National Gallery Of Art | Audio

February 2014 - Ruth Fine, curator (1972–2012), National Gallery of Art, and Rodney M. Miller, collector. In this conversation recorded on February 9, 2014, as part of The Collecting of African American Art, a series at the National Gallery of Art, Ruth Fine and Rodney M. Miller discuss his collection in all of its aspects—from his early interest in art to the development of his diverse interactions with contemporary artists, curators, and dealers. Miller explains the important effect that art has in chronicling and providing a more complete view of society.

February 2014 - Sharon E. J. Gerstel, professor of Byzantine art history and archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles. The Greek city of Thessaloniki was the Byzantine Empire's second city, after Constantinople, in both wealth and size. In this lecture recorded on January 16, 2014, to celebrate the exhibition Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections, which is on view at the National Gallery of Art through March 2, 2014, Sharon Gerstel examines this moment of artistic creativity in Thessaloniki. The first-ever exhibition of Byzantine art at the Gallery presents some 170 works of art, many never before lent to the United States, including mosaics, icons, manuscripts, jewelry, and ceramics. Using the Heaven and Earth exhibition as a lens, Gerstel focuses on works produced in Byzantium's second city—demonstrating their importance in their own time and their significance for generations that followed. This program was coordinated with and supported by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and

January 2014 - Shelley Sturman, senior conservator and head of the department of object conservation, National Gallery of Art. On the 100th anniversary of the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial dedication in Boston, artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens' original plaster version of the bronze memorial was transferred to the National Gallery of Art for full conservation treatment. On long-term loan from the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire, the magisterial Shaw Memorial (1883-1900) was previously restored many times and no longer resembled the artist's original intentions. In this lecture recorded on January 15, 2014, conservator Shelley Sturman reveals the long process of removing the nearly 12-by-18-foot relief sculpture from a concrete block wall, radiographing the sections, repairing cracks, analyzing the materials, preparing the appropriate decorative surface, realigning segments, and designing an appropriate mounting system for display in Washington; this treatment was performed by a team

January 2014 - Daphne Barbour, senior object conservator; Melanie Gifford, research conservator; Lisha Glinsman, conservation scientist; Alison Luchs, curator of early European sculpture; and Kimberly Schenck, head of paper conservation, National Gallery of Art. FACTURE: Conservation · Science · Art History is a new biennial journal from the National Gallery of Art that introduces the latest research on works in its permanent collection. Named for "the manner in which things are made," the journal presents essays on conservation treatment, scientific research, and technical art history. This study undertaken at the Gallery focuses on artists' methods and materials—identifying the materials used by artists, understanding the ways in which different artists handled these materials, and discerning how to preserve the qualities the artists prized. In honor of the inaugural volume, this lecture recorded on January 12, 2014, focuses on Renaissance masterworks—painting, sculpture, textiles, and works on paper—in the

January 2014 - Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi, , director, The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia. Organized to foster connections between the exhibition Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections at the National Gallery of Art and the research interests and collections of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, this colloquium echoes the companion volume to the exhibition catalogue, Cities and Countryside in Byzantine Greece. Held on November 15, 2013, at the Gallery, American and Greek Byzantinists address the many ways community was visualized: in the arts (including mosaics, frescoes, icons, and everyday objects), in architectural construction, and in settings for the ceremonies of daily life and death. Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections is on view through March 2, 2014. This program is coordinated with and supported by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

January 2014 - Ioli Kalavrezou, , Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Art, Harvard University. Organized to foster connections between the exhibition Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections at the National Gallery of Art and the research interests and collections of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, this colloquium echoes the companion volume to the exhibition catalogue, Cities and Countryside in Byzantine Greece. Held on November 15, 2013, at the Gallery, American and Greek Byzantinists address the many ways community was visualized: in the arts (including mosaics, frescoes, icons, and everyday objects), in architectural construction, and in settings for the ceremonies of daily life and death. Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections is on view through March 2, 2014. This program is coordinated with and supported by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

January 2014 - Robert Ousterhout, professor of art history and director of the center for ancient studies, University of Pennsylvania. Organized to foster connections between the exhibition Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections at the National Gallery of Art and the research interests and collections of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, this colloquium echoes the companion volume to the exhibition catalogue, Cities and Countryside in Byzantine Greece. Held on November 15, 2013, at the Gallery, American and Greek Byzantinists address the many ways community was visualized: in the arts (including mosaics, frescoes, icons, and everyday objects), in architectural construction, and in settings for the ceremonies of daily life and death. Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections is on view through March 2, 2014. This program is coordinated with and supported by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

December 2013 - Kathan Brown, founding director, Crown Point Press. San Francisco's Crown Point Press is one of the most influential printmaking studios of the last half century. The exhibition Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press, on view at the National Gallery of Art from September 1, 2013, through January 5, 2014, features 125 working proofs and edition prints produced by 25 artists between 1972 and 2010. Yes, No, Maybe goes beyond celebrating the flash of inspiration and the role of the imagination to examine the artistic process as a sequence of decisions. Kathan Brown, founding director of Crown Point Press, offers an insider's perspective to running this business—full of stories about art and artists—in this lecture recorded on December 8, 2013. Highlighting the exhibition's major theme, Brown shares recordings of artists' voices describing their working process: Robert Bechtle, John Cage, Chuck Close, Richard Diebenkorn, Tom Marioni, Chris Ofili, Kiki Smith, and Pat Steir. Brown also

December 2013 - Arthur J. Wheelock Jr., curator of northern baroque paintings, National Gallery of Art In 1975 Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. was appointed curator of northern baroque paintings at the National Gallery of Art. During his nearly 40 years in the position, Wheelock has cared for, cultivated, and strengthened the Dutch and Flemish paintings collection. He has also fostered an impressive exhibition program, including Anthony van Dyck (1990), Johannes Vermeer: The Art of Painting (1999), Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits (2005), Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (2008), and Judith Leyster (1609-1660) (2009). In this lecture recorded on December 15, 2013, Wheelock shares the history of the Dutch and Flemish collection and special exhibitions while looking toward the future of curatorial responsibility.

Decmber 2013 - Andy Goldsworthy, artist. British artist Andy Goldsworthy was commissioned to create a site-specific sculpture for the National Gallery of Art in 2004. Installed in the East Building in the winter of 2004/2005, Roof comprises nine stacked-slate, low-profile domes—each hollow and measuring, roughly, 5 ½ feet high and 27 feet in diameter, with centered oculi 2 feet in diameter. Goldsworthy, who has worked with the domical form since the late 1970s, chose it for the Gallery in part because the site's northern orientation would allow him to produce perfectly black holes. The earthbound domes also serve as a counterpoint to the many rooftop domes of Washington. In his first public appearance at the Gallery since the spring of 2005, Goldsworthy looked back at Roof's installation. Recorded on November 11, 2013, this lecture focuses on Goldsworthy's art in relationship to the built environment and the contextualization of Roof within his more recent body of work.

December 2013 - Anna Winestein, historian and executive director of the Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership. In conjunction with the exhibition Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929: When Art Danced with Music, historian and executive director of the Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership Anna Winestein presented a lecture on August 10, 2013, about the contribution of Russian film professionals to Abel Gance's legendary Napoléon. Parallels between the relationship of the Ballet Russes with European performing arts in the 1920s, and that of the Russian émigré film studio Albatros with European cinema were also explored.

December 2013 - Mary L. Levkoff, curator and head, department of sculpture and decorative arts, National Gallery of Art. Media magnate William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) was one of the most powerful men of the twentieth century. His political influence, flamboyant lifestyle, and enormous wealth kept him constantly in the public eye, and Orson Welles's caricatured depiction of him in Citizen Kane only magnified his notoriety. In this lecture recorded on November 3, 2013 at the National Gallery of Art, Mary Levkoff, Gallery curator and author of Hearst the Collector, explores another aspect of Heart's life: his extraordinary art collections. Levkoff reconstructs Heart's vast collections of tapestries, classical antiquities, silver, arms, and armor that, at the time, were the largest in private hands. She argues that if half his treasures had not been sold off during the financial crisis of the 1930s, he would be readily recognized today not only for the quantity of items that he bought, but also for the outsta

December 2013 - Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid), composer, multimedia artist, writer, and DJ; accompanied by cellist Danielle Cho, violinist Jennifer Kim and vocalist Rochelle Rice. In this performance recorded on November 24, 2013, at the National Gallery of Art, Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid) presents a composition for string ensemble with live-mixed electronic music and video. DJ Spooky: A Civil War Symphony, originally performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, borrows images from the exhibition Tell It with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial. On view through January 20, 2014, the exhibition considers the legacy of the 54th and the Battle of Fort Wagner in art, examining nineteenth-century efforts to memorialize those who fought, Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial itself, and the continuing inspiration that the regiment, its defining battle, and the Shaw Memorial have been for twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists

November 2013 - Julie Mehretu, artist, in conversation with Judith Brodie, curator and head, department of modern prints and drawings, National Gallery of Art. Julie Mehretu is best known for large-scale, densely packed paintings that combine meticulous rendering and seemingly spontaneous abstract gesture. Her work, including drawings and prints, is built up from multiple layers of archival, geographical, meteorological, and architectural imagery—designs, plans, diagrams, blueprints, ruins, charts, and graphs—traced and punctuated with calligraphic marks and obscuring erasures. She maps the histories of civilizations past and present, engaging with issues of social organization, globalization, and geopolitical connectivity. Mehretu has completed collaborative projects at professional printmaking studios across the United States, among them Gemini G.E.L in Los Angeles and Crown Point Press in San Francisco. For the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series at the National Gallery of Art, Mehretu joined Judith Brod

November 2013 - Panelists include Kerry James Marshall, artist; James Meyer, associate curator of modern art, National Gallery of Art; Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Northwestern University; Hortense J. Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor, English department, Vanderbilt University; Dan S. Wang, artist and writer. The central theme of the exhibition In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall, on view through December 8, 2013, at the National Gallery of Art, is the Middle Passage—the violent journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas during the colonial and antebellum periods—and its traumatic impact in the lives and memories of African Americans in particular. Marshall's show begins with images of human beings and the open sea, of sailboats and an amusement-park water ride, evocative of the Middle Passage. Yet the exhibition also includes scenes of backyard pools, suburban lawns, and white picket fences, of children riding b

November 2013 - Carmen C. Bambach, curator of drawings and prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A fortuitous rediscovery of documents in the Florentine state archive that have been greatly misjudged in the past led to a reevaluation and affirmation of the central importance of Giuliano de' Medici (1479-1516) as a patron of the arts. Giuliano, the overshadowed son of Lorenzo de' Medici "The Magnificent" and brother of Pope Leo X, became Duke of Nemours on his marriage in January 1515. He touched the careers of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo, the latter of whom immortalized the duke posthumously in the marble sculpture of his tomb in the Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, Florence. He was the generous, carefree patron of uomini ingegnosi (brilliant men), whom he lavishly maintained in his household, according to the first-hand account of Francesco Vettori, brother to the duke's maiordomo. In homage to Professor Sydney J. Freedberg who published a book entitled Circa 1600, this talk takes a close look at the ye

Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, and professor, Columbia University. In the sixth and final lecture, originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on May 12, 2013, architectural historian Barry Bergdoll presents a hopeful manifesto of the possibilities of architectural exhibitions, including a look at MoMA's innovative introduction of public laboratories and workshops in which designers, historians, and critics project new futures and new problems in architecture.

Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, and professor, Columbia University. In the fifth lecture, originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on May 5, 2013, architectural historian Barry Bergdoll discusses the establishment, by the 1920s, of exhibitions as a culture of architecture in which one exhibition served as a critique of another, and the exploitation of the propaganda capacity of the exhibition by political agencies, corporations, and the ongoing politics of diplomacy.

Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, and professor, Columbia University. In the fourth lecture, originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on April 28, 2013, architectural historian Barry Bergdoll considers the role of the exhibition as an instrument for reform in the movement for better housing for the working classes, in the institution of city planning as a modern discipline, and in the emergence of the artistic avant-garde in the years around 1900, all cases of projecting alternative futures.

Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, and professor, Columbia University. In the third lecture, originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on April 21, 2013, architectural historian Barry Bergdoll explores the idea of export architecture and outdoor exhibitions and the development of temporary exhibition pavilions from the world's fair to the open-air museum, including Colonial Williamsburg. The 19th-century debate on national identity as expressed in architectural style is shown to have been advanced by the changing valence of high-style pavilions and redeployed vernacular structures.