Washington Review

The Washington Review was founded and edited by Clarissa K. Wittenberg.{{cite web|url=https://dcfilminstitute.org/about/ |title=Clarissa Wittenberg|work=Washington Film Institute |place=Washington D.C.|date=|access-date=2022-12-12}} Inspired by The Paris Review, in 1974 she started the journal initially with Jean Lewton, a colleague with whom she had worked with at X magazine.{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1978/02/12/finding-happiness-on-f-street/b5fe84e5-e8ff-42cb-90e0-c50bda8cc1be/ |title=Finding Happiness On F Street |newspaper=Washington Post |author=Anne Chamberlin|date=February 12, 1978|access-date=2023-06-26}} Wittenberg wanted to document the underrepresented avant-garde culture of Washington. Review topics covered poetry, fiction, essays on the arts, book and art reviews, plays, interviews, photographs, graphics, and original artwork.{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/198889directoryo00coor/page/126/mode/2up?q=%22Washington+Review%22+%22Journal+of+Arts+and+Literature%22 |title=The 1988-89 Directory of Literary Magazines|work=Moyer Bell Ltd |place=|date=1998|access-date=2022-09-24}}

The first Issue of the Washington Review appeared on May/July 1975. It was published by the Friends of the Washington Review of the Arts, Inc., a non-profit, tax-except educational organization. Tabloid-sized, it used two of the large pages per issue for poetry, and was saddle-stapled on high-quality newsprint. The Review had a circulation of 2,000 with 700 subscriptions, and was in 10 libraries.{{cite journal |date=1994 |title=Art Sites 6 |url=https://archive.org/details/cor5_0_s06_ss01_boxrg5_0_2008_025_21/page/n1/mode/2up |journal=Washington Review |volume=20 |issue=2 |access-date=2022-09-24 |place=Washington D.C.}}{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/poetsmarket198700jero/page/312/mode/2up?q=%22Washington+Review%22+%22Journal+of+Arts+and+Literature%22 |title=Poet's Market|work=Writers Digest |place= Cincinnati, Ohio |date=1986|page=312|access-date=2022-09-24}}{{cite web|url=https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_dc/EXTUID_2749282 |title=Friends of the Washington Review of the Arts, Inc.|work=Open Corporates|place=|date=|access-date=2022-09-24}}

File:Washington Review.jpg

Wittenberg worked with local contributors to develop the Review into an arts journal: gallerist George Hemphill, artist Clark V. Fox, dancer Maida Withers. The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities was a regular provider of grants, along with a handful of local foundations.

Mary Swift served as both chairman and president. Her key roles were as managing editor, interviewer, journalist, and photographer-in-residence from the journal's inception to its closure in 2002. Swift's contributions included photographs, reviews of art exhibitions, and interviews with dancer Lucinda Childs, painter Robert Indiana, sculptor Anne Truitt, painter Howard Mehring and museum director and gallerist Walter Hopps. Swift interviewed DC artist Martin Puryear in the first article of his career.{{clarification needed|reason=it is unclear what this means, was it the first issue of the review or the first exhibition of Puryear's career or?|date=February 2024}}{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/05/20/mary-davidson-swift-dead-arts/|title=Mary Swift, doyenne of Washington arts scene, dies at 95|newspaper=The Washington Post|place= Washington, D.C. |date= May 20, 2022 |author=Adam Bernstein|access-date=2022-12-07}} For the February/March 1980 issue, Swift took the photographs and interviewed artist William Christenberry in his studio, including his collection of vintage signs, landscapes, and abandoned buildings from his home state Tuscaloosa, Alabama.{{cite web|url=https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/william-christenberry-papers-21732 |title=William Christenberry papers, circa 1917-2018|author=|work=Smithsonian Libraries and Archives|place=Washington, DC |date=|access-date=2022-12-08}}

The Washington Review ceased publication in 2002, when Wittenberg and Swift retired.

The full set of Washington Review journals are in the Library of Congress and the Mary Swift Papers (1973-2004) at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.

In November 2016, Swift donated thousands of contact sheets, negative, and prints, and more than one hundred cassette tapes of artist interviews to the archives of the Smithsonian Institution. Swift's collection measure 8.2 linear feet and date from 1973-2004. Most of the collection contains photographs that Swift took while working for the Washington Review.{{cite web|url=https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/mary-swift-papers-17433|title=Mary Swift Papers, 1973-2004|work=Smithsonian Institution|place= Washington, D.C. |date=1973|author=|access-date=2022-09-24}}{{cite web|url=https://www.aaa.si.edu/blog/2018/01/acquisitions-mary-swift-papers |title=Acquisitions: Mary Swift Papers|work=Smithsonian Institution|place=|date=January 2, 2018|author=Mary Savig|access-date=2022-09-24}}

• List of avant-garde magazines
• Arts journalism

• [https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/items/detail/promotional-card-washington-review-vol-xv-no-2-18433 Promotional card for Washington Review vol. XV, no. 2., 1989]
• [https://www.artnet.com/artists/sidney-lawrence/ Sidney Lawrence artworks]

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Category:Contemporary art magazines

Category:Arts journals

Category:English-language journals

Category:Visual arts magazines published in the United States

Category:Defunct literary magazines published in the United States

Category:Magazines established in 1974

Category:Magazines published in Washington, D.C.

Category:Journals published between 13 and 25 times per year