The American University Museum is located within the Katzen Arts Center at the American University in Washington, DC.History and descriptionThe American University Museum consists of a three-story, 30000sqft 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 collection. Rotating exhibitions emphasize regional, national, and international contemporary art.AU Museum's Permanent CollectionsThe 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.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.Rotating ExhibitionsJack Rasmussen, the museum's curator, focuses on rotating exhibitions that emphasize regional, national, and contemporary art and artists. The Museum's Kunsthalle style planning ensures constantly changing exhibitions on all three levels of facility, 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.Related linksAmerican University MuseumErica Jong, Review: "Botero Sees the World's True Heavies at Abu Ghraib", Washington Post, 4 Nov 2007Art @ the Katzen Blog
