American University Museum exhibits Fernando Botero: Abu Ghraib

Tuesday, 13 November 2007 22:30

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Artist Fernando Botero has created powerful works that are focusing the world’s attention on human rights and the abuses that occurred in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison during the U.S. occupation of Iraq in an exhibition of his paintings opening at the American University Museum in the Katzen Arts Center, the region’s largest and most active university venue for contemporary art.

This will be the first complete showing in the U.S. of Paris-based Fernando Botero’s seventy-nine paintings and drawings depicting the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The exhibition comes to the AU Museum from Milan, Italy and heads to Monterey, Mexico next. The first U.S. showing was at the Marlborough Gallery in New York City last fall and appeared at UC Berkeley this past spring.

“American University’s long-standing commitment to international human rights makes us a natural host to display Botero’s work,” claims AU Museum Director and Curator Jack Rasmussen. “Through his distinctive painting style, our students, faculty and, especially, the Washington, D.C. community will be able to discuss human rights and war not through a political lens, but through art. Art cannot change the war but it can bear testimony.”

Fernando Botero: Abu Ghraib (through Dec. 30, 2007) features uncompromising, graphic images by this Colombian painter expressing his outrage at the American-led torture of Iraqi insurgents. The Paris-based Botero, known for his exaggeratedly rotund figures in benign social satires, unveiled these controversial works in Europe in 2005. This will be the first showing of the Abu Ghraib paintings and drawings in a museum in the U.S. The works in this exhibition are quite the departure from Botero’s usual style, but do relate to his previous works portraying drug cartel violence in Colombia. Botero constructed each work after reading official reports of the atrocities and concentrated on the suffering and dignity of the victims rather than their tormentors. The show is presented in collaboration with the university’s College of Arts & Sciences, Schools of International Service, Public Affairs, Communications, Kogod School of Business and the Washington College of Law. [ photo: © Fernando Botero. courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY ]

MUSEUM INFORMATION, EXHIBITION HOURS, LOCATION:

The American University Museum is a three-story, public museum and sculpture garden located within the university’s Katzen Arts Center. The region’s largest university facility for exhibiting art, the museum’s permanent collection highlights the donors’ holdings and AU’s Watkins collection. Rotating exhibitions emphasize regional, national and international contemporary art. The Katzen Arts Center, named for Washington area benefactors Dr. and Mrs. Cyrus Katzen, brings all the visual and performing arts programs at AU into one space. Designed to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in the arts, the Katzen includes the museum, the Abramson Family Recital Hall, the Studio Theatre, a dance studio, an electronics studio, artists’ studios, rehearsal space and classrooms.

The museum, located at 4400 Massachusetts Ave, Washington, DC 20016, is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. The museum is also open one hour prior to performing arts events in the Katzen and from 6 – 8 p.m. on Open Arts Nights. Museum admission is free. For more information call 202-885-ARTS (2787).

On the web at http://www.american.edu/museum
Museum blog: http://art_at_thekatzen.typepad.com/