Washington, D.C

Big blossoms in peak bloom in DC at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens’ Lotus Festival – WTOP News

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1 hour ago

July 18, 2024

Big blossoms in peak bloom in DC at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens’ Lotus Festival – WTOP News

A three-day celebration of D.C.’s other famous flowers — the lotuses and waterlilies that dot the 700 acres of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens — kicks off on Friday.

The Lotus and Water Lilly Festival takes place at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. (Courtesy Tim Ervin/National Park Service)

A three-day celebration of D.C.’s other famous flowers — the lotuses and water lilies that dot the 700 acres of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens — kicks off Friday.

This year, the theme is on the art of the lotus and water lilies. The lotus is “a very sacred flower in the Chinese culture, as well as Asian cultures,” said Sheena Foster, executive director of the Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.

During the festival, there will be all kinds of opportunities for all ages to get involved in artistic activities, from Friday morning’s drop-in art class to an acrylic painting class Friday afternoon.

“I’m really excited because we have the Washington Dunhuang Guzheng Academy, which is an organization that’s been around for over 20 years, that teaches the ancient art of the guzheng.”

That’s a stringed instrument that looks something like a zither.

“It’s an ancient Chinese instrument,” Foster said. “And the reason why this is so exciting for me is because I actually began learning to play the guzheng last summer.”

Other festival activities include nature walks, outdoor yoga, spoken word performances and a mix of cultural activities. Those will include classical Indian and Bollywood style dance performances. Mariachi music will share the spotlight with D.C. Strings’ Hip Hop Symphony.

Of course, the real stars of the festival are the lotus and lily plants that spring up across the park at this time of year.

Foster said water lilies are the flowers that bloom close to the surface of the water, appearing to float among the lily pads. “They are spiky and beautiful, and they range in color,” from yellows to magenta.

The lotus flowers, on the other hand, stand out across the landscape.

“You can’t miss the big, beautiful, pink and white flowers” that tower over their flowering companions. “The lotuses are about 5 feet tall right now,” and Foster said they’ll likely top out at about 7 feet tall.

Foster and National Park Service officials often refer to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens as the “hidden gem” in the nation’s capital.

“It’s an urban oasis and it’s right here in our own backyard,” she said.

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Washington, D.C

BetMGM, Caesars go live in Washington, DC after short delay

Published

8 hours ago

July 17, 2024

Press Room

BetMGM, Caesars go live in Washington, DC after short delay

BetMGM and Caesars Sportsbook went live across Washington, DC Wednesday (17 July). Both operators previously could only offer their platforms in exclusion zones.

The launch is two days later than both operators planned. But they had to await the FY 2025 budget being in force.

The budget includes provisions that open the market from a monopoly to a competitive landscape. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser did not sign or veto the budget. Her deadline to do so was 25 July. Instead, she sent it back to the DC Council. The move allows BetMGM and Caesars to begin offering their platforms throughout the city.

Bowser’s press secretary told Sports Handle that Bowser’s non-action “will still permit” the expansion. By sending it back, Bowser was demonstrating that she had “objections to several elements of the budget.” Given the contentious history of sports betting in DC, the expansion could be one of those objections.

Neverthelesss, BetMGM and Caesars Sportsbook announced Wednesday that they had launched their mobile platforms citywide. Both companies already had market access through deals with Nationals Park and Capital One Arena, respectively. Now, instead of being geofenced to a within a two-block radius of their retail sportsbooks, the platforms are live throughout the city, except in federally excluded areas.

BetMGM CEO Adam Greenblatt said via press release that the company looks forward to launching district-wide following “three years of bringing unparalleled, omnichannel experiences to sports fans” under the previous framework.

Eric Hession, president of Caesars Digital, said in a press release that by going live in DC, the company’s presence “will only enhance” the fan experience. He also thanked Bowser and the DC Council “for their leadership on sports betting.”

Originally, both companies had planned to launch Monday (15 July). BetMGM was forced to cancel a launch event it had scheduled at Nationals Park that day.

FanDuel also back, no longer sole operator

FanDuel, which had been operating citywide since April as a sub-contractor for Intralot, also came back online Wednesday. Intralot is the DC Lottery’s provider. Intralot’s previous sports betting contract expired Monday, forcing FanDuel to briefly halt operations due to the budget delay.

Under the previous terms, FanDuel paid a 40% tax rate as a monopoly, but now it will join the other platforms tethered to designated sports facilities at a 20% tax rate.

FanDuel came to the rescue of DC sports bettors in April when it took over for Intralot’s GamBetDC. That platform was widely criticised for both its financial performance and its poor usability.

In the first month that FanDuel was live in DC, handle was up 450% against GamBetDC year over year. And FanDuel made $4.9m in revenue compared to $711,282 by GambetDC in May 2023. Revenue is calculated by taking player winnings off total bets placed during the month.

Looking ahead, the new framework does not cap the number of operators. Other big players such as DraftKings and Fanatics Sportsbook have expressed interest in establishing presences in the market. The new framework allows for a new “Type C” license for digital wagering.

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Washington, D.C

Review | Maggie Michael may be D.C.’s most vital, volatile painter

Published

15 hours ago

July 17, 2024

Press Room

Review | Maggie Michael may be D.C.’s most vital, volatile painter

To understand Maggie Michael’s paintings, start from the bottom.

The lower third of “Heavy Tree, Funneling Heart” (2024) shows where the artist is coming from. This section features pours of paint that form glossy pools on the surface of the canvas, much like the latex paintings she first showed 20 years ago. Yet from these placid ponds, the painting funnels upward and outward, in an ecstatic shower of mixed-media abstraction, to point where she’s going.

In “Understory,” a show of Michael’s recent works on view near Union Market, motion is always key. Tall vertical paintings such as “Boulder Monument (Orange)” (2020/2022) and “Moon Fall (Mt. Hood, Mt. Sopris, Clay)” (2024) evoke the volcanic action of an idea rising to the surface and spilling over. The latest works by Michael — perhaps the most vital and visible D.C. painter since Sam Gilliam — unfold as a series of volatile discoveries.

Michael’s lyrical painting is a reminder of the power of pure abstraction as a lens for finding the world, as it is and as it could be. That Michael’s first major solo show since 2016 arrives at an all-time nadir for abstract-expressionist painting only makes the show more riveting.

Ten years ago, things were different. An overheated market was fixated on highly abstract post-minimalist painting, inviting a craze by collectors for “zombie formalism.” But abstraction is no longer top of mind for curators and dealers. Instead, museums and galleries across the country are deeply engaged with figurative painting, tackling urgent issues about identity and representation. Some critics say the rebound has gone too far, subbing a fad for abstraction with a fever for “zombie figuration.”

Michael’s style recalls mid-century ideals about the value of painting. Objects make frequent appearances on her canvases. A small grid-like device shows up in “Pink for Kiefer, Homage to Midgard” (2023-2024) and other works, a way of mentioning the hard-edge geometric tradition in abstract painting while also toying with the notion of the surface. The snakeskin that Michael pins to “Night Studio” (2024) is a casual quotation of Robert Rauschenberg, whose sculptural combines stretched the notion of painting with taxidermy and tires. She has an arsenal of abstract-expressionist strategies at her disposal, but as a stylist, she makes them all her own.

Michael produced 15 of the paintings in “Understory” while working as an artist-in-residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. During her residency, Michael says, she tried to produce a diptych or triptych in tribute to Mitchell, the New York School artist who relished large-format paintings, but it didn’t happen. That’s not so surprising. Michael is a tighter painter, and her style is much more densely plotted. For “Understory,” which occupies a space that once served as a Lululemon store, Michael uses the former fitting rooms to showcase a rotation of more than a dozen small paintings, some as little as 10 inches square — small in scale but not in scope.

With its epic sweep, “Chagall’s Horse Lands in Utah” (2021-2022) could easily take up an entire wall. In the painting, the loosest figure of a horse charges under an ocher orb that might signify a setting sun. Michael frames this circle with a stencil from player-piano print roll, another one of the artist’s signature marks. This painting summons the vast reaches of a twilight dreamscape, but the actual production is quite condensed. Michael delivers novellas that read like myth.

“Chagall’s Horse Lands in Utah” could be a fitting title for Michael’s entire project. Her approach to drafting abstract sagas draws on a rich and distinctly American painterly tradition. One of her own paintings tests the rule: “American Seance for CoBrA (Malachite)” (2022) stands apart from the others, with a muddled, primitive, almost Crayola-like brushstroke. Both the title and style nod to CoBrA — a collective of postwar European painters from Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br) and Amsterdam (A) — and specifically within this group Karel Appel, the founder from Amsterdam. Nestled within this very non-American and un-Michael-like piece is a section of painting that resembles malachite, a mineral whose radial copper banding is prized by Navajo and Hopi tribes in the Southwest.

These vivid undercurrents bubble up in one painting after another, although the sheer size of “Understory” means that viewers might miss such moments. The show, assembled by Michael herself, features nearly 50 paintings staged on multiple levels. At 3,000 square feet, the space is vast enough that it doesn’t feel cramped or forced; in fact, only an especially prolific artist could hope to fill it. But “Understory” risks being overwhelming. Two or three subsets of paintings in this show could easily stand on their own.

The most difficult painting on view might also be the most figurative. The composition of “Olympia’s Odalesque” (2017/2018) speaks directly to Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” (1863), the reclining nude Venus whose hand rests on her thigh like a tarantula. In Michael’s composition, a hard-edge rectangle intersected by a chevron conveys the thrust of a chaise longue within a frame. But the figure-ish shape inside that frame is cramped, its head missing, with only a nipple-like protrusion to suggest any feminine identity — a bleak reading of the original.

It may take another biennial or two for expressionist paintings to come back into vogue. Abstraction has lost its place, perhaps, but none of its power. Swoops of texture and gesture in a painting such as “Antelope Falls, Nude Descending” (2024) can unlock a primal feeling, as poetry or music manifests goose bumps or heart palpitations. Michael’s paintings dwell in that rush of blood, that sense of sensation.

If you go

Maggie Michael: Understory

1256 Fourth St. NE. unionmarketdc.com.

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Washington, D.C

Delays in Washington D.C. sports betting expansion: BetMGM, Caesars, and FanDuel in limbo

Published

23 hours ago

July 17, 2024

Press Room

Delays in Washington D.C. sports betting expansion: BetMGM, Caesars, and FanDuel in limbo

The anticipated launch of BetMGM and Caesars Sportsbook in Washington D.C. has hit a significant snag due to unresolved budget approval issues. The situation remains unchanged as of early Wednesday morning, July 17, 2024, with both platforms restricted to their respective brick-and-mortar locations and FanDuel halting its citywide online operations.

Budget Approval Issues Stall Sports Betting Expansion

FanDuel, currently the only online platform offering citywide sports gambling in D.C., stopped accepting bets on Tuesday. The halt came because Mayor Muriel E. Bowser had not signed the city’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year, which includes provisions for the continuation and expansion of sports betting. “FanDuel will resume sports betting operations in the city upon final approval of the FY2025 DC Budget,” the company stated to The Washington Post.

Mayor Bowser’s office clarified that she had returned the budget to the D.C. Council without her signature or a veto, effectively allowing the sports gambling provisions to take effect immediately. Despite this, FanDuel had not resumed its online operations by Tuesday evening, leaving bettors and industry stakeholders in a state of uncertainty.

Impact on BetMGM and Caesars Sportsbook

The budget delay has also affected BetMGM and Caesars Sportsbook, which were set to launch district-wide on July 15. BetMGM’s app continues to restrict bets to within a two-block radius of Nationals Park, where the company has a physical sportsbook. A planned promotional event for BetMGM’s expanded D.C. offerings was canceled, and the company stated that the initiative is “in a pause.” Similarly, Caesars Sportsbook, which operates a brick-and-mortar location at Capital One Arena, remains limited to that area.

Legislative and Market Dynamics

The confusion stems from the complex legislative and contractual dynamics involving the D.C. sports betting market. GambetDC, the city’s initial attempt at a mobile sports betting app, was a dismal failure, bringing in only $4.3 million over four years—well short of the projected $84 million. In April, FanDuel replaced GambetDC, generating $1.9 million in its first 30 days alone (Yogonet).

The new budget, which allows up to seven licenses for sports betting, was supposed to create a more competitive market. However, in a letter to Council Chair Phil Mendelson, FanDuel President Christian Genetski expressed concerns about the market opening to other companies, hinting that FanDuel might terminate its contract with Intralot and operate independently under the new framework.

Statements and Reactions

Kenyan R. McDuffie, a D.C. Council member, criticized the Office of Lottery and Gaming for prematurely releasing Intralot from its sports betting responsibilities, adding to the confusion. “Once again, the Office of Lottery and Gaming has created unnecessary confusion by prematurely releasing the contractor from their responsibilities. The Mayor is reviewing the budget, and we expect this to be resolved soon,” McDuffie said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Current Status and Next Steps

As of early Wednesday morning, July 17, 2024, the situation remains unchanged. FanDuel’s brick-and-mortar sportsbook at Audi Field continues to accept wagers, but its online operations are paused. BetMGM and Caesars Sportsbook have not provided timelines for when their citywide mobile betting services will commence.

The D.C. sports betting community eagerly awaits the resolution of these issues, hoping for a swift implementation of the expanded sports betting services promised by the new budget.

Stay tuned for further updates as this situation develops.

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