National Gallery of Art-What's New

Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series

Brice Marden on Art
November 22 at 2:00 p.m.
East Building Concourse, Auditorium

Brice Marden, artist, in conversation with Harry Cooper, curator and head of the department of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery of Art

Book signing of The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works and Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retrospective follows.

NGA on Facebook

The National Gallery of Art is now on Facebook. Become a fan and learn about upcoming events and exhibitions. Our page includes photo albums of exhibition objects and installation views and videos of exhibition press highlights, with more to come. Frequent announcements about lectures, films, exhibition openings, and concerts keep visitors informed of the Gallery's many activities.

New Video Podcast
The Darker Side of Light

Late 19th-century art is often identified with airy and colorful impressionist paintings and the radiant atmosphere of Paris. But in the shadowy recesses, an art of a very different kind thrived. Prints, drawings, and small sculpture from the period present an alternative vision in depictions of the inner worlds of emotions, anxieties, and fantasies. Mainly stored away rather than openly displayed by their owners, the works in this exhibition appealed to artists and audiences devoted to a private aesthetic experience. In this new video podcast, Peter Parshall, the Gallery's curator of old master prints, talks about the works in the exhibition and their subtle and complex depictions of human psychology decades before the publication of Sigmund Freud's theories on the unconscious.

New Video Podcast
Arshile Gorky: Ararat (Excerpts)

Years after campaigns against minority Armenians in Turkey caused his family to disperse and his mother to die before his eyes, Gorky found a 1912 photograph taken in the city of Van upon which he based drawings and paintings entitled The Artist and His Mother. The video Ararat (Excerpts) investigates the fraught history of Gorky's lost childhood through his protracted work on the image of himself at age 12, standing beside his mother Shushan. Derived from the feature-length film Ararat written and directed by Academy Award®-nominated director Atom Egoyan.

Hi-Res | Lo-Res | iTunes | RSS (7:02 mins.)

Robert Bergman: Portraits, 1986–1995
October 11, 2009–January 10, 2010
West Building, Ground Floor

For more than 40 years, Robert Bergman (b. 1944) has traveled the streets and back alleys of the United States, photographing the people and scenes he encounters. Beginning in the 1960s, he, like so many other so-called street photographers of that generation, used a 35mm camera to make black-and-white photographs. In the 1980s Bergman began to work in color. Using no special lighting or equipment, he made a series of monumental portraits of the people he met. The exhibition will present 33 of these compelling portraits from a recent gift to the Gallery of more than 90 photographs by Bergman, most of which have never before been exhibited.

Editions with Additions: Working Proofs by Jasper Johns
October 11, 2009–April 4, 2010
East Building, Ground Level

The exhibition includes approximately 45 proofs for lithographs, etchings, and screenprints that the artist expanded in a range of media, including pastel, ink, and paint. The works of art are installed in two galleries. The first features works from the 1960s and 1970s, highlighting motifs associated with Johns' art throughout his career, such as the alphabet, targets, and body parts. The second gallery introduces complex compositions from the 1980s and 1990s, among them autobiographical references such as family photographs and art objects owned by the artist. The works are selected from a collection of approximately 1,700 proofs for Johns' prints that he has maintained and carefully annotated over four decades. This extraordinary body of work is being acquired by the National Gallery of Art for its permanent collection.

Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500-1800
October 1, 2009–January 31, 2010
West Building, Ground Floor, West Outer Tier

The Gallery's outstanding collection of French old master drawings represents in remarkable richness and breadth the history of French draftsmanship before 1800. Individual works have been included in exhibitions at the Gallery and elsewhere, but the heart of the collection as a whole, now augmented with numerous important recent acquisitions, has never been showcased in a special exhibition. For the first time the Gallery will present a selection of approximately 120 of the most significant, beautiful, and representative drawings made over a period of three centuries by the best French artists working at home and abroad and by foreign artists working in France. Among the key artists are Jean Poyet, Benvenuto Cellini, Jacques Callot, Claude Lorrain, Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Jacques-Louis David. Outstanding examples will also be presented by other gifted but less widely known artists such as Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, Claude Deruet, Jean-Baptiste Pillement, and Jean-Baptiste Hüet. The exhibition will reveal in impressive fashion the strength and depth of the Gallery's collection, while also celebrating the singular originality, elegance, and spirit of French draftsmanship in general.

A comprehensive catalogue illustrating this selection of the Gallery's outstanding collection of French old master drawings will accompany the exhibition.

The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850–1900
October 1, 2009–January 18, 2010
West Building, Ground Floor, East Outer Tier

For much of today's public the art of the late 19th century connotes impressionism, an art of the open air and the café-concert, invoking the pleasure of the landscape and the city with its many entertainments. But there is another side to the story—the discreet world of individual collecting in which prints, drawings, and small sculpture were kept aside in portfolios or stored away in cabinets. Organized around the city centers of Paris, London, and Berlin, the exhibition will include more than 100 works—mainly prints, but also drawings, illustrated books, and small sculpture—from the Gallery's extensive collections that reveal the romantic sensibilities of the arts of privacy. Here the experience of art was a private affair, like taking a book down from the shelf for quiet enjoyment. The arts of privacy encouraged the expression of darker thoughts and moody reflections—a milieu that recruited the talents of academics, realists, impressionists, and symbolists.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an unprecedented catalogue on the study of the nature of the private aesthetic experience in 19th-century collecting.

The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works
October 1, 2009–May 2, 2010
East Building, Mezzanine and Upper Levels

Ten themes—Scrape, Concentricity, Line, Gesture, Art on Art, Drip, Stripe to Zip, Figure or Ground, Monochrome, and Picture the Frame—illuminate specific works across the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection. The resulting juxtapositions, often surprising and provocative, provide a new way to tell the story of postwar American art, and of a great collection. Through remarkable acuity, exhaustive study, and close relationships with the artists, the Meyerhoffs amassed one of the most outstanding collections of modern art, with an emphasis on six American masters: Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella, in addition to important works by leading abstract expressionists and younger artists. A number of the 10 themes concern the material process of creation, others address issues of form and composition, and still others extend past material and formal issues to broach the self-reflexive aspects of modernist painting. Some 126 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints include several acquisitions made after the collection was last highlighted in a major exhibition at the Gallery in 1996. All of the works in the exhibition have been donated or promised to the National Gallery of Art and continue to shape and greatly enhance the Gallery's modern and contemporary collection.

The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain
The Iconography of Power

The armor, paintings, and tapestries in the exhibition were made for the Spanish royal family—the nobles, kings, and Holy Roman Emperors who expanded Spain’s influence throughout Europe and the New World. These objects reveal the exquisite work of artists and craftsmen who served the Spanish ruling class from the 15th to the 18th century. In the intricate and finely wrought details on shields, portraits, and tapestries, something quite different is also revealed: an attempt to link the Spanish monarchy with the pieties of the Catholic Church, the power of the ancient Roman empire, and the cultural glories of ancient Greece. David Brown, curator of Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery of Art, describes this subtle advertising campaign waged by the Spanish throne to advance its goals and reputation.

Hi-Res | Lo-Res | iTunes | RSS (6:11 mins.)

The Art of Power:
Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain
Through November 29, 2009
West Building, Main Floor

This unprecedented exhibition, which explores how armor was used to cultivate the image of royal power in late 15th- to 18th-century Spain, highlights some 75 armors and paintings, in addition to magnificent tapestries and works on paper that depict armor worn in the courtly, chivalric context of parades, pageants, and jousting tournaments and occasionally, battles. Armor from the renowned Spanish Royal Armory in Madrid will be paired for the first time with portraits by masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Alonso Sánchez Coello, Anthony van Dyck, and Diego Velázquez depicting emperors and kings wearing the same armor.

Judith Leyster, 1609–1660
Through November 29, 2009
West Building, Main Floor, Gallery 50a

In celebration of Judith Leyster's (1609–1660) 400th birthday, the Gallery will showcase her expressive Self-Portrait (c. 1630) as the focal point of a small exhibition that will include 10 of Leyster's finest works from American and European collections. Leyster's oeuvre consists of a range of subjects, including genre scenes, portraits, and still lifes, that display her awareness of contemporary artistic styles and themes. The informality of her engaging paintings owes much to Frans Hals (c. 1582/1583–1666), with whom she may have studied, as well as to the Utrecht Caravaggisti. To complement Leyster's works, paintings by Hals and by Leyster's husband, Jan Miense Molenaer (1610–1668), will also be included.

The Beffi Triptych: Preserving Abruzzo's Cultural Heritage
West Building, Main Floor, Rotunda

The first work of art to be transported out of the region of Abruzzo, Italy, in the aftermath of a violent earthquake in April 2009, the Beffi Triptych is one of the most important works from the National Museum of Abruzzo in the city of L'Aquila. The Italian government has loaned the altarpiece for display at the National Gallery of Art until Labor Day in gratitude to the United States for being among the first to offer assistance to the region after the earthquake and as testimony to the Italian commitment to restore fully the cultural heritage of the region

Image: Recent Acquisitions: The Grega and Leo A. Daly III Fund for Architectural Books Recent Acquisitions: The Grega and Leo A. Daly III Fund for Architectural Books
Through November 15, 2009
West Building, Ground Floor, Gallery G21

After more than a century of the dominance of baroque architecture, architects and designers of the 18th and 19th centuries began to look to the past for new inspiration. The twin movements of the Gothic revival and Greek revival emerged in northern Europe and were quickly exported to the Americas and Australia. The Greek revival movement was spurred by a newfound access to Greece and its ancient monuments in the mid-18th century.

In the Tower: Philip Guston
Through January 3, 2010
East Building, Tower Gallery

An exhibition, on view February 1 through September 13, 2009, of work by American artist Philip Guston (1913–1980) launches a series of shows in the East Building Tower Gallery that will focus on developments in art since 1970. A video screened in the exhibition explores Guston's life and the inspiration for his work. The artist is also discussed by Barbara Tempchin and Harry Cooper, curator of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery of Art, in a Backstory podcast.

Comments on Your Visit

We would like to hear from you. Please tell us about your visit to the National Gallery of Art. If you would like a reply, please be sure to include your e-mail address.

Visitor Guides

Plan your visit to the National Gallery with these maps of must-see works.
(Download Acrobat Reader)

Less Than an Hour? West Building Highlights (PDF 153k)

Less Than an Hour? West Building Sculpture Highlights (PDF 160k)

East Building Highlights (PDF 360k)

Sculpture Garden (PDF 270k)

Family Guide: Dutch and French Paintings (PDF 316k)

Calendar of Events

Find out what's happening this month at the National Gallery of Art. To obtain a free bimonthly calendar of events by mail, call (202) 842-6662, or contact us by e-mail at calendar@nga.gov. The current bimonthly Calendar of Events is available in PDF format. (Download Acrobat Reader)

Film Calendar

To obtain a free quarterly film calendar by mail, contact us by e-mail at film-department@nga.gov. Please include your mailing address. The current quarterly Film Calendar is available in PDF format. (Download Acrobat Reader)

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	Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series Brice Marden on Art November 22 at 2:00 p.m. East Building Concourse, Auditorium Brice Marden, artist, in conversation with Harry Cooper, curator and head of the department of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery of Art Book signing of The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works and Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retrospective follows. NGA on Facebook The National Gallery of Art is now on Facebook. Become a fan and learn about upcoming events and exhibitions. Our page includes photo albums of exhibition objects and installation views and videos of exhibition press highlights, with more to come. Frequent announcements about lectures, films, exhibition openings, and concerts keep visitors informed of the Gallery's many activities. New Video Podcast The Darker Side of Light Late 19th-century art is often identified with airy and colorful impressionist paintings and the radiant atmosphere of Paris. But in the shadowy recesses, an art of a very different kind thrived. Prints, drawings, and small sculpture from the period present an alternative vision in depictions of the inner worlds of emotions, anxieties, and fantasies. Mainly stored away rather than openly displayed by their owners, the works in this exhibition appealed to artists and audiences devoted to a private aesthetic experience. In this new video podcast, Peter Parshall, the Gallery's curator of old master prints, talks about the works in the exhibition and their subtle and complex depictions of human psychology decades before the publication of Sigmund Freud's theories on the unconscious. New Video Podcast Arshile Gorky: Ararat (Excerpts) Years after campaigns against minority Armenians in Turkey caused his family to disperse and his mother to die before his eyes, Gorky found a 1912 photograph taken in the city of Van upon which he based drawings and paintings entitled The Artist and His Mother. The video Ararat (Excerpts) investigates the fraught history of Gorky's lost childhood through his protracted work on the image of himself at age 12, standing beside his mother Shushan. Derived from the feature-length film Ararat written and directed by Academy Award®-nominated director Atom Egoyan. Hi-Res \| Lo-Res \| iTunes \| RSS (7:02 mins.) *Robert Bergman: Portraits, 1986–1995* October 11, 2009–January 10, 2010 West Building, Ground Floor For more than 40 years, Robert Bergman (b. 1944) has traveled the streets and back alleys of the United States, photographing the people and scenes he encounters. Beginning in the 1960s, he, like so many other so-called street photographers of that generation, used a 35mm camera to make black-and-white photographs. In the 1980s Bergman began to work in color. Using no special lighting or equipment, he made a series of monumental portraits of the people he met. The exhibition will present 33 of these compelling portraits from a recent gift to the Gallery of more than 90 photographs by Bergman, most of which have never before been exhibited. *Editions with Additions: Working Proofs by Jasper Johns* October 11, 2009–April 4, 2010 East Building, Ground Level The exhibition includes approximately 45 proofs for lithographs, etchings, and screenprints that the artist expanded in a range of media, including pastel, ink, and paint. The works of art are installed in two galleries. The first features works from the 1960s and 1970s, highlighting motifs associated with Johns' art throughout his career, such as the alphabet, targets, and body parts. The second gallery introduces complex compositions from the 1980s and 1990s, among them autobiographical references such as family photographs and art objects owned by the artist. The works are selected from a collection of approximately 1,700 proofs for Johns' prints that he has maintained and carefully annotated over four decades. This extraordinary body of work is being acquired by the National Gallery of Art for its permanent collection. *Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500-1800* October 1, 2009–January 31, 2010 West Building, Ground Floor, West Outer Tier The Gallery's outstanding collection of French old master drawings represents in remarkable richness and breadth the history of French draftsmanship before 1800. Individual works have been included in exhibitions at the Gallery and elsewhere, but the heart of the collection as a whole, now augmented with numerous important recent acquisitions, has never been showcased in a special exhibition. For the first time the Gallery will present a selection of approximately 120 of the most significant, beautiful, and representative drawings made over a period of three centuries by the best French artists working at home and abroad and by foreign artists working in France. Among the key artists are Jean Poyet, Benvenuto Cellini, Jacques Callot, Claude Lorrain, Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Jacques-Louis David. Outstanding examples will also be presented by other gifted but less widely known artists such as Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, Claude Deruet, Jean-Baptiste Pillement, and Jean-Baptiste Hüet. The exhibition will reveal in impressive fashion the strength and depth of the Gallery's collection, while also celebrating the singular originality, elegance, and spirit of French draftsmanship in general. A comprehensive catalogue illustrating this selection of the Gallery's outstanding collection of French old master drawings will accompany the exhibition. The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850–1900 October 1, 2009–January 18, 2010 West Building, Ground Floor, East Outer Tier For much of today's public the art of the late 19th century connotes impressionism, an art of the open air and the café-concert, invoking the pleasure of the landscape and the city with its many entertainments. But there is another side to the story—the discreet world of individual collecting in which prints, drawings, and small sculpture were kept aside in portfolios or stored away in cabinets. Organized around the city centers of Paris, London, and Berlin, the exhibition will include more than 100 works—mainly prints, but also drawings, illustrated books, and small sculpture—from the Gallery's extensive collections that reveal the romantic sensibilities of the arts of privacy. Here the experience of art was a private affair, like taking a book down from the shelf for quiet enjoyment. The arts of privacy encouraged the expression of darker thoughts and moody reflections—a milieu that recruited the talents of academics, realists, impressionists, and symbolists. The exhibition will be accompanied by an unprecedented catalogue on the study of the nature of the private aesthetic experience in 19th-century collecting. The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works October 1, 2009–May 2, 2010 East Building, Mezzanine and Upper Levels Ten themes—Scrape, Concentricity, Line, Gesture, Art on Art, Drip, Stripe to Zip, Figure or Ground, Monochrome, and Picture the Frame—illuminate specific works across the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection. The resulting juxtapositions, often surprising and provocative, provide a new way to tell the story of postwar American art, and of a great collection. Through remarkable acuity, exhaustive study, and close relationships with the artists, the Meyerhoffs amassed one of the most outstanding collections of modern art, with an emphasis on six American masters: Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella, in addition to important works by leading abstract expressionists and younger artists. A number of the 10 themes concern the material process of creation, others address issues of form and composition, and still others extend past material and formal issues to broach the self-reflexive aspects of modernist painting. Some 126 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints include several acquisitions made after the collection was last highlighted in a major exhibition at the Gallery in 1996. All of the works in the exhibition have been donated or promised to the National Gallery of Art and continue to shape and greatly enhance the Gallery's modern and contemporary collection. The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain The Iconography of Power The armor, paintings, and tapestries in the exhibition were made for the Spanish royal family—the nobles, kings, and Holy Roman Emperors who expanded Spain’s influence throughout Europe and the New World. These objects reveal the exquisite work of artists and craftsmen who served the Spanish ruling class from the 15th to the 18th century. In the intricate and finely wrought details on shields, portraits, and tapestries, something quite different is also revealed: an attempt to link the Spanish monarchy with the pieties of the Catholic Church, the power of the ancient Roman empire, and the cultural glories of ancient Greece. David Brown, curator of Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery of Art, describes this subtle advertising campaign waged by the Spanish throne to advance its goals and reputation. Hi-Res \| Lo-Res \| iTunes \| RSS (6:11 mins.) The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain Through November 29, 2009 West Building, Main Floor This unprecedented exhibition, which explores how armor was used to cultivate the image of royal power in late 15th- to 18th-century Spain, highlights some 75 armors and paintings, in addition to magnificent tapestries and works on paper that depict armor worn in the courtly, chivalric context of parades, pageants, and jousting tournaments and occasionally, battles. Armor from the renowned Spanish Royal Armory in Madrid will be paired for the first time with portraits by masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Alonso Sánchez Coello, Anthony van Dyck, and Diego Velázquez depicting emperors and kings wearing the same armor. Judith Leyster, 1609–1660 Through November 29, 2009 West Building, Main Floor, Gallery 50a In celebration of Judith Leyster's (1609–1660) 400th birthday, the Gallery will showcase her expressive Self-Portrait (c. 1630) as the focal point of a small exhibition that will include 10 of Leyster's finest works from American and European collections. Leyster's oeuvre consists of a range of subjects, including genre scenes, portraits, and still lifes, that display her awareness of contemporary artistic styles and themes. The informality of her engaging paintings owes much to Frans Hals (c. 1582/1583–1666), with whom she may have studied, as well as to the Utrecht Caravaggisti. To complement Leyster's works, paintings by Hals and by Leyster's husband, Jan Miense Molenaer (1610–1668), will also be included. The Beffi Triptych: Preserving Abruzzo's Cultural Heritage West Building, Main Floor, Rotunda The first work of art to be transported out of the region of Abruzzo, Italy, in the aftermath of a violent earthquake in April 2009, the Beffi Triptych is one of the most important works from the National Museum of Abruzzo in the city of L'Aquila. The Italian government has loaned the altarpiece for display at the National Gallery of Art until Labor Day in gratitude to the United States for being among the first to offer assistance to the region after the earthquake and as testimony to the Italian commitment to restore fully the cultural heritage of the region Recent Acquisitions: The Grega and Leo A. Daly III Fund for Architectural Books Through November 15, 2009 West Building, Ground Floor, Gallery G21 After more than a century of the dominance of baroque architecture, architects and designers of the 18th and 19th centuries began to look to the past for new inspiration. The twin movements of the Gothic revival and Greek revival emerged in northern Europe and were quickly exported to the Americas and Australia. The Greek revival movement was spurred by a newfound access to Greece and its ancient monuments in the mid-18th century. In the Tower: Philip Guston Through January 3, 2010 East Building, Tower Gallery An exhibition, on view February 1 through September 13, 2009, of work by American artist Philip Guston (1913–1980) launches a series of shows in the East Building Tower Gallery that will focus on developments in art since 1970. A video screened in the exhibition explores Guston's life and the inspiration for his work. The artist is also discussed by Barbara Tempchin and Harry Cooper, curator of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery of Art, in a Backstory podcast. Comments on Your Visit We would like to hear from you. Please tell us about your visit to the National Gallery of Art. If you would like a reply, please be sure to include your e-mail address. Visitor Guides Plan your visit to the National Gallery with these maps of must-see works. (Download Acrobat Reader) Less Than an Hour? West Building Highlights (PDF 153k) Less Than an Hour? West Building Sculpture Highlights (PDF 160k) East Building Highlights (PDF 360k) Sculpture Garden (PDF 270k) Family Guide: Dutch and French Paintings (PDF 316k) Calendar of Events Find out what's happening this month at the National Gallery of Art. To obtain a free bimonthly calendar of events by mail, call (202) 842-6662, or contact us by e-mail at calendar@nga.gov. The current bimonthly Calendar of Events is available in PDF format. (Download Acrobat Reader) Film Calendar To obtain a free quarterly film calendar by mail, contact us by e-mail at film-department@nga.gov. Please include your mailing address. The current quarterly Film Calendar is available in PDF format. (Download Acrobat Reader) Subscribe Subscribe to the Gallery's "What's New" RSS feed to receive new updates automatically. Help
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