The year was 2004, and Jesse Cohen was angry with Washington D.C. It wasn’t about politics or terrible traffic or hoards of school children everywhere. Cohen was fed up with the D.C. art scene.

During that...

Antoinette Wysocki was never keen on the idea of the starving artist. For her, the term conjures up images of 20-somethings fresh out of art school that spend their days peddling their...