Washington, obviously, is filled with museums. And just as obviously, we seldom visit them. After all, you need to have the time, and someone has to suggest going, and the other person has to say “okay”, and you have to follow through. When we are traveling, going to a museum is an obvious choice. At home, not so obvious.

We do try to get to the National Gallery for big exhibits, and we go tobthe Phillips (we are members), but other than that, it tends to be hit or miss.

Yesterday,  we actually spent part of the afternoon at a museum, the closest art museum to our house, less than 2 miles away. It’s the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, where Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues meet. It is convenient, free, has indoor parking (free on weekends), and exhibits that change three or four times a year.

The spring exhibits run another two weeks. One of the most striking shows the work of Fred Folsom. It’s a large exhibit with two components. One includes very large and detailed works representing crowds in bars. The other is an unusual exhibit of nudes with cigarettes.  Go figure.

Then, there is an exhibit of works presented as masters theses this spring. I thought them quite good. Here are some examples:

The students/artists are Poojah Campbell, Patricia Poku, and Andres Izquierdo.

There are three more exhibits. One features contemporary Serbian artists, and a second a multimedia artist named Bruce Connor and focuses on psychedelic mushrooms in Mexico in the 1960s. Neither did much for me.

The final exhibit features a number of pieces which were given to AU when the Corcoran closed a few years ago. The Corcoran distributed their collection broadly. The biggest recipient was the National Gallery, followed by AU and George Washington U. AU itself received 9,000 pieces of art, apparently.  They are now displaying a few of those pieces by artists with a strong connection to DC. They are all worth looking at. Here are a few by Rebecca Davenport, Andrew Stenovich, and Nancy Wolf:

That’s it for today.