Press Highlights
(For a listing of all press, please go HERE.)
The Washington Post
“For Artist and Patron, Sharing Space Is a Piece Of (Art)work”
By Kriston Capps
May 16, 2011
Testing the boundaries of the artist-collector relationship, Philippa Hughes hosted Pittsburgh-based artist Agnes Bolt in her home for a week. Taking up nearly all of Hughes’ living space, Agnes was sequestered in a transparent polycarbonate enclosure. Both Agnes and Philippa spent the week adhereing to a predetermined contract of rules, which dictated the way the interacted and inevitably created tension. But by the end of the week, the artist and the collector had arrived at a mutual understanding, Hughes saying, “I Sincerely hope there’s a way she can take the material she gathered over the past seven days and turn it into something universally relevant. It wasn’t about Agnes and Philippa.”
(Read the full article here.)
Capitol File
“Home Story: An Art Lover’s Sanctuary”
By Jackie Kucinich
May 4, 2011
When Philippa Hughes went to London last year, she asked Zach Storm to cat-sit—and, if he felt like it, to decorate a wall in her 14th Street apartment. The result: Storm, a local artist, created a burst of colored geometric shapes that dashed across the ceiling of Hughes’ apartment, accented with little pink cotton-candy-like clouds. Hughes returned and loved it.
Storm’s mural is not alone.
(Read the full article here.)
Washington City Paper
“The Philippa Collection”
By Kriston Capps
October 22, 2010
Hughes may well be the perfect point of entry to the arts community: she’s fashionable, but not threateningly so, she never drops art theory, and she’s indefatigably chirpy. Her breezy grin keeps everyone comfortable, from art-scene purists to party-hopping dilettantes. And while the overlap between Philippa and her brand might suggest someone who’s been plotting for years to make the scene, her easy persona hints at how she actually came about it: gradually, as a by-product of other ambitions.
BBC World News America
“Why art galleries are embracing the internet”
by Jane O’Brien
September 9, 2010
Southern Living
“Insider’s Guide to Buying Art for Less”
By Christie Findlay
September 2010
Look at the Arts scene around the District and you’re bound to find Philippa Hughes involved–serving on commissions, panels, advisory boards and action committees all aimed at a single goal: supporting the arts. Her own organization, The Pink Line Project, calls itself the “catalyst for the culturally curious,” which translates into encouraging emerging art collectors.
The Wall Street Journal
“A Surfer Builds her Core Strength”
by Jen Murphy
August 2, 2010
Town & Country
“A Monumental Change”
By Annie Groer
November 2009
…The next morning, I returned to 14th Street to pop in on Philippa Hughes- avid surfer, non-practicing lawyer, champion of under-the-radar artists and a recent Fenty appointee to the DC Commission of Arts and Humanities. Walking out onto the terrace of the loft where she entertains frequently, she reminisced: “On election night, 14th and U was where so many people gravitated. It was so exciting. It felt like the center of everything new and progressive and hopeful.”
The Washington Post
“’08 Fall Arts Preview: The Cultural Crowd’s Refreshing Faces: Remaking the Scene”
By Lavanya Ramanathan
September 14, 2008
Young and influential. Those alone are sexy adjectives to us, but add the word “artistic” and, well, you have hit on a combination that makes our hearts flutter. For this year’s Fall Arts Preview, we went looking for young people who are shaping Washington arts. The Style & Arts staff chose people with fresh energy and ideas who’ve proved to be influential on the scene – be they curators or composers, performers, painters or festival founders.
Philippa P.B. Hughes, 39
Art collector and founder of the Pink Line Project
It took just over a year — a couple of events, really, to hear her tell it — for Philippa Hughes to emerge in late 2007 as the belle of Washington’s arts scene. Neither artist nor gallerist, Hughes is a lawyer and lobbyist-turned-art-collector who has imbued Washington’s art scene with a New York-style cool by using a deceptively simple idea: host visual and performance artists in edgy, vacant storefront spaces or at home; hang a screen, show projection art, get a DJ, set up a bar and wait for the hipsters to arrive.
Her blog, Hoogrrl.com, and the Web site for her arts-support organization, the Pink Line Project (Pinkline.org), both muse about art, pass on news and promote Washington events with similar vibes (and the number of such events has only grown since Hughes moved here from her native Richmond several years ago). She hosts invite-only salons for creative types in her 1,000-square foot condo with a giant deck on 14th Street NW and doesn’t seem to have a day job, per se — she cites “good investments” and other factors. She calls herself an “arts activist.”
Her name attached to an ever-growing list of bashes, Hughes plans to narrow her focus to launching a group for art collectors to remove some of the mystery around buying and supporting art: “I’m going to step back and define.”