Six Must-See Exhibitions You Can Visit for Free at Katzen This Fall
“Basketball Players” by Felix Alvarado
AU students don't have to head downtown to experience remarkable art. This fall they can explore six new exhibitions at the Katzen Arts Center right here on campus.
Opening September 5, the exhibitions bring together artists from around the world and around DC, spanning painting, photography, calligraphy, and digital art. Admission is free for everyone.
At the American University Museum, South Korean artist Ahn Chang-Hong fills two floors with large-scale works confronting memory, mortality, and vulnerability. Islamic calligrapher Ayesha Kamal turns sacred text into monumental contemporary art. Pioneering feminist art historian Mary Garrard picks up an iPhone and becomes an artist herself. And the street photography of Norman S. Carr, a longtime collector and lawyer-turned-photographer, captures Washington and cities around the world.
Beyond the museum galleries, the art continues throughout Katzen. In the Kreeger Lobby, Seeing America in Scale: A Humongous Photography Exhibition explores contemporary American life though large-scale photos. In the Katzen Rotunda, GILT by association brings together works of art exploring the many meanings of gold—from beauty and delight to avarice and conflict.
All members of the AU community and public are also invited to three free opening receptions on September 5: GILT by association from 3 to 6 p.m., followed by a reception for the five other exhibitions from 6 to 9 p.m.
Read on for more information about each exhibit!
Ahn Chang-Hong: noon-mool
Ahn Chang-Hong, Sorrow 2025’10, 2025. Mixed media on photo panel, 51.2 x 51.2 inches.
Ahn Chang-Hong has spent more than four decades making art about things that are difficult to look at—and difficult to look away from.
One of South Korea’s most significant contemporary artists, Ahn works across painting, sculpture, and multimedia to explore violence, memory, mortality, and people pushed to the margins of society.
At the center of the exhibition, in noon-mool (tears), those concerns take startling form. At the center of the exhibition is Ahn’s acclaimed Taxidermy series, created by painting over large-scale photographs. The resulting figures are strange, beautiful, and wounded, turning the conventions of portraiture toward subjects that can no longer look back.
The immersive exhibition spans two floors and includes three-dimensional works and earlier paintings, tracing the evolution of Ahn’s work across decades.
BG Muhn and Jack Rasmussen, curators
Beyond Words: The Sacred Art of Ayesha Kamal
Ayesha Kamal, Asma-ul-Husna and Ayat ul Kursi IV, 2022. Mixed media on canvas, 48 x 48 inches.
Contemporary Islamic calligrapher Ayesha Kamal presents a remarkable collection of large-scale mixed-media paintings that explore the enduring relationship between faith, artistic expression, and cultural heritage.
Drawing inspiration from verses of the Holy Qur'an, Asma-ul-Husna (The Beautiful Names of Allah), and centuries of Islamic artistic tradition, Ayesha Kamal transforms sacred text into immersive visual experiences that extend beyond words through intricate calligraphy, expressive textures, luminous metallic elements, and richly layered compositions. Her work invites visitors to experience these sacred texts not simply as language, but as timeless visual expressions that inspire contemplation, reveal beauty, and foster human connection.
Organized by Hummingbird Film Studios
Observer: The Street Photographs of Norman S. Carr
During a 40-year career as a lawyer, Norman S. Carr (1936–2025) collected work by important 20th-century American photographers and developed the eye of a serious collector. Then, in 2000, he turned that eye outward and began taking photographs himself.
The street became his subject. Carr photographed Washington, DC, frequently, as well as cities and communities he encountered while traveling across the United States and abroad. He was drawn to the visual accidents of ordinary life: reflections, light, people passing through a frame, and the fleeting arrangements of a city that disappear almost as soon as they're noticed.
Presented by the Alper Initiative for Washington Art; Carolyn Carr, curator
Double Feature: Two Graphic Narratives by Mary Garrard
Mary Garrard, The Odyssey by Homer (So They Say), book 1, scene 1, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
For decades, Mary Garrard changed the way we see women artists. Then she became one.
The AU professor emerita and pioneering feminist art historian is best known for scholarship that transformed the understanding of Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi and challenged long-held assumptions about women artists of the Renaissance.
Then Garrard started drawing on her iPhone and iPad.
What began as playful experimentation grew into two illustrated narratives. One follows the adventures of a palm tree. The other takes on one of Western literature’s foundational stories, reimagining The Odyssey through a feminist lens.
In Double Feature, the drawings appear sequentially on two monitors, as if the story were a film.
Seeing America in Scale: A Humongous Photography Exhibition
Installation, Seeing America in Scale
Organized by the Studio Art Department and on display in the Kreeger Lobby, Seeing America in Scale is a large-format photography exhibition celebrating diverse perspectives on American life, culture, and community through visual storytelling. Photographers were invited to submit high-resolution images capturing moments, experiences, and narratives that reflect the richness and complexity of contemporary America.
The nine artists featured are Luke Walter, Pedro Ledesma III, Scott Robinson, Brian Kent, Sally Davies, Anice Hoachlander, Shamila Chaudhary, Felix Alvarado, and Tony Ventouris.
GILT by association: Paintings, Sculpture, Prints & Drawings
This exhibit on display in the Katzen Rotunda is presented by Ward Circle Faction/Group 93, a long-running collective of artists associated with American University, explores the significance of gilt—glory, beauty, delight, honor, artifice, glitter, avarice, repression, conflict, and promises of a New Golden Age—by juxtaposing artworks and inviting viewers to summon associations.
The featured artists are Lucy J Blankstein, Michael Graham, Marjorie Hirano, Carol A. Jason, Luciano Penay, Patricia Segnan, Romeo Segnan, Myrtle Katzen, Norman Strike, Claudia Vess, Gail Watkins, Mimi Wolford, and Julie Zahn.