The breadth of creativity in DC is on full display in Humanist Touch: Works from the Weber Collection, featuring more than 80 works by primarily local artists made over the past 40 years. The exhibition is drawn from the collection of Joan and Bruce Weber, who have built an expansive art collection that includes painting, sculpture, photography, and new media. 

Though the works range widely in style and media, Joan Weber points to a shared emphasis on the artists’ hand across the collection. “We liked and wanted to see the brushwork (Dick Vosseller), the physical gesture of the torn poster paper (Thom Flynn), [and] the unfinished edges purposely left (Jason Gubbiotti),” she shares in an interview with curator Laura Roulet. Adding to this focus on humanity, the human form appears repeatedly across the collection.  

The exhibition is also shaped by an undercurrent of community and friendship. The Webers have devoted significant time to visiting local artists’ studios and exhibitions, building lasting relationships with many of the artists represented in the collection. Together, these works tell a story both about the evolution of the collectors’ tastes over time and the vibrancy of DC’s art community. 

Ilana Manolson, Luminary, 2018. Acrylic on yupo, 48 x 74 in.

Celebrating the Overlooked  
Ilana Manolson: The Air We Share 

Most people can recall seeing a still life with flowers, whether one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s poppies or Vincent van Gogh’s vital Sunflowers. But have you ever seen a painting of weeds? In The Air We Share, artist Ilana Manolson elevates weeds to a central subject, rather than a nuisance, by highlighting their beauty and their essential place in the ecosystem to articulate a broader narrative about environmental advocacy. Originally a student of botany and a naturalist, Manolson shifted her career to art but with an enduring interest in the natural world.  

Her paintings are lush and vibrant, featuring rich colors, visible brushstrokes, and descending trails of paint. Before beginning each work, she carefully studies and sketches the botanical subject repeatedly in a scientific manner. From there, she begins painting, her creativity spilling onto the canvas.  

“She gains freedom through sudden insight to improvise, striking a balance between careful inspection and intuitive expression,” writes curator Sarah Tanguy in the exhibition catalog. Details and layers of translucent washes add dimension, texture, and luminosity to each work. “Ultimately, the exhibition invites us to pause, look closely at minutiae, and recognize ourselves within a vast living web,” writes Tanguy.  

Joan Danziger, Ocean Sky Raven, 2022. Metal and glass, 25 x 41 x 29 inches.

Fantastical Animals and Mythic Ravens 
The Magical World of Joan Danziger and Ravens: Spirits of the Sky 

Two exhibitions feature the surrealist-inspired, fantastical sculptures of DC artist Joan Danziger. According to the 91-year-old artist, the works spanning her career “combine an interplay of animal strength and beauty of nature with the human spirit. They evoke mysterious and secret worlds, drawing upon my fascination with dream imagery and metamorphosis.”  

In The Magical World of Joan Danziger: A Retrospective, a horse with long blonde hair plays the drums while enormous, jewel-toned beetles scale the museum’s walls. The lines between human and animal, dreams and reality, blur. The exhibition traces Danziger’s evolution from a young painter to mature sculptor through 60 years of artwork, highlighting links between her works through time. 

The second exhibition highlights Danziger’s newer explorations of one creature. Ravens: Spirits of the Sky displays Danziger’s interpretations of these long-mythologized birds, forged through the interplay of metal and shards of glass. They appear in a kaleidoscope of colors forebodingly perched, croaking, in flight, and on the hunt. The exhibition catalog notes the raven's long history across culture and lore, from cave paintings to Native American, Norse, and Greek mythology, and Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem, considering how these histories have shaped human perceptions of the bird. 

José Gabriel Fernández, Untitled, 2003–2015. Acrylic gesso on resin and gypsum, 6 1/4 x 15 3/4 x 12 1/4 in. Courtesy of the artist and Henrique Faria.

Intimate Sculptural Pairings 
Vital and Veiled: Valerie Brathwaite and José Gabriel Fernández 

This exhibition brings the work of two Latin American sculptors into conversation with one another. Brathwaite is an artist from Trinidad whose sculptures, inspired by nature and living forms, are enriched by the visual traditions and ecology of the Caribbean. Her work includes colorful plaster stones, plant-like ceramics, and amorphous fabric structures that reflect the sensuality of the human body.  

Fernández, an artist from Venezuela, creates minimalist, rigid white works with smooth, aerodynamic forms. His practice draws on the tradition of bullfighting by distilling its physical movements into sculpture, while exploring masculinity and its homoerotic implications. Together, what does this artist pairing accomplish? Across distinct bodies of work, the artists give form to personal experience, sensuality, and Latin American contexts. 
 

Learn more about visiting the AU Museum and view a full list of upcoming events. Ilana Manolson: The Air We Share and Vital and Veiled: Valerie Brathwaite and José Gabriel Fernández will close on March 29. All other exhibitions close May 17.