Animations:

Visit
Open today 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Sculpture Garden Extended Hours

Open late until 8:00 p.m. on select nights
Through September 5
Exhibitions & Events
America’s 250th

Celebrating American art and artists
Art & Artists
Open Call

Artists Reimagining the Collection
Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

Open 10:00–5:00

Visit
Open today 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Sculpture Garden Extended Hours

Open late until 8:00 p.m. on select nights
Through September 5
Exhibitions & Events
America’s 250th

Celebrating American art and artists
Art & Artists
Open Call

Artists Reimagining the Collection
Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

Video

Chasing That Which Is Not Me / Chasing That Which Is Me

The 73rd A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts presented by Anna Deavere Smith

July 8, 2024

Award-winning actress, playwright, and professor Anna Deavere Smith explores performance as a way of knowing in this four-part series, “Chasing That Which Is Not Me / Chasing That Which Is Me,” delivered in spring 2024.

Since 1980, Anna Deavere Smith has been interviewing Americans through her project “On the Road: A Search for American Character,” which she developed into a new form of theater. Delivered with segments of performance, these lectures examine this material collected over the course of Smith’s career.

Inaugurated in 1949, the Mellon Lectures is the longest-running lecture series at the National Gallery of Art. The series was founded “to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts.”

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