Crowstep Projects is pleased to announce Common Things: Art and Objects in Public Life, a group exhibition presented at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in partnership with the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College.

Responding to the work of political thinker Hannah Arendt, the project explores what Arendt described as the “world of things,” the objects around which public life unfolds. Bringing together invited artists and juried works selected through an open call, the exhibition reflects on what it means to share a world in common with others. It also asks whether the work of art might be the basis for a shared world, bringing people together, setting them apart, and creating space for the difficult work of living together as humans who, by our very nature, think and act differently from one another.

The work in Common Things spans media, from paint and graphite to glass, wool, wax, and bronze. Just as the materials range widely, so do the ways in which this work responds to the exhibition’s underlying questions. At the same time that it resists easy categorization, several patterns emerge across the show, offering ways of thinking about whether and how art might form the foundation of a shared world. Some pieces transform familiar materials, images, objects, and spaces in ways that encourage us to see and think about those things in ways we hadn’t yet seen or thought about them. Others explore borders, edges, and thresholds as a way of traversing political, social, cultural, and spatial boundaries. Still others draw on shared inheritances, adopting and adapting motifs, styles, and methods of making across time and place. Brought together in the context of a university museum—a civic bridge between the academy and the public—these works form an exhibition developed to encourage thinking and learning in the company of others.

Participating artists include:

Allan Wexler
Anna Gregor
Anna Schuleit Haber
Anna Riley and Justin Ginsberg
Ari Elefterin
Asuka Goto
Azadeh Hussaini
Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann
Becky Blosser
Ben DuVall
Benjamin Luzzatto and Democracy as Form
Christina P. Day
Cynthia Reynolds
Dawit L. Petros
Erika Diamond
Heather Vance Haddon
Jason Campbell
Jaydan Moore
Jennifer Sakai
John Ruppert
John von Bergen
Karen Dias
Kate Mangold
LigoranoRees
Mary Early
Massa Lemu
Rachel Farbiarz
Rhonda Weppler
Sally Veach
Stefano Passeri
Stephen Lichty
Veronica Lawlor

The exhibition provides the foundation for public programs emphasizing close and careful looking, sustained dialogue, and collective inquiry among artists, scholars, students, poets, and the public. These exchanges extend through a small-format publication featuring new writing that broadens access to the project’s ideas and situates objects, artworks, and spaces as the groundwork for democratic life. Details forthcoming.

Common Things is curated by Sarah Rogers Morris in collaboration with a jury comprised of:

Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator, American University Museum
Leili Adibfar, Art Historian, University of Illinois Chicago
Marisa Lerer, Art History, Florida International University
Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Academic Director, Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College

Common Things: Art and Objects in Public Life opens at the AU Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC on February 6, 2027 and runs through May 23, 2027.