Gallery Of Art

Public screening of `Idol' finale set The Carroll County Arts Council will hold a public screening of the American Idol finale, at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Carroll Arts Center, 91 W. Main St., Westminster. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5, and refreshments will be sold. All proceeds will go toward the Arts Council's college scholarship program. For security considerations, audience members younger than 13 must attend with an adult. Large signs will not be permitted. Advance tickets are required and can be purchased at the box office.

WASHINGTON -- To ensure success for the latest exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, Director J. Carter Brown tried something different.He held a ceremonial pipe smoking to bless the exhibit with two Indians, Al Chandler and George P. Horse Capture, and two other officials involved in the exhibit, which is devoted to the rich heritage of North America's native peoples."

Collector and art patron Olga Hirshhorn has offered a collection of some 3,000 works of modern art, folk art and artifacts to Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art, Mrs. Hirshhorn and the gallery announced yesterday.The collection includes about 700 works of 19th- and 20th-century American and European modern art, 1,000 works of folk and related arts and 1,300 other objects including memorabilia and artifacts from other cultures.The modern art consists of works by John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Man Ray, Henry Moore, Willem de Kooning, Louise Nevelson, Alexander Calder and others.

John Walker III, the patrician art connoisseur who, as chief curator and then director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, almost single-handedly shaped the museum into a world-class institution, died Sunday at his home in Sussex, England. He was 88 and had lived in England since he retired from the gallery in 1969.Mr. Walker was a member of a groundbreaking generation of museum professionals, spurred by an interest in art both old and new.Like many of his peers, he attended Harvard University, studying art history and museum practices under Professor Paul J. Sachs.

BEAR WITH ME. I'm going to pass along a suggestion I picked up from former National Gallery of Art director John Walker about the best way to visit a museum.The suggestion is: The best way to visit a museum is in a wheelchair.Whoa! Before you shred this column for the kitty box, let me explain.Walker wrote a wonderful memoir of his career at Washington's National Gallery of Art. "Self-Portrait With Donors" offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of the super-rich men and women who bequeath their art masterpieces to museums.

The second annual "Legal and Business Issues of Film Making" seminar is scheduled for Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. in the Moot Courtroom of the University of Baltimore Law School, 1420 N. Charles St. The seminar, sponsored by Maryland Lawyers for the Arts Inc. (MLA) and Women In Film and Video of Maryland Inc. (WIFV), will focus on the practical approach to the legal intricacies of filmmaking.The seminar topics include music rights in film; the Screen Actors Guild; releases for actors and models; screenwriters and scripts; the Maryland State Film Commission; the Maryland Producers Club; and film production and financing.

From silk-screens by Andy Warhol at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art to color-drenched canvases by Monet at the Baltimore Museum of Art - the 2005-2006 season is packed with offerings for all types of art lovers. Among this year's most exciting events surely will be the Walters Art Museum's spectacular Palace of Wonders and its cornucopia of fabulous bling-bling, which goes on view Oct. 22. Paintings, sculpture, porcelains, gemstones, clocks, carpets, watches, swords and knickknacks by the cartload were the means by which aristocrats and mercantile princes of 17th-century Netherlands and Flanders trumpeted their good fortune and virtue.

Audrey Schiminger has an eye for art. Since she was a preschooler, she has spent time doodling and drawing pictures. By the time she was in first grade, she was taking her first formal drawing classes. "I like to be put in situations where I am given a chance to be creative," said Schiminger, 15, of Forest Hill. "Art gives me a chance to be creative, with no guidelines." Her parents enrolled her in a class in first grade, and nine years later, she draws and paints every day. Although she doesn't create art for the accolades, she has won more than her share of contests.

The family of Roy Lichtenstein has given the National Gallery of Art in Washington more than a dozen drawings by the late pop artist in memory of Jane Meyerhoff, the Baltimore collector who died last year after having promised, with her husband, Robert, to donate their important collection of late 20th-century art to the museum. All 13 of the drawings in the Lichtenstein family gift are directly related to 11 of the artist's paintings in the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, a renowned collection of postwar art. The Meyerhoffs began giving parts of their collection to the National Gallery in 1986.

Baltimore artist Robert Lawson has won a $4,000 New Forms Regional Project Grant, funded by the Pennsylvania Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation, for his work developing photographic imagery with a laser-scanning technique. His work, called sweep transformation imaging (or STI), translates a combination of motion and object into "hybrid" forms.Many of Mr. Lawson's images are on display in "Four Mindsets: Photographs Exploring Motion-Form," a collaborative show using the STI technique, running tomorrow through April 24 in the Bloomberg Center for Astronomy and Physics on the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University.