Millennium Arts Salon is focused on advancing cultural literacy

Background

Now entering its 7th year, Millennium Arts Salon is focused on advancing cultural literacy through its art programming, which includes salon talks, exhibitions, tours and special events. Based in historic Columbia Heights, DC, most of its intimate salon talks and art exhibitions are held in its beautifully restored 1923 town home. Through its outreach efforts, it also hosts programs in various venues around the city and collaborates with other art institutions, such as the David C Driskell Center at the University of Maryland College Park (for the past 3 years), the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and Parish Gallery of Georgetown DC.

Notable individuals have participated in MAS salons and/or exhibitions, including artists and administrators Allan Edmunds and EJ Montgomery, master artist Sam Gilliam, collector Paul Jones, writer and appraiser Halima Taha (author of Collecting African American Art), artist and master printmaker Lou Stovall, historian and dance critic Richard Long, artist and filmmaker Camille Billops and writer, professor and filmmaker, Jim Hatch, singer Ysaye Barnwell of “Sweet Honey on the Rock”, political scientist Dr. Ron Walters, Director, African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland College Park, collector Dr. Robert Steele, Executive Director of the David C. Driskell Center at UMCP, professor Leslie King-Hammond, Graduate Dean, Maryland Institute, College of Art, poet Sonia Sanchez, curator Ruth Fine of the National Gallery of Art, theatre director Chris McElroen, Co-founder and Director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem, and emerging and mid-career artists Michael Platt, Ray Grist, Bill Hutson, Eric Mack, Preston Sampson, and Sheila Crider, to name a few.

MAS’s groundbreaking program, “On Common Ground,” from 2000 to 2005, inspected the common links between seemingly divergent topics in art and culture. It’s 2006-2007 program, “It’s All About Art – Visual Art, Performing Arts, Arts and Letters!” builds on previous work, boldly asserts each art form informs the other, and celebrates this fact.

MAS is supported through its staff and volunteers, its membership organization, The Millennium Arts Salon Club, consisting of art interested individuals in the Baltimore-Washington-Virginia area and through its Art Advisory Board, consisting of accomplished professionals in the art field.