Vietnam Transformed: The Art of Richard J. Olsen as Symbolic Reality

This exhibition showcases prints and paintings made throughout Olsen’s career.

Olsen served in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot early in the war, before the countryside was ravaged by bombing and defoliation.  His approach to art reflects his optimistic personality in that instead of merely fixating on the horrors of war in his work, Olsen also considers the multi-faceted beauty of the country and uses imagery that invokes the mythology, history and cultural landscape of Vietnam in tandem with his own wartime experience.