EVERYONE HAS AT SOME TIME perched upon the lonelier, more acute angle of a love triangle. Childhood is the most brutal and famous introduction to the condition of the third wheel, when one discovers one is not a parent’s first and only love. The adolescent crush, which usually seeks the shortest route, is often directed at a sibling’s main squeeze. Less foundational, but just as traumatic, are those chaste threesomes in which a single adult might innocently accompany a couple to lunch, the loner doing her best to ignore the echoing vacancy on her side of the booth.

Amy Sillman has condensed the

Intended by the museum to honor one of the university’s own, this exhibition provides an in-depth look at the career of painter Willem De Looper, who came to Washington, DC, from the Netherlands in 1950. He enrolled in American University in 1953 and has remained in the area ever since. This exhibition, a retrospective of sorts, includes thirty-six acrylic paintings made by the artist between 1965 and 1998.

De Looper is often considered a second-generation member of the Washington Color School. Like its better-known adherents Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, De Looper created compositions of