WASHINGTON, DC.- Spring shows at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center will be open April 3 through May 27.

Carol Brown Goldberg: Entanglement offers viewers vivid evidence of the artist’s artmaking as the convergence of intellect, emotion, and technique. Goldberg’s paintings are marked by images of dense, imagined foliage rooted in a unique interplay of tightly packed philosophical concepts and more ethereal poetic imaginings. Technically, Goldberg has successfully translated the spontaneity and immediacy of her small pen-and-ink works to largescale paintings on canvas. Goldberg was able to achieve the speedy yet controlled hand-to-brain coordination required at this scale through her discovery of acrylic paint sticks. This new medium enables her to envelop us visually, drawing us deep into the work in a way that is physical and poetic. Gallery Talk: Thursday, April 26, 6-7:30 p.m.

Toledo Múltiple presents the work of Mexico’s most prolific and influential graphic artist, Francisco Toledo. The exhibition encompasses over 50 years of Toledo’s printmaking, revealing the progression of his creative process and baring the indelible imprint of the culture that produced it: the myth and magic, ritual and fable of Oaxaca and the Zapotec people. The exhibit also includes 21 works by both Mexican and international printmakers as part of Toledo’s collection for the Instituto de Artes Graficas de Oaxaca. These prints have influenced Toledo’s creative vision and serve to contextualize the medium in a global art history. Through the years, Toledo has developed this collection in an effort to bring art to his home state of Oaxaca and to the rest of Mexico. This exhibit was organized by the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center and is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C.

Jiha Moon: Double Welcome, Most Everyone's Mad Here features new work by multimedia artist Jiha Moon. Moon harvests cultural elements native to Korea, Japan, and China and then unites them with Western elements to investigate the multifaceted nature of current global identity as influenced by popular culture, technology, racial perceptions, and folklore. Featuring more than 50 works, Moon blurs the lines between Western and Eastern identified iconography with use of characters from the online game Angry Birds© and smart phone Emojis, which float alongside Asian tigers and Indian gods in compositions that appear both familiar and foreign simultaneously. Moon’s witty and ironic work explores how Westerners perceive other cultures and how perceived foreigners see the West. Honoring traditional Asian arts through her use of Hanji paper, Korean silk, and calligraphic brushstrokes, she plays with iconography and symbols that have been classified as “foreign,” such as blue willow china patterns, fortune cookies (which originated in California but are identified as Chinese), Korean fans, and floating dragons and intermingles them with references to Pop and southern folk art. This exhibition is presented as part of the Visiting Artist Program organized by AU Studio Art. Jiha Moon: Double Welcome, Most Everyone’s Mad Here is organized by the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia in collaboration with the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston School of the Arts in Charleston, South Carolina. The exhibition is curated by Amy G. Moorefield, former Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the Taubman Museum of Art and Mark Sloan, Director and Chief Curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Gallery Talk: Friday, April 13 at noon.

The featured artist in the museum’s Alper Initiative for Washington Art space is Michael Clark (a.k.a. Clark Fox), a prominent figure in the Washington art world for more than 50 years. Clark was not only a fly on the wall of the art world as the last half-century played out— he was in the middle of the action, making innovative works that draw their inspiration from movements as diverse as Pop Art, Op Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, and the Washington Color School. Michael Clark: Washington Artist concentrates on Clark’s significant artistic contributions to the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s in Washington, D.C. Gallery Talk: Saturday, April 14 5-6 p.m., RSVP to tinyurl.com/AlperClark

A descendant of Bizen sword makers, New York-based artist Miya Ando spent her childhood among Buddhist priests in a temple in Okayama, Japan, and later, in California. Best known for her sublime metal paintings, Ando combines the traditional techniques of her ancestry with modern industrial technology, skillfully transforming sheets of metal into ephemeral, abstract paintings suffused with color. Ando's exhibition presents five new sculptures entitled, “Kumo” (Clouds), solid blocks of optical glass ranging in size, within which clouds are apparently suspended, created by Ando's unique use of state-of-the-art lasers. The exhibition also features Ando's two-dimensional works on wood and metal, continuing the themes of her sculptures, bringing natural atmospheric phenomena to mind. Gallery Talk: Thursday, May 24, 6-7 p.m.

Rounding out the exhibits are two AU student shows -- Master of Fine Art First Year and Thesis Exhibitions – from April 3 - April 25 and May 5 - May 27, respectively. AU’s Department of Art presents a two-part exhibition featuring the work of first- and second-year MFA candidates working in diverse media. Year One: First Look exhibits the work of artists J'han Brady, Amanda Muhlena Hays, Sarah Jarrett, Arnaud Leclere, Sonimar Maldonado, Bryan McGinnis, Guy Miller, Veronica Salas, and Nadia Shihabi. Eight represents the culmination of two years' work by the eight graduating members of AU’s Studio Art MFA program, featuring the work of Holly Trout, Tim Magenta, Tiffany Raquel, Fallon Chase, Ben Alwehaibi, Michelle Gagliano, Michelle Tangires, and Paige Stewart. MFA Thesis Candidate Reception, Saturday, May 5, 5-7:30 p.m.