National Gallery of Art | Talks

Latest Episodes:

"Sound Thoughts on Art" trailer Mar 10, 2021

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Hosted by musician and journalist Celeste Headlee, each episode focuses on a work of art in the National Gallery’s collection. Learn about the work and its context and hear a musician respond to that work through sound, creating a dialogue between visual art and music. Sound Thoughts on Art tells the stories of how we experience art and how it connects us.

Find full transcripts and more information about this episode at https://www.nga.gov/music-programs/podcasts.html.

Arnold Newman Lecture Series on Photography: Teju Cole and Fazal Sheikh Mar 05, 2021

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“the artifice of justice” A Conversation with Reginald D. Betts, Candice C. Jones, and Richard Ross Jan 29, 2021

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Reginald Dwayne Betts- poet and PhD in Law candidate, Yale Law School; Candice C. Jones, president and CEO, Public Welfare Foundation of Washington, DC; Richard Ross, artist and Distinguished Research Professor of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara In a previously recorded conversation, artist Richard Ross; Candice C. Jones, president and CEO of Public Welfare Foundation; and poet and legal scholar Reginald Dwayne Betts discuss the role of the arts in eliciting, supporting, perhaps demanding social change. Together, as activists and artists, they unpack the complex interplay between art, institutions, and advocacy. An award-winning memoirist and poet, Betts has written extensively on the American legal and justice system, telling his own stories of injustice and bringing to light those of others. He conceptualized and brought to life—through a joint partnership with Yale Law School’s Justice Collaboratory and support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—the Million Book Project, which will distribute a curated 500-book collection to 1,000 medium- and maximum-security prisons across every state. “the artifice of justice” is a phrase from Betts’s poem titled “When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving,” published in Felon: poems. Prior to Jones’s work leading the Public Welfare Foundation, which aims to build a justice system that is community led, restorative, and racially just, she served as director of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, pushing major reforms to reduce the number of youth in state custody. Jones, as a White House Fellow, created the strategy that restored access to Pell grants to youth and adults in correctional settings. Award-winning artist Ross created Juvenile-in-Justice, a collection of photographs, interviews, audio documents, and texts created over a dozen years, drawn from the lives of more than 1,000 incarcerated kids. The project humanizes the statistics about children in the justice system and tells their stories. Relying on their experiences, Betts, Jones, and Ross describe how art can facilitate change by shifting the imagination and enabling others to be understood anew. This program is made possible by the James D. and Kathryn K. Steele Fund for Photography.

Elson Lecture Series 2020: Mary Kelly Jan 12, 2021

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Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture 2020: Julie Dash and the L.A. Rebellion: Architects of the Impossible Jan 05, 2021

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The Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art 2020: Telling the Past Differently: Italian Renaissance Art in the Hands of the Beholder Nov 03, 2020

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Reflections on the Collection: The Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professors at the National Gallery of Art: David Bomford on Édouard Manet’s The Railway (1873) Sep 22, 2020

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John Wilmerding Symposium 2020, A Tribute to David C. Driskell: Part 6, Artist Conversation Sep 17, 2020

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2020 Summer Lecture Series: Staycation: Modern Masters of the French Riviera Aug 07, 2020

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2020 Summer Lecture Series: Staycation: Milan: A Tale of Two Cities Jul 31, 2020

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