The Long Sixties: Washington Paintings in the Watkins and Corcoran Legacy Collections, 1957-1982
Curated by Jack Rasmussen
American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center, Washington DC
February 16 – August 9, 2021
"The American University Museum recently acquired 9,000 works from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, a Washington institution that closed its doors to the public in 2014. Together with our Watkins Collection we have an especially strong cache of works by Washington regional artists. While curating a show of Washington paintings drawn from our growing collections, I became interested in how my memories of a formative time in my life might be affecting my choice of artwork for this exhibition.
Every exhibition is an opportunity to address what we can see of the past from our contemporary perspective. My perspective includes the acknowledgement of persistent, systemic gender and racial injustice, bias, and violence that was present in the fifties, laid bare in the sixties, and continues to the present day. It is clear to me that the defining characteristic of most White mainstream art made between 1957 and 1982 in Washington was an adherence to aesthetic and commercial constraints that encouraged artists to remain silent when their voices are most needed. What pushback there was against this tendency was led by Black and women artists, whose work has been systematically underrepresented in the collections of Washington museums."
– Jack Rasmussen, Curator
Featuring Artists: Cynthia Bickley-Green, Lisa Montag Brotman, Allen Carter, Michael Clark, Manon Cleary, Robert D’Arista, Rebecca Davenport, Gene Davis, Willem de Looper, Jeff Donaldson, Thomas Downing, William S. Dutterer, Alan Feltus, Fred Folsom, Robert Franklin Gates, Sam Gilliam, Carol Brown Goldberg, Tom Green, Helene McKinsey Herzbrun, Michal Hunter, Val Lewton, Howard Mehring, William Newman, Kenneth Noland, Robin Rose, Joseph Shannon, Frank Anthony Smith, Carroll Sockwell, Alma Thomas, Franklin White, William Woodward, and Kenneth Victor Young.
View the exhibition and catalogue online in Museum@Home.
MORE or LESS
The past, present and future of abstraction.
May 24, 2018
Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper
35 Days
In the galleries: A colorful survey of Washington artists
July, 29, 2017
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
35 Days is "a museum-worthy survey of D.C. art."
35 Days
35 Days
June 24, 2017
Stephanie Rudig, Washington City Paper
"This isn’t just a Color School roundup, however: The show includes artists deploying color to completely different ends, like the trippy pattern-based work of Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, as well as some varying landscape photography artists like Anne Rowland and William Christenberry."
Early Alma Thomas and Downing, Mehring, Reed
At Hemphill Fine Arts, a Survey of Washington Color School's Lesser-Known Stars
February 17, 2017
Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper
"It's a Washington Color School resurgence with new exhibitions featuring the work of Thomas Downing, Howard Mehring, Paul Reed, and Alma Thomas."
Early Alma Thomas, and Downing, Mehring, Reed
Enter a universe of dappled color in Howard Mehring show at AU museum
February 9, 2017
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
"The Washington Color School is still much discussed in the D.C. art world — some might say too much so — and the artists are enjoying a posthumous commercial boom at galleries here and elsewhere."
Selections from the Dolly Langdon and Aldus H. Chapin Collection
In the Galleries: A Washington Color School reunion
July 12, 2014
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
"Made between 1958 and 1986, these 19 works constitute an impressive sampler of Washington color painting, although they include one by an artist who never lived in the District, Karl Stanley Benjamin, and one by a representational artist, Michael Clark (whose 'Lincoln Memorial' features bars of luminous color)."
Pattern: Three Generations of Shape and Color
Visual variations on a ‘Pattern’ at Carroll Square Gallery
June 30, 2011
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
"'Pattern' addresses the link between ’60s abstraction and its present-day descendants by placing a 1967 work at the show’s center."
Viewing Rm.
"Viewing Rm." at Hemphill Fine Arts
February 4, 2011
Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper
"The exhibit is variegated, but like any good combine painting (and those are included too) it coheres pretty well despite itself, as giants like Robert Rauschenberg mix with such local figures as Joseph Mills, Mingering Mike and Colby Caldwell."
Viewing Rm.
Familiar favorites: Once more, with feeling
January 28, 2011
Jessica Dawson, The Washington Post
"Here hang big, striking works by Tom Downing and Jacob Kainen. Here, too, are precious works on paper by Al Jensen and Alma Thomas. That Eugene Atget picture of the taxidermist's vitrine? I'll take it."