Good morning! Lenny Campello, author of the forthcoming book 100 Washington Artists, isn’t happy—-at all—-with Kriston Capps‘ Arts Desk piece on him from yesterday, and says so at length on his D.C. Art News blog. Jeffry Cudlin—-artist, curator, WCP art critic—-has some thoughts on his blog, which he gets to after having some fun with his own inclusion in Campello’s book:

So, if this were my book, how would I do it? I don’t want to diminish for a second the hours, organization, and mental energy that Lenny has put into his book…but it seems to me that to really put this concept to bed, one needs not just to identify a pool of notable working artists, but to sort them according to the various disciplines in which they work.

This imaginary book, then, would survey and classify the various strains of DC gallery culture, with brief intros to each section, and offer a little history, a little criticism, and bios of key players in galleries and museums as well.

Right out of the gate it seems to me that this book would need to account for the division between traditional gallery culture (“new realism”, landscape painting, black-and-white street photography, etc.) and avante-garde gallery culture (new media, installation, cross-disciplinary project work, and traditional consumable media oriented toward contemporary art museums/Artforum/Chelsea).

He goes on, and it’s worth your time.

Circling back: I’ve noticed that Campello frequently deploys the term “DMV” on his blog. Apparently a lot of you are doing this! says The Washington Post‘s Paul Farhi, who details use of the appellation outside the area’s hip-hop and go-go scenes. As for its origins? “We would congratulate the originator of ‘the DMV,’ but it’s not clear who should get the props,” he writes. One option: WDMV-TV, former name of D.C’s Channel 9 (UPDATE: Actually, that’s totally not true). More likely? Any of a number of rappers in the local scene. But Sarah Godfrey already wrote that story in Washington City Paper inOctober 2009.

DCist has some great interviews with local bands this week: Office of Future Plans, who close Fort Reno at the end of the summer; The Shirks; Bellflur. This weekend’s Old Bridge Festival was canceled after its venue in rural Virginia fell through. Some of the bands—-and some of the kegs!—-will instead be at D.C.’s Paper Sun on Saturday. Of course, there’s another D.C. music festival going on this weekend in the Virginia wild: Mustock, detailed in today’s City Lights pick.

Start your day sweetly and sadly: