“It’s taken me a solid week to wrap my mind around the creative awesome that was the 4th annual Black Love Experience hosted by Nubian Hueman at the Anacostia Arts Center. These type of innovative, commUNITY focused and all around boss as hell events are what raises the bar for what people say east of the river/black folks is expecting and capable of achieving.” – Nikki Peele
Read the full article here.
GoANACOSTIA.com is live! This concise business portal gives a one-stop place to find businesses and organizations located in Historic Anacostia. Launching with 75 business listings and growing each day, the directory and correlated marketing initiative is 100% FREE to businesses and has no advertising options to ensure that money isn’t a barrier to exposure or entry. This effort is produced by ARCH and made possible through partnerships with the Department of Housing and Community Development and the Anacostia BID. Read the full press release here.
The 11th Street Bridge Park and ARCH Development Corporation are partnering to examine critical affordable housing issues in two FREE public programs at the Anacostia Arts Center. These events complement the “Better Homes and Gardens” exhibition on view at the Anacostia Arts Center’s Vivid Solutions Gallery and the 11th Street Bridge Park’s Equitable Development Plan. Read full press release here.
Article by Duane Gautier, photos by Andrew Lightman
I have just reviewed the latest white paper from the Urban Institute on how to regenerate the economy and solve the problems in Wards 7 and 8. This
report for City First Bank, with no new ideas, adds nothing to the more than 20 such “East of the River” studies by think tanks, urban planners, and government agencies over the past 30 years. None of the plans and very few of the recommendations of these reports have ever been implemented.
The following are some approaches that might just work. I am going to confine my suggestions to the Greater Anacostia neighborhood, the area where I have worked over the past 30 years.
The District of Columbia’s government needs to care about the physical appearance of Anacostia. Noting states “depressed area” more than patched streets, poor or no public lighting, crumbling brick sidewalks, and filthy streets. Compare the almost pristine conditions of the public areas and streets of Georgetown or Capitol Hill with those in Anacostia.
 |
| The New American Pastime study by Wesley Clark |
Few cities are undergoing a period of gentrification as lengthy as D.C.’s, and perhaps none are gentrifying as quickly. The individual stories of displacement, as well as the larger narrative arc that shows how class and racial lines overlap to push out poorer minority communities, have particular poignancy in D.C., one of the first cities in the U.S. with a black majority. Against this backdrop, the local African-American artist collective Delusions of Grandeur created How We Lost DC, an exhibition the group calls “a visual discourse on gentrification.” The work of Wesley Clark, Larry Cook, Shaunté Gates, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Amber Robles-Gorden, and Stan Squirewell encompasses photography, textile, paintings, mixed media, and sculpture in a show that moves between portraiture and would-be artifacts to tapestry and art made from maps of the District itself. The group uses these works to provide commentary on a world where, in their words, “the rise to wealth is ever present, yet elusive.” The exhibit takes place at Honfleur Gallery, itself a project of ARCH Development Corporation, a nonprofit dedicated to sparking economic and residential revitalization in Anacostia, one of D.C.’s poorest neighborhood and one that could gentrify soon.
The exhibition is on view Tuesdays through Fridays noon to 5 p.m. and Saturdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., to Oct. 31, at Honfleur Gallery, 1241 Good Hope Road SE. Free. (202) 365-8392. honfleurgallery.com.
—Emily Walz
See more at: www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/47479/how-we-lost-dc-at-honfleur-gallery-wednesday-sept-16/
