American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series
About the Series
THE AMERICAN PICTURES DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES
offers a
highly original approach to art and portraiture. This annual series
pairs
great works of art with leading figures of contemporary American culture.
Each lecture features an eminent writer, critic, historian, or artist who
chooses
a single image and investigates its meanings. In the process,
he or she also
explores how works of art reflect American identity or
open a window into
our shared history. Most important, the series reveals
how artworks inspire
creativity in many different fields. The series
director is historian and essayist
Adam Goodheart, who is director of
the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the
American Experience at
Washington College.
AMERICAN PICTURES is made possible through a pioneering
partnership
among Washington College, the National Portrait Gallery,
and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Additional support comes from the Starr Foundation, the Hodson Trust,
the Hedgelawn
Foundation, and other donors.
Event & Ticket Information
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Tickets: Free tickets are available beginning at 3:30 p.m. at the
G Street lobby information desk. No advance reservations are required.
Doors open for each lecture at 4 p.m.
Location: Eighth and F Streets NW, Washington, D.C., in the museums’
Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium.
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown (Red, Yellow, and Green lines)
Information: 202.633.1000 or saamprograms@si.edu
Websites: AmericanArt.si.edu, NPG.si.edu, starrcenter.washcoll.edu
For the Washington College community: The Starr Center will be running free buses from Chestertown to Washington, D.C. for each of the four weekend events.
These trips will also include opportunities for special tours of the museums and dinner in Washington's trendy Penn Quarter.
To reserve free tickets for the American Pictures events and for information on the
free buses, please contact Joan Smith at the Starr Center: jsmith7@washcoll.edu,
(410) 708-1659.
Series Partners
WASHINGTON COLLEGE
Founded in 1782 under the personal patronage of its namesake,
Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, upholds a tradition of
excellence and innovation in the liberal arts. The American Pictures
lecture series is a project of the college’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study
of the American Experience and its Department of Art and Art History.
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation’s first collection
of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience.
The collection captures the aspirations, character, and imagination of the
American people from the colonial period to today.
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
The National Portrait Gallery tells the stories of America through the
individuals—poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and
activists—who have built our national culture. It is where the arts keep us
in the company of remarkable Americans.
The museums share a meticulously renovated National Historic Landmark
building in the heart of D.C.’s vibrant downtown cultural district.
The building
features expanded permanent collection galleries and
innovative new public
spaces. Collectively, the two museums and their
programs are known as the
Donald W. Reynolds Center for AmericanArt and Portraiture.
American Pictures Event Schedule
John Waters
on Cy Twombly’s Letter of Resignation (1967)
Saturday, March 21, 2009
4:30 p.m.
Actor, writer, visual artist, and filmmaker John Waters has been dubbed
the “Pope of Trash” by no less an authority than William S. Burroughs.
His
films have brought an underground sensibility into mainstream culture,
demonstrating—in the words of one New York Times critic—a “gleeful
irreverence and appreciation of the American grotesque.” The sixteen movies
to his credit include some of the cult successes of the 1970s and 1980s,
including “Pink Flamingos,” “Polyester,” and “Hairspray,” which in 2002 was
turned into a hit Broadway musical, then a hit film based on the musical.
An exhibition of Waters’s photography opens April 4, 2009, at the Marianne
Boesky Gallery in New York.
Jamaica Kincaid
on Edward Lamson Henry’s Kept In (1889)
Saturday, April 11, 2009
4:30 p.m.
Jamaica Kincaid, born in Antigua, has made a lasting mark on the literary history
of both the Caribbean and her adopted country, the United States. She draws
on her own upbringing to create her powerful and widely acclaimed works of
fiction and nonfiction, which include Annie John (1985), A Small Place (1988),
The Autobiography of My Mother (1996), and, most recently, Among Flowers:
A Walk in the Himalayas (2005). Her writing frequently touches on themes of
race and coming-of-age, issues that are also present in Henry’s painting. Kincaid
was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1976 until 1995, and in 2004 was
elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A critic for The New York
Review of Books wrote: “Kincaid’s rhythms . . . bring Gertrude Stein to mind.
She is an eccentric and altogether impressive descendant.”
Jamaica Kincaid event photographs
Harold Holzer
on John Henry Brown’s Abraham Lincoln (1860)
Saturday, April 18, 2009
4:30 p.m.
As the nation celebrates the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, leading Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer delves into one of the most unusual and deeply revealing portraits of the sixteenth president. Holzer is the author or editor of thirty-one books on Lincoln and the Civil War era. He has received numerous awards, including the 2005 Lincoln Prize, the most prestigious award in the field, for his book Lincoln at Cooper Union (2004), and he was a 2008 recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Holzer helped to organize a new Lincoln Series of modern political debates and dialogues in the Lincoln tradition at the Cooper Union, which debuted in 2007. His latest work is the critically praised Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860–1861 (2008). Currently, Holzer is senior vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and co-chairman of the United States Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
Henry Holzer event photographs
Roz Chast
on Charles Addams's Boiling Oil (1946)
Sunday, April 26, 2009
4:30 p.m.
Roz Chast is internationally recognized for her pioneering cartoons, which have
appeared regularly in The New Yorker magazine since 1978. In addition to her
work in The New Yorker, she has published cartoons in magazines ranging from
Mother Jones to Town & Country and illustrated several children’s books. Using a
cast of recurring characters, generally hapless but relatively cheerful “everyfolk,”
she addresses the issues of modern life, including guilt, anxiety, aging, families,
friends, money, and real estate. Chast has received several prestigious awards,
among them an honorary doctorate from Pratt Institute in 1998. The most recent
collection of her work is Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-
Inspected Cartoons, 1978–2006 (2008). David Remnick, editor of The New
Yorker, has called her “the magazine’s only certifiable genius.”
Credits
Letter of Resignation XXXI by Cy Twombly, 1967
© Cy Twombly, 1967
John Waters Photo: Greg Norman
Edward Lamson Henry, Kept In, 1889; 13 ½”
x 18”, N0309.1961
Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York
Jamaica Kincaid photo: © Mariana Cook 1992
John Henry Brown, Abraham Lincoln, 1860
National Portrait Gallery
Harold Holzer photo: Don Perdue
Charles Addams cartoon, Boiling Oil, 1946
© Charles Addams, with permission Tee and Charles Addams Foundation
Roz Chast photo: Fred Collins
