NARRATOR:
This painting made in the 1430s invites us to witness an extraordinary moment in Christianity, as the Angel Gabriel delivers Mary a message from God, that she will bear his son, Jesus. The Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck’s way of telling the story has a lot in common with theater design. For a start, look how he positioned the figures. 

ANNA LOUIZOS:
It's almost like they're facing the audience, in a way. 

My name is Anna Louizos. I'm a set designer. Some of my notable Broadway shows have been In the Heights, Avenue Q, and School of Rock.

The techniques that van Eyck seems to be using in this painting are very similar to what set designers would do - you create layers to create a sense of depth, and to ground these characters in a space that seems real. 

NARRATOR: 
The Angel and Mary are shown within a detailed church setting with dramatic lighting streaming through the windows. 

ANNA LOUIZOS: 
They're surrounded by elements - props - that you would have onstage.  

NARRATOR: 
These include a dove representing the Holy Spirit and white lilies symbolizing Mary’s purity. Her heavenly blue robe – another symbolic element – contrasts beautifully with Gabriel’s richly brocaded garments and rainbow wings. 

ANNA LOUIZOS: 
And so you have these two very vivid colors against this kind of neutral earth-tone brown background, which really pops the characters.  

He’s done it all - he's a set designer, he's a costume designer and he's a lighting designer. He's put it all together in this beautiful painting, and has manipulated us into looking where he wants us to look. The longer you look at it, the more you see – it’s really incredible.  

NARRATOR:
This unsettling scene by Hieronymous Bosch presents us with a classic cautionary tale. Kaywin Feldman, Director of the National Gallery of Art.

KAYWIN FELDMAN:
In the story, we see that as death approaches the miser, in fact I sort of see death peering around the door as a kind of macabre room service, and he is reminding the miser that his time has come, and the little demons are offering the bags of money, and meanwhile the angel is looking up towards the crucifix and encouraging the miser to think of God and, to give up sinful ways.  

NARRATOR:
The figure in green represents the miser earlier in life. He greedily counts gold coins while a nearby rat clutches a money-lending document.

Filmmaker Jem Cohen: 

JEM COHEN: 
What would be a flashback in the cinema can be simultaneous in a painting - a different moment from the same story placed elsewhere in the picture so the viewer cuts from one to the other. Here, the demon’s already inside the chest taking possession of that which can't be possessed, or not for long, by mortal humans - which is to say, riches. So this is a ‘you can't take it with you’ painting from a very different era that remains bitterly relevant today. Today those sacks might be full of stocks and bonds or Bitcoin, but greed is greed and hoarding is hoarding, so it's very timeless.  

NARRATOR:
Bosch’s signature monsters are everywhere - they’re incredibly inventive. 

JEM COHEN: 
The demon under the curtain looks just like the Creature from the Black Lagoon - a testament to Bosch’s resonance in popular culture.

KAYWIN FELDMAN:
There’s an angel seated behind the miser and has one hand in fact on the miser’s shoulder, and the angel is pointing up towards the window where there’s a crucifix and light descending, and it’s a moment for the miser to reconsider and mend his ways.

NARRATOR:
There is much we still don’t know about Bosch’s painting. It may have been part of an altarpiece that presented a fuller narrative of the struggle between good and evil - we are left with many unanswered questions. Infra-red imaging revealed that Bosch too was unsure how this story would end.

KAYWIN FELDMAN:
Originally, Bosch painted the miser grasping the bag of coins that the little monster is offering him, and in his other hand he had some silver chalices, and you can see in this final version that Bosch changed his mind. So, we’re not really quite sure what direction the miser is going to go.

What’s particularly timeless I think about Bosch is that he holds a mirror up and shows humanity what it looks like.  And to his credit, that mirror is just as relevant, funny and piercing today as it was 500 years ago when he painted the picture.  

NARRATOR: 
The peacock pie is the headliner in this banquet painting, made in 1627 by Dutch artist Pieter Claesz. It’s surrounded by other costly and imported foods and tableware. They don’t depict an actual meal – rather, they are assembled in this scene to signal the wealth of the person who bought the painting. 

CARLA HALL: 
It’s all about showing your guest - or the viewer - who you are, what you stand for. Back in the day in 1627, you had to hire an artist to come in and paint your perception of your wealth.   Today, we tend to do it on social media. It’s so beautifully done.

My name is Carla Hall.  I am a chef - a lotta people may know me from Top Chef back in the day, and I'm a lover of all things creative.

NARRATOR: 
Below the pie is a golden saltcellar, and a dish of little candies. 

CARLA HALL: 
Salt would have been very precious. Sugar would have been precious. In the handwork not only of the candies, but also of the crust, you see that they have help - there are people who are in the kitchen who are doing this work, and they are very skilled.  

NARRATOR: 
Sugar would have come to the Netherlands from American or Caribbean plantations; the olives and white wine, perhaps from the Mediterranean. And the blue and white porcelain bowls would have been brought from China at considerable expense. So this painting alludes to the strength and prosperity of the Dutch trading empire at this time, as well as to the wealth and aspirations of the family who hung it in their home.

Carla’s all in favor of the pie’s perfectly browned crust. But the stuffed peacock on top that spectacularly announces what’s inside?

CARLA HALL: 
It's clearly not edible.  In modern times, I would say it is akin to having a burger with 24 karat gold on it.  You don’t eat it, the gold isn't tasting delicious, but you are only having it for wealth and to charge a certain amount because you can. 
 

NARRATOR: 
Women artists worked across many kinds of media in the seventeenth century, but many of their names have been lost to us today. Judith Leyster is a remarkable exception. Celebrated for her scenes from Dutch life, Leyster was among the first women to be accepted into the artists’ guild in the Dutch city of Haarlem. By her mid-twenties, she had her own workshop and students. Leyster made this self-portrait at around 21 years old. 

SUSANNA COFFEY: 
This is a painting that I have known for a very, very long time.  And was important to me when I was a young painter. My name is Susanna Coffey. And since 1995, my work as a painter has been focused on the self-portrait. 

The painter’s looking at us.  She knows we’re here. And I know the mirror is right in front of her.  But in her mind, she is aware that the world outside of that mirror will at some time, be paying attention to her.  

She has depicted herself in the moment of painting, with a loaded brush, holding her tools. From my perspective as an artist I know she didn't put on that collar to paint in! (laughs) It has another reason for being there – saying to collectors: “this is what I could do”. One can see how beautifully she paints transparencies, how amazing the lace is, her attention to the velvet in her sleeve.  

But she isn't dressed like that as a lady of wealth; she's really dressed like that as a working woman who's showing her abilities.  

And it is one of the great things about portraiture, that we are able to find a place in between us and another that lived hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago. So to me, that's magical.   

NARRATOR: 
Gazing intently upward, hands clasped in prayer, the biblical hero Daniel beseeches God to save him. The king of Babylon, angry at Daniel’s refusal to worship the Babylonian king, has thrown him into a lions’ den, expecting the wild cats to tear him apart. The lions are skillfully portrayed by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens.

CRAIG SAFFOE: 
Everything anatomical about these lions looks pretty spot-on to me. My name is Craig Saffoe, I'm the curator of Great Cats at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo.  

NARRATOR: 
Rubens, who made the painting around 1616, was able to study real lions at the royal menagerie in Brussels. Take the pair of lions at the lower right. 

CRAIG SAFFOE: 
They’re gnarling and teeth-baring at each other - that's very normal for lions.  It's not even always a sign of just outright aggression - maybe they're fighting over the scraps of bones that I see on the floor there. 
 
I do see a full range of expressions of cats, and if that's what the artist was trying to capture, he did it beautifully. The animal yawning in the background is great. And then the animal directly below him has that kind of pensive stare as though he's looking at something he may be hunting, down to the animal at the bottom, who's fully asleep. 

And certainly these cats evoke emotions, and one of the emotions is man versus the savage beast. 

NARRATOR: 
Here we see Daniel in a moment of survival, with his unwavering faith in God serving as protection from untimely demise in the lions’ den.

Rubens’s skill, and his fascination with the world around him, so evident in his depiction of these lions, brought him enormous success as an artist, patronized by royalty all over Europe.  

NARRATOR:
In northern England in the early 19th century, the River Tyne was used to transport vast quantities of coal mined nearby, out to sea en route to London. Joseph Mallord William Turner shows us men heaving coal by night, from flat-bottom boats, known as keels, onto tall-masted, seagoing ships. Smoke billows from fiery torches that illuminate their labor. Here’s curator Franklin Kelly:  

FRANK KELLY:
It draws me in most immediately by this remarkable display of moonlight. Where you see this not just in the sky but a line of reflected light on the water which draws you into the distance. The cooler light of the moon and the contrasting light of those torches immediately sets up a kind of visual pushing and pulling for our attention.  

NARRATOR:
Turner’s view is a romantic one – but the work happening on the river was, in reality, not as picturesque.

FRANK KELLY:
And of course in the 1830s, the Industrial Revolution was taking hold and changing England dramatically - and what was driving most of the engines of the Industrial Revolution? Coal.  

NARRATOR:
The coal transportation on the River Tyne would have had serious and lasting environmental impacts.

Professor Joel Fodrie of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an estuarine and fisheries ecologist – an expert on rivers.

JOEL FODRIE:
I'm certainly struck by these activities as they were happening in this painting. They did not have the data or the long-term understanding of the changes that we now are beginning to understand.

We have built ports, we have built seawalls, we have built big docks.  And so these are pervasive, and very profound changes to the form and nature of rivers and estuaries. These are acute local changes, that are happening everywhere.   

And so I'm struck by the shift in mindset and the things that we’re concerned about now in terms of environmental health, environmental quality, human modification of the planet.

Our economies are important.  Jobs are important - I look at this waterfront and I see jobs! And so trying to balance those things is really the fine razor’s edge that we seem to be on these days.

NARRATOR:
Turner’s striking painting gives us a glimpse into the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and raises questions on the state of the natural world, as the environment continues to evolve in response to human activity.    

SARAH CASH:
I’m Sarah Cash - I am an Associate Curator of American and British Paintings at the National Gallery of Art.

In this painting, Frederic Church’s Niagara from 1857, we are viewing, of course, Niagara Falls. This painting was radical and revolutionary in its day – it's as if we are suspended over the Falls, which is quite remarkable. He's brought the near and far sides of the falls both into our view.  In other words, we cannot see this view with the human eye.  

SARA CAPEN:
I think that he was removing all distractions so that we could connect to its essence. To think greater than who we are as humans. I’m Sara Capen. I'm the executive director for the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area.

SARAH CASH:
I think he chose it also, because he knew that Americans at this time viewed this place as the symbol of the new nation, and of the vitality of the new country.  

NARRATOR:
But for some Americans at this time, the Falls represented something profoundly different – a route to freedom.

SARA CAPEN:
When Church came to research Niagara Falls, it was very similar to today, a place of great tourism. But there were undercurrents. You had southern plantation owners coming up to see Niagara Falls, who brought the people that they had enslaved with them, to serve them. The waiters at the Cataract House hotel which were predominantly free African-American waiters - would share with them: “Listen, you are literally 500 yards from freedom. We can help you get there”.

NARRATOR:
Niagara Falls – a series of waterfalls along the Niagara River – straddle American and Canadian territory. Visitors to the site would realize that just beyond the American Falls lay the Canadian border, and the majestic view Church painted.

SARA CAPEN:
Freedom Seekers crossed right at the bottom of the American Falls in a rowboat, after running down stairs after stairs that were wooden, three hundred or more feet to the very bottom, surrounded by those mighty Cataracts. Going into freedom, into Canada. It is an important story, that has been untold.  

I personally feel that it is as relevant of a painting today as it was then. And it really touches your heart. But also makes you want to walk away and take action. It wants you to better understand, maybe, it’s our history, maybe it’s our relationship with nature and land. But I think most importantly, it's really calling on us to become stewards so that these places are here for future generations.   

NARRATOR: 
In Anglo-American artist John Singleton Copley’s reimagining of a dramatic scene that took place in Havana, Cuba, in 1749, a 14-year-old sailor, Brook Watson, is attacked by a shark while swimming. 

CHARLES BROCK: 
That choice to essentially grab a moment in time in which the outcome is still not clear is one of the things that makes the painting so gripping. I think the drama is in Copley’s choice to focus right at the moment where life and death hang in the balance. My name is Charles Brock; I'm the associate curator of American and British Paintings at the National Gallery of Art.

YOAN CAPOTE:
My name is Yoan Capote. I'm a Cuban artist. For any Cuban, it's an overwhelming work.  And the horror and the pain experienced by Watson makes us reflect on the drama of thousands of migrants in the Cuban Seas. 

When you look at the sea, you are remembering so many stories the history of the country, the migrants that come, the Spanish that discover, or the people that leave, the battles on the sea, the people that die.  

NARRATOR: 
Much of the tension and emotion in Copley’s painting comes from the expressions of Watson’s fellow sailors. The most prominent is the young Black man featured near the top of the painting. This is a significant inclusion, especially since Havana was one of the central ports for the transatlantic slave trade.

CHARLES BROCK: 
Copley is aspiring to capture bigger currents and bigger stories about history, one of them being the history that was taking place as the painting was being executed, which was of course the American Revolutionary War. One of the key issues during that war was slavery, juxtaposed with Americans’ aspirations for freedom. And there was a lot of ongoing open debate about the abolition of the slave trade during that moment in time.   

RHODA MATTHEWS: 
I am so thankful to have the opportunity to be able to talk about this portrait because it really resonates with me and my own family experience. My name is Rhoda Matthews. I am a school social worker at Anne Beers Elementary School in Washington, D.C.  

NARRATOR: 
The painting is by Archibald Motley. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and went on to chronicle African American life in the Jazz Age and beyond. Motley made this tender portrait of his grandmother in 1922. 

RHODA MATTHEWS: 
Her hands look like they have gone through a lot of hard work, but yet I can imagine that they are probably just as soft as butter. I think he's emphasizing that this is a proud woman. But yet her eyes seem a little somber.  Those are eyes with a lot of feelings behind it. A lot of fear, anger, love, compassion. She's been through a lot of hardship, and you can see it all over her face. However, she's not really able to show it, based on the time period, or just simply being an African-American person in America, she can't really display who she is.  

NARRATOR: 
Born into enslavement in Kentucky, Louisa Sims Motley eventually migrated North with her family to Chicago. On the wall behind her, Motley has painted a shadow, perhaps a reference to the ways her early life as an enslaved person will always remain with her, even decades later.

RHODA MATTHEWS: 
I would use this portrait to talk to kids about persistence and resiliency, because despite all that she's gone through, - slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Great Migration, as well as Jim Crow, she's here in 1922 as an 80-year-old woman, looking so elegant. Just hearing her story, I have so much respect for her and what she's been able to accomplish.

NARRATOR: 
This memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens celebrates an extraordinarily courageous – and groundbreaking - group of men. The 54th Massachusetts Regiment was one of the first military units of Black soldiers formed in the North in the Civil War. Among their ranks was Sergeant William H. Carney. 

CARL CRUZ: 
My name is Carl Cruz and I am the great-great-grandnephew of Sgt William H. Carney. 

NARRATOR: 
Sergeant Carney, a 22-year-old seaman from New Bedford, MA, enlisted in the 54th Regiment in February of 1863. 

CARL CRUZ: 
It was one way of him assuring that men of color, men who had been enslaved, would be able to have freedom. 

NARRATOR: 
The memorial shows the soldiers marching, with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw on horseback. On the night of July 18th, 1863, the 54th stormed Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. The battle was fierce and the 54th suffered significant casualties. Amidst the fighting, the color bearer was wounded and could no longer hold the flag.  Immediately, Carney picked up the American flag, and later describing what he had witnessed, recounted:

CARL CRUZ: 
In less than 20 minutes, I found myself alone, struggling upon the ramparts, while all around me were the dead and wounded, lying one upon another. 

NARRATOR: 
Sergeant Carney, badly injured himself, eventually reached safety. He told his comrades: 

CARL CRUZ: 
'I only did my duty. Boys, the old flag never touched the ground.' And that became a rallying point for more Blacks to join the Union forces, which eventually helped the Union forces to win the Civil War. It certainly influenced President Abraham Lincoln.

NARRATOR: 
Although the 54th Regiment lost the battle, the African American soldiers were hailed for their bravery and became an inspiration for many.


CARL CRUZ:
When I think of the men of the 54th, I really understand what Black Lives Matter means. To also fight for this nation's history, for this nation's freedoms - something we still are doing today. Carney and those men of the 54th, lived that, did that, died for that. So, I think they are an example for us. And hopefully, by telling these stories we will at some point truly overcome.  

EVE STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER:
I'm Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, Curator and Head of Italian and Spanish Paintings at the National Gallery of Art.

NARRATOR: 
This tranquil, richly detailed portrait depicts Ginevra de’ Benci, the daughter of a wealthy banker in Renaissance Florence. Just around the time of her marriage to Luigi Niccolini in 1474, she was painted by the young Leonardo da Vinci. 

EVE STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER:
It's the first of only three surviving portraits of women by Leonardo.  

NARRATOR: 
Previously, portraits were usually presented in profile. 

EVE STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER:
Leonardo takes the step of pivoting Ginevra ever so slightly, so you see her at a three-quarter angle, and therefore, get a greater expanse of her face, her body, as well as the landscape in the background behind her. We see the care that Leonardo put into building up the soft modeling of the contours and the shading of Ginevra’s face.  

NARRATOR: 
He also emphasized her smooth, pale skin by placing her against a background of dark juniper leaves. Ginevra’s name is a variant on ginepro, the Italian word for juniper. Leonardo’s visual play on his sitter’s name and the plant behind her seems especially appropriate, since the precision and beauty of words were very important to Ginevra, who wrote poetry. 

The painting may possibly have been commissioned by another poet - one of Ginevra’s admirers: the Venetian ambassador to Florence at the time, Bernardo Bembo. 

EVE STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER:
This was common in the Renaissance period - that a woman would be married but then also have a platonic lover who she would exchange letters with - they might exchange poetry.  

What I find fascinating is how people interpret or analyze her facial expression as being austere or cold or remote. But one could also just see her as confident or direct or composed.  And I think that complexity of both form and then viewer reception is really Leonardo’s gift with this portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci.   

NARRATOR: 
The artist El Greco made this painting in Spain, around 1614. It depicts the death of Laocoön, the bearded man in the center, during the war fought by the ancient Greeks against the Trojans. 

GRETCHEN HIRSCHAUER: 
Laocoön was a Trojan priest and he got in trouble when he threw a spear at the Trojan Horse, which you see very small, in the background. 

I'm Gretchen Hirschauer.  I am a curator in the Department of Italian and Spanish Paintings.

NARRATOR: 
The Roman writer Virgil told how the Greeks hid an elite military unit inside the giant wooden horse left outside the walls of Troy. The Greeks then pretended to sail away in defeat. The Trojans triumphantly pulled the horse inside the city walls, and, under cover of darkness, the Greek soldiers crept out and opened the gates of Troy to their comrades. 

According to Virgil, Laocoön had tried in vain to warn his fellow Trojans about the horse, even throwing a spear at its wooden sides. And in doing so, he brought down the fury of the goddess Athena, protector of the Greeks, upon himself and his sons. 

GRETCHEN HIRSCHAUER: 
And so she, in retaliation, condemned the whole family - the father and the two sons - to death, and they were killed by serpents.  

To me when I look at this picture, the first thing I see is the face of Laocoön.  And the sort of agony on his face, the anguish.  He knows what's about to happen not only to him, but happening to his sons as well.

TERI CROSS DAVIS: 
And in that moment I feel so much for him, as a father. He knows he's lost, because of his desire to do the right thing.   

My name is Teri Ellen Cross Davis. I am a poet, I am also the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series artistic curator and poetry programs manager for the Folger Shakespeare Library.  

There's a way into any art. For me, that door is opened by our own human experiences. I can look at this and say: I know that father’s grief, I know his pain, I know his anguish. I'm a Black woman in America - I worry about my children’s safety every day. What makes a poem work for me is the humanity that it exposes; what makes this painting work for me is the humanity it exposes.  

NARRATOR: 
This painting shows us two of the most famous buildings in Venice - St Mark’s Basilica and the pink-colored Ducal Palace. Nearby, people examine some of the city’s renowned textiles at the little stalls. The painting was made around 1744 by Canaletto, artist of view paintings. His paintings were often commissioned as souvenirs by wealthy young British men on a European “Grand Tour”. Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, curator and head of Italian and Spanish Paintings.

EVE STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER:
They would often collect works of art - older works of art including Greek and Roman sculpture, pictures from an earlier time period such as the Renaissance.  But they would also commission works from contemporary artists such as Canaletto. 

NARRATOR: 
Canaletto’s views functioned as reminders of the architectural wonders and social pleasures of Venice (like canals and gondolas) once the purchasers were back home in cool, cloudy Britain. These paintings also gave those who’d never visited Venice a glimpse of its appearance and atmosphere. And Canaletto often included slightly more than the eye could see in person from a particular viewpoint, making it even richer in setting and detail.  

Of course, today a quick internet search provides an infinite number of images of Venice. While travel mementos have shifted over time from paintings and souvenir postcards to photographs captured by personal cameras and now phones, the subjects of these mementos remain the same sites that capture the heart and soul of Venice.

SAM YOUKILIS:
I’m Sam Youkilis, I'm a photographer from New York City and I'm currently working between Italy and New York.”

Venice in particular I think is so interesting because it's one of the most frequented places by tourists and one of the most photographed and storied places in Italy, and probably the world.  

NARRATOR: 
As a travel photographer, Sam is always searching for new, different, and unexpected ways to capture the sites of Venice.

SAM YOUKILIS:
It's kind of lovely to see these beautiful stalls and vendors. I remember quite vividly a couple of weeks ago walking into this square, and it's just like café after café with the same chairs, the same beautifully dressed servers all the way at the end of this crazy extension of an outdoor café, with menus, speaking every language at everyone who walks by, trying to get people to sit down. 

And I think that form of presentation to visitors is so, so, so, different from this one, which feels way more quiet, way more beautiful, and actually reflective of Venice and a place.

NARRATOR: 
In a tender, peaceful scene painted around 1510 by Raphael, we see major figures in Christianity, with Mary sitting with her baby, Jesus, in her lap. Nearby is Jesus’ cousin St John the Baptist, identified by his animal skin clothing.  

GRETCHEN HIRSCHAUER: 
They have this very serious, intent look on their faces - they seem to know what will happen in the future.  The Christ child accepts the reed cross that's offered to him by St. John the Baptist, which is an indication that he accepts his future crucifixion on the cross.  

I'm Gretchen Hirschauer.  I am a curator in the Department of Italian and Spanish Paintings.

NARRATOR: 
The painting’s circular format was inspired by the decorative round gift trays presented to wealthy Florentine women after giving birth. Within this format, Raphael skillfully leads our eye around the scene.

GRETCHEN HIRSCHAUER: 
The painting is all about angles.  Let’s say you start down at her sandal and then your eye goes up to her elbow on the trunk of the tree. And then your eye is taken to her head, and then down again, she's gazing directly at John the Baptist, who is gazing directly at the Christ child. He has found a way to connect these figures, not only physically but emotionally. They are all connected to one another within this very particular format.

To me, one of the more interesting points is that she's seen as the Madonna of Humility, and that people don’t realize that there are certain types of Madonnas; they're not all the same… She's not here the queen of heaven, but she's a humble woman sitting on the ground.  

STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER: 
Hi, I'm Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, curator and head of Italian and Spanish Paintings at the National Gallery of Art. [We see before us two women at an open window of two different ages; one more youthful and one a bit older. 

NARRATOR: 
The scene, painted by Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, around 1660, has us wondering.

STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER: 
Why are these two women at the window? Who are these two women? We don’t know the answers, but I think there's several interesting ways to think about the work.  

NARRATOR: 
The older woman seems to be hiding her amusement at something outside, behind her shawl. Her companion smiles too. 

STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER: 
And for women of a certain class in society, it was not deemed decorous for them to laugh or openly smile in public. And then of course one needs to consider who was the intended viewer? Who is she smiling at? Honestly, we just don’t know.  

NARRATOR:
Some believe it’s possible that the woman at right, with her coy smile and direct gaze, may be a prostitute, beckoning her next customer. It’s just as possible, however, that we’re seeing a woman of good standing being minded by her chaperone, exhibiting a moment of playfulness. Do they realize they are being seen? Or do they believe they are escaping notice? This ambiguity is part of the power of the picture.

STRAUSSMAN-PFLANZER: 
There's a freeness and an accessibility to the women that I think is actually quite refreshing. Whether it was considered inappropriate or not in the period, I think for the present-day viewer there's something very visceral and immediate that's exciting and engaging.

NARRATOR:
American artist Mary Cassatt made this painting around 1905. Known for her images of women and children, Cassatt was progressive both in her modern, Impressionist technique and her feminist views on politics and society.  

NIKKI GEORGOPULOS:
I’m Nikki Georgopulos and I'm the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow for French Paintings.

Whether or not the child and the woman were related, they have this very close, intimate relationship. Cassatt was concerned with the future, and so I think that in this way we can understand this image as one of guidance.

MARIA BERRIO:
My name is Maria Berrio and I am an artist. And if you look at that small mirror, it contains that little girl’s reflection, but it's almost like she's trapped in a small circle. But here Cassatt is saying that society will contain you, but that it's up to us to see yourself and see how capable we are to escape those parameters. So, seeing this painting, to me, is really beautiful - how she tried to portray this woman teaching this young child how to see herself.

NARRATOR:
As well as the mirror, the sunflower worn by the woman is especially prominent. It may have pointed to women’s struggle to gain the right to vote.  

NIKKI GEORGOPULOS:
What I came to uncover was that when Cassatt painted the painting, which is in about 1905, the sunflower had become the primary symbol for the American Suffrage Movement. She had a very clever way of cloaking her more radical beliefs in this subject matter that was seen as acceptable for her as a woman artist.   

AARON WILE: 
What fascinates me about this painting is that it offers a distinctly modern vision of political authority. I'm Aaron Wile, Associate Curator in the Department of French Paintings.  

NARRATOR: 
Jacques-Louis David here portrays Emperor Napoleon in his study with his signature pose, hand in waistcoat.

AARON WILE: 
The clock tells us it's 4:13 in the morning, and we see that he's been working all night. The candles are nearly melted down, his hair is disheveled, his cuffs are unbuttoned. We can see from the large rolled-up piece of paper on his desk that he's been working on his most famous legislative achievement, the Napoleonic Code, which gave post-revolutionary France its first coherent set of laws. David shows Napoleon, just as he's risen from his work, and he's about to gird his sword and leave to review his troops. 

NARRATOR:
A famous book beneath the desk chronicles the achievements of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. 

AARON WILE: 
And this sent a clear message that Napoleon’s achievements equaled or surpassed those of Greece and Rome.  

The portrait, with its almost hallucinatory realism, every detail, every texture is painstakingly rendered, strikes us with the force of truth - it feels like a documentary record, but in fact it's a fiction, it’s a lie. Several distinct moments and objects in his broader history are collapsed into this single image. And in this way, the painting’s participating actively in mythmaking. And I think it's up to us to look more closely to understand how myths are constructed and how political legitimacy of someone like Napoleon is maintained.   

NARRATOR: 
Auguste Renoir was incredibly skilled at beguiling viewers’ senses with rich color, shimmering light, and thoughtful composition. Curator Mary Morton: 

MORTON: 
One of the extraordinary things about the painting is how much pleasure and what a challenge Renoir is meeting in describing all of the textures of these fantastic textiles -  the velvet, the brocade, the transparent, diaphanous bodice, the feathers, the gold, metal, the slippers, and then of course her incredible expression alongside the positioning of her legs and the arching of her foot, captivate the viewer.

NARRATOR: 
The painting sets out to make us think we’re inside a harem – a strictly private, female space in a North African home at the time. But in fact, this is Renoir’s own studio. 

LAILA LALAMI: 
I'm not at all surprised to learn that the model for this painting was, in fact, a woman in Paris – My name is Laila Lalami and I am a novelist and essayist based in Los Angeles.

Renoir, like any other Frenchman, would not have had access to this intimate space in the home of an Algerian family. But what is clear is that there is this desire/to violate a barrier. It is a woman that is being portrayed almost as an offering.  

MARY MORTON: 
He has rented, probably, a fantastic costume, vaguely North African. And then he's also embellished his studio space with some decorative arts.  
 
LAILA LALAMI: 
It is impossible to look at this picture from 1870 and not think about the context in which it was painted - at this point, France has invaded Algeria and is now in control of the country.  

We like to think of ourselves as more modern and more enlightened creatures, but all we have to do is look at how this way of looking at women continues today, because of this fantasy, this view of Arab and Amazigh and Muslim women as other.  

MARY MORTON: 
So what does one do with pictures like this, which served to advance the stereotype of the colonized? I think it's crucial that we don’t hide it away. We need to use objects like this, to help us access critically the past and history.  

NARRATOR:
What was French artist Edgar Degas’s intention, in making this painting? Curator Kimberly Jones:

KIM JONES:
In the foreground you have an elegantly dressed woman, with her back turned to the viewer, but then you have the background, which is very indistinguishable, made up of stripes of color. And when you look at all those elements together, you realize you're in a museum.

The fact that the background is so indistinct is actually very telling. Degas isn’t really interested in showing you the specifics of the place but rather, it’s very much a painting about looking. And in fact, the obscurity of the background hides that sensation, because we can never know what another person is seeing, what they’re experiencing as they look at a work of art.

NARRATOR:
The question of how people look at art is something that those who work in the museum have ample opportunity to observe and think about.

JERRY FOLEY:
I'm Jerry Foley. I'm what's known as a Gallery Protective Officer here. We protect art, people and buildings. It is interesting to be around the visitors, and the longer I'm here, the more I learn about art and people.

It's so varied.  Some people come in very quickly, some take their time and some, it depends on what area they're in as to how much time they take... it's quite interesting to me.  It does seem like people who come on their own are looking into it more, and reacting more on their own.

When people are not there, I tend to look at the art more.  But then when people are there, I'm also observing the people as well.

NARRATOR: 
The woman in this painting is gazing at the works in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. She may be Degas’s friend, the artist Mary Cassatt. 

KIM JONES: 
As a woman, Mary Cassatt was not allowed into certain areas such as nightclubs and cabarets.  The Louvre Museum was different. So it was very much a communal space that both artists could share - they both loved visiting the Louvre Museum and studying the works of old masters.
 

NARRATOR:
French artist Édouard Manet made this painting in 1862, when Paris was in the midst of extraordinary upheaval. As part of an ambitious urban renewal, those on the margins of society - people like those we see here - were driven out of the city center to accommodate the rebuilding program. Here’s Mary Morton, Curator of French paintings: 

MARY MORTON:
It is epically scaled. So this was a major public statement that he's putting together here. And, I would argue, a political and a social statement. He's just basically saying, particularly with that old musician at the center looking directly out at the visitor, “what about us?”  

JESSE RABINOWITZ:
I think by the mere fact that Manet chose to paint these people, he is calling importance to them and expressing their humanity and their right to live with dignity and respect.  

JESSE RABINOWITZ:
My name is Jesse Rabinowitz and I live and work in Washington, D.C.  I'm the Senior Manager for Advocacy and Policy at Miriam’s Kitchen, where we work to end chronic homelessness in D.C.  

JESSE RABINOWITZ:
In this picture, I see a lot of loneliness and longing for connection, especially in the musician’s face, but also in the boys’ faces. And when I speak with folks who live outside in D.C., I commonly hear how isolating and lonely they feel, few people, if anybody, stops to say “hi”, to check in, to acknowledge them as human beings. I think Manet is reminding us of our collective responsibility towards all of our neighbors and is forcing us to look people who we might otherwise choose not to look at directly in the eye, directly in the face.   

NARRATOR: 
Hiram Powers made multiple versions of The Greek Slave, one of the most famous American statues. This one dates to 1846.

The Greek war of independence against Turkey provided inspiration for Powers… but for many 19th-century viewers, this enslaved woman also symbolized the struggle of African-American people against slavery in the United States.

The sculpture was widely exhibited in the U.S. and in Europe, and small replicas were sold. One such statuette belonged to the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. 

KA’MAL McLARIN: 
My name is Ka’mal McClarin.  I’m a program manager for the National Park Service for the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. I’m the former curator of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, also known as Cedar Hill.  

Visiting Douglass at Cedar Hill, you would have seen bounties of artworks representing the quote/unquote “abolitionist call,” and Douglass often used those artworks to really keep the memory of the abolitionist movement alive along with imparting lessons on the quote/unquote “past movement.” As he transitioned from an enslaved person to Abolitionist, that iconic symbol had a direct connection to his heart in many ways. 

Particularly in the 1840s, it pretty much was seen at many exhibitions abroad as well as domestically, and it really creates this national/international discussion about how we should actually perceive that Greek Slave statue.  

NARRATOR: 
The role of American art in challenging traditions of enslavement can be traced back to The Greek Slave and the avalanche of debate it stirred up - some of which centered around the great question of the abolition of slavery in the United States. The woman’s full nudity may have startled some visitors. But her demure expression and pose, and the understanding that she was stripped by her captors, instead suggested that what was immoral was the injustice of enslavement rather than her exposed flesh.  

KA’MAL McLARIN: 
Hiram Powers pretty much starts the conversation. And calls our moral fortitude into question during the 1840s all the way up to the 1850s and 1860s. And I see it in today’s time - the legacy of slavery and that discussion around all these works of art really continue in many ways.

NARRATOR: 
This bust puts us in in the presence of Lorenzo de’ Medici, ruler of the Italian city-state of Florence. He was among the most powerful men in Europe in the late 1400s.

SHELLEY STURMAN: 
Hi, I'm Shelley Sturman, Senior Conservator and Head of Object Conservation at the National Gallery of Art.

When you see paintings of Lorenzo, there's very specific characteristics - his brooding brows and his underbite and his very strong nose. Those are all captured in this bust. He is just staring down at you.  And it's not a grimace, but it's certainly not a smile - it's his air of authority. You sense his power.  You sense his feeling that he knows what's going on. He's looking out for himself.  

NARRATOR: 
The bust, which is painted terracotta, or clay, used to be much darker in coloring. The conservation team explored beneath the modern varnish.

SHELLEY STURMAN: 
We began to see that there were dirt layers directly on top of brightly colored layers, original layers.  And we saw stubble on the cheeks and the chin.  The eyes, we could see little flecks of paint.  The dark tunic turned out to be a deep mulberry color. And the headdress was a deep red, a brilliant red. 

NARRATOR: 
These details help make Lorenzo’s portrait intensely lifelike. This bust may even be the very portrait that moved his son to tears when he saw it after his father’s death.  

SHELLEY STURMAN: 
You can see into the eyes and you can feel his presence. He looks much more like a living being than one made out of clay you get the feeling of what people looked like then, how they dressed, how they act. And you feel like you want to sit there and look a little more and try and figure out what life was like, what he did with his days.

I think that sculpture is a very important way of looking at the past, of seeing yourself in historical figures.  

NARRATOR:
When Edgar Degas first exhibited this sculpture in Paris in 1881, most critics and viewers were scandalized. They deplored the revolutionary display, in an art gallery, of a figure made of wax, textiles and even human hair. And they found his portrayal of a 14-year-old ballet dancer from the Paris Opera House to be uncomfortably realistic - exposing the grim realities of ballet, usually hidden behind the beauty of the dance costumes and music.  At the time, many young dancers with the Paris Opera came from working class families who were dependent on job opportunities in cultural centers where the well-off spent their time.

TARA HUTTON:
My name is Tara Hutton. As a professional ballerina, I am deeply familiar with her obvious fatigue.  Degas’s model, Marie van Goethem, looks simultaneously proud, obedient, and exhausted - such is the nature of ballet.  

I see pride. I also see melancholy.  I see a worn-down young woman in this position.  She has not only had the normal rigors of training as a ballet dancer, but she also had the financial responsibility to bring money home to her poor family, which was common in this era of ballet.

NARRATOR:
This young model posed for Degas as he made drawings, small studies, and finally this sculpture.

TARA HUTTON:
We are trained, as dancers, to create movement - we are not trained to hold poses for hours on end. The dancer is paused in a relaxed fourth position. Her hips and stomach are thrust forward. This is the look of dancer’s fatigue that you would see at the end of a long rehearsal.  

I do think Degas saw artists as individuals. I very much appreciate how his sculpture captures this vulnerable young dancer, who is facing the harsh realities of the vigor of the art and the toughness that was often unseen to the public eye. I think it's a very honest and real display of what a young woman at that time faced.   

ALISON LUCHS: 
I’m Alison Luchs, Curator of Early European Sculpture at the National Gallery of Art. 

When you look at this cup, you notice a wonderful sense of movement that pervades both the stone, the swirling, spiraling veining that winds its way over the surface and is broken up by the fluting and the spiral coils of wire that cover the surfaces of the goldsmith work.

NARRATOR: 
This chalice was made around a thousand years ago in France, by expert craftsmen working for the Abbot of the royal Catholic church of Saint-Denis, just outside Paris. They started with an ancient carved stone cup.

ALISON LUCHS: 
We believe it was made in ancient Egypt, in the first or second century B.C., so just a little before the time of Cleopatra. And it represents the belief that beautiful, veined stones were infused with a kind of divine power and lifeforce. 

NARRATOR: 
The craftsmen set it in gilded silver, studded with jewels and decorated with golden filigree wire in coiling patterns.

The chalice, placed on the church altar, would have contained wine made sacred by the priest. Pointed arches and stained-glass windows allowed richly colored light to flood the Gothic-style church – a feature also reflected in the chalice.

ALISON LUCHS: 
What the chalice has in common with this is not so much the shapes as the belief in the power of light to represent holiness and to bring people closer to God.   

NARRATOR: 
The peacock pie is the headliner in this banquet painting, made in 1627 by Dutch artist Pieter Claesz. It’s surrounded by other costly and imported foods and tableware. They don’t depict an actual meal – rather, they are assembled in this scene to signal the wealth of the person who bought the painting. 

CARLA HALL: 
It’s all about showing your guest - or the viewer - who you are, what you stand for. Back in the day in 1627, you had to hire an artist to come in and paint your perception of your wealth.   Today, we tend to do it on social media. It’s so beautifully done.

My name is Carla Hall.  I am a chef - a lotta people may know me from Top Chef back in the day, and I'm a lover of all things creative.

NARRATOR: 
Below the pie is a golden saltcellar, and a dish of little candies. 

CARLA HALL: 
Salt would have been very precious. Sugar would have been precious. In the handwork not only of the candies, but also of the crust, you see that they have help - there are people who are in the kitchen who are doing this work, and they are very skilled.  

NARRATOR: 
Sugar would have come to the Netherlands from American or Caribbean plantations; the olives and white wine, perhaps from the Mediterranean. And the blue and white porcelain bowls would have been brought from China at considerable expense. So this painting alludes to the strength and prosperity of the Dutch trading empire at this time, as well as to the wealth and aspirations of the family who hung it in their home.

Carla’s all in favor of the pie’s perfectly browned crust. But the stuffed peacock on top that spectacularly announces what’s inside?

CARLA HALL: 
It's clearly not edible.  In modern times, I would say it is akin to having a burger with 24 karat gold on it.  You don’t eat it, the gold isn't tasting delicious, but you are only having it for wealth and to charge a certain amount because you can.