National Gallery of Art - VIDEOS AND PODCASTS

Wyeth Lectures in American Art

Established in 2003, the Wyeth Lecture in American Art is a biennial event hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, and supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Wyeth lecturers are chosen on the basis of their outstanding contributions to the study of and scholarship on American art.

Additional lecture program recordings in this series will be made available as podcasts in the coming months.
2009
Image: Wyeth Lecture in American Art: Minstrelsy Wyeth Lecture in American Art: Minstrelsy "Uncorked": Thomas Eakins' Empathetic Realism
Recorded on November 4, 2009, this podcast presents the fourth Wyeth Lecture in American Art, a biennial event hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Richard J. Powell focuses on Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) as uniquely empathetic among the many 19th-century artists who depicted African American performance and entertainment. Eakins' Negro Boy Dancing (1887; Metropolitan Museum of Art) shows a young banjo player, an elderly teacher, and an adolescent dancer, evoking the American rage for the form of musical theater known as minstrelsy. Eakins' watercolor, along with two oil-on-board studies at the National Gallery of Art, challenged the tendency of minstrelsy to employ racial ridicule and physical exaggeration. Instead, Powell argues, Eakins adhered to a painterly realism as well as his own brand of empathy and ethics.


Watch | iTunes | Watch on ArtBabble | RSS (65:40 mins.)

2007
Image: Edward Hopper (1882–1967) Ground Swell, 1939 oil on canvas The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund Wyeth Lecture in American Art: Ground Swell: Edward Hopper in 1939
Edward Hopper's paintings often show people and places in states of enigmatic isolation, loneliness, and contemplation. These are among the fabled Hopper themes—so fabled it would hardly seem possible to go beyond them to give another account of his art. Focusing on one Hopper painting, Ground Swell of 1939, this lecture by Alexander Nemerov tries to provide a thicker, denser, more surprising story of what it meant for Hopper to make a painting, especially in the year 1939. Produced in conjunction with the exhibition Edward Hopper.

Watch | iTunes | Watch on ArtBabble | RSS (52:13 mins.)

Notable Lectures | Video Podcasts | Music Programs | The Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series | The Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art | Elson Lecture Series | A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts | Conversations with Artists Series | Conversations with Collectors Series | Wyeth Lectures in American Art Series