Programs
During the academic year, the Center organizes scholarly programs that range in size and duration from multiday gatherings to small roundtable discussions. The Center’s programs encourage and support innovative research in the visual arts.
Public Programs
The Center supports lectures, symposia, and discussions that are free and open to the public. These programs are often organized in collaboration with departments across the National Gallery of Art or with partnering institutions.
September 10, 2024
Copresented with the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo
Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo
Writer, poet, and professor Eliane Potiguara discussed the connection between water and Indigenous cultural preservation.
September 27, 2024
West Building Lecture Hall
Author Jennifer L. Roberts discussed her book Contact: Art and the Pull of Print with Steven Nelson, dean of the Center. Roberts’s 2021 Mellon Lectures formed the basis for the volume. A book signing followed the conversation.
November 8, 2024
Organized with exhibition curators Mary Morton and Kimberly A. Jones
East Building Auditorium and live streamed
As a complement to the morning’s study day, this public program examined the impact of impressionism beyond the French capital.
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Steven Nelson, The Center
Mary Morton, National Gallery of Art
Kimberly A. Jones, National Gallery of Art
Presentations and Panel Discussion
“National Identities and the Politics of Dislocation: Another Exhibition in Paris, 1874”
Nikki Georgopulos, University of British Columbia
“Loïs Mailou Jones’s French Landscapes: Routes Toward Impressionism”
Kelly-Christina Grant, Université Paris Nanterre
“Francisco Oller, Camille Pissarro, and Impressionism in the Caribbean”
Natalia Ángeles Vieyra, National Gallery of Art
André Dombrowski, University of Pennsylvania, moderator
November 17, 2024
28th Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art
East Building Auditorium and live streamed
Caravaggio’s Maltese paintings are conveyers of meaning borne from their experience. The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (1608) stands apart from other altar paintings produced in his final years. Preserved in situ in the Oratory of the Knights of Saint John in Valletta, it provides unique insight into how Caravaggio conceived the spatial relationships of his final altarpieces. This lecture posited that, for The Beheading, Caravaggio undertook calculated studies of what we would today call audience immersion.
Methodologically anchored in site immersion and archival research conducted over three decades, this lecture contextualized Caravaggio’s work within the specific functions of the Oratory, the mechanics of the patronage of the Hospitaller Knights, and the peculiarities of their government. Finally, this lecture discussed how The Beheading was carefully conceived by Caravaggio to perform within this system and the sacred space of the Oratory. Nowhere else can a late work by Caravaggio be absorbed in such a manner.
February 28–March 1, 2025
University of Maryland / West Building Lecture Hall and live streamed
February 28
George Levitine Lecture in Art History
“Freddy Rodríguez: The Geometry of Freedom”
E. Carmen Ramos, National Gallery of Art
March 1
Morning Session
Welcome by Steven Nelson, The Center
Moderated by Emily Catherine Egan, University of Maryland
“The Human Forest: 16th-Century Brazilwood Extraction and Contemporary Legacies”
Erin Wrightson, University of Pennsylvania
Introduced by Sarah M. Guérin
“Drawing Kinship: Pastel, Whiteness, and the Aesthetic Work of Colonial Authority”
Megan Baker, University of Delaware
Introduced by Jennifer Van Horn
“Visions of Empire in Edinburgh’s New Town”
Amy Orner, Pennsylvania State University
Introduced by Robin Thomas
“A Composite of Fragments: Removal, Displacement, and Illusion in Museum Displays of Persian Luster Tiles”
Hossein Nakhaei, University of Pittsburgh
Introduced by Sahar Hosseini
Afternoon Session
Welcome and moderated by Kaira M. Cabañas, The Center
“Fashioning Modernist Painting: Representations of Hand Fans in Marie Laurencin’s Art”
Raquel Belden, Emory University
Introduced by Todd Cronan
“Under Advisement: New Negro Women and the Black Beauty Bodily Aesthetic”
Brandee Newkirk, Duke University
Introduced by Kaira M. Cabañas
“The Diasporic Archive and the Reimagining of Memory in the Art of Faith Ringgold and Simone Leigh”
Drew Lynch, Virginia Commonwealth University
Introduced by Tobias Wofford
“Panorama of Mount Lu and Zhang Daqian’s Taiwanese Period (1976–1983)”
Haojian Cheng, University of Maryland
Introduced by Jason Kuo
March 8, 2025
East Building Print Study Room / National Gallery of Art Library and live streamed
This event was organized to update the work of women artists on Wikipedia and to celebrate the Italian printmaker Girolama Cagnaccia Parasole (c. 1567–1622). After presentations and a display of rare books and original artworks in the East Building Print Study Room, the day culminated with an edit-a-thon, creating and improving Wikipedia articles about Girolama, her family, and the Accademia using National Gallery resources, including The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590–1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma.
Introduction
Peter M. Lukehart, The Center, with a contribution by Susan Nalezyty
“Girolama Parasole: A Family in Print”
Evelyn Lincoln, Brown University (emerita)
Display of rare books and original artworks
Wikipedia editing tutorial and edit-a-thon
Ariel Cetrone, Wikimedia DC
March 9–30, 2025
74th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
East Building Auditorium and live streamed
Over four lectures, Wilson presented key themes and examined buildings, works of art, and other historical documents through the interplay of race and the construction of national identity. She brought together historical research on the United States’ early civic architecture, including Richmond’s Virginia State Capitol, the White House, and the design of Washington, DC. Her talks explored the complex dichotomy between the founding ideals of these institutions and the reality of their construction.
March 9: “The Architecture of ‘We the People’”
March 16: “The Measure of Freedom and Slavery”
March 23: “‘Wanted at the City of Washington. A number of slaves to labor…’”
March 30: “The Metropolis of Unfreedom: Washington City”
April 25, 2025
West Building Lecture Hall
In this conversation, Mary Beard and Hugo Shakeshaft explored the place of beauty in ancient Greece. This event took place on occasion of the publication of Shakeshaft’s Beauty and the Gods: A History from Homer to Plato. Copies were available for sale after the conversation.
By-Invitation Programs
The Center organizes small gatherings focused on particular topics throughout the year, ranging from study days to thematic seminars. These events bring together scholars from around the world to the National Gallery. Dialogues following public programs offer informal conversations with lecturers following their presentations.
June 4–7, 2024
Each year, a Center postdoctoral fellow in residence designs and directs an intensive weeklong seminar for the predoctoral fellows in residence, including readings, discussions, and visits to local institutions.
Participants
Justin M. Brown, Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2022–2024
Christopher Daly, David E. Finley Fellow, 2021–2024
Erin Dickey, Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2022–2024
Bianca Hand, Twenty-Four-Month Ittleson Fellow, 2022–2024
Aleksander Musiał, Paul Mellon Fellow, 2021–2024
Kelvin Parnell Jr., Wyeth Fellow, 2022–2024
With her time in residence cut short by the outbreak of COVID-19, Emily Braun returned to the Center four years later to hold a colloquy on the connections between poetry and painting. Questions asked included: How do the visual interpretative skills of the poet differ from those of the art historian? How do art historians today define (and teach) a “formal” description or analysis of an artwork (indeed, what does that word “formal” mean)?
Morning Session
“Why Now, Ekphrasis?”
Emily Braun, The Center
“Ekphrasis and the Museum”
Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux, Boston University (emerita)
“The Puzzles of Ancient Ekphrasis: From Pompeii to Petronius”
Mary Beard, The Center
“Painting and the Lyric: From Virtue to Desire”
Elizabeth Cropper, The Center (emerita)
“Robert Lowell’s For the Union Dead, and Possibly in Tandem with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Hiram Powers’ Greek Slave’”
Harry Cooper, National Gallery of Art
Afternoon Session
“Some Poems with Paintings in Them”
Jorie Graham, Harvard University
“Van Gogh and Poetic Painting”
Judy Sund, CUNY Graduate Center
“‘Heavens, I Recognize the Place’—Notes on Ekphrastic Poetry”
Peter Sacks, Harvard University
“Diptychs”
Kevin Young, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
November 8, 2024
Ahead of the day’s public program, a group of scholars, organized by the Center with curators Mary Morton and Kimberly A. Jones, convened in the exhibition for discussion.
Participants
Juliet Bellow, American University
Michelle Bird, National Gallery of Art
Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Kaira M. Cabañas, The Center
Alexis Clark, North Carolina State University
Justine De Young, Fashion Institute of Technology
André Dombrowski, University of Pennsylvania
Michelle Foa, Tulane University
Nikki Georgopulos, University of British Columbia
Kelly-Christina Grant, Université Paris Nanterre
Gloria Groom, Art Institute of Chicago
Ann Hoenigswald, National Gallery of Art (retired)
Rena Hoisington, National Gallery of Art
Kimberly A. Jones, National Gallery of Art
Peter M. Lukehart, The Center
Mary Morton, National Gallery of Art
Harmon Siegel, Harvard University
Natalia Ángeles Vieyra, National Gallery of Art
Genevieve Westerby, University of Delaware
Aaron Wile, National Gallery of Art
November 18, 2024
This dialogue discussed the sources documenting Caravaggio’s stay in Malta and presented them within a wider framework of art-historical research on the artist. The first part of the session engaged with archival documents and contextualized their significance in shaping our understanding of the artist’s work. The second part was an open discussion on performance and audience immersion (as discussed in Sciberras’s lecture, “Blood Joining Blood: The Immersive in Caravaggio’s Malta”) and current issues in Caravaggio scholarship.
March 24, 2025
A discussion of the 74th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts.
April 4, 2025
Much scholarship today has highlighted the critique that “Byzantium” is an anachronistic term to describe the medieval Roman Empire, once centered on Constantinople. An invention of the early modern period, “Byzantium” is instead an artifact of European machinations: on the one hand, seeking to disentangle the empire from European history “proper” and, on the other hand, desiring to weaponize Byzantine history as a foil against eastern enemies, particularly the Ottoman Empire. The category of Byzantine art becomes ever more fraught with the complex and intertwined legacies of the post-Byzantine world, which saw the reception, reworking, and adaptation of Byzantine stylistic elements across the empire’s sphere of influence and diaspora, from Venice to Russia, from Ethiopia to Scandinavia.
Concepts like flatness, frontality, gold, revetments, inverse perspective, and so on developed not so much out of Byzantine art itself but from a host of diverse, global artists responding to and refracting Byzantine art through their own religious, imperial, colonial, and subversive projects. This seminar examined the meandering lives of Byzantine art after the invention of “Byzantium” into the present, seeking for the first time to critically examine the promiscuous permutations of a style through its centuries of confusion, elision, and reinvention.
Introduction
Roland Betancourt, The Center
Session I: Exiles of Byzantium
“Renaissance Responses to the End of Byzantium”
Michail Leivadiotis, Freie Universität Berlin
“Troy in the Wake of Constantinople’s Fall: The Riccardiana Virgil and Byzantium’s Alterity”
Nicole C. Paxton, John Cabot University
“Medieval Nubian Art Between Makuria, Byzantium, and Europe”
Ravinder S. Binning, Dumbarton Oaks
Discussion
Moderated by Roland Betancourt
Session II: Reforging Byzantiums
“Iconic Timepieces: The Revival of Sinai’s Calendar Icons”
Peter Boudreau, Princeton University
“Forging a New Aristocracy: Collecting and Counterfeiting Byzantine Enamel in the Gilded Age”
Shannon Steiner, New York
“Patterns: Introducing Shirley Kontos”
Justin Willson, The Icon Museum and Study Center
Discussion
Moderated by Roland Betancourt
Session III: Aesthetic Excursions
“Byzantium in Bengal: Jamini Roy at Home and in the World”
Paroma Chatterjee, University of Michigan
“Caribbean Mosaics: Romare Bearden and the ‘Byzantine Dimension’”
Alicia Walker, Bryn Mawr College
“Byzantium After Byz/antium”
Andrea Myers Achi, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Discussion and Final Remarks
Moderated by Roland Betancourt, The Center
Fellows’ Presentations
Colloquia, presented by Center professors and senior fellows, and shoptalks, given by the postdoctoral and predoctoral fellows, occur throughout the academic year. Colloquia are public programs held in the West Building Lecture Hall. Shoptalks are by invitation.
September 26, 2024
“The Trouble with Museums”
Mary Beard, Kress-Beinecke Professor
October 31, 2024
“The Bohío and the City: Ephemeral Architecture and Urbanism in the Late Spanish Colonial Caribbean”
Paul Niell, Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow
November 21, 2024
“Scrappy Art History: Reconstituting Franciscan Visual Strategies in the Maya and Pueblo Worlds”
Amara Solari, Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow
January 23, 2025
“Forging New Narratives of Abstraction from the Andes”
Michele Greet, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow
March 27, 2025
“Staging the Diaspora: Vernacular Image-Making in May’s Studio, San Francisco, 1923–1945”
Chang Tan, William C. Seitz Senior Fellow
April 17, 2025
“Dispatched: The Photographic Summons of the Police Radio Antenna Tower”
Jason Hill, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow
May 1, 2025
“Black, White, and All the Reds In-Between: Toward a Critical Theory of Color in Medieval Arabic Architecture”
Abbey Stockstill, Paul Mellon Senior Fellow
October 10, 2024
“From Easel to Wall: Experiments with Oil in Italian Renaissance Mural Painting”
Maria Gabriella Matarazzo, Beinecke Postdoctoral Fellow
November 7, 2024
“The Settler-Bishop’s Benediction: Legacies of a Medieval Walrus Hunt”
Robyn A. Barrow, Paul Mellon Fellow
December 5, 2024
“Toward a Nonhuman History of Renaissance Art (Worms)”
David P. Bardeen, David E. Finley Fellow
February 6, 2025
“‘Traces on the Surface of Time (āsār bar safhe-ye rūzgar)’: Deciphering the Ancient Past in Late 19th-Century Iran”
Chaeri Lee, Twenty-Four-Month Ittleson Fellow
February 20, 2025
“‘New Things in Old Ways’: Anthropology and Iteration in the Seneca Arts Project (1935–1941)”
Julia Silverman, Wyeth Fellow
March 6, 2025
“When Heavens Collided: Clockwork Asynchronicity Between Early Modern China and Europe”
Wenjie Su, Samuel H. Kress Fellow
April 3, 2025
“The World Eaters and Lee Bontecou’s Flightless Birds”
James H. Miller, Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow
April 10, 2025
“Veins of Power: Mapping Knowledge and Authority in Late Colonial Huancavelica”
Celia Rodríguez Tejuca, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow
Staff Programs
The Center organizes programs to support research and spark dialogue within the National Gallery staff community. Works in Progress give staff a platform to present on research in progress outside their regular duties. Guest Dialogues are opportunities for staff to engage with speakers invited by the Center.
October 2, 2024
“Returning to Kenneth V. Young’s Orbs of Color”
Sarah Battle, The Center
February 5, 2025
“Contemplative Spaces in Modern Architecture”
Susan B. Wertheim, Department of Architecture and Engineering
April 2, 2025
“Adaptations for an Uncertain World”
Noël Kassewitz, Department of Object Conservation
May 9, 2025
“Using AI to Explore Unstructured Data from the Index of American Design”
Abby Foster, John Wilmerding Intern in Digital Interpretation
February 19, 2025
“The Ship of Fools”
Javier Téllez, New York
March 5, 2025
“Estevão Silva and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo”
Lorraine Mendes, Pinacoteca de São Paulo