John A. Tyson, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, National Gallery of Art. Hans Haacke (b. 1936, Cologne) is one of the leading figures of conceptual art and one of the most important political artists working today. In 2013, the Collectors Committee of the National Gallery of Art made possible the acquisition of Haacke’s Condensation Wall (1963–1966/2013), a breakthrough kinetic work from the artist's early career. Reflecting Haacke's involvement with the West German-based group Zero, Condensation Wall is part of a set of sculptures, including Condensation Cube and Condensation Floor, that combine geometric shapes and organic materials to reveal physico-dynamical processes. Contemporaneous with minimal sculpture, Haacke's work transforms the industrially fabricated containers of artists like Donald Judd and Larry Bell into barometers: depending on the conditions of the environment, the water inside condenses and evaporates into fog or “rain.” The transparent boxes frame this natural process, the gallery that displays them, and the surrounding artworks. In this lecture, delivered on December 14, 2015 as part of the Works in Progress series, John Tyson considers how Haacke has employed weather for both aesthetic and political ends, exploring the way meteorological projects, such as Condensation Wall, can heighten viewers’ awareness of the normally invisible systems at work in art institutions.

Jens M. Daehner and Kenneth S. Lapatin, associate curators of antiquities, The J. Paul Getty Museum. To celebrate the opening of Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World on December 13, 2015, exhibition curators Jens M. Daehner and Kenneth S. Lapatin present some 50 bronze sculptures and related works, dating from the 4th century BC to the 1st century AD. They span the Hellenistic period when the art and culture of Greece spread throughout the Mediterranean and lands once conquered by Alexander the Great. Through the medium of bronze, artists were able to capture the dynamic realism, expression, and detail that characterized the new artistic goals of the period. Power and Pathos brings together works from world-renowned archaeological museums in Austria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Georgia, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United States. On view through March 20, 2016, the exhibition presents a unique opportunity to witness the importance of bronze in the ancient world, when it became the preferred medium for portrait sculpture.

Leo G. Mazow, associate professor of art history, University of Arkansas, and guitarist, The Coverlets; Brittany Stephenson, singer, The Coverlets. American artist Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) used folk and popular song as source material for several of his best-known murals, easel paintings, and prints. Borrowing from such classic tunes as “Jesse James,” “John Henry,” “Wreck of the Old ’97,” and “Frankie and Johnnie,” Benton found in music and lyrics artistic material that could help preserve a quickly vanishing past. In this lecture and music performance presented on November 22, 2015, at the National Gallery of Art, Leo G. Mazow and Brittany Stephenson offer a survey of Benton’s sonic subjects—including train whistles, gunshots, and musical instruments—that figure prominently in his work.

Scott MacDonald, visiting professor of art history, Hamilton College. From the fall of 1947 until the spring of 1963, New York City was invigorated by Cinema 16, the most successful and influential film society in American history. Established by Amos and Marcia Vogel, and directed by Vogel, Cinema 16 offered its audiences monthly film programs of great diversity and considerable intellectual and emotional challenge. At its height, Cinema 16 boasted 8,000 members, including many of the movers and shakers of the New York cultural scene, who came to see films that were unavailable or illegal to show outside the parameters of a membership film society. In this Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture recorded on December 7, 2014, Scott MacDonald, film historian and author of Cinema 16: Documents toward a History of the Film Society, presents a program of films that were crucial for Cinema 16 audiences—organized so as to evoke the unusually challenging programming strategy Amos Vogel developed. The following films were screened: A Divided World (1948), a rarely seen nature film by Swedish filmmaker Arne Sucksdorff; Fireworks (1946), probably the first openly gay film, a psychodrama by 17-year-old Kenneth Anger; George Franju’s The Blood of the Beasts (1949), which exposes the surreal underbelly of normal urban life (no film caused more controversy at Cinema 16); Weegee’s New York (c. 1952), a New York City Symphony photographed by master street photographer Weegee and apparently edited by Vogel; Eaux d’artifice (1953), Kenneth Anger’s exploration of the Villa d’Este gardens at Tivoli outside of Rome; and Canadian Norman McLaren’s Begone Dull Care (1949), a visual accompaniment, made by painting directly on the filmstrip, to an original composition by jazz great Oscar Peterson.

Thomas Elsaesser, senior fellow, International College of Cultural Technologies and Media Theory, Weimar, Germany. In this Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture recorded on December 2, 2012, cultural historian Thomas Elsaesser, one of our most creative and unconventional thinkers on cinematic culture, film history, and digital media, speaks on the interconnections between the cinematic avant-gardes of the 1920s and modernist architecture, the nonfiction film, and advertising. Among Elsaesser’s twenty 20 authored and edited books is an in-depth study of German cinema in the 1920s, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary,; a monograph on Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis,; and European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, covering a broad range of topics from film festivals to national cinemas, and from the high-/low culture debate to the cinematic auteurs of France, Britain, and Germany. Elsaesser’s illustrated lecture included advertisements and industrial films from the interwar period that were influenced by avant-garde cinematic techniques, and was followed by concluded with a screening of a new digital restoration of Walter Ruttmann’s classic 1929 film Melodie der Welt.

David Bindman, emeritus professor of the history of art, University College London. Antonio Canova’s (1757-1822) sculptures, as they have come down to us, are notable for their pure use of marble. However, the sculptor was the subject of controversy in his own time because he often toned down the whiteness of the marble and in some cases tinted the stone in flesh colors. Why did this cause such an adverse reaction, and in which quarters? In this 19th annual Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art recorded on November 8, 2015, at the National Gallery of Art, David Bindman discusses the heart of the immense prestige of marble sculpture over every other kind of art in the 19th century and the attitudes we have toward it now.

John G. Hanhardt, senior curator for media arts, Nam June Paik Media Arts Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Andy Warhol created a large and distinctive body of work in both film and video. In this Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture recorded on December 4, 2011, John G. Hanhardt, historian of experimental media, examines the various ways Warhol reshaped time and narrative in both media, illustrated with excerpts from Warhol’s films and videotapes. This program was scheduled to coincide with Warhol on the Mall, a joint celebration on the occasion of two exhibitions: Warhol: Headlines, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (September 25, 2011–January 2, 2012), and Andy Warhol: Shadows at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (September 25, 2011–January 15, 2012).

David C. Driskell, artist, curator, and Distinguished University Professor of Art, Emeritus, University of Maryland at College Park; Ellington Robinson, artist, professorial lecturer of painting at American University, and professorial lecturer of drawing at Montgomery College, Takoma Park. David C. Driskell is the only speaker in National Gallery of Art history to participate in programming as an artist, collector, and scholar. In this conversation recorded on November 1, 2015, Driskell returns to discuss the role of the mentor with artist Ellington Robinson. Both artists present the genesis and evolution of their work, sharing their experience with important mentors and their training together at the University of Maryland, College Park. This program is held in collaboration with the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park. The discussion coincides with New Arrivals 2015: Collecting Contemporary Art at the University of Maryland, an exhibition featuring Robinson’s work that was on view at the Stamp Gallery from September 21 through December 18, 2015.

David Getsy, Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History and chair, department of art history, theory, and criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. To celebrate the publication of Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender, David Getsy presented a lecture at the National Gallery of Art on October 25, 2015. The book examines abstract sculpture in the 1960s that came to propose unconventional and open accounts of bodies, persons, and genders. Drawing on transgender and queer theory, Getsy offers innovative and archivally rich new interpretations of artworks by, and critical writing about, four major artists—Dan Flavin (1933–1996), Nancy Grossman (b. 1940), John Chamberlain (1927–2011), and David Smith (1906–1965). Abstract Bodies makes a case for abstraction as a resource in reconsidering gender’s multiple capacities and offers an ambitious contribution to this burgeoning interdisciplinary field.

Don Perry, producer. Thomas Allen Harris’s 2014 documentary film Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People investigates black portrait photographers and artists who have profoundly reshaped the image of contemporary and historic African Americans, and continue to do so. Don Perry, who coproduced and cowrote the film with Harris, visited the National Gallery of Art on May 31, 2015 to introduce and speak about Through a Lens Darkly.