National Gallery of Art | Audio

Artists Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen in conversation with Niels Van Tomme, visiting curator, Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Artists Harun Farocki (b. 1944, Germany) and Trevor Paglen (b. 1974, United States) will discuss their unique roles as artistic observers of global military operations with curator Niels Van Tomme. Investigating forms of surveillance, espionage, war-making, and weaponry, Farocki and Paglen address the vast implications of such activities for image-making, and the media they are creatively working with, namely film and photography. In which ways have the realities they depict transformed, and politicized, our relationship to images? And, what is ultimately the responsibility of artists in capturing or revealing such processes? This program is coordinated with the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) in conjunction with the exhibition "Visibility Machines: Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen," on view at the CADVC from October 24, 2013, through February 22, 2014.

August 2014 - Philippe de Montebello, director emeritus, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Fiske Kimball Professor, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and Martin Gayford, London critic for Artinfo and author of Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud and David Hockney: A Bigger Message. Introducing their unique and very personal new book, Rendez-vous with Art, Philippe de Montebello, past and longest-serving director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and author and art critic Martin Gayford explored what it feels like to experience pictures and sculptures in museums, galleries, and churches around the world. They offered their opinions and insightful reflections about outstanding collections and individual works of art, including those by Giotto, Poussin, Velázquez, Rubens, Titian, Vermeer, and Fragonard. Throughout their conversation, recorded on October 7, 2014, at the National Gallery of Art, Gayford and de Montebello addressed the modern challenges of seeing art: What makes up an art collection? How are works of art classified? How is art displayed, and how does that affect our perception and understanding of it?

October 2014 - Karen Thorsen and Douglas Dempsey. Karen Thorsen, director of James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket, and cowriter Douglas Dempsey discuss the making of their award-winning documentary, the challenges of restoring the original 16 mm film elements, and the necessity of ensuring access to this powerful film during the digital age. Produced in association with Maysles Films and PBS/American Masters, The Price of the Ticket premiered in 1990 at Sundance and went on to win numerous awards at home and abroad. An emotional portrait, a social critique, and a passionate plea for human equality, its extensive vérité footage allows Baldwin to tell his own story: exploring what it means to be born black, impoverished, gay, and gifted in a world that has yet to understand that "all men are brothers." "On-camera witnesses" include the late Maya Angelou (she reads passages from the author's writings), Amiri Baraka, David Leeming, Bobby Short, and William Styron. Now considered a documentary film classic, The Price of the Ticket has been restored with the help of the Ford Foundation, Maysles Documentary Center, National Endowment for the Arts, and Stan and Joanne Marder. This conversation and the world premiere of the film's restoration took place on October 12, 2014, at the National Gallery of Art. This program was supported by Dr. Darryl Atwell and Dr. Renicha McCree to honor the 90th anniversary of the birth of James Baldwin (1924–1987), American essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, and activist.

October 2014 - Ksenya Gurshtein, National Gallery of Art; Luka Arsenjuk, school of languages, literatures, and culture, UMCP; Eric Zakim, Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, UMCP; and Mauro Resmini, department of modern culture and media, Brown University. Opened in the spring of 2014 with a screening of two important feature films: Dušan Makavejev's Innocence Unprotected (1968) and Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania by Jonas Mekas (1972). A panel discussion convened after the screenings, in conjunction with the symposium The Filmmaker's Voice: The Essay Film and the Circulation of Ideas, organized by the Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies, University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). Participants included series co-curator Ksenya Gurshtein, National Gallery of Art; Luka Arsenjuk, school of languages, literatures, and culture, UMCP; Eric Zakim, Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, UMCP; and Mauro Resmini, department of modern culture and media, Brown University.

October 2014 - Sandra Ramos, artist, and Michelle Bird, curatorial assistant, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art. In this conversation, which took place on June 21, 2011 as part of the works-in-progress series at the National Gallery of Art, Havana-based artist Sandra Ramos describes her use of various media to explore issues related to the recovery of both individual and collective memory. Blending memorabilia from past events—real and imagined, personal and historical—the artist creates a phantasmagorical new world from the "ruins of a utopia." In this world, forbidden topics such as migration, racism, and the political manipulation of history become the quotidian subjects of her art. The main protagonist is a character who fuses her own self-image with that of a print of a 19th-century Dutch princess. Evoking a postmodern Alice in Wonderland, she navigates through the complexities of life on the island. Floating somewhere between the foreground and background, her figure is not fully integrated with her surroundings but exists in the intervening space of her environment and circumstance. As a result, Ramos's art extends beyond the autobiographical to bear the weight and vulnerability of the island and its people.

October 2014 - Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art.Captain Linnaeus Tripe was a British photographer best known for the outstanding body of work he produced in India and Burma (now Myanmar) in the 1850s. Under the auspices of the East India Company, he took many photographs of archaeological sites and monuments, ancient and contemporary religious and secular buildings, as well as geological formations and landscape vistas that had not been seen before in the West. His military training gave his work a striking aesthetic and formal rigor and helped him achieve remarkably consistent results, despite the challenges that India's heat and humidity posed to photographic chemistry. In this lecture recorded on September 28, 2014, curator Sarah Greenough discusses the 60 works that comprise the first major exhibition of his photographs, Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852–1860, on view from September 21, 2014 to January 2, 2015 at the National Gallery of Art.

October 2014 - Carolyn Forché, poet and professor of English and director of the Lannan Center, Georgetown University; E. Ethelbert Miller, poet, literary activist, and director, African American Resource Center, Howard University. On September 11, 2014, for the first lecture program in National Gallery of Art history to be held in the East Building Atrium, celebrated poets Carolyn Forché and E. Ethelbert Miller shared their personal reflections on the legacy of James Baldwin (1924–1987). This program was supported by Dr. Darryl Atwell and Dr. Renicha McCree to honor what would have been the 90th birthday of Baldwin—American essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, and activist. Archival video footage of Baldwin discussing "The Negro and the American Promise" and "The Artist's Struggle for Integrity" provided the starting point for Miller's and Forché's presentations, respectively. For these poets, Baldwin's words serve as a guide for understanding one's world in a larger social context: "You can only take if you are prepared to give, and giving is not an investment. It is not a day at the bargain counter. It is a total risk of everything, of you and who you think you are, who you think you'd like to be, where you think you'd like to go—everything, and this forever, forever…"

September 2014 - Ed Grazda, photographer. Panel discussion follows with co-curators of the exhibition Sarah Greenough, curator of photographs, National Gallery of Art, and Philip Brookman, curator of photography and media arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art. On October 15, 1994, the National Gallery of Art hosted a public symposium in honor of its first exhibition devoted to a living photographer: Robert Frank: Moving Out. The exhibition was drawn largely from the Robert Frank Collection given by the artist to the Gallery in 1990. Including 157 photographs, a book, and 2 videos, the show featured Frank's early work in Switzerland, as well as images from his travels in Peru, France, Spain, England, and the United States. Robert Delpire, Allen Ginsberg, Jonas Mekas, and Ed Grazda, Frank's close friends who influenced his life and career, participated in this symposium. Robert Frank: Moving Out was on view at the National Gallery of Art from October 2 through December 3, 1994.

August 2014 - Ursula von Rydingsvard, artist. The artist, née Ursula Karoliszyn, was born in 1942 in Deensen, a small German town where her Polish-speaking Ukrainian father was conscripted by the Nazis to work the land during World War II. The family remained there until the end of the war, and then moved through nine camps for displaced persons in five years. After immigrating to the United States at age eight, von Rydingsvard and her family carved out a new life for themselves. She earned an MFA from Columbia University in 1975, and emerged from her studies focused on the cedar 4 × 4 beams that would define her sculptural practice. Although her work is abstract, the artist has acknowledged a strong correlation to the human figure. This link is most visible in her vertically oriented conical works, exemplified by Five Cones (1990–1992), which was donated to the National Gallery of Art by Sherry and Joel Mallin in 2011. The gridlike format and the organic flow of von Rydingsvard's materials give Five Cones its structural and visual tensions. It is this juxtaposition—the artist's physical aggression toward her material together with the considerable refinement of form—that gives strength to von Rydingsvard's work. In honor of the installation of Five Cones in the East Building Atrium, von Rydingsvard discussed the sculpture within the context of her career in this lecture recorded on September 21, 2014.

September 2014 - Jonas Mekas, filmmaker and founder, Anthology Film Archives. On October 15, 1994, the National Gallery of Art hosted a public symposium in honor of its first exhibition devoted to a living photographer: Robert Frank: Moving Out. The exhibition was drawn largely from the Robert Frank Collection given by the artist to the Gallery in 1990. Including 157 photographs, a book, and 2 videos, the show featured Frank's early work in Switzerland, as well as images from his travels in Peru, France, Spain, England, and the United States. Robert Delpire, Allen Ginsberg, Jonas Mekas, and Ed Grazda, Frank's close friends who influenced his life and career, participated in this symposium. Robert Frank: Moving Out was on view at the National Gallery of Art from October 2 through December 3, 1994.

September 2014 - Robert Delpire, publisher and director, Centre Nationale de la Photographie, Paris. On October 15, 1994, the National Gallery of Art hosted a public symposium in honor of its first exhibition devoted to a living photographer: Robert Frank: Moving Out. The exhibition was drawn largely from the Robert Frank Collection given by the artist to the Gallery in 1990. Including 157 photographs, a book, and 2 videos, the show featured Frank's early work in Switzerland, as well as images from his travels in Peru, France, Spain, England, and the United States. Robert Delpire, Allen Ginsberg, Jonas Mekas, and Ed Grazda, Frank's close friends who influenced his life and career, participated in this symposium. Robert Frank: Moving Out was on view at the National Gallery of Art from October 2 through December 3, 1994.

September 2014 - Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), poet. On October 15, 1994, the National Gallery of Art hosted a public symposium in honor of its first exhibition devoted to a living photographer: Robert Frank: Moving Out. The exhibition was drawn largely from the Robert Frank Collection given by the artist to the Gallery in 1990. Including 157 photographs, a book, and 2 videos, the show featured Frank's early work in Switzerland, as well as images from his travels in Peru, France, Spain, England, and the United States. Robert Delpire, Allen Ginsberg, Jonas Mekas, and Ed Grazda, Frank's close friends who influenced his life and career, participated in this symposium. Robert Frank: Moving Out was on view at the National Gallery of Art from October 2 through December 3, 1994.

August 2014 - Photographers Ray Metzker, Emmet Gowin, and Jim Dow with Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art. Photography was not invented until the mid-19th century, and the process was not widely taught as an art form until World War II. In 1946 famed Bauhaus photographer and painter László Moholy-Nagy recruited Harry Callahan to teach at the Institute of Design he had established in Chicago. One of the most important schools of photography in 20th-century America, the institute championed such qualities as serendipity and experimentation, setting new standards for the medium and attracting students who would become some of the nation's finest photographers. While reflecting on his time as a professor, Callahan said, "teaching taught me how little I knew and it forced me to think; I had to teach to get an education." In this program recorded on March 23, 1996, at the National Gallery of Art, Callahan's students Ray Metzker, Emmet Gowin, and Jim Dow—all photographers in their own right—recount experiences of their friend and mentor. This program was held in celebration of the exhibition Harry Callahan, on view from March 3 to May 22, 1996, at the National Gallery of Art.

August 2014 - Elizabeth Cropper, dean, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art. Ten years after completing his work The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, Bolognese painter Domenichino Zampieri was accused by his rival Giovanni Lanfranco of stealing the idea for the painting from an altarpiece crafted by Lanfranco's teacher, Agostino Carracci. The resulting scandal reverberated through the centuries, drawing responses by artists and critics from Poussin and Malvasia to Fuseli and Delacroix. Why was Domenichino attacked in this way when other related paintings—including Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin and Perugino's painting of the same subject—aroused no such negative response? In this lecture recorded on December 11, 2005 at the National Gallery of Art, Elizabeth Cropper presents her latest book, which investigates the Domenichino affair and addresses the perennial debate regarding the precise nature of originality and imitation. Cropper offers a detailed analysis of attitudes toward imitation, emulation, and plagiarism, and a fascinating discussion of what Domenichino's plight signifies in art history.

August 2014 - Franklin Kelly, senior curator of American and British paintings, National Gallery of Art. On view from July 3, 2005 through February 26, 2006, Winslow Homer in the National Gallery of Art presented a survey of 53 paintings, watercolors, drawings, etchings, and wood engravings by American artist Winslow Homer (1836-1910) in the Gallery's collection. The exhibition spanned Homer's entire career, from his early Civil War painting Home Sweet Home (c. 1863) to late watercolors of tropical landscapes and his hunting scene Right and Left (1909), completed less than 2 years before his death. In this lecture recorded on January 8, 2006, Franklin Kelly describes the importance of the Maine coast in Homer's life and art. Homer spent his last 27 years living and working in a small, rugged spot called Prouts Neck, located on the Atlantic coast in southern Maine. Through works featured in the exhibition and archival photographs, Kelly illustrates how the Maine coast was an inspiring source of material to Homer throughout his career.