Washington, DC | Artist Talk with Joan Danziger

Join ArtTable for an artist talk and exhibition walkthrough with Joan Danziger! Joan has two concurrent exhibitions on view at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.

Spanning 60 years of imaginative artistry, The Magical World of Joan Danziger is the first career retrospective for Joan Danziger, who is actively producing art at the age of 91. Danziger has been a working artist since the 1960s. The retrospective traces her evolution from a surrealist painter to a multimedia artist who transforms her creations into three-dimensional sculptures. Over the decades, she evolved into a sculptor and glass artist who imbues her work with secret meanings from world religions, history and mythology.

A major milestone in her career was transitioning from an artist who worked on canvas to a three-dimensional artist. In 2008, she added glass to her repertoire when she began her Beetles series. She enjoyed the results of working with glass so much that it led to two other series of glass sculptures of horses and her newest creation, ravens.

Ravens: Spirits of the Sky will transform the American University Museum’s Long Gallery into an aviary. Featuring never-before-exhibited artworks, the show is comprised entirely of 21 metal and glass raven sculptures inspired by the bird’s appearance in world mythology. Snow Crystal Raven references a Native American myth that expresses reverence and thankfulness to the Great Spirit. Smoky Raven demonstrates ‘lift’ in the bird’s preparation for flight. Colorful and predatory, Amethyst Raven with Frog depicts a raven gripping a frog in its beak. The iridescent violets and yellow glass contrast to express the struggle of life and death. The ravens are captured in various poses, including flight, with three of the sculptures suspended from the ceiling.

For more than 60 years, Washington, D.C.-based artist Joan Danziger has beguiled audiences with her artworks born of mythology, imagination and fantasy. As an artist, she has metamorphosized from a painter to a sculptor to a glass artist. Danziger began her career as a surrealist painter and the dramatic hues in her paintings fed directly into painted sculptures — from vivid, surreal flowers in vases resting on pigmented patterned, handwoven carpets to large colorful figures of acrobats and musicians, to brilliantly hued figures riding bicycles with parrots.

Her public commissions can be seen along the Eastern Seaboard in Maryland, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. She has exhibited in museums from New York to California, and her work is included in the collections of museums including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.); New Orleans Museum of Art; National Sporting Library & Museum (Middleburg, Virginia); Grounds For Sculpture (Hamilton Township, New Jersey); Reading Public Museum (Reading, Pennsylvania); New Jersey State Museum (Trenton, New Jersey); Museum of Science & Industry (Jacksonville, Florida); and the San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego, California).

Program Admission:

• ArtTable Members – $15
• ArtTable Member Guests – $20
• General Admission – $25

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All program registration fees go toward event expenses and administrative costs for the organization.