Gallery
The Athenaeum Gallery is dedicated to showcasing the wide variety of excellent work being created by artists in the DC/MD/VA region.
We endeavor to increase exposure for the region's many excellent artists in our light-filled gallery space. Our goal is to represent the widest range of media, style, and perspective.
An average of eight shows are mounted per year. Each one with an opening reception and many with ancillary programs such as gallery talks, demonstrations, children's workshops, or even modern dance performances choreographed specially for the space and the art.
Apply to have an exhibit in the Athenaeum Gallery
Rolling Review
Click the link below to be considered for a solo or group show. You can apply as a single artist, with several other artists if you have an idea for a small group show, or as a curator for a larger group show.
Click the link below for more information and details.
Call for Entries
This is a time like no other our generation has faced. It is no exaggeration to say that the pandemic has affected every one of us. It has changed how we navigate the most mundane tasks in our lives; in some cases, it may cause long-term change in our social and economic environments. We invite artists to respond to this particular, unique moment.
Artists are invited to submit works that represent the full gamut of how the global Coronavirus pandemic and its associated ‘social distancing’ has affected them. Fear, uncertainty, anger and doubt are certainly typical responses but we are also interested in evidence of the creative benefits of solitude and reflection and the time to process them.
We plan to assemble an exhibition that both chronicles this particular moment in time and surprises viewers with unique and unexpected perspectives.
Five $500 prizes will be awarded, selected by an independent arts expert, and awarded at the opening reception on Sunday, September 13, 2020 and a $500 Viewer's Choice prize will be awarded at the end of the exhibition.
Now in the Gallery
Elzbieta Sikorska | Everything is Double
June 18, 2020 — July 26, 2020
Elzbieta Sikorska, Upside Down
48" x 41", Handmade paper, pencil, crayon, paper pulp painting, golden pigment, acrilic medium, acrylic paint, 2019
Elzbieta Skorska | Everything is Double Artist Statement
Elzbieta’s works each start out with paper that she crafts herself. She explores many themes as noted in her Artist Statement below, but classic design elements and a formal art education in Poland meet and diverge in her beautiful and mysterious ghosts, phantoms, memories, and reflections.
Elzbieta has exhibited nationally and internationally throughout her career. She had a solo exhibition, “Time Stands Still”, at the Katzen Art Center in 2017 and one at the McLean Project for the Arts in 2014. In 2004 she traveled to her native Warsaw with a one person show and presented her work in Leipzig and Dresden, Germany. From 1989 to 1999 she worked with the Addison Ripley Gallery in Washington, DC and was featured in 4 individual exhibitions. She has been included in many group exhibitions including ones at the National Gallery in Warsaw and NMWA in Washington, DC.
Artist Statement
There is a playful, puzzle-like element in the attempt to rediscover hidden threads and connections, to investigate accepted categories. I’m trying to play with these ideas in my art by contrasting and juxtaposing different images. I’m not looking for answers but rather would like to inspire reflection.
The concept of time, our understanding of early civilizations, and the connections between cultures have been my interest for some time now. Exploring these areas can reveal different, sometimes double meanings and deeper layers of matters we may consider well defined. And yet they are not, and this dissonance is closely intertwined with the understanding of our own identity.
The idea of duality is not new; the two faces of man, gods, nature, opposite meanings of ideas are an old tale. A human being has feminine and masculine elements. We attach attributes to “she" and “he” and everything around us, but the established divisions are getting murky the more we investigate them. The same can be applied to many concepts we take for granted.
Elzbieta Sikorska | Everything is Double is sponsored by:
BABS BECKWITH, Specializing in Old Town Real Estate for 25+ years
McEnearney Associates, Inc.
Click Here to take a video tour of the show