Silber Gallery, September 3 - October 23, 2026

 

Concentric Circles is a group painting exhibition that places William S. Dutterer (1943–2007) at the center of an intergenerational story of painting, mentorship, and artistic influence. Bringing together works by Dutterer, his mentor Grace Hartigan, and artists Julia Stoops and Tom Kenyon, the exhibition examines how ideas, methods, and values move between artists and across generations.

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A painter, draftsman, and influential educator, Dutterer developed a distinctive visual language that moved between abstraction and figuration. His work is characterized by bold forms, rigorous drawing, psychologically charged imagery, and an ongoing investigation of gesture, surface, symbol, and repetition. Resisting easy categorization, Dutterer absorbed the lessons of postwar abstraction while developing an increasingly personal and idiosyncratic approach to image-making.

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Dutterer studied under Grace Hartigan, a major figure in postwar American painting and longtime director of the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He later became an influential educator himself at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., where his teaching emphasized discipline, experimentation, observation, and fearlessness in the studio.

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Rather than presenting influence as a straight line from teacher to student, Concentric Circles considers Dutterer as the center of an expanding network. The exhibition asks what artists truly inherit from one another: a style, a gesture, a way of seeing, a commitment to the work—or simply the permission to take risks.

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Through these relationships, Concentric Circles offers an opportunity to reconsider Dutterer’s legacy as extending beyond the remarkable objects he created. Like circles expanding outward from a single point, an artist’s influence can travel through teachers, peers, students, and communities—and continue long after the artist is gone.

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Curated by Caitlin Tucker-Melvin (Guest Curator) and Liz Faust. In partnership with the William S Dutterer Trust and Catalyst Contemporary.

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Exhibitions Details: 

• Opening Recpetion: September 3, 4–8 PM - Silber Gallery

• Lecture: Painting Process: Gesture, Surface, and Meaning, September 9, 5–6 PM - Hyman Forum

• Lecture: By Curator Caitlin-Tucker Melvin, October 10, 3–5 PM - Hyman Forum

• Closing Reception: October 23, 4–6 PM - Silber Gallery

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Artists: William S. Dutterer, Grace Hartigan, Tom Kenyon, and  Julia Stoops