Washington, DC—The National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (the Center) announced today that Aden Kumler of Universität Basel will deliver the 75th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, the institution’s longest-running lecture series, in May 2026.

Kumler, an award-winning art historian, will present a four-part lecture series entitled In Praise of Difficulty: Ambiguity, Aesthetics, and the Work of Art in Medieval Europe, to take place in the National Gallery’s East Building Auditorium every Sunday from May 3 to 24, 2026, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. In the series, Kumler will focus on difficulty as an aesthetic strategy, value, and theme in medieval European art. The lectures expand upon one of the central topics of Kumler’s scholarly research: how the material conditions of life shape people’s thought, imagination, and actions.

Art made for and by European medieval Christians has often been associated with religious and aesthetic values of certainty, clarity, and transcendence. Kumler argues that, instead, a long tradition of medieval art offers viewers perceptual and conceptual encounters with ambiguity, obscurity, and contingency. Attending to this neglected tradition of difficult, often self-reflexive images, Kumler’s lectures will explore how medieval works of art position difficulty as a virtue, asking what was at stake and reflecting on its implications for our understanding of medieval art today.

“Professor Kumler’s lectures will take on one of the most challenging concepts in medieval European art: difficulty. In a series of talks ranging from the invention of art as a human creation to the transformative and redemptive effects inherent to works of art, Aden Kumler will highlight the rewards of examining the complex and sometimes obscure origins of art of this period,” said Peter M. Lukehart, interim dean of the Center.

The Lectures

“Regio dissimilitudinis: Art and Ars in a Fallen World”
Sunday, May 3, 2026
For medieval Christians, artmaking originated in estrangement: Exiled from paradise after their transgression, Adam and Eve invented ars (craft or art) to survive after the fall. In this lecture, Kumler examines how medieval artworks confronted and reflected upon their origin and existence as postlapsarian human creations in a “region of dissimilitude”: a world of aesthetic experience, estranged from its creator.

“Opus/Onus: Art’s Burden in Medieval Europe”
Sunday, May 10, 2026
The making of art in medieval Europe required skill, a knowledge of materials, hard work, and patience. There was also the additional challenge of making images and objects that pleased the senses, engaged the mind, and even addressed the beholder’s soul. Addressing the multiple burdens placed on the work of art—and its makers—in medieval Europe, this lecture explores how artists thematized art’s tasks and difficulties in the works they created.

“Obscuritas: Ambiguity and Disorientation”
Sunday, May 17, 2026
Although European medieval art has often been celebrated for its luminous qualities, spiritual certainties, and ordered and ordering aesthetic values, these characteristics are only part of the historical picture. This lecture examines medieval works of art that virtuosically pursue other aims: blurring the divide between image and reality, bending time and space, and calling into question both the work of art and art’s work on its beholders.

“Passio—Patientia—Potentia: Tribulation, Tension, Transformation”
Sunday, May 24, 2026
Medieval Christians understood passio—the state of being acted upon, even de-formed and transformed—to be a fundamental aspect of the human condition and of Christ’s redemptive work. In this lecture, Kumler examines how medieval works of art took up passio and the cognate virtue of patience as a theme, an aesthetic strategy, and an occasion for reflecting upon the making and beholding of works of art.

About Aden Kumler

Aden Kumler is professor of art history in the Department of Arts, Media, Philosophy at Universität Basel and director of eikones, Center for the Theory and History of the Image. Her research interests are thematically and historically wide-ranging, but a key tenet of her work surrounds how the material conditions of life shape people’s thought, imagination, and actions. Kumler’s first book, Translating Truth: Ambitious Images and Religious Knowledge in Late Medieval France and England (2011), examines the interplay of manuscript illumination and vernacular texts in 13th- and 14th-century France and England. It was awarded a Medieval Academy of America book subvention and was short-listed for the ACE/Mercer’s International Book Award. Her work also focuses on Christian liturgical objects in the context of practice, ritual prescriptions, and theological concepts in the Middle Ages, as well as contemporary problems of methodology and image theory. A new area of her research explores the influential role of images, artworks, and artifacts in the formation of historical conceptions of labor, property, value, and authenticity. At the Center, Kumler has been a David E. Finley Fellow (2004–2007) and a member of the board of advisors (2017–2020).

About the Mellon Lectures

Inaugurated in 1949, the Mellon Lectures is the longest-running lecture series at the National Gallery of Art. The series was founded to present the best contemporary thought and scholarship in the fine arts. The program itself is named for Andrew W. Mellon, founder of the National Gallery of Art, who gave the nation his art collection and funds to build the West Building, which opened to the public in 1941. Lecturers have included art historians, artists, archaeologists, poets, actors, and musicologists. See the full list.

About the National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art welcomes all people to explore art, creativity, and our shared humanity. Millions of people come through its doors each year—with millions more online—making it one of the most visited art museums in the world. The National Gallery’s renowned collection includes nearly 160,000 works of art, from the ancient world to today. Admission to the West and East Buildings, Sculpture Garden, special exhibitions, and public programs is always free.