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September 5, 2025

Visitors enjoy Storytime in the National Gallery's East Building.
Talks & Conversations

Storytime: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

East Building Atrium

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Talks & Conversations

The Art of Looking: Jules Breton, The Cliff (La Falaise)

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Registration Required

September 6, 2025

Festivals

First Saturdays

Each month, join us for a fun and relaxed experience featuring art making, films, and a variety of special pop-up activities. All activities are free, and most are first come, first served. Some activities require registration. Learn More about First Saturdays

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

A very young visitor reading a children's book with a pacifier in it's mouth.
Talks & Conversations
Storytime: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

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East Building Atrium
A glass holding a loose bouquet of flowers set within an oval is surrounded by eight insects against an off-white surface in this vertical still life painting. It is impossible to tell whether the oval is an opening piercing the white surface or if the still life is an oval-shaped painting sitting on top of the white surface. The glass holding the flowers has straight, slightly flaring sides with a ring of textured knubs around the bottom third. Flowers in the glass include a white lily of the valley, yellow and purple violet, blue grape hyacinth, yellow narcissus, red poppy, upside-down cup-shaped pink snake’s head fritillary, and stems of greenery. The bouquet is lit from the left, and a ray of light focused by the glass falls across the back edge of the wooden ledge on which the glass sits. Two drops of water bead on the ledge, and the artist signed the front face of the ledge, “CLARA P.” The background behind the flowers within the oval is black. The bugs on the white surface are much larger in scale, painted precisely so anatomical details can be made out. Across the top are a dragonfly with a green body, a house fly with red eyes, and a dragonfly with a red body. A fuzzy caterpillar is to the left of the oval and a hornet is to the right. Across the bottom are a snail, a ladybug, and a beetle with a black body and red wings and legs.
Talks & Conversations

Conservation is a Logic of Love

East Building Auditorium

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Registration Required

September 7, 2025

Modernist Visions

Join us for a four-part lecture series about the bold transformation of modern art at the turn of the 20th century. Upending the traditional idea of art as a “mirror of reality,” artists grappled with profound questions: What is the purpose of painting? What can it truly express? Learn More about Modernist Visions

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Registration Required

Pale beige, angular houses cluster at the center of the horizontal landscape painting. The hilly, rocky landscape around and below the houses is painted with cool blues and greens, and warm ivory and caramel brown beneath a pale blue sky. The artist applied the paint with regular, parallel, straight strokes.
Talks & Conversations
Paul Cezanne and Georges Seurat: Eyes in Service to the Mind

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East Building Auditorium

Registration Required

September 14, 2025

Alison Saar, Sweeping Beauty, 1997, 3- color woodcut on Okawara Natural Paper, National Gallery of Art, Promised gift of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson
Talks & Conversations

Artist Talk: Willie Cole and Alison Saar in Conversation with Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson

East Building Auditorium

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Registration Required

September 19, 2025

A seated woman with an infant on her lap and three children are clustered on a terrace overlooking green hills and a body of water in this square painting. They all have pale skin with flushed cheeks. The group is centered in the composition, and the woman sits to our left, facing our right, almost in profile. The wooden chair is upholstered in scarlet-red fabric and a large slate-blue bird perches on the backrest. Gold-edged, red drapery hangs behind the woman, suspended from stone columns on either side of her. The woman’s brown hair is covered by a frilly, silvery-gray cap with a matching shawl layered over a short, three-quarter sleeve jacket. Her fern-green skirt, covered with a pattern of coral-red flowers and gold vines, gleams in the soft light coming from behind us. A thin black band encircles her neck, and a round, black earring dangles from the ear we can see. She bows her head slightly and gazes down at the children. The infant lies across her lap with its head coming toward us, its chubby arms reaching up to the woman while turning to look at the three standing children. They appear to be a young boy and two girls, and they all have blond hair, large brown eyes, and delicate rose-red mouths. They crowd together at the woman’s knees. The boy is taller than the girls and stands behind them, visible from the shoulders up. He is dressed in red garments and stands almost in profile to gaze up at the woman. The girls turn their heads to look directly at us. At the center of the trio, the taller girl wears a long, voluminous brown gown. Her hair is pulled back and long ringlets frame her face. She also wears round black earrings and two delicate black cords around her neck, one of which holds a gold ring. At the front, the shortest girl wears a black and white gown with a sheer neckerchief along neckline, and she rests one arm across the woman’s lap. The girl’s long, puffy, black sleeves are slashed to create openings for white fabric to show through. Her hair is also upswept with ringlets framing her face. To the right of the group is a column made of two creatures with pink female heads, faces, and nude torsos with scaly, olive-green, twisting, snake-like legs. One creature faces us and the other faces our right. The sky beyond the terrace is filled with clouds that transition from slate gray at the top to tan and rust orange where it meets the distant hills.
Talks & Conversations

The Art of Looking: Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Deborah Kip, Wife of Sir Balthasar Gerbier, and Her Children

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Registration Required

September 20, 2025

Arnold Newman Lecture Series on Photography

Learn More about Arnold Newman Lecture Series on Photography

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Registration Required

Talks & Conversations
Artist Talk: Carla Williams in Conversation with Deborah Willis

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East Building Auditorium

Registration Required

September 21, 2025

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 Opening Day

Celebrate the opening of the exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985 with a curator-led talk, a film screening, and more.   Learn More about Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 Opening Day

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Registration Required

Talks & Conversations
Introduction to the Exhibition: Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985

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East Building Auditorium

Registration Required

September 25, 2025

Talks & Conversations

Wood Work: The Parasole Woodblock Carvers in Early Modern Rome

West Building Lecture Hall

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Registration Required

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