Inaugurated in 1949, the Mellon Lectures is the longest-running lecture series at the National Gallery of Art. The series was founded “to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts.” Past lecturers have included art historians, artists, poets, and musicologists.
Beginning March 9, 2025, cultural historian, architectural designer, and curator Mabel O. Wilson addresses the history of slavery and dispossession in US civic architecture in the four-part series, America’s Architecture of Freedom and Unfreedom.