Release Date March 6, 2007

"Saturday Bookcase" at the National Gallery of Art Begins with Artist and Critic William Dunlap on March 24,
Artist and Scholar David C. Driskell on April 14, and Author and Professor
Leonard Barkan on May 5

Washington, DC—On March 24, 2007, the National Gallery of Art launches Saturday Bookcase, a new series of readings, discussions, and conversations between artists, art-related book authors, and Gallery staff, preceded and followed by a book signing.

The events, which begin at 3:00 p.m. in the West Building Lecture Hall, are open to the public. Begining at 2:30 p.m., books will be available for purchase at the events. Books also are available in advance from the National Gallery of Art Shops by calling (202) 842-6002 or (800) 697-9350, by faxing (202) 789-3047, or by e-mailing mailorder@nga.gov.

The Gallery, located at Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, on the National Mall, is open free of charge to the public, Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday 11 am to 6 pm. For more information, visit the Web site at www.nga.gov (click on Programs and Events), or inquire at the Art Information Desks at all entrances.

A Conversation with William Dunlap: Raiding Art History
Saturday, March 24
Book signing with William Dunlap

"I don't pretend to understand it—I'm just a slave to it."
- William Dunlap, 1995

On the occasion of the publication of a lavishly illustrated book about his life in art, Mississippi-born artist, commentator, and educator William Dunlap will show slides and talk with Deborah Ziska, chief of press and public information, National Gallery of Art, about the influences and impact that Washington-area artists and museums have had on his distinguished career. Dunlap's paintings, sculpture, and constructions are in numerous private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; ExxonMobil Corporation; and U.S. embassies. He lectures often on art-related subjects, writes for art publications, and has been a panelist on PBS/WETA-TV26 Around Town since 1988. According to Jack Cowart, executive director of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, "William Dunlap's assemblages of elements taken from his life, our lives, and the world around us reflect his sensuous and infectiously energetic view of life. He shares his feelings with us openly, dangerously, and naively, perhaps."

Book Description
Dunlap (University Press of Mississippi, 2006), includes 120 full-color reproductions and features work spanning more than three decades from every stage of William Dunlap's career. A foreword by Julia Reed, an author and a senior writer at Vogue, and an essay by J. Richard Gruber, director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, give an overview of Dunlap's fascinating career and establish him in the context of contemporary American art.
Hardcover, cloth binding: $45

A Conversation with David C. Driskell: Artist and Scholar
Saturday, April 14
Book signing with David C. Driskell and Julie L. McGee

"Art in all of its various forms is the finest expression we have of our real spiritual selves."
- David Driskell

Artist, educator, historian, curator, and humanitarian. David Driskell will talk with Ruth Fine, curator of special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art, and Julie McGee, author of David C. Driskel: Artist and Scholar. They will discuss Driskell's southern upbringing, his education in Washington, DC, at Howard and Catholic Universities, and the many people with whom his life has intersected, including artists Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, all of which helped to set the stage for Driskell's remarkably productive and influential life. In 2000, he was the recipient of the National Humanities Medal from former President Bill Clinton. One year later, the University of Maryland, College Park, established the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. Fine was curator of the exhibition Romare Bearden, which opened at the National Gallery of Art in 2003 and toured the country. McGee currently is the Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

Book Description
David C. Driskell: Artist and Scholar (Pomegranate Communications, 2006 (216 pages) by Julie L. McGee, with a foreword by Keith Morrison. It traces Driskell's personal, artistic, and scholarly journeys, lending context to his participation in and influence on pivotal movements in 20th-century American art and society. The book contains nearly 200 full-color and black-and-white images, a bibliography, and an index.
Hardcover: $45.00

Reflections on "Satyr Square: A Year, A Life in Rome"
Leonard Barkan
Saturday, May 5
Book signing with Leonard Barkan

"Maybe Rome really is the map of the unconscious..." Leonard Barkan in Satyr Square: A Year, A Life in Rome

Leonard Barkan, author of Satyr Square: A Year, A Life in Rome, the Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature, and director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Princeton University, will present a lecture followed by an open discussion. Part memoir, part literary criticism, part culinary and aesthetic travelogue, Satyr Square is a poignant and engaging narrative about an American professor spending a magical year in Rome. Barkan has written four other books, including Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture. A native of New York City, he now lives in Princeton.

Book Description
Satyr Square: A Year, A Life in Rome (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006, 304 pages) by Leonard Barkan is the celebration of a life lived in the uncanny spaces where art and real people intersect. At the heart of the narrative—its surface all irony, humor, and indirection—is a man of genuine ardor, struggling with the directions of his own personal and professional lives, trying to rediscover or reinvent his own intellectual passions of Italy, art, architecture, food, wine, literature, and longing. The book's overarching theme is of art's universal and everlasting power to represent and inspire life.
Hardcover: $24.00

General Information

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov.

Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering the East and West Buildings. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the 4th Street entrances to the East or West Building to permit x-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. For the safety of visitors and the works of art, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor's back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left in the checkrooms. Items larger than 17 x 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms.

For additional press information please call or send inquiries to:

Press Office
National Gallery of Art
2000B South Club Drive
Landover, MD 20785
phone: (202) 842-6353 e-mail: pressinfo@nga.gov

Deborah Ziska
Chief of Press and Public Information
(202) 842-6353
ds-ziska@nga.gov

If you are a member of the press and would like to be added to our press list, click here.

"Saturday Bookcase" at the National Gallery of Art Begins with Artist and Critic William Dunlap on March 24, Artist and Scholar David C. Driskell on April 14, and Author and Professor Leonard Barkan on May 5

"Saturday Bookcase" at the National Gallery of Art Begins with Artist and Critic William Dunlap on March 24,
Artist and Scholar David C. Driskell on April 14, and Author and Professor
Leonard Barkan on May 5