Contact Us
Tues - Sun 11 a.m - 4 p.m.
Closed Monday
Free admission
Media Contact:
Rebecca Basu
202-885-5950
basu@american.edu

AU Museum
Located on American University’s main campus at the Katzen Arts Center.
Open Tuesday-Sunday, 11-4PM. Closed Monday. Admission is free.
Special Events
- February 16 & 17
- Docent-Led Tours
- February 21
- Free Parking: Michael B. Platt + Carol A. Beane
- March 2
- Nancy at Ninety Gallery Talk
- March 7
- INTERFERENCE Concert
- March 3, 9, & 16
- Docent-Led Tours
- March 10
- JRA Distinguished Artist Lecture
- March 17
- Michael Platt Memorial
Winter Exhibitions On view through March 17

The Gifts of Tony Podesta
This first major exhibition drawn from our Corcoran Legacy Collection features strong and provocative photography and sculpture donated by Tony Podesta over the past decade to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, now part of the American University Museum’s holdings. Podesta has earned the reputation of being a fearless supporter of challenging contemporary art by women. He is an important patron of the arts nationally and internationally, with an outsized impact all across the Washington art world.
See more about The Gifts of Tony Podesta.

Jiří Kolář (1914–2002): Forms of Visual Poetry
This exhibition is dedicated to one of the most remarkable Czech poets and visual artists associated with Modernism, Jiří Kolář (1914-2002). During the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Kolář encountered considerable challenges, including a prison sentence for the critical stance towards the system expressed in his poetry. Whether because “images” were less easily censurable than “words” or for other, personal reasons, from about 1959, he focused exclusively on visual arts - especially various experimental forms of collage. Yet most of his mixed-media works remained profoundly concerned with the word/image relationship, and can best be described as “visual” poetry. The selection is representative of the main aspects of his oeuvre as it evolved over several decades.
See more about Jiří Kolář (1914–2002): Forms of Visual Poetry.

Michael B. Platt + Carol A. Beane: Influences and Connections
Standing at the foot of Australia’s sacred sandstone monolith known as Uluru, Michael B. Platt and Carol A. Beane envisioned a world invisible to many others. The world is at once primordial and imminent, spiritual and mortal. This exhibition is a collaborative offering from one of Washington’s most prolific pairs; an offering of visibility from one world into another. Inspired by the ancestral stories told by the indigenous keepers of Australia’s most sacred grounds, Platt and Beane fuse poetic image with word.
See more about Michael B. Platt + Carol A. Beane: Influences and Connections.

Nancy at Ninety: A Retrospective of Form and Color
This retrospective of seven decades of the work of Washington, DC sculptor Nancy Frankel will celebrate her ninetieth birthday in 2019. Working in various media since the 1950s—including wood, Plexiglas, Hydrocal, design cast, and steel—Frankel has explored a fundamentally geometric vocabulary, with moments of whimsy, the title of one of the works in this show. In addition to her freestanding works in three dimensions, a few of her many graphite drawings and tempera paintings will be represented, as well as a large wall relief.
See more about Nancy at Ninety: A Retrospective of Form and Color.