Artdc.org in Hyattsville, The Final Frontier | Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

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Artdc.org in Hyattsville, The Final Frontier

March 16, 2009

Lustine Before

Lustine After

Hyattsville is a little old town in Maryland just south of College Park that has the misfortune to be bisected by Rte.1. That was a good thing in the 1930s when they built the first motels and roadhouses, but like most towns similarly situated between Florida and Maine, the old highway and its buildings have aged in place, and not always too gracefully. Hyattsville’s hoped-for route to regeneration, and it may well be a smart one, is to exploit the retro look of the downtown and to invite artists in to take advantage of new reasonably-priced housing. Thus, we have the Arts District of Hyattsville, townhouses and condos at pretty good prices, including some configured as live-work spaces, and ongoing efforts to bring in galleries, cafes etc.

Jesse seems to be excited about something

Pete Duvall at the opening - is he cute or what?

Part of that effort is the refurbished Lustine Center (the former Lustine Auto), which includes a compact gallery space that had its inaugural show as a project of artdc.org Saturday night. Artdc.org, the invention of Jesse Cohen, is a virtual community of artists, a website that hosts images of the work of its couple hundred artist members, discussions on a million topics, notices, calls to arms, etc. It has in a relatively short time become an indispensable part of the DC art scene.

auto nostalgia in the artspace

one of the photos - a coincidence?

Now artdc.org has emerged from the virtual world into the real Hyattsville. Jesse and his cohorts will run the new Lustine artspace for the foreseeable future. (I vote they call it LustArt) Their first show features local photographers and plans are for educational programming and, I imagine, any good idea will get a hearing.

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