This is my post for for this week’s class under this blog. After this week,  I will be creating a new blog site or twitter site.

Going to museums is a passion on mine. I like going and wondering from picture to sculpture to photo to video installation to mobile and everything in between.  I can alone or with a group. Sometimes, I join a artist talk in progress or a when a museum curator is escorting a group through a specific installation. I listen but then leave to go off on my own. Washington , D.C. is growing and exciting art scene with exciting installations in small apartments to large mammoth buildings.

This past week I went to art reception at the Katzen Art Center at American University. The space is three levels and is as large like a department store.  This particular show was modern but the Center has in its collection over 300 works of art from fine, to pop and folk art.The gift shop is tiny compared to the actual space for displaying the art. 20 feet by 10, is my ballpark guess. It is have an eclectic mix of items including work by local artist for sale something you would not find at big guys downtown.

On the first level was the work of Dafna Kaffeman, entitled “What Could be Sweeter Than Going to Paradise?” The phrase is something a young Palastinian girl said that Kaffeman, who is Jewish took as her theme. She had that phrase and others embroidery in Hebrew on high quality handkerchiefs. Then using waxes made fine, delicate flowers to surround or frame the square shape material. Each box, about two dozen, was about about 12 inches high by 12  inches wide, was mounted on the wall in a single row. Each piece had its own message. You had to get close to to read and to see the details.

Upstairs, it was all action, music and motion moving quickly. Marisa Baumgartner and Nicole Cohen were in from Germany and had a video installation. Projecting on the various walls were moving roulette wheels, six feet high but in the middle, photos of different people, places and things. The dark room and the projector lights gave the room a feeling of being in a disco. Not my type of art but others were smiling and taking photos of themselves in front of the moving videos that were being beemed onto the wall.

Katzen is fun for an art reception, the food and the atmosphere, to see many people if you live in that the neighborhood but not for going alone.