| Fall
Exhibitions at the AU Museum, Showing Now through Oct. 29
Five
new exhibitions are featured in this fall's lineup at the AU
Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, including the work of Mindy Weisel,
daughter of Nobel Peace Prize winning author Eli Weisel.
"As
the AU Museum enters its second season in the Katzen Arts Center, we continue
to expand our global perspective and encourage you to visit," says
Jack Rasmussen, director and curator of the AU Museum.
Leading
the lineup is "New Leipzig Painters" from Germany, a contemporary,
much-debated artistic development. Photos of the Hungarian revolution
of 1956; paintings from Eberhard Havekost, a Dresden-based painter whose
paintings are rarely shown outside of Europe; and exhibitions from Washington-based
artists Weisel and Athena Tacha also appear in the gallery.
 Life
after Death: New Leipzig Paintings
from the Rubell Family Collection
For its only mid-Atlantic showing, this nationally touring exhibition
at the AU Museum focuses on a much-discussed, often controversial development
in contemporary art — grandly scaled paintings that echo traditions
of social realism, particularly as it was practiced in East Germany. After
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the seven artists represented created
a “school” that blends dream elements of surrealism and a
modernist spatial sense and matter-of-fact narrative.
Eberhart Havekost: 1996-2006 Paintings
from the Rubell Family Collection
This unprecedented exhibition traces the past decade of work by one of
Germany’s most-watched painters, Eberhard Havekost (b. 1967), who
is based in Dresden and rarely shows his pieces outside Europe or New
York. Havekost paints images based on his altered and manipulated photographs
and video clips.
Mindy Weisel: Words on a Journey
Mindy Weisel’s heritage as the only daughter of Holocaust survivors
has long spurred her work as a painter, author, and lecturer (currently
at the Corcoran School of Art and Design). In this exhibition, the Washington-based,
former AU student premieres works in an entirely new technique: fused
glass. “Words on a Journey” (borrowed from a poem) refers
to Weisel’s journey through life as well as the implied meanings
within each piece. In one work, her father’s concentration camp
number and mother’s love of the color blue fuse into a luminous,
emotionally charged commentary on memory and loss. The exhibition
coincides with a gallery talk with Mindy Weisel on Sun., Oct 8, at 4:00
p.m.
 Hungarian
Revolution, 1956
More than 100 photographs commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian
revolution. In this emblematic event of the Cold War, a demonstration
led by students blossomed into a national uprising against communist tyrants
and their Soviet rulers. A wide range of subjects — Budapest street
skirmishes, refugees at the Austrian border, scenes of suppression by
the communist loyalists — photographed by foreign news media as
well as Hungarian professionals and amateurs are represented.
 Athena
Tacha: Small Wonders
One of the initiators of site-specific architectural sculpture, Athena
Tacha premieres a new group of small scale works reflecting her abiding
fascination with nature and space. Made variously of sand and stones,
epoxy, grey slate, lead, aluminum, vellum, and a host of other natural
and synthetic materials, the 15 sculptures on view, none more than two
feet high, invoke canyons, caves, a glacier, and, frozen in mid-air, a
waterfall, wave, and volcano. Photoworks are also in the exhibition by
this Washington, D.C.-based artist. The exhibition coincides with
a gallery talk with Athena Tacha on Sat., Oct 14, at 4:00 p.m.
PREVIEW OF NOVEMBER EXHIBITIONS:
Nov. 14, 2006 – Jan. 21, 2007
Gifts from the Katherine Dreier Estate
Rare works by Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Kurt Schwitters, and others introduce
an AU holding from the estate of Katherine Dreier, founder of the influential
Societe Anonyme. These works are part of the Watkins Collection and were
originally donated by Duncan Phillips.
William
H. Calfee and the Washington Modernists
The emergence of Washington’s modernists of the 1940s and 1950s
is traced in these works by Calfee, the long time AU art department chair
(focusing on his sculpture), as well as works by Law Watkins, Robert Gates,
Sarah Baker, Karl Knaths, and others.
Nov.
21, 2006 – Jan. 21, 2007
High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-75
This touring show—in Washington for its only mid-Atlantic showing—tracks
an under-recognized but fecund period of New York painting with works
by Lynda Benglis, Blinky Palermo, Elizabeth Murray, and others.
Twenty-First
Century Ibero-American Art
Paintings and mixed-media pieces by some 20 artists reveal the diversity
of contemporary art in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds of
Europe and the Americas. The show, juried by Jack Rasmussen, is presented
in conjunction with the Association of Ibero-American Cultural Attaches.
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