Back in the days when this DCist was a lowly art history grad student at American University, we were relegated to a few rooms in a dank basement with a couple of antiquated slide projectors. But now there is a fabulous, 130,000-square-foot facility that sits atop Ward Circle. Art history can come out from underground.

The new Katzen Arts Center, which encompasses all the arts, opens this Saturday. Performing arts events will begin this fall, but in the interim, the center’s art gallery ain’t too shabby. The current show, “Soft Openings” is composed of mostly D.C. and Baltimore artists. There are a few AU alums thrown in there—lest we forget the accomplishments of AU’s MFA alums—but the show is most successful with its site-specific works.

Museum Director Jack Rasmussen consulted with many of the artists about what would work in the gallery’s sprawling and often idiosyncratic space and the collaboration has paid off. In one of these spaces, Christine Buckton Tillman laid down “Forest From the Trees,” a series of felt rings inspired by Christmas tree skirts—”as if this place had once grew [sic] a felt forest,” the artist told reporters.

Kristin Holder, representing the good old District of Columbia, covered a massive curved wall with “Qi,” an interconnected web of silvers and golds that she painted on-site over 12 days.

Unfortunately, the work of Ben Summerford, an AU alum from the 1950s and a former faculty member, breaks the warm, fuzzy bubble that a good chunk of the rest of exhibit creates. His early- and late-Cezanne-wannabe-paintings just don’t fit. But then again, the place just opened. We can give them some time to figure it out.