What we do here

Market 5 Gallery is a multicultural, multidisciplinary arts organization sponsoring programs that encompass all visual and performing arts, crafts, and literary disciplines. In the nearly three decades since its founding, the Gallery's mission and guiding purpose has been to encourage the creative expression of our city's many individual artists and arts organizations by providing a welcoming and affordable environment in which they can exhibit, perform, and sell their work.

A major programmatic goal of Market 5 Gallery has always been to structure a broad range of program choices to provide both performers and audiences with a wide range of art, educational, and cultural experience. The following is a summary of the organization's programs:

Exhibitions | Theater | Music | Market Festival | Flea Market

Exhibitions: Shows range from the traditional to the abstract. Please contact the Gallery Director for more information on participating in current and future exhibition seasons.

Theater: The Gallery hosted a wealth of theater companies in our facilities. The Washington Improvisational Theater was seen in a well-received summer series entitled "SportSpeak"; the American Theater Project in a production of "Don't Come if You Can't Be Uncomfortable" featuring Clyde Wray; Pin Points Theater in "Hooked on Love"; and the one-woman show "Book of Judas" by Betty Williams; additionally, our audiences were enlightened and entertained by a new breed of Poets/Lecturers including; The African American Writers Guild; The Spoken Word; Clyde Wray; Majorie Sulken; Louise Gray; and the Vietnam Veterans Poets. We are looking to reinvigorate our summer youth theater program as well which hs had a rich history at the Gallery.

Music: Our audiences enjoy the diversity and richness of the musical talent this city has to offer-the steamy blues of Rico and The Blues Boyz, led by Guitarist Rico Waltz; the Joe Tate/Ishmael Newman Quintet which performed in concert and at our Saturday and Sunday outdoor festivities; the popular "Heavy Meadow" group Rest Area; Afro-Cuban sounds by Barnett Williams; the rhythms of Grupo el Panama; classical recitals by the Capitol Hill Community Orchestra and Amy and Endre, and a series of recitals of music of the Art Deco Period by mandolinist Neil Gladd; musical variations from the Republic of Georgia by Temur Tsagouria; and the swinging mellow sounds of jazz at well-received concerts by performers such as Jerry Gordon; the Emory Diggs Quartet; the Boston Jazz Trio; and the satin sounds of vocalists' James Zimmernan and Gail Dixon to name a few.

Market Festival: Artists, musicians and artisans have always been a part of the traditional "marketplace," and the Saturday festival on the Gallery's North Plaza was begun in 1978 to return this tradition to Eastern Market. The festival features painters, potters, jewelers, silversmiths, musicians, clothing designers, street performers, and other creative people who are not typically exhibited in concert halls or commercial galleries and gives them the opportunity to perform and sell their work. Vendors and shoppers come from Capitol Hill and the rest of the District, and from as far away as southern Virginia, West Virginia, and the Shenandoah Valley. The North Plaza, redesigned in 1989, permits a gay and lively venue for vendors. Rentals for spaces continue at an affordable $15 to $25 per vendor, and they help provide much needed income for the Gallery.

Flea Market: The Sunday Flea Market is a continuation of more than a century of curbside selling outside Eastern Market. This weekly antique and collectibles show has an international flavor. Everything from mid-1800's furniture to Bolivian cocoa bags and dolls, hand woven textiles and trinkets from Africa, South American, Tibet and the Middle East, and good old American "junque" is always for sale. The project took flight, when, in 1980, the Gallery entered into an agreement with Tom Rall to manage the Flea Market. Under his stewardship, the project has continued to grow and pump vitality in the 7th Street business corridor. Where once the Sunday street scene was bleak, it now is crowded with browsers and diners who patronize the boutiques and eateries on Market Row.

<top>