FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 24, 2025
MEDIA CONTACT:
Tayah Frye, tayah [dot] frye
gwu [dot] edu (tayah[dot]frye[at]gwu[dot]edu)
In collaboration with For Freedoms, Americas explores the work of two photographers looking at contemporary American experience over two decades
WASHINGTON (September 24, 2025) — In collaboration with For Freedoms, the George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design announces the opening of Americas, the first in a two-part exhibition series. Co-curated by For Freedoms co-founder Eric Gottesman and Susan Sterner, the exhibition brings together the photography of Wesaam Al-Badry and Peter van Agtmael in a layered exploration of the myths, contradictions, and lived realities that shape the American story.
For more than two decades, both photographers have chronicled their own Americas through long-form documentary practices and deeply personal perspectives. Al-Badry, who immigrated to the United States from Iraq after the Gulf War, has turned his lens toward immigrant communities and working people whose labor sustains American life yet often goes unseen. Van Agtmael, raised in the D.C. suburbs, began photographing during military embeds in Iraq and has since examined how war abroad reverberates at home, questioning the narratives that bind and fracture the nation.
Americas foregrounds voices and histories that complicate and enrich our understanding of the nation as it approaches its 250th anniversary. Al-Badry’s work captures bodies in motion and in community, evoking intimacy, resilience, and exclusion. Van Agtmael’s images take on national contexts: the post-9/11 wars, the persistence of violence, and the uneasy emotions that shape American identity.
By placing their practices in dialogue, Americas does not seek to present a singular narrative but rather insists on the multiplicity of experiences that constitute American life. The exhibition invites audiences to ask: Whose realities are silenced for myths to persist? What contradictions endure at the heart of the nation’s promise?
Part two of the exhibition, opening on October 31, will extend these questions through responses led by students, faculty, visiting artists, and curators. Selected work will include newly developed and in-progress pieces by Al-Badry and van Agtmael, presented in conversation with student projects. Later in the Fall semester, a student graphic design group will cultivate large-scale collages as collective responses, further advancing the dialogue between myth, memory, and lived experience.
The exhibition is presented as part of the For Freedoms residency which unfolds as a Civic Arts Lab, an ongoing collaboration between the Corcoran School and For Freedoms. Together, the series examines how art can foster civic dialogue and challenge narratives of American history and culture.
Exhibition Details
- Title: Americas (Exhibition Part One)
- Artists: Wesaam Al-Badry and Peter van Agtmael
- Co-Curators: Eric Gottesman and Susan Sterner
- Location: Atrium, Flagg Building, 500 17th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20006
- Dates: October 2, 2025 – January 25, 2026 Admission: Free and open to the public Wednesday–Saturday, 1–5 p.m.
- Opening Reception: October 2, 2025, 6:30–8PM, free and open to the public
For more information, visit https://corcoran.gwu.edu/national-gallery
For Freedoms
For Freedoms was founded in 2016 by a coalition of artists to deepen civic engagement through the arts. They provide artists, institutions, and communities a decentralized space for connection, and the tools to support their creative capacities and resilience as cultural workers. Together, the network is building more robust civic dialogue, and inspiring a sense of belonging and responsibility for one another. For Freedoms envisions a joyful, interconnected world where creativity is seen as integral to enhancing civic expression, listening, healing, and justice.
Corcoran School of the Arts & Design
The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University is dedicated to educating the next generation of cultural leaders. Part of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, the school functions as an incubator for artists, designers and scholars, who learn from internationally renowned faculty at the intersection of creativity and social innovation. The school offers 22 undergraduate and graduate degrees in art history, design, interior architecture, museum studies, music, fine arts, theater and dance.