National Gallery of Art | Audio

Kadir López, artist, and Michelle Bird, curatorial assistant, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art. Kadir López Nieves was born in 1972 in the province of Las Tunas. His talent was recognized at the age of twelve, when he was chosen to receive formal art training in Cuba's educational system. He graduated from the Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA) in Havana in 1995. Kadir came to artistic maturity at a time when the image and illusion of the Cuban Revolution were greatly diminished. Much of his work is inspired by a meditation on time: blurring past, present, and future, he critiques the effects of progress, or lack thereof, in spiritual, economic, and political arenas. In his recent Signs, Kadir repurposes porcelain-lacquered steel advertising signs from prerevolutionary Cuba by fusing black-and-white photographs onto them. The irony of the juxtaposition provides a more complicated reading of the island's history. In this conversation, which took place on October 17, 2011, as part of the Works in Progress series at the National Gallery of Art, Kadir López discusses his practice and recent work with Michelle Bird.

Virginia Brilliant, The Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida. The first major retrospective of paintings by the inventive Italian Renaissance master Piero di Cosimo premiered at the National Gallery of Art on February 1, 2015. After Giorgio Vasari described Piero in 1550 as an oddball misanthrope—"more like a beast than a man"—the painter was generally relegated to the margins of art history. American collectors, who tended to focus on mainstream works, did not begin collecting Piero's paintings until the 1930s and 1940s. Yet museums in America are now home to numerous paintings by this visionary artist—from solemn altarpieces and tondi to intriguing mythological scenes. In this lecture, held on March 19, 2015, Virginia Brilliant explores how changing tastes and opportunities prompted American collectors to acquire major works by this eccentric artist. Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence is on view through May 3, 2015.

Thomas Crow, Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. In this six-part lecture series entitled Restoration as Event and Idea: Art in Europe, 1814‒1820, Art historian Thomas Crow will consider the period following the fall of Napoleon. During this time, artists throughout Europe were left uncertain and adrift, with old certainties and boundaries dissolved. How did they then set new courses for themselves? Professor Crow's lectures answer that question by offering both the wide view of art centers across the continent—Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, Brussels—and a close-up focus on individual actors— Francisco Goya (1746‒1828), Jacques-Louis David (1748‒1825), Antonio Canova (1757‒1822), Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769‒1830), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780‒1867), and Théodore Géricault (1791‒1824). Whether directly or indirectly, these artists were linked in a new international network with changed artistic priorities and new creative possibilities emerging from the wreckage of the old. In this third lecture, entitled "Cut Loose, 1815–1817: Napoleon Returns, David Crosses Borders, and Géricault Wanders Outcast Rome," originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on March 29, 2015, Professor Crow examines the displaced and wandering existences of David and Géricault, both in geographical and psychological exile, during which each was forced to reexamine and reconfigure the fundamentals of his artistic life.

Peter M. Lukehart, associate dean, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art. The publication of Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata in 1581 occasioned a host of responses from artists, literati, and musicians that lasted well into the eighteenth century. In this lecture recorded on February 25, 2015, Peter Lukehart focuses on the rich corpus of drawings, paintings, and prints created during the first decades after the epic became part of the shared culture of Italy. From lavishly illustrated editions of Tasso's poem to handsomely decorated interiors, the text provided a rich source of narrative material for painters, draftsmen, and printmakers. The lecture concludes with an introduction to Claudio Monteverdi's 1624 musical representation of a famous scene from Gerusalemme, Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, in which the intersection of love and war has tragic consequences.

Thomas Crow, Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. In this six-part lecture series entitled Restoration as Event and Idea: Art in Europe, 1814‒1820, Art historian Thomas Crow will consider the period following the fall of Napoleon. During this time, artists throughout Europe were left uncertain and adrift, with old certainties and boundaries dissolved. How did they then set new courses for themselves? Professor Crow's lectures answer that question by offering both the wide view of art centers across the continent—Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, Brussels—and a close-up focus on individual actors— Francisco Goya (1746‒1828), Jacques-Louis David (1748‒1825), Antonio Canova (1757‒1822), Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769‒1830), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780‒1867), and Théodore Géricault (1791‒1824). Whether directly or indirectly, these artists were linked in a new international network with changed artistic priorities and new creative possibilities emerging from the wreckage of the old. In this first lecture, entitled "Moscow Burns / The Pope Comes Home, 1812‒1814: David, Gros, and Ingres Test Empire's Facade," originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on March 15, 2015, Professor Crow describes how key works by David, Gros, and Ingres, fashioned during this tumultuous two-year period, convey the tensions and fissures engendered by the unsustainable character of Napoleon's foundering empire.

Renée Green, artist, filmmaker, writer, and the director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; in conversation with James Meyer, associate curator of modern art, National Gallery of Art. For nearly three decades, artist Renée Green has created an impressive body of work in which language is an essential element. Green is also a prolific writer and a major voice in the international art world. Other Planes of There: Selected Writings gathers for the first time a substantial collection of the work she wrote between 1981 and 2010. The book brings together essays, film scripts, reviews, and polemics as well as reflections on Green's own artistic practice and seminal artworks. In this program recorded on March 1, 2015, Renée Green and James Meyer discuss the thirty years of contemporary art, incisive critiques, and prescient observations showcased in Other Planes of There. Their conversation spans cinema, literature, sound, time-based media, and the relationship between art forms and other forms of knowledge

Michael Fried, J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in the Humanities and professor of the history of art, John Hopkins University. To celebrate the publication of his latest book, Another Light: Jacques-Louis David to Thomas Demand, Michael Fried presented a film screening and lecture at the National Gallery of Art on February 22, 2015. After showing Thomas Demand's brilliant stop-motion film Pacific Sun (2012), Fried presents his analysis of the film—both in its own right and in relation to Demand's much-admired photographic work.

Dave H. and Reba White Williams, authors and collectors. Over more than four decades, Dave H. and Reba White Williams formed what is considered the largest and finest private collection of American prints, published 17 exhibition catalogs, and donated the majority of their collection to leading museums both in the United States and abroad. In the 6,000 prints they personally selected, they cover both familiar and totally unknown ground—from anonymous WPA artists of the Great Depression era to African American artists working in the 1930s and 1940s to George Bellows and Winslow Homer alike. In this conversation recorded in the East Building Atrium on December 14, 2014, at the National Gallery of Art, the Williamses share insights from the memoir Small Victories: One Couple's Surprising Adventures Building an Unrivaled Collection of American Prints. By reflecting on the nature of collecting and on the significance of popular culture, the couple provides a glimpse into how they set out to build a great collection of American prints and succeeded beyond their dreams.

Al Acres, associate professor of art and art history, Georgetown University. Countless Renaissance images of Christ's infancy allude either to his sacrifice or to evil, and sometimes to both. Each represents a kind of absence in the moment pictured: the ultimate death of the infant and an intangible menace resisted by his coming. Although both occur widely in European work of the period and are familiar to modern observers of Renaissance art, they have never been systematically addressed. In this lecture recorded on January 25, 2015, based on his new book, Al Acres offers some suggestions about why this might be and examines the extraordinary variety of ways in which artists sought to convey these related ideas. In the challenge of representing two oblique presences, artists as diverse as Bosch, Botticelli, Bruegel, Gossaert, Leonardo, and Michelangelo (among many others) recognized a rich opportunity to cultivate new and deeply absorbing kinds of visual ingenuity.

Dagoberto Rodríguez, artist, and Michelle Bird, curatorial assistant, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art. The Havana-based collective Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters) has created some of the most important work to emerge from Cuba in the past decade. Formed in 1991 by Marco Castillo, Dagoberto Rodríguez, and Alexandre Arrechea (who departed in June 2003), the group adopted its current name in 1994, deciding to renounce the notion of individual authorship and refer back to an older guild tradition of artisans and skilled laborers. Interested in the intersection of art and society, the group merges architecture, design, and sculpture in unexpected and often humorous ways. For Los Carpinteros, drawing has played an integral role as a mock technical draft of a blueprint that suggests not only a process of artistic elaboration but also a form of architectural or carpentry plans. In this conversation, which took place on February 8, 2011 as part of the Works in Progress series at the National Gallery of Art, Dagoberto Rodríguez discusses the practice and upcoming projects of Los Carpinteros with Michelle Bird.

Daphne Barbour, senior conservator, department of object conservation, National Gallery of Art; Alison Luchs, curator of early European sculpture, National Gallery of Art; and Shelley Sturman, senior conservator and head, department of object conservation, National Gallery of Art. Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1878–1881), Edgar Degas's groundbreaking statuette of a young ballerina that caused a sensation at the 1881 impressionist exhibition, takes center stage in a National Gallery of Art exhibition titled Degas's Little Dancer. On view from October 5, 2014-February 8, 2015, the exhibition explores Degas's fascination with ballet and his experimental, modern approach to his work. It is presented in conjunction with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' world-premiere musical Little Dancer. In this lecture program recorded on November 23, 2014, Daphne Barbour, Alison Luchs, and Shelley Sturman examine this statuette, the only sculpture the artist exhibited during his lifetime. Luchs considers Degas's fascination with Little Dancer Aged Fourteen and its model, Marie van Goethem, with reference to Degas's ballet imagery and relatively little-studied poetry; Sturman reveals the methods by which Degas created this revolutionary work; and Barbour examines Study in the Nude of the Little Dancer and its puzzling relationship to the dressed statuette that appeared

Gretchen Hirschauer, associate curator of Italian and Spanish painting, National Gallery of Art; Dennis Geronimus, associate professor and chair of the department of art history, New York University; and Elizabeth Walmsley, paintings conservator, National Gallery of Art. The first major retrospective exhibition of paintings by the imaginative Italian Renaissance master Piero di Cosimo premiered at the National Gallery of Art on February 1, 2015. In honor of the opening, exhibition curators Gretchen A. Hirschauer and Dennis Geronimus along with conservator Elizabeth Walmsley present this introduction to Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence. On view through May 3, 2015, the installation features 44 of the artist's most compelling paintings, including fanciful mythologies, powerful religious works (one on loan for the first time from the church in Italy for which it was created 500 years ago), and sensitive portraits. Several important paintings underwent conservation treatment before the exhibition, among them the National Gallery's Visitation altarpiece (c. 1489/1490).

Jill DeVonyar, independent curator and former ballet dancer, and Richard Kendall, curator at large, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1878–1881), Edgar Degas's groundbreaking statuette of a young ballerina that caused a sensation at the 1881 impressionist exhibition, takes center stage in a National Gallery of Art exhibition titled Degas's Little Dancer. On view from October 5, 2014-February 8, 2015, the exhibition explores Degas's fascination with ballet and his experimental, modern approach to his work. It is presented in conjunction with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' world-premiere musical Little Dancer. In this paired lecture recorded on November 16, 2014, Degas specialists Richard Kendall and Jill DeVonyar examine Little Dancer Aged Fourteen by focusing on the relationship between this avant-garde work and its model, Marie van Goethe. Kendall discusses the sculpture's revolutionary realism, and DeVonyar analyzes its radicalism as an image of the ballet. Kendall and DeVonyar share fresh insight into the artist's world, his innovative techniques, and his deep knowledge of the ballet.

Felix Monguilot Benzal, art historian; docent, education division, Borghese Gallery, Rome; and Kress Interpretive Fellow (2012–2013), National Gallery of Art. During opening week of the exhibition El Greco in the National Gallery of Art and Washington-Area Collections: A 400th Anniversary Celebration, Felix Monguilot Benzal presented a lecture on November 8, 2014 tracing the artist's career from Crete to Toledo, Spain. Domenikos Theotokopoulos, universally known as El Greco (1541–1614), was born on the Greek island of Crete, where he achieved mastery as a painter of Byzantine icons. Aspiring to success on a larger stage, he moved to Venice in his late twenties and absorbed the lessons of High Renaissance masters, especially Titian and Tintoretto. In 1570 he departed for Rome, where he studied the work of Michelangelo and encountered the style known as mannerism, which rejected the logic and naturalism of Renaissance art. El Greco relocated to Spain in 1576 and spent the rest of his life in Toledo, where he finally received the major commissions that had eluded him in Italy. Unlike the Italian mannerists, who aimed at elegant artifice, El Greco used their dramatically elongated figures and ambiguous treatment of space for expressive ends, creating transcendent works that, like the icons of his youth, convey deep spirituality. Blending diverse influences—Byzantine, Renaissance, mannerist—he developed a unique style that captures the religious fervor of Counter-Reformation Spain. The Gallery is fortunate to have seven paintings by El Greco, one of the largest collections of his work in the United States. Four of them (Christ Cleansing the Temple, two altarpieces from a chapel in Toledo, and Laocoön) have recently returned from Spain, where they were featured in major exhibitions honoring the 400th anniversary of the artist's death. On view through February 16, 2015, the Gallery's reunited paintings are joined here by three others from Dumbarton Oaks and The Phillips Collection in Washington, and The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Mary Morton, curator and head, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art. A portrait of Joseph Roulin, the postman made famous by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) in a series of portraits, was on view at the National Gallery of Art for the first time thanks to a loan from the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands. Portrait of Monsieur Roulin (1889) hung alongside the Gallery's own Roulin's Baby (1888), a portrait of the postman's daughter Marcelle as an infant. In honor of this historic pairing, the Gallery mounted the exhibition Celebrating Van Gogh at the National Gallery of Art, which opened to the public on June 8, 2014. To mark the exhibition closing on September 7, 2014, Mary Morton presented a lecture on the riches of the Gallery's Van Gogh paintings. In addition to seven other paintings on view, two new Van Gogh works have arrived within the last year at the bequest of renowned philanthropist, art collector, and Gallery benefactor Paul Mellon (1907–1999). The paintings had been in the home of Mellon's wife, Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, until her death at age 103 on the Gallery's anniversary, March 17, 2014.