Release Date: April 1, 2010

Spring Lectures at the National Gallery of Art explore Ginsberg’s Photographs, Darwin and Beauty, Art and Representation in the Ancient New World, and More

Washington, DC—The National Gallery of Art welcomes spring with an engaging array of public lecture programs.  On May 23, Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head of the department of photographs, National Gallery of Art, discusses the photographs of Allen Ginsberg in relation to the exhibition Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, 1953–1997 (on view May 2 through September 16, 2010). Rescheduled due to snow closure on the original date, Jane Munro, the Fitzwilliam Museum’s senior assistant keeper in the department of paintings, drawings, and prints, presents her lecture on Darwin, Beauty, and the Visual Arts on June 6.

The Gallery’s acclaimed A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts continue for the fifty-ninth year with Mary Miller, dean of Yale College and Sterling Professor of History of Art, who will deliver this year’s series, entitled Art and Representation in the Ancient New World, beginning April 18.

All lecture programs are free of charge, with seating available on a first-come, first-seated basis.

Lecture Series

The Fifty-Ninth A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
Art and Representation in the Ancient New World
The Fifty-Ninth A. W. Mellon Lecture series will be presented by Mary Miller, dean of Yale College and Sterling Professor of History of Art
East Building Auditorium, 2:00 p.m.

The Shifting Now of the Pre-Columbian Past
April 18

Seeing Time, Hearing Time, Placing Time
April 25

The Body of Perfection, the Perfection of the Body
May 2

Representation and Imitation
May 9

Envisioning a New World
May 16

Works in Progress: Mondays
East Building Small Auditorium, 12:10 and 1:10 p.m.

Monuments for the Future: The German Contribution to the 1976 Venice Biennial
April 19

Mechtild Widrich, graduate curatorial intern, National Gallery of Art

Demystifying the Mystical: The Making of a Seventeenth-Century Spanish Polychrome Sculpture
April 26
Daphne Barbour, senior conservator, department of object conservation, and Judy Ozone, senior conservator, department of object conservation, National Gallery of Art

Narrative of Return: Images from an Asian-American Odyssey
May 17
Patricia Chu, associate professor of English, George Washington University, and Lee Ewing, photographer, National Gallery of Art

Monumental Politics in Republican Venice
June 7
Janna Israel, research associate, Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art

Vogel5050.org—It Takes a Village to Build a Website
June 14
Ellen Arnold, visual information specialist, Institute of Museum and Library Services; David Beaudet, information technology specialist, National Gallery of Art; Mary Lee Corlett, research associate, department of special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art; John Gordy, Web manager, National Gallery of Art; Jennifer Riddell, editor of education publications, National Gallery of Art 

Lecture Programs
East Building Auditorium, 2:00 p.m.

Venus as Odalisque: Ingres’s Reimagining of the Female Nude
April 4
Susan L. Siegfried, professor of history of art and women’s studies, University of Michigan
Book signing of Ingres: Painting Reimagined follows.

Northern Light on Italian Heights: On the Contribution of Artists from the Low Countries in Sixteenth-Century Italy
April 11
Bert Meijer, Samuel H. Kress Professor, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art

Seeing with the Eyes of the Angels: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
May 23
Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head of the department of photographs, National Gallery of Art
Book signing of Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg follows.

Darwin, Beauty, and the Visual Arts
June 6
Jane Munro, senior assistant keeper, department of paintings, drawings and prints, The Fitzwilliam Museum
Book signing of Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts follows

Bachiacca and the Art of Harvesting in Renaissance Florence
June 13
Robert G. La France, Hanna Kiel Fellow 2009-2010, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence, Italy, and curator of pre-modern art, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Book signing of Bachiacca: Artist of the Medici Court follows.

On Sundays, June 20 and 27, film programs will be shown in the East Building auditorium at 2:00 p.m. in place of lectures. For details visit www.nga.gov/programs/film.