The American University Museum is located within the Katzen Arts Center at the

American University The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was cha ...

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morg ...

History and description

The American University Museum consists of a three-story, museum and sculpture garden. The region’s largest university facility for exhibiting art, the museum’s permanent collection highlights the holdings of the Katzen and Watkins collections. Rotating exhibitions emphasize regional, national, and international contemporary art.

Permanent collections

The Katzen Collection is a private collection donated to the university by Dr. Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen in 2005. The collection includes more than 300 paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures, focusing on Pop Art, Washington art, and glass sculpture. It also contains three large bronze sculptures by

Nancy Graves Nancy Graves (December 23, 1939 – October 21, 1995, in Massachusetts) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime- filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the Moon. Her works are included in ...

. The Watkins Collection included more than 4500 works of art, with an emphasis on art produced in the Washington area since the 1940s. The collection was created in 1945 as a memorial to C. Law Watkins, the former chair of the Department of Art at American University. Originally only 25 works, it has been augmented by later donations. The Corcoran Legacy Collection includes more than 9,000 works of art from the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Desig ...

and includes works by

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Monochrome photography, black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association ...

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

and the Washington Color School.

Rotating exhibitions

Jack Rasmussen, the museum's curator, focuses on rotating exhibitions that emphasize regional, national, international, and contemporary art and artists. The Museum's Kunsthalle style planning ensures constantly changing exhibitions on all three levels of the museum, often with highly relevant, political, and sometimes provocative programming that mirrors Washington, D.C. itself. Approximately 24 exhibitions are mounted annually across the museum's 44,000 square foot space. In 2006 the museum presented “Contemporary North Korean Art: The Evolution of Socialist Realism,” the first ever exhibition of North Korea political realism artwork ever showcased in the United States. In 2017, the museum presented "Between Two Rounds of Fire, the Exile of the Sea", an Arab modernism exhibition in collaboration with the

Barjeel Art Foundation Barjeel Art Foundation is a non-profit arts organisation based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. The foundation was established in 2010 by Emirati commentator Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi to manage and exhibit his personal art collection. There are ov ...

on themes of war from eight different Arab countries and territories. Via the Alper Initiative for Washington Art, the museum also focuses exhibitions on Washington, DC area artists, and is dedicated to preserving, presenting, and creating the art history of Washington through a book collection, database, events, and exhibitions. The Alper Initiative for Washington Art was made possible through a major financial grant by American University alumna and art advocate Carolyn Small Alper. In 2016 the initiative sponsored a widely acclaimed exhibition titled The Looking Glass: Artist Immigrants of Washington, which was curated by Rasmussen to showcase the immigration stories, experiences, and views of ten Washington, DC area artists - all of whom were immigrants to the United States from Latin America. The Alper Initiative for Washington Art includes: * 5 new exhibitions submitted by Washington-area artists each year * 2,000 square feet of gallery space in the museum * 60+ books on the Washington, DC area art history

History and description

Permanent collections

Rotating exhibitions

References

Related links