New Exhibitions Open Sept. 7 at the American University Museum
Eight new exhibits at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center open Sept. 7, featuring a range of artistic media and experiences for visitors. More than 140 original artworks and items pertaining to the legendary “Gonzo” artist Ralph Steadman are on display in And Another Thing, a traveling show celebrating the artist’s life work. Joseph Holston's art blends jazz and visual storytelling to celebrate Black American culture. Connie Imboden's haunting photography, created in mirrored environments and underwater, delves into psychological and mythological themes. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Jeff Gates's digital portraits critique political figures. Mark Kelner reimagines suburban signage as vibrant American landscapes. Selected works from the museum’s Corcoran Legacy Collection showcase American landscape painting from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Mira Hecht's luminous paintings evoke calm and interconnectedness, and Pegan Brooke's serene works, inspired by natural water and light, invite contemplation and reflection. The museum is free and open to all. Exhibits close December 8.
American University Museum is proud to be the first stop on a U.S. tour of Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing, a sweeping exhibition that spans more than 60 years of the artist’s life and work. Featured are Steadman’s legendary collaborations with maverick Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, his illustrated literary classics such as Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” the inventive books he authored such as “I, Leonardo” and “The Big I Am” and much more. The exhibition showcases a selection of 149 original artworks as well as ephemera, including Steadman’s sketchbooks, children’s books, magazines, personal photographs and handwritten notes that tell a fuller story of how the artworks were born. From Steadman’s early years as a student to his political illustrations, social commentary and activism, this exhibition surveys Steadman’s nonstop creative passion and collaborations. Beautiful works from “The Gonzovation Trilogy,” his collaboration with documentarian and filmmaker Ceri Levy about extinct and endangered birds and animals, sit alongside his more experimental collections such as Paranoids, caricatures of notable figures from history, entertainment and politics that Steadman created by reworking Polaroid photographs.
As one of the most influential illustrators and satirical artists of the last six decades, Steadman is famous for his long collaboration with journalist and author Thompson, notably illustrating “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Through their storytelling, in which the topic becomes almost secondary to the personality of the artists and work, a new way of covering news was born. In “Gonzo” journalism, as named by Boston Globe journalist Bill Cardoso, journalists use first-person narratives in reporting. The influence of Gonzo journalism is evident in today’s online news sources, editorial pieces, social media, videos, political punditry and podcasts. While And Another Thing pays tribute to Thompson and Steadman’s future-defining meeting, the exhibition leads viewers on a journey that is much more than a Gonzo exploration.
Joseph Holston is a lifelong resident of the Washington area whose career of more than 50 years includes a distinguished exhibition record. Featuring works created from 1990 up to the present day, the exhibition, Call and Response, is a selection of paintings, etchings and screenprints that portray music and dance. Music has been a constant backdrop to Holston’s creativity. His love of both classical music and jazz has long been the inspiration for many of his works. Holston captures the confluence of painting, printmaking, jazz, and dance, using painting and printmaking to show music and movement as essential components of Black cultural history and the Black American experience.
A Sight to Behold: The Corcoran Legacy Collection of Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century American Landscape Paintings at the American University Museum features art from the museum’s permanent collection on the changing styles of American landscape painting. The exhibition traces the development of landscape painting in America from approximately 1825 to the 1930s, with attention to influences and sources on which the American painters drew. Curated by Carolyn Kinder Carr, former Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Deputy Director and Chief Curator.
Maurice Brazil Prendergast, St. Malo, c. 1909-1910. Oil on board, unframed: 10 5/8 x 13 3/4 inches. Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Gift of Mrs. Charles Prendergast in memory of Charles and Maurice Prendergast).
Endless Transformations: The Alchemy of Connie Imboden presents more than 50 black-and-white and color photographs by the artist. Working in mirrored studio environments and choreographing complex underwater shoots, Imboden uses the camera lens to create layered and fragmented visions of the human body that evoke historical painting, global mythologies, and concepts from Jungian analysis. While her images invite Queer and feminist readings, the Baltimore-based artist is first and foremost inspired by art’s ongoing role of offering connection and catharsis in the midst of human struggles. Curated by Kristen Hileman, Senior Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art at The Baltimore Museum of Art.
Jeff Gates is an artist and writer interested in the intersection of art and culture. Experimentation with new technologies and public engagement are essential to Gates’s work. Since 2010, he’s created over 300 posters conveying his views on the state of American political discourse. In 2022, Gates started work on a series of portraits of Republican Party politicians and other figures associated with the party. The series is his visual exploration of the consequences of partisan intransigence and the erosion of public trust. On display in the museum’s Project Space, Faces of the Republican Party showcases a selection of these portraits. As digital collages, the portraits meld photography, graphic design and the aesthetic of posters.
Mark Kelner: New American Landscapes features the artist’s manipulations of ubiquitous mass cultural markers, such as cigarette labels or gas station logos, and makes use of colorful imagery from art history and pop culture. The exhibit consists of more than two dozen large-scale paintings. Kelner’s painterly recreations of suburban strip mall signs—rich in impasto textures, vibrant colors, and bold typography—transform mundane signage into powerful symbols of national identity. Viewers will learn how these everyday markers embody our changing culture and personal histories, reflecting American landscapes and immigrant experiences through text, collage, and graphic design. 
Mark Kelner, Strip Mall Landscape XVI, (Largo, Florida), 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 68 x 55 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
Oil paintings and works on paper make up in the center thereof rose a fountain, an exhibit featuring the work of AU alumna Mira Hecht (BA,1995). The abstract art of Hecht, who works and teaches in the D.C. area, explores the nature of reality, interconnection and interdependency, and the fragility of life. Hecht received a master’s degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied with Pegan Brooke, an artist also on display this fall.
Inspired by the artist’s studio environs on the Pacific Coast, PEGAN BROOKE: FLUX II Light on Water emphasizes humans’ relationship with nature and one another. Through beautifully created oil paintings, Brooke invites the viewer to slow down and “take a moment” to contemplate nature and awareness of feelings and thoughts. Light falling on water is a visual metaphor for the “ever-changing flux in which we make our lives.”