Release Date: May 23, 2011

Summer Season of the National Gallery of Art 2011 Lecture Program Celebrates Canaletto, Italian Master Drawings, Gauguin, and Baltz Exhibitions, and 150th Anniversary of Italy

Washington, DC—The National Gallery of Art welcomes summer with lectures by distinguished guest lecturers, as well as Gallery staff and experts. Highlights of the season include three guest lectures and an Italian-themed summer lecture series.

The exhibition Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals draws to a close on May 30, and Italian Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, 1525–1835 continues through November 27. To continue the Gallery's celebration of Italian art and culture, acclaimed author Meryle Secrest returns to the Gallery on June 19 to celebrate the publication of her latest biography, Modigliani, A Life, with a lecture titled The Unknown Modigliani.

The Gallery also presents a special summer lecture series honoring the 150th anniversary of Italy with lectures on all things Italian. Among presentations by Gallery staff and experts are Russell Sale's opening lecture The Early Medici, Their Palace, and the Arts of Florence (July 10); Americans in Italy: 1850–1925 by head of adult programs Wilford W. Scott (July 24), and From Mantegna to Morandi: Five Centuries of Great Italian Printmakers by Gallery lecturer Eric Denker.

The exhibition Gauguin: Maker of Myth, on view through June 5, serves as the inspiration for the lecture Gauguin's Selves: Visual Identities in the Age of Freud by Richard Brettell, the Margaret McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetics, University of Texas at Dallas on June 4.

The exhibition Lewis Baltz: Prototypes/Ronde de Nuit, on view through July 31, is the subject of Decoding Baltz's Prototypes on June 5, presented by Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and prints and drawings department.

All lecture programs are presented free of charge and take place on Sundays at 2:00 p.m. in the East Building Auditorium unless otherwise noted. Seating is on a first-come, first-seated basis.

Lecture Programs

Gauguin's Selves: Visual Identities in the Age of Freud
Saturday, June 4, noon
Richard Brettell, Margaret McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetics, Interdisciplinary Program in Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas

Decoding Baltz's Prototypes
June 5
Britt Salvesen, curator and head, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and prints and drawings department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Unknown Modigliani
June 19
Meryle Secrest, author
Book signing of Modigliani: A Life follows

Summer Lecture Series: All Things Italian
(in honor of the 150th anniversary of Italy)

The Early Medici, Their Palace, and the Arts of Florence
July 10
Russell Sale, lecturer, National Gallery of Art

Shaping a National Identity: Feminine Themes in Italian Sculpture, 1815–1870
July 17
David Gariff, lecturer, National Gallery of Art

Americans in Italy: 1850–1925
July 24
Wilford W. Scott, head of adult programs, National Gallery of Art

Crosscurrents in Renaissance Painting: Italy and the North
July 31
Lorena Baines, education assistant for high school programs, National Gallery of Art

Italian Pittura Metafisica: A Visionary World
August 7
Diane Arkin, lecturer and adult program docent coordinator, National Gallery of Art

Italian Futurism: Expressing the Energy of the Modern World
August 14
Sally Shelburne, lecturer, National Gallery of Art

"It's beautiful here, isn't it . . .": Italian Photography and Architecture, 1950 to Present
August 21
Adam Davies, lecturer and media specialist, National Gallery of Art

From Mantegna to Morandi: Five Centuries of Great Italian Printmakers
August 28
Eric Denker, lecturer, National Gallery of Art

Works in Progress
Mondays and selected Tuesdays in the East Building Small Auditorium at 12:10 and 1:10 p.m.

Gauguin: The Mythmaker in His Studio
May 23
Carol Christensen, senior conservator, department of painting conservation, National Gallery of Art

Portraiture and the Moving Image
June 6
Joanna Raczynska, assistant head of film programs, National Gallery of Art

New Developments in the Analysis of Illuminated Manuscripts: The Use of Imaging Spectroscopy and High-Resolution Infrared Reflectography
June 13
Paola Ricciardi, Samuel H. Kress Fellow, scientific research department, National Gallery of Art

Print or Painting? The Treatment of a Penschilderij by Willem van de Velde the Elder
June 20
Kristin DeGhetaldi, painting conservation fellow, National Gallery of Art

More Than Ninety Miles Away: A Dialogue with Cuban Artist Sandra Ramos
June 21
Michelle Bird, curatorial assistant, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art, in conversation with artist Sandra Ramos