No doubt you're just sick of all the traveling and lounging around on beaches you've done all summer. It's time to trade the coolers of Corona for free glasses of wine, and the sound of crashing waves for the amusing chatter of art scensters. The fall 2007 art season has begun! Over the next two weekends you'll find too many opening receptions for even the most ambitious art lover to get to, so pick your......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

>> Conner Contemporary opens Academy 2007, their annual BFA/MFA art show featuring talented graduates from the region. The curators have been touring student shows since January to find the best from this year's class in a wide variety of media. Find the Next Great Artist this Friday at their opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. >> Art Enables is really settling into their new space, and are celebrating the induction of their official gallery......

Co-written by DCist Contributor Paul Ghosh-Roy Get together a bunch of artists, a bunch of bands, a cool venue, and a great time is had by all. On Saturday night, DCist ventured into the land of perfectly disheveled hair and meticulously scuffed jeans to see if the theory worked in practice as The Rock and Roll Hotel hosted the Big Art Show . The event is organized by a collective of artists and volunteers based......

While a couple of us on the DCist staff are still trying to wipe our minds of the image of the live circumcision performance art that happened last night at the Warehouse gallery (seriously, can you use soap on your eyeballs?), we will nevertheless try to explain that across the street at artDC ... wait, what was happening over there? Oh right, that international art show. When we told you about it last year, some......

It's not over yet folks: April is about to culminate with the biggest art weekend in recent memory. Artomatic and ColorField.remix continue to bring us a healthy helping of visual and performance art, and now we get one big, fat cherry of an art fair to top it all off this weekend, sprinkled with about a billion other shows placed to coincide with it, including one at a particular venue that deserves your attention. >>......

Earlier this week we heard some terrible news for one of our favorite venues in the city. Warehouse Arts Complex, located on the developing 7th Street corridor near the Convention Center, was greeted with a property tax bill over 500% what they paid last year. The concert venue, art gallery, theater, screening room, and cafe/bar serves the arts community in more ways than any location outside the Kennedy Center, but this kind of work isn't......

Past attendees of any of the F.W. Thomas Performaces, the semi-regular literary-comedic efforts of City Paper contributor Adam Mazmanian held at Warehouse, are well versed in the religion of Lowery. That's T.M. Lowery, or Mike Lowery, or Thomas Michael Lowery, depending on who you ask, the baby-faced "artist-in-residence" of F.W. Thomas and proprietor of The Argyle Academy, a collection of neurotic cartoon animal characters. Mazmanian invited Lowery to present some of his drawings at the......

If you managed to stay inside basking in the glow of fluorescent lights and humming computers, congrats. Our informal survey of the city's green spaces indicates that most Washingtonians didn't share your stamina and came up with some excuse to get outside. Whether you were "taking the dog to the vet," "coming down with a touch of the flu" or just dealing with the House's voting malarkey, we now proudly offer "Go Home Already:......

>> Bad news: The Sex Worker Art Show at the Rock and Roll Hotel has been cancelled due to inclement weather. Check the HIPS website for news of a possible reschedule date. >> The Washington Nationals issue a call for people who want to be the Racing Presidents! Yes, it's fun fun FUN for the home crowd as Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt square off for a battle of base-running supremacy. Will YOU step......

>> Where, oh where, to get your art and beer this week? There may not be many openings around town, but all you need is one big one, and Dr. Dremo's is command central for the weekend's launch activities. More than an art show, the Counter Culture Festival has music, dancing, and food to keep your creative side abuzz all evening. The festival is organized by DC Conspiracy, a group of comic creators, artists and......

We're totally pleased (and just a little bit tingly) to announce the first ever DCist Exposed Photography Show. You know those amazing photographers we feature here everyday, not just for Photo of the Day, but on so many of our posts? Well, as you may know, we get those images from photographers who upload their work to Flickr and tag it with "DCist." Each day we're more and more impressed by the level of talent......

If you're anything like this writer, the last big election returns "party" you went to turned into a vast pit of sorrow and despair you'd like not to repeat. Or maybe you joyously tossed balloons and toasted champagne at your party's continuing reign. Either way, the fate of the next two years of our country is being decided and you need a place to go tonight to watch, with trepidation and a beer, as the......

With so many large cities boasting their own international fine art shows and biennials, isn't it high time that the nation's capital got a piece of that action? Finally, it looks like we have a major fine art show of our very own. You might have already heard the buzz about artDC, but now it's time to start marking your calendars. The fair's organizers have announced that the show will be held next April 27-30......

If the closest you’ve come to attending an art show is buying a $17 sofa-size painting at a Starving Artist show, get a culture shock on Saturday at the Gateway Arts District Studio Tour. More than 30 painters, mixed-media artists, sculptors and photographers will open their studios as part of Mount Rainier Day in Prince George’s County. The event will include the work of artists living at the Mount Rainier Artists’ Lofts, including Joel Traylor,......

So, when a Washington Post art critic tells an artist that their work is the only salvageable thing in an art show of six-hundred pieces, that's a good thing, right? Maybe not when it's spat with the vitriolic follow-up that, "glass is such a gorgeous medium it's hard to screw it up." Which is funny, because technically glass blowing is pretty easy to screw up. It took 2,000 years of work, from Mesopotamia to......

In recent weeks, Austria has been the Scott Stapp of the international stage -- fending off doping allegations against its Olympic athletes and suffering its first case of the bird flu (no doubt caught while it filmed that nasty video with Moldova and Djibouti). So, the Republik Österreich desperately needs your moral support in these difficult days. And what better way to give that support than to head over to an Austrian Winemakers' Wine Tasting......

This post was written by Seattlest editor Dan Gonsiorowski. "The Week in -ist" will run every week, typically on the weekend, but this weekend we forgot, and anyway most of you have the day off today. Earlier this week kissy couples were wading through roses and red tissue paper deeper than an east coast snow dump and singles shook a tiny, lonely fist (no ring!) at it all. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4,......

DCist is happy to share news this week of area events and exhibits by our fellow bloggers. First off, Lenny Campello of DC Art News, opens a show of his recent drawings on Friday at the Georgetown Fraser Gallery. There's a reception for the show that night from 6-9 p.m. A drawing from the exhibit is shown at right. >> Frank Warren is still sharing secrets people send him in the mail on his......

This has been a pretty slow food week for the Washington area. Sure, some chefs have left their posts, and some chefs published masturbatory recipes in recently "revamped" magazines. These things happen all the time. Nevertheless, DCist seeks to sniff out the news anyway. Del Ray a Witless Wasteland Don't ever say DCist doesn't follow up. It's just that sometimes it hurts us to do it; take this post as an example. Remember a couple......

>> In case you missed it, the dates for the inaugural Capital Fringe Festival (which DCist told you about back in April) were announced on Saturday during the Arts on Foot festival in Penn Quarter. Mark July 20-30, 2006 in your calendars now! You can celebrate and get more info about the festival tomorrow night at The Warehouse Cafe & Bar at a happy hour from 6 - 8 p.m.; with the promise of $2......

>> Itching to display your own art? Artdc.org is seeking entrants for a group art show in Takoma Park scheduled to begin May 21. For the exhibit, titled "What Does It Mean to Emerge?," Artdc organizers will show the best artists within a 150-mile radius of the D.C. area. Entrants must be registered at artdc.org with a completed profile including username, interests and webpage, if available. The exhibit organizers are also seeking musicians and master......

We really wanted to title this Out and About: This Will Be Short Because We're Tired From DCist Happy Hour Edition. But brevity is the soul of wit! FRIDAY: >> Drummer Cindy Blackman (who used to play for Lenny Kravitz), is bringing her jazz styling to the Blues Alley in Georgetown. >> The National Philharmonic plays the beloved season favorite, Handel's Messiah, at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theatre in Rockville. 8 p.m. Call 301-762-8580 for......

When we were at the Crafty Bastards art show a couple years back, a gentleman by the stage was manning a machine which would squish pennies into souvenirs imprinted with the Crafty Bastards logo. We quickly discovered he was one of the operators of a museum here in Washington D.C. we had heard a little bit about. The man was from the D.C. Squished Penny Museum. Although not open to the public, the exhibit of......