Release Date: December 23, 2016

National Gallery of Art 2017 Winter Lecture Program Highlights Distinguished Artists, Scholars, and Curators

Alexander S. C. Rower, Alexander Calder's grandson and president, Calder Foundation, will discuss Calder Tower with Harry Cooper, curator and head, department of modern art, 2:00 p.m., February 26, National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium. Installation view of Alexander Calder: A Survey in East Building, Tower 2 galleries. Copyright © 2016 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Rob Shelley. Photo Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Update: Febrauary 10, 2017

Washington, DC—The 2017 winter/spring lecture program at the National Gallery of Art brings together distinguished artists, curators, and scholars. Artist highlights include Joseph Monroe Webb, international award-winning dancer, choreographer, actor, educator, poet, and founder and director of the American Embassy of Dance, for a performance on communication through dance movement and sound; Jason Moran, jazz pianist and artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and pioneering performance and video artist Joan Jonas with Lynne Cooke for their Kennedy Center collaboration Jason + Joan: Reanimation; Theaster Gates, professor in the department of visual arts and director of arts and public life at the University of Chicago, with Sarah Newman for his Tower Gallery exhibition; the Elson Lecture, one of a series that presents distinguished contemporary artists whose work is represented in the Gallery's permanent collection, features artist Matt Mullican; and Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra for the 2017 Arnold Newman Lecture on Photography. Alexander S. C. Rower, Alexander Calder's grandson and president of the Calder Foundation, and Harry Cooper will discuss the East Building's new tower gallery devoted to works by Calder. The Sixty-Sixth Annual A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, a six-part lecture series titled The Forest: America in the 1830s, will be given by Alexander Nemerov, department chair and Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities, Stanford University.

Lectures are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-seated basis. Unless otherwise noted, all programs take place in the East Building Auditorium. Lectures marked with an asterisk (*) are part of the Works in Progress series, lunchtime lectures that highlight new research by Gallery staff, interns, fellows, and special guests. The 30-minute talks are followed by question-and-answer periods. The East Building of the National Gallery of Art is located at Fourth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Please visit nga.gov/podcasts for lecture recordings.

Schedule of Lectures

January 15 at 2:00 p.m.
Arnold Newman Lecture Series on Photography
Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra, artist

The Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation generously supports this series to make such conversations available to the public.

January 22 at 2:00 p.m.
"Slipping into the World as Abstractions": Georgia O'Keeffe's Abstract Portraits
Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art

January 23* at 12:10 and 1:10 p.m.
Paper/Plates: Renaissance Prints and Ceramics at the National Gallery of Art
Jamie Gabbarelli, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, National Gallery of Art

January 29 at 2:00 p.m.
Freedom Sound/Do You Hear Me?
Joseph Monroe Webb, international award-winning dancer, choreographer, actor, educator, and poet; founder and director, American Embassy of Dance. Webb presents a lecture on communication through dance movement and sound, and an exploration of dance as a means of communication and a portal to freedom. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, on view in the West Building through March 5, 2017. The presentation is supported in loving memory of Shirley Casstevens.

February 5 at 12:00 p.m.
Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence: An Introduction to the Della Robbia Exhibition
Alison Luchs, curator of early European sculpture and deputy head of sculpture and decorative arts, National Gallery of Art

February 5 at 2:00 p.m.
Jason + Joan: "Reanimation": Jason Moran and Joan Jonas in Conversation with Lynne Cooke
Lynne Cooke, senior curator, special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art; Joan Jonas, artist; and Jason Moran, pianist and artistic director for jazz, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This program is held in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

February 26 at 12:00 p.m.
Conversations with Artists: Theaster Gates
Theaster Gates, artist, and Sarah Newman, exhibition guest curator, National Gallery of Art

February 26 at 2:00 p.m.
Calder Tower
Alexander S. C. Rower, Calder's grandson and president, Calder Foundation, in conversation with Harry Cooper, curator and head, department of modern art, National Gallery of Art. This program is coordinated with the Calder Foundation.

March 1 at 3:00 p.m.
The Landmarks of New York
Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, commissioner, American Battle Monuments Commission; chairperson, Historic Landmarks Preservation Center; commissioner, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission; founder and chair, NYC Landmarks50 Alliance; chair, New York State Council on the Arts; and director, Trust for the National Mall. A book signing of The Landmarks of New York: An Illustrated Record of the City's Historic Buildings, 6th ed., follows.

March 2 at 3:30 p.m.
Elson Lecture
Matt Mullican
Matt Mullican, artist

March 12 at 2:00 p.m.
East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography
Diane Waggoner, curator of nineteenth-century photographs, National Gallery of Art. A signing of the exhibition catalog East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography follows.

March 13* at 12:10 and 1:10 p.m.
Apocalypse Now: Michelangelo's "Doni Tondo" and the End of the World
James P. Anno, PhD candidate, department of art history and archaeology, Washington University in St. Louis

March 16–17 at 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
WYETH FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART SYMPOSIUM
The African American Art World in Twentieth-Century Washington, DC

Speakers include Rhea Combs, Gwendolyn H. Everett, Paul Gardullo, Tuliza Fleming, Jacqueline Francis, Lauren Haynes, Amy Kirschke, Robert O'Meally, Richard J. Powell, Steven Nelson, Jacquelyn D. Serwer, Jeffrey Stewart, John A. Tyson, and Tobias Wofford. The symposium will also feature a panel of artists including Lilian T. Burwell, Floyd Coleman, David C. Driskell, Sam Gilliam, Keith Morrison, Sylvia Snowden, and Lou Stovall.

March 19 at 2:00 p.m.
Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin
Christina Rosenberger, art historian. A book signing of Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin follows.

March 20* at 12:10 and 1:10 p.m.
Monumental Ephemera: The 1939 Smithsonian Gallery of Art Competition
Zoë Samels, curatorial assistant, department of American and British paintings, National Gallery of Art

March 26; April 2, 9, 23, 30; and May 7 at 2:00 p.m.
The Sixty-Sixth A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
The Forest: America in the 1830s
Alexander Nemerov, department chair and Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities, Stanford University

Press Contact:
Sarah Edwards Holley, (202) 842-6359 or [email protected]