Common Things: Art and Objects in Public Life invites artists, designers, and architects working across media to reflect creatively on what thinker Hannah Arendt described as the "world of things," those durable features of the physical world that "relate and separate men at the same time." The show asks artists to consider what it means to share a world in common with others and how their work 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.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College and will be open at the AU Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC from February 6, 2027 through May 23, 2027. 

Alongside work by a small number of invited artists, the exhibition will include works selected through an open call. Please watch this page for the Call for Entry, coming soon.

Image: 1830 collage of visiting cards from Rahel Varnhagen’s salon, reflecting a social world in which differences of belief, rank, and profession were set aside in favor of shared conversation. Varnhagen was a writer and intellectual known for her influential late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century salons. She was also the subject of a biography by Hannah Arendt.
Source: Berlin State Library, Prussian Cultural Heritage