National Gallery of Art | Talks

Howardena Pindell discusses how social issues and the prospect of societal change impact her art and life. In her artistic practice, Pindell’s work reflects a fascination with gridded, serialized imagery and surface texture. She often employs lengthy, metaphorical processes of destruction/reconstruction. Even in her more politically charged work, Pindell reverts to these thematic focuses to address issues of homelessness, AIDS, war, genocide, sexism, xenophobia, and apartheid. Watch the...

Guitarist Sonia De Los Santos hails from Mexico, where as a child she was exposed to different musical influences. In Auguste Renoir’s “Young Spanish Woman with a Guitar,” De Los Santos sees echoes of her younger self. Her song “Sueña” is an ode to dreams. Still haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channels? National Gallery of Art ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtUS National Gallery of Art | Talks ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtTalks

Maria Schneider composed “Bulería, Soleá y Rumba” in the wake of a cancer diagnosis. Inspired by American artists such as Robert Henri and George Bellows, Schneider discusses “art for life’s sake” that tells a story of people—like the evocative figures in Bellows’s The Lone Tenement. Still haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channels? National Gallery of Art ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtUS National Gallery of Art | Talks ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtTalks

This work reminds jazz trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis of the proud, hard-working generations that raised him. A history of struggle may suggest the minor key, but Marsalis ultimately chose upbeat music to celebrate those who fought and made it work. Still haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channels? National Gallery of Art ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtUS National Gallery of Art | Talks ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtTalks

Clint Smith, Renée Stout, and Hank Willis Thomas present on the role of history and memory in shaping American culture and identity. This is the third talk of the three-part series "John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art: Afro-Atlantic Histories," which gathers literary and visual artists to reflect on how art responds to and shapes both official and overlooked narratives wrought by the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies. Watch the entire video by Hank Willis Thomas titled “A...

Erica Buddington, Nona Faustine, and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers present archival research–based practices that create and uplift missing narratives. This is the second talk of the three-part series "John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art: Afro-Atlantic Histories," which gathers literary and visual artists to reflect on how art responds to and shapes both official and overlooked narratives wrought by the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies. Watch the video: https://youtu.be/36aA_Mg7IZA

Artists Rosana Paulino and Cameron Rowland explore the lasting legacy of slavery in their works of art. This is the first talk of the three-part series "John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art: Afro-Atlantic Histories," which gathers literary and visual artists to reflect on how art responds to and shapes both official and overlooked narratives wrought by the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies. Watch the lecture: https://youtu.be/5n90V4Acg_w

Violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved and National Gallery director Kaywin Feldman discuss Hieronymus Bosch’s “Death and the Miser” and its symbolism of contrast: light and dark, life and death. Skærved plays a 17th-century violin sonatina that echoes similar contrasts of sensuality and fatality, beauty and mortality. Still haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channels? National Gallery of Art ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtUS National Gallery of Art | Talks...

Musician Daniel Ho spent much of his childhood on the water, so he relates to Thomas Cole’s river paintings. Ho responds to Voyage of Life with an original suite. Starting with simple harmonies to represent childhood, he gradually introduces complexity. Find full transcript and more information about this episode at https://www.nga.gov/music-programs/podcasts/daniel-ho-thomas-cole-voyage-life-series.html Still haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channels? National Gallery of Art...

In “Sand Dipper,” jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman creates an abstract and overwhelming world. This music, Scheinman says, sounds how El Greco’s painting looks. And it feels like the question on Laocoön’s face as he looks up for the last time. Still haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channels? National Gallery of Art ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtUS National Gallery of Art | Talks ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtTalks

Orphée depicts many tragedies, but songwriter Dom Flemons finds the joy in it: it resolves in the beautiful scene of two lovers embracing. Flemons pairs it with the tranquil “Blue Butterfly.” The instrumental song helps the emotional weight sink in. Still haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channels? National Gallery of Art ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtUS National Gallery of Art | Talks ►►https://www.youtube.com/NationalGalleryofArtTalks

Presentations on Thomas’s studio art training and involvement with galleries, museums, and universities by Renee Maurer, Nell Irvin Painter, and Rebecca VanDiver, followed with discussion moderated by Steven Nelson Renee Maurer, associate curator, The Phillips Collection, and coordinating curator for Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful; Nell Irvin Painter, artist, Edwards Professor of American History Emerita, Princeton University, and Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful catalog...

Elizabeth Alexander, poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, cultural advocate, and president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, discuss their connections to Thomas’s life and work. This conversation was filmed at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery while Alternative Worlds, a group exhibition featuring the work of Alma Thomas, was on view. Celebrate Alma W. Thomas's Legacy...

Presentations on Thomas’s studio art training and involvement with galleries, museums, and universities by Renee Maurer, Nell Irvin Painter, and Rebecca VanDiver, followed with discussion moderated by Steven Nelson Renee Maurer, associate curator, The Phillips Collection, and coordinating curator for Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful; Nell Irvin Painter, artist, Edwards Professor of American History Emerita, Princeton University, and Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful catalog...

Presentations on Thomas’s aesthetic and social environment by Melanee Harvey, Margie Jervis, Marya McQuirter, and Thaïsa Way, followed with discussion moderated by Charles Brock. Melanee Harvey, assistant professor and coordinator of art history, Howard University, Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful catalog contributor, and American University Feminist Art History Conference session chair; Margie Jervis, artist and scenic designer, Creative Cauldron of Falls Church; Marya McQuirter,...

The final session of American University’s Feminist Art History Conference, cohosted by the National Gallery, brings together distinguished curators to discuss contemporary issues in museum practice. Lauren Haynes, Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University; Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum; Asma Naeem, chief curator of the Baltimore Museum of...

In her 2021 Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture, Terri Simone Francis reflects on Josephine Baker’s influence within the visual arts and theorizes Baker as both an international cultural figure and an African American film pioneer. Recent restorations of her films of the 1920s and 1930s have allowed her work to be seen in the context of recent cinema and media, indeed almost as recent cinema and media. In Francis’s view Baker exemplifies what author Toni Morrison called a “rememory”—a remembered...

In this lecture, released on December 3, 2021, Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha), associate curator of Native American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), discusses her recent research and curatorial practices that affirm Indigenous representations. Dr. Norby shares her vision for and approaches to collecting, presenting, and interpreting Native American art at the Met and beyond.

In this photograph, journalist and musician Celeste Headlee hears “Lenox Avenue,” a suite her grandfather William Grant Still named after Harlem’s main street. This portrait captures the pride of Black Americans achieving success during the Harlem Renaissance despite systemic injustice. Find full transcripts and more information about this episode at https://www.nga.gov/music-programs/podcasts.html. Subscribe directly to Sound Thoughts on Art from the National Gallery of Art on Apple...

In this lecture, released on November 5, 2021, Babette Bohn of Texas Christian University discusses women artists in early modern Italy. Early modern Bologna was exceptional for its many talented women artists. Thanks to a long-standing tradition of honoring accomplished women, several attentive artistic biographers, strong local interest in collecting women’s work, and permissive attitudes toward women studying with male artists who were not family members, Bologna was home to more women...