National Gallery Of Art | Audio

linn meyers, artist and co-founder, STABLE, in conversation with Jonathan Frederick Walz, director of curatorial affairs and curator of American art, The Columbus Museum. Artist linn meyers creates works that reveal the expansive potential of drawing. In monumental installations drawn straight onto the wall and smaller works of ink on panel or mylar, meyers uses simple designs and delicate handling of materials to make rhythm visible in drawings of astonishing detail. That meyers works alone—even on the 400-foot long our view from here, made in 2017 at the Hirshhorn Museum—means these drawings also materialize her extensive labor, recording not only meyers’s skill but also her capability for extreme endurance. With fellow Washington, DC-based artists Tim Doud and Caitlin Teal Price, meyers is a cofounder of STABLE, a local studio complex that provides visual artists with an active, affordable workspace to pursue their profession. In this conversation recorded at the National Gallery of Art on December 9, 2018

Emily Ann Francisco, curatorial assistant, department of modern art, and former collection management assistant, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art. Nearly 2,600 photographs from the Corcoran Gallery of Art were recently accessioned into the National Gallery of Art’s collection. These acquisitions have richly expanded the Gallery’s holdings of photographs from the 1960s to the present, as well as in photojournalism, social documentary photography, and works by groundbreaking early photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge. In this lecture held on December 17, 2018, as part of the Works in Progress Lecture Series at the National Gallery of Art, Emily Ann Francisco discusses the unique challenges of researching and cataloging this collection and provides a broad survey of its highlights.

David Gariff, senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art. This holiday presentation explores the biblical episodes surrounding the birth of Christ as depicted in masterworks from the Gallery’s permanent collection. Gariff examines excerpts from the King James Version of the Bible and investigates the iconography, artistic technique, and historical context of works from the Gallery’s collection, such as paintings by Duccio, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Giorgione, and Gerard David. This lecture was presented on December 13, 2018, at the National Gallery of Art.

Victor Stoichita (Université de Fribourg and former Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor at the National Gallery of Art) discusses Murillo’s Two Women at a Window in terms of the artist’s preoccupation with two relationships: that between the private space depicted in the painting and the public space of the beholder, and that of the viewer and the viewed.

John Edmonds, artist, in conversation with Jessica Bell Brown, PhD candidate, department of art and archaeology, Princeton University. In his photographs of African Americans, John Edmonds challenges the exclusionary history of art by expanding its roster of subjects, while using its conventions to recognize the humanity and sensuality of his sitters. For his Du-Rag and Hoods series, Edmonds dressed his subjects in culturally specific clothing in photographs that tempered stereotypes associated with streetwear with soft light and demure poses. Art historian and writer Jessica Bell Brown asserts that Edmonds’s portraits “are not rebuttals of stereotypes about black and brown men, nor are they objective ‘documents’ of black life. Rather, they are radical alternative propositions of how we can behold anew.” On September 23, 2018, in conjunction with the exhibition Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project, Bell Brown and Edmonds discuss the possibilities that come with new forms and subjects of portraiture. This progra

Philip Brookman, consulting curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art. During the 1940s American photographer Gordon Parks (1912–2006) grew from a self-taught photographer making portraits and documenting everyday life in Saint Paul and Chicago to a visionary professional shooting for Ebony, Vogue, Fortune, and Life. For the first time, the formative decade of Parks’s 60-year career is the focus of an exhibition, which brings together 150 photographs and ephemera—including magazines, books, letters, and family pictures. Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950 is on view at the National Gallery of Art from November 4, 2018, through February 19, 2019. In this lecture held on November 18, 2018, Philip Brookman illustrates how Parks’s early experiences at the Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, and Standard Oil (New Jersey), as well as his close relationships with Roy Stryker, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison, helped shape his groundbreaking style.

Mason McClew, prints and drawings cataloger for the Corcoran Collection, department of American and modern prints and drawings. Traditionally, print publishers in the United States have been relegated to ancillary positions in art-historical discussions concerning the production of multiples by artists and printers. Mason McClew traces the development of fine art publishing through his experience cataloging the American works on paper recently acquired from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, illuminating little-known, yet influential figures who encouraged consumers to collect prints. In this lecture on November 5, 2018, as part of the Works in Progress Lecture Series at the National Gallery of Art, McClew discusses the rise of American print publishers in the art market from the Federalist era to the present by contextualizing significant examples from the Corcoran Collection with other notable works in the Gallery’s permanent collection.

Stephen J. Campbell, Henry and Elizabeth Wiesenfeld Professor of Art History, Johns Hopkins University. In this lecture, presented on November 4, 2018, Stephen J. Campbell addresses the conflicted reception of the Venetian painter Titian outside his home city during a crucial phase in the formation of his reputation—his achievement of celebrity as a Hapsburg court painter and his inclusion in an emerging canon of Venetian and central Italian artists. While Titian’s production for Hapsburg patrons in Spain and other non-Italian destinations shows him performing as the quintessential artist of the Italian "modern manner," by the mid-sixteenth century his work for sites in Italy pursued a different course: artistic and critical reaction suggests that it was found to be inscrutable or alienating. Campbell’s lecture proposes that this reception resulted from a tacit disavowal on Titian's part of contemporary critical accounts—by Lodovico Dolce, Pietro Aretino, and Giorgio Vasari—that increasingly sought to define

Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken (Teylers Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands, and former Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor at the National Gallery of Art) brings viewers inside the “rustic paradise” of river landscapes by brothers Annibale and Agostino Carracci in the National Gallery of Art collection. While describing their distinct approaches to the subject, Professor van Tuyll shows the pleasure the brothers took in creating these views.

Heidi Applegate, guest lecturer. Coinciding with the Kennedy Center’s production of the Broadway musical Hamilton, guest lecturer Heidi Applegate surveys works of art featuring Alexander Hamilton in this presentation delivered August 5, 2018, at the National Gallery of Art. The American painter John Trumbull and the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Cerrachi are Hamilton’s best known portraitists thanks to the countless reproductions of their works made after Hamilton’s death. Several other artists also created portraits of Hamilton from life, many of which were replicated during the 19th century. Applegate also discusses portraits of Hamilton’s family members and other founding fathers who were important to Hamilton’s political career, as well as the major posthumous paintings and monuments that helped to secure Hamilton’s legacy.

David Ogawa, associate professor of art history, Union College. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is best known as the great master of landscape painting in the 19th century who bridged the French neoclassical tradition with the impressionist movement of the 1870s. Corot’s figure paintings, although constituting a much smaller, less well-known portion of his oeuvre, are of equal importance to the history of art. These works are the focus of the exhibition Corot: Women, on view at the National Gallery of Art through December 31, 2018. Corot also had a long relationship with photography and photographic media, from its growth in the 1850s until his death in 1875. In this lecture held on October 20, 2018, David Ogawa explores Corot's distinct and complex engagement with photographic processes as source material, expressive medium, and an integral part of his artistic legacy.

Eric Denker, senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art. Ailsa Mellon Bruce was the only daughter of Andrew Mellon, the founder of the National Gallery of Art, and a patron of the Gallery since 1941. Through direct donation and various funds she was responsible for the Gallery’s acquisition of many major works, including Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo. At her death in 1969 she left 153 paintings, primarily by French artists, to the Gallery. For the 1978 opening of the East Building, selected paintings from the collection were shown as a memorial exhibition under the title Small French Paintings from the Bequest of Ailsa Mellon Bruce. In this lecture celebrating the 40th anniversary of the East Building, presented on August 26, 2018, Eric Denker, senior lecturer at the National Gallery of Art, describes the exhibition—a great favorite among visitors that would continue in various forms for 35 years. The show included jewel-like works by, among others, Corot, Manet, Degas, Boudin, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Eric Denker, senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art. I. M. Pei’s majestic East Building opened in June of 1978 with the express purpose of providing space for both the National Gallery’s rapidly expanding collection of modern art and as a venue for special exhibitions. The East Building has since hosted close to 250 exhibitions of artistic masterpieces from around the world. From the opening exhibition, The Splendor of Dresden: Five Centuries of Art Collecting, through the four floors devoted to Rodin Rediscovered, from The Treasure Houses of Britain to Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, from Art Nouveau, 1890–1914 to Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting, these memorable exhibitions have left an indelible mark on the cultural life of the nation’s capital. This lecture celebrating the 40th anniversary of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, presented by Eric Denker, senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art, on August 12, 2018, describes some of the most sign

Naoko Takahatake, associate curator of prints and drawings, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Chiaroscuro woodcuts simulate three-dimensional form through their successive impression of relief-cut blocks that define areas of dark and light. This style of printmaking flourished in 16th-century Italy, interpreting works by such masters as Raphael, Parmigianino, and Titian and boasting extraordinary craft as well as often striking palettes. Yet questions remain: exactly how were chiaroscuros created, in what sequence were the blocks printed, and why? In this lecture recorded on October 14, 2018, at the National Gallery of Art, Naoko Takahatake discusses the chiaroscuro woodcut as one of the most beautiful developments in the history of printmaking. The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy is on view through January 20, 2019.

David Gariff, senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art. The East Building of the National Gallery of Art houses an impressive collection of modern sculptures displayed throughout its many levels. Henry Moore’s Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece, Anthony Caro’s National Gallery Ledge Piece, and the enormous mobile, Untitled, by Alexander Calder were commissioned for the opening of the building in 1978 and are prominently displayed at the entrance and in the atrium. Other large-scale works by Max Ernst, Andy Goldsworthy, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Serra, and David Smith are also found in the atrium. Throughout the upstairs galleries one can trace the history of 20th-century sculpture in parallel with the history of 20th-century painting. As part of the series Celebrating the East Building: 20th-Century Art, senior lecturer David Gariff leads a tour of the Gallery’s modern sculptures in this lecture presented on August 30, 2018, at the National Gallery of Art.

Caitlin Teal Price, artist and cofounder, STABLE, in conversation with John Pilson, photographer, video artist, and senior critic and acting director of graduate studies for fall 2018, Yale University School of Art. Moderated by Lily Siegel, executive director and curator, Greater Reston Arts Center. Caitlin Teal Price presents new work exploring themes of daily routine and ritual in the solo exhibition Green Is the Secret Color to Make Gold, on view September 29 through November 24, 2018, at the Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE). Price is known for her photographs of people; this body of work, however, depicts arrangements of objects—primarily those collected by her young son on walks they regularly take together—in consideration of value and systems of classification. The exhibition also includes Price’s first large-scale drawings. Price, with fellow Washington, DC–based artists Tim Doud and Linn Meyers, is cofounder of STABLE, a local studio complex that provides visual artists with an active, affordable

Harry Cooper, senior curator and head of modern art, National Gallery of Art. It is often said that the National Gallery of Art is a collection of collections. All its acquisitions of art are the resultof gifts, whether of art itself or of the funds to acquire art. In the realm of modern art, one of the principal mechanisms of this generosity has been the Collectors Committee, a group of patrons who came together in 1975 to commission and donate major works to help inaugurate the East Building, which opened in 1978. In this lecture held on July 8, 2018, Harry Cooper surveys the gifts made by the Committee since 2008, when he joined the Gallery’s staff. This revealing inside look at the acquisition process demonstrates how dramatically the collection of contemporary works has grown over the past decade.

David Gariff, senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art. Referred to variously as “ABC art” or “primary structures,” minimalism displays the reductive aspects of earlier modernist trends that embraced geometric abstraction in painting and pure geometric forms in sculpture. In direct opposition to their abstract expressionist predecessors, minimalist artists sought to eliminate concepts of self-expression and subjective emotion. Painters and sculptors associated with minimalist practices include Donald Judd, Tony Smith, Dan Flavin, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, and Robert Mangold. As part of the series Celebrating the East Building: 20th-Century Art, senior lecturer David Gariff surveys the art and theory of minimalism. This lecture was presented on August 28, 2018, at the National Gallery of Art.

David Gariff, senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art. By the end of the 1950s abstract expressionism had begun to wane. Color-field or hard-edge painters, depending on their approach, adopted the large scale and rich palette of painters like Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Morris Louis poured paint onto huge unprimed canvases, as Pollock did, but in a different way and with different results. Urgent physical gestures gave way to something that looks more like an impersonal force of nature. Louis’s younger colleagues, including Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Sam Gilliam, Howard Mehring, Kenneth Noland, and Paul Reed, were equally inventive, whether staining unprimed canvas, masking with tape, or crumpling and cinching the canvas to create a space at once optical and physical. Most of these painters lived in Washington, DC, where their originality earned them the name Washington Color School. As part of the series Celebrating the East Building: 20th-Century Art, senior lecturer David Gariff exa

David Gariff, senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art. In all of art history, only one movement dared to predict public and commercial success in its very name. The distinction is appropriate, because pop art was all about commerce and consumption from the beginning. Emerging in mid-1950s Great Britain and soon spreading to the United States, pop was a creature of the postwar boom, when television, advertising, fast food, birth rates, home appliances, and suburban sprawl were quickly changing daily life in the developed world. Works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Claes Oldenburg reflect a new syntax of imagery drawn from popular culture and mass media, devoid of exalted art historical themes and the personal expression that were hallmarks of abstract expressionist painting. As part of the series Celebrating the East Building: 20th-Century Art, senior lecturer David Gariff considers the wide variety of objects, themes, and working methods that characterized pop art and the way it blurred distinctions b