National Gallery of Art | Audio

Michelle Facini, paper conservator, National Gallery of Art. The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L. showcases 17 serial projects created over the past five decades by many prominent artists in collaboration with the renowned Los Angeles print workshop and publisher Gemini G.E.L. The exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of Gemini, and is on view from October 4, 2015 to February 7, 2016. In this talk recorded on September 22, 2015, the conservation division invites you behind the scenes with paper conservator Michelle Facini for a glimpse into the fascinating world of art conservation and its role in this exhibition. Technically challenging and bold in scale, the majority of artworks selected for this exhibition are oversized, requiring many hours of coordination among staff members specializing in this type of collections care. Facini discusses the treatment of Michael Heizer’s Scrap Metal Drypoint #6 and the technical challenges of bathing a work of art on paper that is 7 feet long!

Mary Morton, curator and head, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art; Joseph J. Rishel, The Gisela and Dennis Alter Senior Curator of European Painting before 1900 and Senior Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum; Jennifer A. Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum. Two concurrent impressionist exhibitions, Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting (Philadelphia Museum of Art, June 24-September 13, 2015) and Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye (National Gallery of Art, June 28-October 4, 2015), raise a provocative art-historical issue: what role do dealers and the art market play in formulating artistic values. The hard-won success of impressionist painters depended on the support and encouragement of Paul Durand-Ruel in the 1870s and 1880s. His efforts established a core group identified with the movement, which would become a canon in 20th-century art-historical accounts. Although Caillebotte was one of the leaders of the impressionist movement, he was left out of this canon until recently. In this panel discussion recorded on September 10, 2015, at the National Gallery of Art, exhibition curators Mary Morton, Joseph J. Rishel, and Jennifer A. Thompson explore this omission and the factors that contributed to it.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., curator of northern baroque paintings, National Gallery of Art. In this lecture recorded on September 20, 2015, to honor the exhibition Pleasure and Piety: The Art of Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638), Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. presents the artist as a master storyteller, virtuoso draftsman, and brilliant colorist. Born and raised in Utrecht, one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands, Wtewael embraced the popular international style known as mannerism, characterized by extreme refinement, artifice, and elegant distortion. He remained one of the leading proponents of this style, even as most early seventeenth-century Dutch artists shifted to a more naturalistic manner of painting. Wtewael’s inventive compositions, teeming with twisting, choreographed figures and saturated with pastels and acidic colors, retained their appeal for his patrons. Wtewael depicted risqué mythological scenes and moralizing biblical stories with equal ease. Yet his strong adherence to a mannerist style would also lead to the eventual decline of his reputation. On view from June 28 through October 4, 2015, and featuring 37 paintings and 11 drawings, the exhibition sheds light on Wtewael’s artistic excellence and allows him to reclaim his rightful place among the great masters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Deborah Luster, artist. In 1990, the National Gallery of Art launched an initiative to acquire the finest examples of the art of photography and to mount photography exhibitions of the highest quality, accompanied by scholarly publications and programs. In the years since, the Gallery’s collection of photographs has grown to nearly 15,000 works encompassing the history of the medium, from its beginnings in 1839 to the present, featuring in-depth holdings of work by many masters of the art form. Commemorating the 25th anniversary of this initiative, the Gallery presents the exhibition The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund. On view from May 3 through September 13, 2015, The Memory of Time explores the work of 26 contemporary artists who investigate the richness and complexity of photography’s relationship to time, memory, and history. For more than 20 years, artist Deborah Luster has been engaged in an ongoing investigation of violence and its consequences. In this lecture held on the exhibition’s closing day, Luster discusses the evolution of her work from One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana and Tooth for an Eye: A Chorography of Violence in Orleans Parish, as well as her current project at Louisiana’s Angola Prison.

Jennifer Reeves, featured artist. Filmmaker Jennifer Reeves visited the National Gallery of Art on May 30, 2015, to introduce her film The Time We Killed (2004), a feature-length, experimental narrative that delves inside the mind of an agoraphobic writer unable to leave her New York apartment in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. In this talk, Reeves discusses her approaches to filmmaking and the specific ways in which this feature addresses themes of memory, mental health and recovery, feminism, sexuality, and politics.

Carrie Mae Weems, artist. For more than 30 years Carrie Mae Weems has made provocative, socially motivated art that examines issues of race, gender, and class inequality. Often producing serial or installation pieces, her conceptually layered work employs a variety of materials including photographs, text, fabric, sound, digital images, and most recently, video. By referencing past traditions—often through storytelling—Weems sheds light on those who have been left out of the historical record, aspiring to create a more multidimensional picture of the human condition. For the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series at the National Gallery of Art, Weems discusses her career and artistic process on September 12, 2015. Her work is represented in the Gallery’s collection by the chromogenic prints After Manet (2002) and May Flowers (2002), as well as Slow Fade to Black II (2010), a group of 17 inkjet prints. All are on view in the exhibition The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund through September 13, 2015.

Charles Ritchie, assistant curator, department of modern prints and drawings, National Gallery of Art. Established in 1966, Gemini G.E.L. is an artists' workshop and publisher of limited edition prints and sculptures. Known for a willingness to embrace new technology and tackle complex projects, Gemini G.E.L. has attracted some of the most innovative artists of our time. The National Gallery of Art has been home to the Gemini G.E.L. Archive since 1981. The archive is intended to include an example of nearly every edition ever published by Gemini G.E.L., as well as selected proof impressions, working materials, and documents. The first exhibitions of the archive organized by the Gallery were Gemini G.E.L.: Art and Collaboration (November 18, 1984-February 24, 1985) and Gemini G.E.L.: Recent Prints and Sculpture (June 5-October 2, 1994). In this lecture recorded on September 18, 1994, exhibition curator Charles Ritchie explores the milestones among the work produced in the previous decade by 24 artists. Gemini G.E.L.: Recent Prints and Sculpture focuses on the workshop’s sensitivity to the pulse of contemporary art and its uncanny ability to reflect the spectrum of modern concerns.

Faya Causey, head of academic programs, National Gallery of Art. Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was perhaps more knowledgeable about the ancient world—its art, history, languages, and literature—than any other late nineteenth-century painter was. His understanding of the antiquity of Provence, where he lived most of his life in contact with its storied places and their layered histories, was particularly deep, encompassing its geological formation and millennia of inhabitation from the Paleolithic to the Roman period. In this lecture recorded on August 2, 2015, at the National Gallery of Art, Faya Causey traces Cézanne’s involvement with this world, from his own experiences in Aix and its environs to his decades-long study of classical art, architecture, and literature at Collège Bourbon; at the free drawing school attached to the Musée d'Aix (now the Musée Granet), and at the Musée du Louvre.

Miguel Falomir, jefe del Departamento de Pintura Italiana y Francesa del Museo del Prado, y Félix Monguilot Benzal, guía de la Galería Borghese de Roma y becario Kress Interpretive (2012-2013) en la National Gallery of Art. El 9 de noviembre de 2014 Miguel Falomir ofreció la conferencia anual Sydney J. Freedberg sobre arte italiano titulada Venecia 1548: Tiziano contemplando “El milagro del esclavo” de Tintoreto. En diciembre de 1547, cuando Tiziano abandona Venecia y viaja a Augsburgo para reunirse con la corte imperial, era sin duda el pintor más importante de la escena artística veneciana. Cuando regresó un año más tarde, encontró la ciudad enamorada del talento de Jacopo Tintoretto, un pintor casi 30 años más joven que él. El milagro del esclavo de Tintoretto, pintado por la Scuola Grande di San Marco, recibía alabanzas unánimes por parte del entusiasta público veneciano, incluidos los miembros más cercanos del círculo personal de Tiziano. En esta entrevista entre Miguel Falomir y Félix Monguilot Benzal, grabada en español nada más finalizar la conferencia Freedberg, los expertos debatieron en profundidad acerca de cómo Tintoretto se aprovechó de la ausencia de Tiziano para asombrar al público veneciano con su trabajo. Con El milagro del esclavo Tintoretto propuso un nuevo ideal estético que combinaba los talentos de Miguel Ángel y del propio Tiziano, quien, en respuesta, se vio obligado a evolucionar estéticamente.

Sarah Kennel, associate curator, department of photography, National Gallery of Art. In this lecture, delivered on June 29, 2015 as part of the Works in Progress series, Sarah Kennel explores one of the most curious landmarks in the history of photography, Duchenne de Boulogne’s 1862 publication Mechanism of Human Facial Expression, a copy of which the National Gallery of Art acquired in early 2015. A pioneering neurologist, Duchenne de Boulogne began experimenting in the 1830s with the application of electricity to stimulate facial muscles in order to invoke a wide range of expressions—or, as he put it, “to speak the language of the emotions.” He then recorded these artificially induced expressions through photographs. By harnessing two relatively new technologies, applied electricity and photography, Duchenne brought scientific rigor to a field of study that had previously relied on the imperfect observations of the eye and notations of the hand. Shaped by emerging conventions of photographic portraiture and shifting ideas about theatricality, realism, and mimesis, Duchenne’s photographs complicate as much as clarify the supposed transparency between the expressive surface of the face and the interior world of its bearer. As such, they raise provocative questions about the relationship between photography as an instrument of knowledge and the visual culture of both theater and medicine in the 19th century.

John Delaney, senior imaging scientist, scientific research department, National Gallery of Art; Yuriko Jackall, assistant curator, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art; and Michael Swicklik, senior paintings conservator, National Gallery of Art. Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Young Girl Reading (c. 1770) is one of the most beloved works at the National Gallery of Art for its rapid brushwork, bold use of color, and delightful subject matter. New research conducted at the Gallery has shed an entirely different light on this painting, revealing an original figure that is clearly related to a series of 18 so-called “fantasy figures” by Fragonard—rapidly painted, similarly colored compositions of identical dimensions. In this lecture, delivered on June 15, 2015, as part of the Works in Progress series, John Delaney, Yuriko Jackall, and Michael Swicklik share ongoing technical and art-historical research on Young Girl Reading and its associated works.

Mary Morton, curator and head of the department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art. Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894) was among the most critically noted impressionist artists during the height of their activity in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The exhibition Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye, on view at the National Gallery of Art from June 28 through October 4, 2015, brings together some 55 of his most successful paintings, primarily from the brief period—1875 to 1882—when he was fully engaged with the impressionist movement. In this opening-day lecture, Mary Morton explores the provocative character and complexity of Caillebotte's contributions—which range from spectacular images of the new public spaces designed by Baron Haussmann to visual meditations on leisure-time activities in and around Paris.

Kimberly Schenck, Head of Paper Conservation, National Gallery of Art. This first comprehensive exhibition to examine the history of metalpoint—the art of drawing with a metal stylus on a specially prepared ground—premiered at the National Gallery of Art from May 3 through July 26, 2015. With some 90 drawings from the Middle Ages to the present, Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns featured works from the collections of the British Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and other major museums in the United States and Europe. In this lecture recorded on May 18, 2015, as a part of the Works in Progress series, exhibition conservator Kimberly Schenck explores the varied materials and techniques of metalpoint and offers a glimpse into why these drawings look the way they do. Although discussions of metalpoint often focus on the metal used in the drawing process, the characteristics of other components, such as the paper support and the ground or coating, also play important roles.

Sally Mann, artist. In this presentation recorded on June 21, 2015, at the National Gallery of Art, acclaimed photographer Sally Mann reads from her revealing memoir and family history, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs. In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are described as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder." Mann crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel, but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.

Sarah Cash, consulting curator, department of American and British paintings, National Gallery of Art, and former Bechhoefer Curator of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art. Richard Norris Brooke enjoyed a long and successful artistic career in Washington, DC. Active in almost every local arts organization, the painter served as vice principal of the Corcoran School of Art from 1902 to 1918. Of the numerous paintings by Brooke that represent African American life in rural northern Virginia, A Pastoral Visit (1881) is the most celebrated. Purchased by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1881 and now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, the work depicts an elderly minister seated at a table with a family of parishioners. The artist portrayed the figures in this large canvas with a degree of humanity and dignity rare in 19th-century images of African Americans, which Brooke criticized as "works of flimsy treatment and vulgar exaggeration." He grouped the highly individualized figures as a tight domestic unit engaged in a cultural activity important to white and black families alike. In this lecture, delivered on May 14, 2015 as part of the Works in Progress series, Sarah Cash examines this fascinating genre scene in detail, revealing new discoveries and ongoing research about where and when it was painted in Warrenton, Virginia.