Talks & Conversations

Mitch Epstein, In Conversation with History: Photographing American Culture and the American Landscape

Mitch Epstein, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Six Grandfathers, South Dakota 2018, 2018, printed 2025, inkjet print, Gift of the Artist, © Mitch Epstein, 2025.70.3

Join us for a presentation by artist Mitch Epstein, whose photographs are on view in three National Gallery exhibitions: Dear America: Artists Explore the American Experience, Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography, and American Icon: The US Flag in Art. Epstein will discuss his creative practice and engagement with the exhibition themes.  

Mitch Epstein (born 1952, Holyoke, MA) has photographed the landscape and culture of America for 50 years. A graduate of Cooper Union, he became a pioneer of 1970s fine-art color photography. His mixed media work includes films, moving image with sound installations, and performance. Epstein has been inducted into the National Academy of Design (2020) and has been awarded the Prix Pictet (2011), Berlin Prize (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002). His 17 books include Recreation (2022, 2005); Property Rights (2021); New York Arbor (2013); American Power (2009); and Family Business (2004), winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award. Epstein’s most recent exhibition, American Nature, assembles three self-contained yet integrated photographic series (Old Growth, Property Rights, American Power), a multi-channel video-sound installation with tonal music performed in a forest (Forest Waves), and a looped projection with music (Darius Kinsey: Clear Cut). Together these five pieces investigate notions of wilderness and human society, and their both collaborative and troubled co-existence. Epstein lives in New York City and Massachusetts.  

The Elson Lecture Series features distinguished contemporary artists who are represented in the Gallery's permanent collection. The Honorable and Mrs. Edward E. Elson generously endowed this series in 1992. 

You may also like

A woman plays an upright piano as two boys play checkers at a table in this horizontal painting. The scene is loosely painted with areas of flat color and pattern. The people have pale, peachy skin and dark brown hair. Their facial features are painted with dots or short strokes of black. The piano is against the wall to our left. The woman wears a short-sleeved, lemon-yellow dress with a long skirt. A music book is propped on the music stand, and loosely painted objects line the top of the instrument. The wall behind the piano is patterned with white and pale yellow flowers under and around arches against a cranberry-red background. The table where the boys play is in the middle of the room. The players sit in wooden chairs and wear black and white striped jackets with white collars. The boy to our right looks at the board while resting his left cheek, closer to us, in his hand. The other boy looks on with his arms on the table in front of him. The checkerboard sits on a red and white striped cloth, which has lines of black dots in the white strips. Beneath the table is a floral rug with blue and black flowers against a red background. The border is painted loosely with leafy shapes against bright white. Beneath the area rug the floor or another carpet is garnet red with a diamond-shaped grid painted in orange. A petal-pink, upholstered chair sits in front of a tall wardrobe in the back corner of the room. A picture with two violins against a blue background hangs on the side of the furniture to our right. A chest of drawers next to the wardrobe holds a few bowls or objects and a white statue, about half human height. The statue is of a person standing with one knee bent in front of the other, one elbow tucked by the side with that hand held to the chest, and the other bent elbow raised overhead. Pictures hang on the wall around the statue, and the wallpaper there is ivory white with a dark yellow pattern. The artist signed the work in the lower right corner, “Henri Matisse.”

Talks & Conversations:  The Art of Looking: Henri Matisse, Pianist and Checker Players

–
Registration Required
This painting shows a woman sitting with her body turned to the right, her hands clasped around her knees and her head tilted up to the ceiling. Her eyes are closed, and her long, wavy hair flows over her shoulders and down her back. She has pale skin, and her face is illuminated by dramatic lighting, highlighting her round cheeks and small nose. She is wearing a white blouse with ruffled sleeves that drapes off of her right shoulder, exposing her neck, sternum, and part of her shoulder. Over this shirt she seems to be wearing a draped purple garment with a yellow border that covers her other shoulder and her legs. The background is dark.

Talks & Conversations:  The Art of Looking: Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy 

–
Registration Required

Talks & Conversations:  Poetry Reading: Joseph Stanton on American Art

–