National Gallery of Art | Audio

Julia Robinson, associate professor, department of art history, New York University Accounts of postwar art have, until now, positioned Virginia Dwan as a figure of the late 1960s, focusing on her New York gallery (through 1971) and her extramural projects thereafter. But this slant tends to leave Dwan’s carte blanche leadership unexplained, offering no sense of it as something achieved after a lengthy honing of instincts, or as a process that began well before her East Coast chapter. What Dwan offered to her artists, the celebrated attitude of latitude, the many manifestations of so-called negative space, did not come from nowhere, not exactly. For the public symposium held on November 19, 2016, in conjunction with the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959 – 1971 at the National Gallery of Art, Julia Robinson argues that the challenges of late ’50s Los Angeles—far from the international art world—galvanized Dwan Gallery’s founding years and its outré stance. Learning from scratch, Dwan took on an international stable of artists and mounted a decade of remarkable exhibitions. Perhaps not coincidentally, this happened in alignment (geographically and chronologically) with the founding of Artforum. As Dwan’s striking show announcements appeared in its pages, that magazine assumed the leading role in the critical reception of advanced contemporary art. Although both entities would change coasts within a few short years, the West proved a robust testing ground: the ultimate anteroom, not only to New York, but to the vast, heretofore unfathomable “venues” certain artists had resolutely in their sights. Describing this underexplored trajectory, Robinson considers how Dwan transformed brute LA givens—space, latitude, and attitude—into farsighted aspirations.

Harry Cooper, curator and head, department of modern art, National Gallery of Art. As one of the most important American modernists, Stuart Davis (1892–1964) blurred distinctions between text and image, high and low art, and abstraction and figuration, crafting a distinct style that continues to influence art being made today. Featuring some 100 of his most important, visually complex, jazz-inspired compositions, Stuart Davis: In Full Swing takes a critical approach to the development of Davis’s art and theory, paying special attention to his transformative recycling of earlier works. On November 20, 2016, Harry Cooper introduces the exhibition in celebration of its opening at the National Gallery of Art, where it remains on view through March 5, 2017.

Justin Wolff, associate professor of art history, University of Maine In November 1937 Life magazine featured four lithographs by the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) in the article “Four Ways in Which the World May End.” In this lecture from the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held at the National Gallery of Art on October 22, 2016, Justin Wolff analyzes the so-called “End of the World” lithographs, part of the National Gallery of Art collection, in the context of scientific theories about cosmic cataclysm, suspicions that European fascism portended an apocalypse, and Kent’s solidarity with a radical leftism that anticipated capitalism’s disintegration. Wolff considers looking beyond their political meaning to what the lithographs tell us about Kent’s renowned emotional intensity and wanderlust—specifically, what they reveal about his tenacious quest to acquire psychic integrity in barren lands at the ends of the world. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Pamela M. Lee, Osgood Hooker Professorship in Fine Arts, Stanford University. In 1969 Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson collaborated on their first video together, East Coast, West Coast. Clocking in at twenty-two minutes, the video featured the two artists playing the roles of East Coast intellectual and West Coast hippy respectively, trading perspectives on art and life as a series of bicoastal clichés. Virginia Dwan, Smithson’s most important patron, occupied a singular position relative to the art scenes of Los Angeles and New York. For the public symposium keynote address given on November 18, 2016, in conjunction with the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959 – 1971 at the National Gallery of Art, Pamela M. Lee revisits the history of the Dwan Gallery as a negotiator of two distinct but converging art cultures and the formative role Virginia Dwan played in bringing them closer together.

Randall Griffey, associate curator, department of modern and contemporary art, Metropolitan Museum of Art. American painter Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) entered the modernist canon as a result of the abstract paintings he created in Germany in 1914-1915. But the paintings he created of his home state of Maine late in his career beginning in 1937 brought him his greatest acclaim during his lifetime. In fact, Hartley began his career in 1909 at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery as a painter of Maine. Previewing a major exhibition to open in March 2017 at the Met Breuer and in July 2017 at the Colby College Museum of Art, Randall Griffey illuminates the painter’s dynamic, rich, and occasionally contradictory artistic engagement with his native Maine. Maine was to Hartley a springboard to imagination and creative inspiration, a locus of memory and longing, a refuge, and a means of communion with previous artists who painted there, especially Winslow Homer. Speaking at the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held on October 22, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Griffey showcases Hartley’s impressive range, from early post-impressionist interpretations of seasonal change in the region to late, folk-inspired depictions of Mount Katahdin, the state’s great geological landmark. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Rachael Z. DeLue, associate professor, department of art and archaeology, Princeton University. The modern American artist Arthur Dove (1880–1946) drew inspiration from the natural world when making his paintings and assemblages, but he also played around with found objects, popular music, sound technology, aviation, farm animals, meteorology, language, and script, including his own signature. The circle motifs that appear persistently across Dove’s art serve to signify and connect these disparate things, creating a vital and unique form of abstraction, one resolutely if paradoxically bound to objective reality and material existence. As Dove himself said, “there is no such thing as abstraction,” preferring the term “extraction” to describe the essential relationship between his work and the world. Speaking at the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held on October 22, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Rachael Z. DeLue discusses some of the chief characteristics of Dove’s extractions, focusing on examples from the Gallery’s collection. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Jennifer Raab, assistant professor, department of the history of art, Yale University. What does it mean to see a work of art “in detail”? Speaking at the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held on October 22, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Jennifer Raab considers broader questions of detail, vision, and knowledge in 19th-century America by looking at a few of Frederic Church’s most famous landscape paintings. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Jane Kamensky, professor of history and Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Looking through the eyes of John Singleton Copley, Jane Kamensky reveals an unknown American Revolution. In this lecture held on October 30, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Kamensky draws from her new book on Copley and his world to untangle the web of principles and interests that shaped the age of America’s founding. Copley’s prodigious talent earned him the patronage of Boston’s patriot leaders, including Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. But the artist did not share their politics, and painting portraits failed to satisfy his lofty artistic goals. When resistance escalated into all-out war, Copley was in London. The magisterial canvases he created there—several of which are now in the National Gallery of Art collection—made him one of the towering figures of the British art scene: a painter of America’s Revolution as Britain’s American War. This program is coordinated with and supported by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Wendy Bellion, associate professor, department of art history, University of Delaware. Trompe l’oeil art challenges viewers to make perceptual distinctions between things that look extraordinarily similar. It stages lessons in perception, imitation, and deception while piquing our delight in the pleasures of wit. Drawing upon the National Gallery of Art’s important collection of American still life painting, Wendy Bellion explores the serious fun of illusion in a lecture from the inaugural John Wilmerding Sympsoium on American Art, held at the National Gallery of Art on October 22, 2016. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Molly Donovan, associate curator, department of modern art, National Gallery of Art. A focus installation on the work of American artist Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) will reopen the East Building Tower Gallery after the space's nearly three years of renovation. Inspired by the Gallery's recent acquisition of Kruger's Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything) (1987/2014), the exhibition comprises related images of figures in profile over which Kruger has superimposed her striking figures of speech. The distinctive direct address of Kruger's texts (using active verbs and personal pronouns) contrasts with her selected images of passive figures to create arresting conceptual works of great visual power. In this lecture held on October 23, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Molly Donovan introduces the exhibition In the Tower: Barbara Kruger, on view through January 22, 2017.

Mark D. Mitchell, Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, Yale University Art Gallery. The genre of still life has enjoyed unexpected power in America’s artistic tradition. Its periodic resurgence provides distinct perspective on the nation’s cultural development hewn to individual experience. Speaking at the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held on October 22, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Mark D. Mitchell offers a new look at still life, its meaning in America, and its potential for future study. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Peter Humfrey, emeritus professor of art history, University of St. Andrews. In this lecture recorded on October 12, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Peter Humfrey surveys the reception of Venetian artist Paolo Veronese in Britain from the early years of the 17th century, when his paintings first began to arrive there, until the end of the 19th century, when some of the finest examples in British private collections began to be exported to the United States. Humfrey focuses on the changing attitudes toward the artist over three centuries, particularly as reflected in the history of collecting. He also considers the pronouncements of critics such as Sir Joshua Reynolds and John Ruskin, and the possible influence of Veronese on English painters.

Thomas Struth, artist, in conversation with Philip Brookman, consulting curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art, and Andrea Nelson, associate curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art. Thomas Struth was born in Geldern, Germany, in 1954. He first studied painting with Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf before turning to photography in 1976 and becoming one of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s earliest students. In the late 1970s he began to make a series of black-and-white photographs of empty urban environments that established his international reputation. In the late 1980s he conceived another series, the Museum Photographs, where he photographed in some of the world’s most celebrated museums. These large color pictures, often depicting crowds of people, explore the different functions that art fulfills in our modern, secularized world and the ways in which people experience paintings today, including the notion of the museum as a sacred pilgrimage site. As his interest in the idea of worship and pilgrimage expanded, Struth launched a series titled Places of Worship in 1995. In his Family Portraits series, which includes photographs of Struth’s friends as well as of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, all the works are infused with a sense of the forces that inform his subjects’ lives. As he has done throughout his career, Struth exploits the gap between what was planned and what actually transpired—something that is fundamental to the art of photography. Struth has eight prints on view in the exhibition Photography Reinvented: The Collection of Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker at the National Gallery of Art through March 5, 2017, including several from his Museum Photographs, Places of Worship, and Family Portraits. On October 16, 2016, in conjunction with the exhibition and as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series, Thomas Struth discusses his career and traveling exhibition Nature and Politics.

Paige Rozanski, curatorial assistant, department of modern art, National Gallery of Art. In this lecture held on September 26, 2016, as part of the Works in Progress series at the National Gallery of Art, Paige Rozanski sheds light on the discoveries she made during her research at the Dwan Gallery Archives and the Virginia Dwan Archives in preparation for the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959–1971. Rozanski underscores the integral role this material played in planning the exhibition, illustrates how the archives contributed to scholarship, and outlines her approach to writing the chronology and exhibition history published in the exhibition catalog.

Virginia Dwan, collector, and James Meyer, deputy director and chief curator, Dia Art Foundation. The remarkable career of gallerist and patron Virginia Dwan is featured front and center for the first time in an exhibition of some 100 works, including highlights from Dwan's promised gift of her extraordinary personal collection to the National Gallery of Art. Founded by Dwan in a storefront in Los Angeles in 1959, Dwan's West Coast enterprise was a leading avant-garde space in the early 1960s, presenting works by abstract expressionists, neo-dadaists, pop artists, and nouveaux réalistes. In 1965, Dwan established a gallery in New York where she presented groundbreaking exhibitions of such new tendencies as minimalism, conceptual art, and land. The exhibition traces Dwan's activities and the emergence of an avant-garde gallery in an age of mobility, when air travel and the interstate highway system linked the two coasts and transformed the making of art and the sites of its exhibition. On September 27, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Virginia Dwan and James Meyer join in conversation to celebrate the opening week of the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959–1971, on view from September 30, 2016, through January 29, 2017.