that hopes have been raised. On several occasions, the slope of decay at Mt. Zion has been halted, only to have progress quickly dashed by changes of heart and fashion.

Over the last several decades, there have been many false starts at restoration. Those failures of the past are vivid to Dr. Page, but he chalks them up as lessons learned. He believes that there now appears to be real momentum for change.

When it first opened in 1809, the cemetery offered two distinct classes of burial that mirrored the social segregation of the time. Whites and free blacks paid $15 for a prime lot, while slave-owning members of the church paid $3 for internment of their human property anywhere there was room. From its very beginnings, the cemetery was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Hidden over the slope of a hill is a small pre-burial storage vault that was frequently pressed into service as a place for runaway slaves to hide on their way north to freedom.

Mt. Zion was a busy place with dozens interred there yearly, but things changed dramatically for the worse when, in 1849, the racially restricted Oak Hill Cemetery was established. White families, seeking the opportunity of burial in the grand, new and all-white Oak Hill Cemetery, worked quickly to have their dead dug up and taken out of Mt. Zion – along with the funds for their perpetual care. The result of the mass exodus of the well-to-do was a patchwork of half-filled holes and a shortfall in dollars for upkeep.

For many years, the church tried to maintain the property, but waning interest on the part of congregants and the flight of heirs to more affordable places outside the city created a vacuum of attention, allowing the burial ground to fall into disrepair. Mt. Zion Cemetery became an eyesore and real-estate developers saw an opportunity to build high-rise apartments and townhouses. Heirs to some of those buried, seeing a profit to be made, petitioned the U.S. District Court for permission to disinter the remains, rebury them elsewhere and sell the land. The Court agreed in 1964 and appointed trustees to sell the land.

The sale was killed when an heir to someone buried at the site, along with the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation – promising to improve the cemetery and citing its historical significance – won their fight to have the cemetery designated a protected historical landmark and included in the National Register of Historic Places. In light of the new historical designations and the promise of restoration, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Gasch reversed the order allowing disinterment, stating that such action by the heirs and developers “cannot but offend the sensitivities of civilized people.” “Equally important,” said the judge, “is the fact that not only would such a degradation be perpetrated against the dead, but in this instance the violation of their graves involves the destruction of a monument to evolving free black culture in the District of Columbia.”

Unfortunately, plans by the group to rehabilitate the cemetery were never fully carried out. The site quickly fell further into a state of disrepair. Headstones, made of cheap concrete and rebar, not the exquisite carved granite and marble like those in Oak Hill, were broken or stolen for neighborhood garden projects, weeds grew unchecked and the sign marking the place disappeared. It became difficult to even find the cemetery among the vegetation.

Today, most of the remaining headstones are haphazardly placed into mounds at the edges of the cemetery. The largest group of these stones is located just above an alley behind a row of apartment buildings, feet away from trash dumpsters. While some names are still visible, many of the grave markers are unidentified, as are the exact locations of the remains of an estimated 4,000 slaves, whites, freed blacks and their descendants. A search for a way to honor them is now underway by the church and interested community members. Diagrams prepared in the past give a general location for some graves, but to locate the majority will require specialized skill and equipment.

The tool of choice for this sort of task is ground-penetrating radar, a non-intrusive, subsurface imaging device about the size of a baby carriage. A GPR unit is pulled over the ground to develop a visual profile of what lies below the surface. For cemeteries with missing or destroyed burial records, a GPR survey can produce a composite sitemap of an area indicating grave locations and their depth.

Facing a similar situation, the nonprofit association overseeing Congressional Cemetery in Southeast brought in Robert Perry, an expert at both GPR and the identification of lost graves, to determine the location of unmarked graves, headstones and burial vaults.

Perry sees the condition at Mt. Zion as somewhat typical of African American burial sites across the country. “Black cemeteries tend to be neglected,” he said, adding that graves from the early 1800s do not often have caskets. Single graves are sometime found to contain three, four or five bodies. Perry cites an average cost of $1,650 per day to scan an average of 200 grave spots.

In speaking of his work at Congressional Cemetery, he noted that the local community found closure from knowing that loved ones – or just fellow human beings – are in an appropriate final resting place. “Lots of people stand around and watch what I do,” Perry said. “You’d be surprised how emotional they get.”

Finding the locations of the remains is only the first challenge. Repairing the headstones, cleaning the grounds and placing the correct marker with the correct remains is thought by many in the community as the first steps in helping descendants connect to the lives of their forebears.

While those restorative efforts will be difficult, they are achievable. The larger challenge comes after all is put in good order. Will there be the collective will to learn from the mistakes of the past and begin to set them right?

Gary Tischler •

In the District of Columbia, as elsewhere, time has flown in 2015, driven by snow, wind and frigid air.

It’s been a busy time for new Mayor Muriel Bowser, who seems to have made a whirlwind of her own in the two months since her inauguration.

On March 31, at the Lincoln Theatre, she is scheduled to give her first State of the District address, which “will lay out where we stand on creating a fresh start, highlight our commitment of engagement and integrity and establish how we will create a pathway to the middle class,” according to her newsletter.

Not coincidentally, March 31 marks the end of the month designated as Women’s History Month. Under Bowser, the District can celebrate with particular elan and glee, since we sport a leadership team glistening with women at the helm.

You can start with the mayor, only the second female mayor the District of Columbia has ever had, and continue on to long-serving House Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier, D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and several members of the District Council.

If you follow the mayor on her newsletter, you get a picture these days of a leader, a mover and a doer, a hands-on type who is tackling problems and making her presence felt, always buoyed by an energetic personality. She is nothing if not out there in the community much of the time.

The State of the District address might tell us how the various strands of action and vision she’s been pulling on will come together.

She seems already to have a knack –out of constant necessity – for handling what has been a series of weather-related mini-crises involving school closings, deployment of snow-clearing equipment and a steady stream of inconveniences for District residents. After a halting start, her responses have improved storm by storm, dip by dip.

She’ll likely face a bit of an infrastructure problem given the massive numbers of potholes resulting from the extended winter.
Early on, Bowser seemed hesitant responding to the fire and fatality at the L’Enfant Metro Station, but other incidents, and the general public response, indicated that perhaps a major look at how Metro operates was in order – a policy she’s pursuing.
She responded to a looming budget deficit of nearly $250 million by holding a series of public town meetings eliciting citizen responses to possible cuts and priorities.

She appeared strong – even willing to go to jail – concerning the District’s marijuana law after Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) put D.C. residents on edge by appearing to threaten to incarcerate elected officials for implementing the law.

She chose to appoint Gregory Dean, the former chief of the Seattle Fire Department, as the next head of the District’s Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department, choosing not to pick interim chief Eugene Jones.

She also decided, in conjunction with Chancellor Kaya Henderson, to launch “Empowering Males of Color,” an initiative to “advance achievement and opportunity and reduce racial disparities for boys and men of color across Washington, D.C.”
She just went on the annual Wall Street visit last week with D.C.’s Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt, District Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and Council member Jack Evans, presenting the District’s strong financial picture to the money guys.

She’s been busy.

Georgetowner •

CAG Concerts Kick-off Party?

March 12th, 2015 at 06:30 PM | $60 | Event Website

The kick-off party will be at The George Town Club on March 12 from 6:30 to 8:30 PM.

Concerts in the Parks is Georgetown’s favorite summer concerts series that is free and open to the public in beautiful Volt and Rose parks. Proceeds from this event help underwrite the cost of putting on the concerts. 2015 Concerts will take place Sunday evenings from 5:30 to 7:00 PM on May 17th, June 14th and July 12th.

Address

The George Town Club; 1530 Wisconsin Ave NW

Opening Reception: Full Spectrum

March 13th, 2015 at 06:00 PM | FREE | gallery@callowayart.com | Tel: 202-965-4601 | Event Website

Full spectrum, will explore six DC local and rooted artists’approach to color and abstraction. Participating artists include: Matthew Langley, Shahin Shikhaliyev, John Sandy, Chris Baer, Shaun Rabah and David Bell.

Address

Susan Calloway Fine Arts; 1643 Wisconsin Ave NW

Rock and Roll For Children Annual Bash

March 14th, 2015 at 07:00 PM | $75.00-$400.00 | mary@lindarothpr.com | Tel: 301-938-4505 | Event Website

The Rock and Roll for Children Foundation is proud to support the Children’s Inn at NIH at their Annual Bash. The party will kick off at 7:00 pm, uniting music icons and fans at the Bethesda Blues and Jazz Club for a night of incomparable rock n’roll, dancing and amazing auction items from rock legends.Memorable performances will include the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s newest inductee, Ricky Byrd, of Joan Jett, among many more.

Address

Bethesda Blues and Jazz Club; 7719 Wisconsin Ave, Bethesda, MD 20814

Cloverfest presented by Drink the District

March 14th, 2015 at 01:30 PM | $39-$50 | ilovebeer@drinkthedistrict.com | Tel: 202-618-3663 | Event Website

Channel your inner leprechaun and join us at Cloverfest presented by Drink the District! There will be 75+ beers to sample at the end of this rainbow so get your tickets fast before they disappear!

Address

The Yards Park; 1300 1st St SE

Free Chamber Concert

March 17th, 2015 at 12:00 PM | 0 | info@dumbartonhouse.org | Tel: 2023372288 | Event Website

Friday Morning Music Club performs a free chamber concert at Dumbarton House on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at noon.

Address

Dumbarton House; 2715 Q Street NW

Building in the 21st Century: Small and Sustainable

March 17th, 2015 at 12:30 PM | Free Member | $10 Non-member. | Tel: 202-272-2448 | Event Website

Brian Levy commissioned the first Minim House in 2013. Working closely with Foundry Architects on the design and Element Design+Build on the construction of the tiny house, Levy went on to found Minim Homes LLC to make the plans for and completed versions of micro homes with cutting-edge sustainable technologies widely available. Levy speaks about off-grid electric and water, cooling, heating, and air quality systems appropriate for small dwellings. 1.0 LU HSW (AIA). Pre-registration required

Address

National Building Museum; 401 F Street NW

Landmark Society Lecture: The American Plate: A Culinary History in 100 Bites

March 18th, 2015 at 06:30 PM | Member, $15 | Non-Member, $20 | mwachur@tudorplace.org | Tel: 202.580.7323 | Event Website

6:30, wine + light appetizers | 7 – 8:30 p.m., lecture

What is American about “American” food? Join author Libby H. O’Connell, chief historian for the History Channel, for a rich chronicle of the evolution of American cuisine and culture from before Columbus until today. Dr. O’Connell’s book, The American Plate: A Culinary History in 100 Bites, explores how cultures and individuals have shaped our national diet and continue to influence how and what we cook and eat.

Address

1670 31st St NW
Washington D.C. 20007

Gary Tischler •

Outside, it looked as if the long, baleful tide of winter storms and stress seemed to have abated. If spring had not entirely sprung, the temperatures and the air, if not the pot holes, were entirely welcome.

It seemed that the presence of Martin Wollesen, the executive director of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland as the speaker of the Georgetown Media Group’s monthly Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the George Town Club, fit the new spirit of spring-like optimism and energy on March 12.

Wollesen, who came to Maryland in 2013 to head the Clarice after a provocative and exhilarating stint as the artistic director for ArtPower! at the University of California, San Diego, in attitude, spirit and energy, presented as nothing less than a cultural and performing arts pied piper, charging ahead into a changed arts ecology, dropping ideas like from flowers from a bouquet, some of which could also pass for bombshells.

The Clarice on the University of Maryland’s main campus in College Park, a place usually known for its embrace of its Terrapin football and basketball program especially with the approach of March Madness, is something of a hidden treasure for Washington arts enthusiasts, who tend not to venture too far afield from a city, rich with an abundance of big, medium-sized and small performance arts offerings.

Yet, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center should not be ignored, and neither should Wollesen, a nervy, intriguing spokesman not only for the Clarice, but for the arts in general. This is a man who’s lived a life rooted in diversity—born in Northern California, raised in Singapore and the Philippines, often in his youth running to the sounds of crisis in lands far away from our comfort zone. He lived in the Philippines when it was ruled by President Ferdinand Marcos, he lived on a kibbutz near trouble zone borders. “I wanted to go where bombings were happening,” he admitted. “But at the kibbutz, all I did was to end up painting toys for children. When you’re young, you think you’re invincible,” he told us.

That range of experience may account for his willingness to listen to, be more than tolerant of, and try out new ideas about the performance arts, how they’re presented, their audience and artists. “We’re living in a rapidly changing society, and the arts I think will have to change, too,” he said. “You can see it happening. There’s a whole new audience out there, and a whole new world of technology. We need to draw these tech-savvy audiences to us, and we need to come to them, too.”

Wollesen is all about collaboration, about recognizing the new arts environment and the likely audiences. He appeared to be delighted in the examples he unloaded from his diverse bouquet of ideas. “In San Diego, we had this young, very talented and well known string quartet, and there were a lot of students in the audience and they loved it and so after every movement they jumped up and applauded, which, in the world of classical music is a no-no, it just isn’t done. So some regular patrons were very upset, and suggested I tell people not to applaud. But I also talked to the artists, and they said, no, we loved what they did.”

Stressing that new audiences are linked to technology and that presenters should embrace the technology and understand it, Wollesen said, “When you see people texting or tweating, I know a lot of people find that annoying. But it’s part of the way today’s audiences receive performance art. I saw a program, a classical music program, where a young woman had her pad open throughout—she looked things up, the composer, the performers, the piece, and then she texted her friends about the performance.”

He’s about cooperation or bringing the art to the audiences: “We brought performers to the dorms, or the schools. It’s not every day you have that kind of thing in a dormitory.”

One of the ideas that he offered was the use of Twitter during the course of a performance in which audience response is measured and comments copied and then thrown on a giant screen during intermission.

“We’re used to being at a performance and being quiet,” he said. “The new audiences are not. They want to participate.”

At the Clarice, Wollesen has quite a playground to operate in. It includes the Cafritz Foundation Theatre (a black box space with 86 seats); a dance theatre, with 207 seats; the Dekelboum Concert Hall, with 970 seats and a 126-set choir loft; the Gildenhorn Recital Hall with 297 sets; the Kay Theatre with 626 seats and the Kogod Theatre with 156 seats. The Clarice is also the site of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland, headed by Michael Kaiser, the former president of the Kennedy Center.

Wolleson is an arts enthusiast, a futurist and an arts optimist. “I believe in new spaces and new work,” he said. “I think performance arts centers must connect with the community, to find new artists and bring new arts to the community. [gallery ids="102014,135078,135081,135080" nav="thumbs"]