AU Museum

Open Tuesday-Sunday, 11:00-4:00. Admission is free.
Located on American University’s main campus at the Katzen Arts Center.
 

Fall Special Events

 

November 17

Docent-Led Tour

November 17

Sine Nomine with the Experiential Orchestra

November 18

Kids@Katzen

November 25

Docent-Led Tour

November 29

Free Parking: Ian Jehle

December 9

JRA Distinguished Artist Lecture with Bennett Bean

Jim Sanborn—Without Provenance:
the making of contemporary antiquity

In Without Provenance, Jim Sanborn has given us all a rare gift of artistic provocation. Certainly there is an abundance of beauty in this exhibition, but it is beauty that provokes thought and reflection. The takeaway from this extraordinary show is a vision for an art collecting world very different from our own.

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Finding a path—Emilie Brzezinski and Dalya Luttwak: A Conversation

Emilie Brzezinski and Dalya Luttwak have much in common as artists, yet they have never shown their works together. Brzezinski’s massive, rough-hewn wood sculptures embody the vital energy of trees as archetypes of being. Luttwak’s brilliantly colored metal creations are inspired by another essential aspect of universal growth and decay in nature—plant roots. This site–specific installation is a conversation on their approaches to nature as a means of understanding one’s path through the world, and life itself.

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Selections from the Artery Collection

The Artery Organization Collection was conceived as a corporate collection in the early 1980s to support Washington-area artists and enhance the real estate offices of the company in Artery Plaza, the first large building in Bethesda. CEO Henry H. Goldberg and his wife, artist Carol Brown Goldberg, worked with curators and galleries to ensure the broadest possible outreach and diversification of artistic styles. The energy reflected in the variety of art chosen over two plus decades captures the spirit and inspiration of the Washington art world of the 1970s and 1980s and reflects the cooperation of artists, dealers, and collectors. The Artery Collection is the largest private assemblage of Washington-area artists.

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Tribe: Contemporary Photography from the Arab World

Tribe: Contemporary Photography from the Arab World is an exhibition highlighting a selection of artists published within the eight editions of Tribe—a magazine founded in Dubai that is dedicated to covering developments in photography and new media from the Arab World. The exhibition contextualizes an expansive field of image-based work through various themes, while celebrating artists both internationally acclaimed as well as those whose practices have recently been recognized. At times artists poetically deploy hues, shadows and partial images to nuance aspects of Arab culture. By expanding our appreciation and understanding of the variety of photographic practices creatively deployed by artists from throughout the Arab World, through its publications and first exhibition, Tribe aims to place these accomplished artists on a global stage within the larger sphere of contemporary photography.

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Ian Jehle: Dynamical Systems

Ian Jehle, a DC-based artist and American University faculty member, has long been known for his sensitive, large scale portraits of members of the Washington art community. This exhibition will use those graphic portraits as the introduction to a new body of abstract drawings, based on mathematical algorithms. These complex, linear systems will be installed as site-specific wall drawings throughout the Alper gallery, and extending into the lobby area. Dynamical Systems will combine Jehle’s unusual combination of skill sets as a visual artist, teacher and mechanical engineer.

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