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May & June 2025 Public Talk Descriptions​​

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May 2025 Public Talk Descriptions

 

John Singer Sargent: Romance, Drama, and the Visual World

John Singer Sargent was an American artist of great renown, who spent most of his life in Europe. Beginning on April 27, 2025, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will exhibit many works from Sargent’s early career—portraits that depicted the avatars of modern culture, images of everyday people, and dazzling landscapes that provide a visual chronicle of the places he visited for inspiration. The exhibition will begin with paintings that the precocious 18-year-old art student created when he arrived in Paris in 1874 and will continue through the mid-1880s, when his infamous portrait Madame X was a scandalous success at the Paris Salon. Join us for this talk that will either prepare you well to enjoy the exhibition or substitute for a visit if you are unable to attend in person!

 

Alice Neel: Portraits, Politics, and Power

Although mostly unheralded, Alice Neel was one of the great American painters of the Twentieth Century, and a pioneer among women artists. A painter of people, landscape, and still life, Neel was never fashionable or in step with avant-garde movements. When abstract expressionism and pop art were all the rage, she painted in a style and with an approach distinctively her own. Come and hear about her unconventional life and her remarkable career and see many examples of her unique and sometimes shocking paintings.

 

Marc Chagall: Painting Poetry

Marc Chagall lived a long and fruitful life, producing paintings, etchings, book illustrations, stained-glass windows, ceramics, tapestries, and stage sets and costumes—all infused with poetry. His works have a lyrical, emotional resonance informed by his love of humanity. Chagall does not belong to one art movement or style but incorporates elements of cubism, fauvism, symbolism, surrealism, and futurism into his work.  He was a pioneer of modernism, born in a shtetl, leaving us a rich legacy of unforgettable images. This talk requires two parts to tell his inspiring story.

 

The Harlem Renaissance: Courage, Grace, and Vision

The Harlem Renaissance was the beginning of an explosion in creativity that transformed African American identity and history, but it also transformed American culture in general.  Never before had so many people of all backgrounds read the thoughts of African Americans and embraced the black community’s productions, expressions, and style in art, literature, music, dance, and theater. This talk will introduce you to many of the inspired artists who produced astonishing and ground-breaking works.

 

Nazi-Looted Art: Gustav Klimt— Painter of Vienna’s Golden Age

This talk will discuss the important relationship Gustav Klimt, art star of Vienna’s Golden Age, had with his many Jewish patrons. We will see some amazing paintings and learn the tragic stories of what happened to these works and to their enlightened, forward-thinking collectors during the Nazi era and beyond.   

 

Ruth Asawa: Sculptor, Educator, Arts Activist

American sculptor, educator, and arts activist Ruth Asawa is known for her extensive body of work including paintings, printmaking, public commissions, and especially her wire sculptures that challenge conventional notions of material and form. A firm believer in the radical potential of arts education, she also devoted herself to expanding access to art-focused educational programs by co-founding the Alvarado Arts Workshop in 1968 and the first public arts high school in San Francisco in 1982. Come and hear about this pioneering and inspirational artist. The Museum of Modern Art will be holding a blockbuster Ruth Asawa retrospective in 2025!

 

Vincent van Gogh: Color, Passion, and Pain

Throughout his life, Vincent van Gogh was poor, often hungry and ill.  When he died in 1890 at the age of 37, it seemed that his work would be forgotten.  All that has changed, and Vincent is now perhaps the most famous painter of all.  This talk will look at Vincent’s life through his colorful, bold and passionate paintings. Although his works were created many years ago, these remarkable images capture the world in a modern and exciting way.

 

Holocaust Art: This Happened

After the end of World War II, writers and philosophers maintained that the Nazi death camps defied representation; no art could ever do justice to the barbarity. Yet survivors have forced themselves to try to make sense of the horrors they endured— in literature, in music, and in visual art. And now, as Auschwitz recedes into the historical distance and the last survivors disappear, the world cannot afford to forget the legacy these artists have left. This presentation will examine the remarkable work of several painters, some who survived and some who did not.

 

Gustav Klimt and Vienna’s Golden Age

Gustav Klimt dominated cultural life in Vienna at the turn of the Twentieth Century and was the bridge between the Symbolism of fin-de-siècle Europe and the wave of Modernism that captured the imagination of the Continent. This talk will tell the story of his remarkable life, as well as examine his ebullient landscapes, sensual drawings, and ravishing portraits. We will also discuss what happened to his many Jewish patrons and the Klimt works they owned during the Nazi era and beyond.

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Tempestuous Beauty:

How Artists throughout the Ages Were Inspired by Flowers and Gardens

Artists have long been drawn to the natural world to stimulate their creativity. The rich symbolism, diverse color palettes, and delicate, changing nature of flowers have been a source of inspiration across cultures for centuries. Come join us for this talk; we will be introduced to an array of astonishing images from throughout art history, some iconic and some unfamiliar, reminding us why flowers and gardens give us hope, nourish our souls, and elicit pleasure and happiness.

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June 2025 Public Talk Descriptions

 

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller: Sculptor of the Black American Experience

Meta Fuller was born in Philadelphia during Reconstruction and lived until the year that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. A protégée of French sculptor Auguste Rodin, she returned to America from a triumph in Paris to become a luminary of the Harlem Renaissance. Meta Fuller has been described as one of the most imaginative artists of her generation, and her powerful sculptures stand as an historical record of the Black American experience.

 

The Dreyfus Affair, Anti-Semitism, and Art in 19th Century Paris

In 1894 Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was wrongly accused of passing military secrets to the Germans. He was convicted of high treason, court-martialed, and deported to solitary confinement on Devil’s Island. France was split into a fierce anti-Semitic, pro-military right-wing camp and a republican, liberal, left-wing camp. Shockwaves were felt in the circle of Parisian artists as well. The full story of this important, oft-neglected part of art history will be told in two illuminating parts. Part I will discuss the Dreyfus Affair in detail, including what led up to virulent anti-Semitism in France during the latter part of the 19th Century and the role art and artist-activists played. In Part II, on August 14th, we will see how the circle of Parisian artists responded during the Dreyfus Affair and how their political views affected their art and their friendships. 

 

Henri Matisse: Master of Color, Magician of Modernism

The remarkable career of Henri Matisse, one of the most influential artists of the Twentieth Century, fundamentally altered the course of modern art. Spanning six and a half decades, his vast creative output encompassed painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic arts, and paper cutouts. This talk will examine his extraordinary life and many of his important works. His friend and sometime rival Pablo Picasso once said,” All things considered, there is only Matisse.”

 

Andy Warhol: One Singular Sensation

Few American artists are as celebrated and notorious as Andy Warhol. His iconic paintings, silk screens, photography, films, and sculptures have become indelible representations of the American aesthetic, exploring the relationship between artistic expression and celebrity culture. This presentation will examine Warhol’s life and art from his beginnings as a commercial illustrator in the 1950s, to his iconic Pop masterpieces of the early 1960s, to the avant-garde films from the 1960s and '70s, to his innovative use of readymade abstractions in the 1980s.

 

Ruth Orkin: Power of the Image

Ruth Orkin, born in Hollywood, California in 1921, was an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker. She moved to New York in 1943 and launched an impressive career capturing iconic images of people and places. She often said that film, music, and travel inspired her, and all of that came together in her photography. The subject of innumerable exhibitions and honors in her lifetime, Ruth Orkin’s legacy continues to this day.

 

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: The Sacred and the Profane, the Divine and the Witty

Raised on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (1940-2025)  addresses the myths of her ancestors in the context of current issues facing Native Americans. Her inspiration also stems from the work of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Robert Rauschenberg. She uses paint, collage, and found objects to produce both representational and abstract images. Smith has had more than eighty solo exhibits over the past thirty years, organized and curated scores of Native exhibitions, and lectured at almost 200 universities, museums, and conferences.  Jaune Quick-to-See Smith creates a unique, intimate, and insightful visual language grounded in themes of personal and political identity.