Claudia Rousseau, Ph.D.

Archives for Claudia Rousseau, Ph.D.

Born and raised in New York City, Claudia Rousseau completed a B.A. in Art History at Hunter College (CUNY), and an M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York. She is Professor of Art History at Montgomery College and is an internationally published scholar, a recognized critic and a curator of many art exhibits in the region. Dr. Rousseau was art critic for the Gazette Newspapers in Montgomery, Prince George’s and Frederick Counties for eleven years, publishing extended monthly reviews of exhibitions of contemporary art. In 2010 she received the honor of juried membership in the prestigious International Association of Art Critics (AICA) for her writing on art. Dr. Rousseau has served on many important art juries, including the Bethesda Painting Competition (the Trawick Prize), the fellowship committee for the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, and the Awards Review Panel for the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County. She also serves as a panel member of the Public Arts Trust Steering Committee of the AHCMC, as well as the Art Review Panel at Maryland Park and Planning for public art.

Reviews
East City Art Reviews—Cianne Fragione Gate to the Sea

East City Art Reviews—Cianne Fragione Gate to the Sea

By on October 30, 2019

Works from a large series of paintings watercolors and prints by Cianne Fragione is on view at Gallery Neptune & Brown. They were inspired by a residency the artist had at Monasterace (Reggio Calabria) near the destroyed Greek town of Caulonia on the southernmost coast of Italy. Facing the Ionian Sea, ancient Caulonia is now an archaeological site reached through an iron gate and a flight of 50 or 60 steps down to the water—a gate to the sea. Read More
Reviews
East City Artnotes—Kirsty Little: Refuse? REFUSE 35B+

East City Artnotes—Kirsty Little: Refuse? REFUSE 35B+

By on July 17, 2019

The numbers are staggering. Americans use approximately 35 billion plastic bottles and containers each year. Since its invention, which completely transformed consumer culture, we have only increased our plastic footprint, particularly since major plastic production began in the 1940s and 1950s. We need to do something about this now, and Kirsty Little is trying to draw our attention to this inalterable fact by creating a work that calls the viewer to recognize the problem. Read More
Reviews
East City Art Reviews: Squire Broel’s Totemic Structures at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center

East City Art Reviews: Squire Broel’s Totemic Structures at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center

By on July 17, 2019

A small group of standing bronze sculptures by sculptor Squire Broel is currently in the outdoor sculpture area at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. At significant distances from one another, there is a strong sense of loneliness in this installation. In the bright sun, with angled shadows from the building, totems in the American desert may come to mind, although the aesthetic seems more universal, potentially recalling various primitive or prehistoric sources. Read More
Reviews
East City Art Reviews: Bethesda Painting Awards 2019

East City Art Reviews: Bethesda Painting Awards 2019

By on June 11, 2019

Gallery B in downtown Bethesda is hosting the finalists of the annual Bethesda Painting Awards competition. This year’s selection exhibits a pronounced showing of painting, in the traditional sense, both figurative and abstract. It’s been some time since we’ve seen such a strong feeling of hand is in the works represented, that is, of paint on surface, made into recognizable or abstract imagery. Read More
Reviews
Recovering Tintoretto, Painter of the Venetian Late Renaissance

Recovering Tintoretto, Painter of the Venetian Late Renaissance

By on June 4, 2019

The retrospective exhibition of the work of Venetian artist Jacopo Robusti, known as Il Tintoretto, is still on view at the National Gallery. Although Tintoretto was enormously successful in his own time and place, he remains relatively unknown to the general public. The reasons for this are many. Not least among them are the many myths that stubbornly follow the artist’s reputation portraying him as an outsider, a rebel, a difficult and bizarre personality, and perhaps most problematically: a Mannerist. Read More
Reviews
East City Art Reviews: NOMAD: The Art of Alonzo Davis

East City Art Reviews: NOMAD: The Art of Alonzo Davis

By on April 15, 2019

A remarkable two-part exhibition of recent work by Washington DC artist Alonzo Davis is currently in the art galleries of the Rachel Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center of the Northern Virginia Community College Alexandria campus. Comprised of Davis’ Navigation and Migrant series, the underlying and unifying theme of the exhibition is travel, of “finding one’s way in unfamiliar territory,” whether that territory is in the vastness of the sea, the fearful emptiness of the desert, or in the changes in one’s life. Read More
Reviews
East City Art Reviews—Carolina Mayorga: PINK Ranchos and Other Ephemeral Zip Codes

East City Art Reviews—Carolina Mayorga: PINK Ranchos and Other Ephemeral Zip Codes

By on March 26, 2019

Mayorga has made pink her brand. Her exhibit PINK ranchos and other ephemeral zip codes refers specifically to the oppression of women and girls, but more generally, to large portions of the populations of Latin American countries, especially those where the split in living conditions between the wealthy and the poor is extremely sharp, and where the violence and terror inflicted by governments and/or gangs is most commonly directed at families with children living in ephemeral housing and economic deprivation. Read More
Reviews
East City Art Reviews: To Eat or Not to Eat at Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery

East City Art Reviews: To Eat or Not to Eat at Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery

By on February 26, 2019

A thought provoking exhibit curated by Maria Karametou is at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery on U Street, NW. Its title, To Eat or Not to Eat has more to do with Karametou’s vision for the show than what is actually exhibited. Nevertheless, what is included is not only interesting from a political, environmental and theoretical point of view, but also from an aesthetic one. Read More
Reviews
East City Art Reviews: Isabel Manalo Adrenaline

East City Art Reviews: Isabel Manalo Adrenaline

By on December 18, 2018

New paintings by Isabel Manalo at Addison/Ripley are a departure for her, exploring large format gestural compositions in bright colors. Yet they represent a continuation of the themes of Filipina identity and conceptual self-portraiture that remain central to her thinking. Called Adrenaline, the show’s title refers to powerful energies released in response to current events. Worked in a variety of media, they are the result of an emotional encounter with the canvas, painted on the floor in a process that recalls the Abstract Expressionist idea. Yet, for Manalo these paintings express her identity in a way exclusive to the Philippines, as each work begins with a character from the Baybayin script. Read More
Reviews
East City Art Reviews—The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards 16

East City Art Reviews—The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards 16

By on September 13, 2018

The exhibition of the eight finalists of sixteenth Trawick Prize for Contemporary Art competition is on view at Gallery B in Bethesda. This year, there is a sense that the jurors gravitated toward the conceptually subtle, the formally elegant and the well-crafted. Winners this year ranged from an environmentally conscious installation, to a draftsman who transforms the ordinary into extraordinary drawings, to a collaborative installation that has overtones of spiritual atonement. Read More
Reviews
East City Art Reviews: CMD + F at Hemphill Fine Arts

East City Art Reviews: CMD + F at Hemphill Fine Arts

By on July 30, 2018

The title of this three person show now at Hemphill Fine Arts, CMD + F is a computer command for a search within a document. Area artists Tommy Bobo, James Huckenpahler and Rachel Schmidt are all working with computer based new media, each of them searching for new ways to create art in this fast-changing digital world. The results, as well presented here, are all fascinating, showing the potential of these experimental techniques. Read More
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