The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund
5505 Connecticut Avenue, NW # 268
Washington, D.C. 20015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Johanna Halford-MacLeod (202-288-4608; 202-253-5351)

THE FRANZ AND VIRGINIA BADER FUND ANNOUNCES 2008 GRANT RECIPIENTS

Washington, D.C., Nov. 30, 2008—The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund has awarded a total of $50,000 to three area visual artists. The recipients of this year’s Bader Fund grants are sculptors Emilie Brzezinski of McLean, Va., and Richard Cleaver of Baltimore, Md; and photographer Mark Power of Silver Spring, Md.

Brzezinski has focused on wood since the 1980s and uses tree trunks to make sculpture on a heroic scale, carving with chisels, axes, and chainsaws. As evidence of a tree’s struggle for life, she retains its essential outline and gesture, as well as the imperfections that she finds in her material. The resulting works speak as metaphors for human experience.

Cleaver makes intricate ceramic sculptures that integrate wood, pearls, semi-precious stones, gold leaf, and oil paint. Cleaver bases his work on narratives drawn from personal and historical events overlapped with subconscious and dream imagery. Concealed compartments and secret drawers in his works serve as hiding places for multiple meanings. Cleaver exhibited his work at the Franz Bader Gallery in the 1990s.

Power received the grant for his recent portraits of friends and family that are striking for their plainness, authority, and wit. A native Washingtonian, whose work encompasses a wide range of subject matter and techniques, Power founded Icon Gallery, the first D.C. gallery devoted exclusively to fine art photography.

The Fund has given away $340,000 in grants, since beginning its grants program in 2002 .

ABOUT THE FRANZ AND VIRGINIA BADER FUND

The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund was established in 2001 in accordance with the will of the late Virginia Bader to provide grants to visual artists who have reached the age of forty and reside within 150 miles of Washington, D.C. Virginia Forman Bader, who died in 2001, was the widow of Franz Bader, who was well known in Washington as the owner of a gallery and art-bookstore. Bader retired in 1985.

Bader was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1903. His father was a flour merchant and his mother was a painter. Franz was expected to work in his father's business, but he became a bookseller instead because, as he said, he could not see why he should spend his life making bread more expensive for people. In the mid-1930s he became the owner of Vienna's oldest bookstore, the Wallishauser'sche Buchhandlung. Following the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Bader, like other Jews, lost his business. He and his first wife, Tony, fled the country in December 1938 with nothing but twenty-four dollars. A bottle of rum given to them by well-wishers to add to their tea was confiscated at the border. The Baders arrived in Washington in January 1939. Bader went to work in James Whyte's bookstore, selling foreign language books, maps, and modern art. Bader persuaded Whyte to hold monthly art exhibitions. In 1953 Bader opened his own art gallery and bookshop at 1705 G Street, NW. The gallery had various addresses over the years, including two on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was located at 2001 Eye Street at the time of Bader's retirement. It continued to operate, moving to 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue around 1987, and then to 1500 K Street in 1990. It closed in 1995. The Franz Bader Bookstore was bought by one of Bader's employee and continues to operate at 1911 I Street, NW.

Many well-known artists exhibited at the Franz Bader Gallery, and Bader was always interested in late-bloomers: he gave Grandma Moses her first Washington show and Alma Thomas her first show in a commercial gallery. Among the crafts shown at Bader's gallery were ceramics by the Natzlers.

Tony Bader died in 1966, and in 1971 Franz Bader married Virginia Forman. He died in 1994. Virginia died in 2001.

The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund is governed by a committee of nine, and a trustee responsible for financial oversight. All were friends of Franz and Virginia Bader. The Fund is administered by an executive director.