American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series
About the Series
The American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series offers a highly original
approach to art and portraiture. This new series pairs great works of art with leading
figures of contemporary American culture. Each lecture features an eminent writer,
critic, historian or artist who unravels the meaning behind a single, powerful image.
In the process, he or she also explores how works of art reflect American identity or
provide a window into our shared history. Most importantly, the series reveals how
artworks inspire creative minds in many different fields. The series director is Adam
Goodheart, director of the C.V. Starr Center, who has worked closely with the two
museum directors and their staffs, as well as with members of the college's Department
of Art and Art History, which is cosponsoring American Pictures.
American Pictures is made possible through the 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, and other donors.
All events are held at the Smithsonian's Reynolds Center for American Art & Portraiture,
8th & F Sts., NW, Washington, D.C..
American Pictures Event Schedule
Allan Gurganus on Thomas Eakins’s Walt Whitman
Saturday, March 8, 4:30 p.m.
John Cheever wrote, “I consider Allan Gurganus the most technically gifted and morally
responsive writer of his generation.” For more than thirty years, Gurganus’s fiction has
been acclaimed for its dark humor, erotic candor, and folkloric sweep. He is the author
of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, White People, Plays Well with Others, and
most recently The Practical Heart: Four Novellas. His novels and short stories have won
the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, and the O. Henry Prize,
among many other honors. Gurganus was inducted into the American Academy of Arts
and Letters in 2007, and in 2006 was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He most recently
edited New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2006. In this inaugural American
Pictures lecture, Gurganus will discuss Thomas Eakins’s 1888 portrait of Walt Whitman
(1819-1892) in the very building where the poet nursed wounded soldiers during the Civil
War. Gurganus, who studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where
Eakins taught, will appear on the documentary “Walt Whitman, An American” in April
on PBS.
See photos from this event.
Laurie Anderson on Andy Warhol’s Little Electric Chair
Saturday, March 15, 4:30 p.m.
Laurie Anderson is one of today’s premier performance artists. Known for her
multimedia presentations, she has cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, composer,
poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist. Recognized
worldwide as a groundbreaking leader in the use of technology in the arts, she has invented
new instruments such as the tape-bow violin (1977) and the talking stick (1999-2000).
In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence at NASA, out of which she
developed her solo performance “The End of the Moon,” which premiered in 2004. Her
visual work has been presented in major museums throughout the United States and
Europe. In 2003, the Musée Art Contemporain in Lyon, France, produced a touring
retrospective, The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson. Anderson
narrated Ric Burns’s “Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film,” which aired in 2006 as part of
the PBS series American Masters. Winner of the 2007 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, she
is currently working on a new album, Homeland.
See photos from this event.
Garry Wills on Thomas Eakins’s William Rush Carving His Allegorical
Figure of the Schuylkill River
Saturday, April 26, 4:30 p.m.
One of America’s most distinguished public intellectuals, Garry Wills has published more
than thirty books, a syndicated newspaper column, and countless essays on history,
politics, religion, and culture. The critic John Leonard wrote in the New York Times that
Wills “reads like a combination of H.L. Mencken, John Locke and Albert Camus.” His
book Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man landed Wills on President Nixon’s
enemies list. Wills won the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction in
1978 for Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. He was awarded the
National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1992 and the Pulitzer Prize in general
nonfiction in 1993 for his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America.
In 1998, Wills received a National Medal for the Humanities from President Clinton. Wills,
whose articles appear frequently in the New York Review of Books and other publications,
is professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University. His most recent book is Head
and Heart: American Christianities.
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Anna Deavere Smith on Ruth Orkin’s "Member of the Wedding,"
Ethel Waters, Carson McCullers, and Julie Harris, New York City, 1950
Saturday, May 10, 4:30 p.m.
See photos from this event.
An actress, playwright, and author, Anna Deavere Smith is renowned for pioneering a
new form of theater, combining the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects
with the art of interpreting their words through performance, and looking at controversial
events from multiple points of view. When Smith received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship
in 1996, her work, including the widely acclaimed plays Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights,
Brooklyn and Other Identities and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, was described as a blend of
theatrical art, social commentary, journalism, and intimate reverie. Smith has received
numerous other honors, including an Obie Award for Best Play for Fires in the Mirror. She
has performed in film and television as well as on stage, and is widely known for her
recurring role as Nancy McNally, the national security advisor on NBC’s The West Wing.
She founded the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University in 1997
and was its director until 2000. Currently, she is a professor at the Tisch School of the
Arts at New York University. Her latest book is Letters to a Young Artist.
See pictures from this event.
Ticket Information
All lectures, which are free and open to the public, take place at 4:30 p.m. in the museums'
Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium. No reservations are taken for the general public. Free
tickets are available on a first come, first served basis beginning at 3:30 p.m. at the G Street
lobby information desk. Doors open for each lecture at 4 p.m.
The museums are located at Eighth and F Streets, N.W., just above the Gallery Place/
Chinatown Metrorail station. For additional information about the museums, directions
and parking information, visit ReynoldsCenter.org.
Washington College students, alumni, and guests can reserve special seating at the
lecture and/or on a bus the College is running from Chestertown to the events by
emailing Joan Smith or calling her at (410) 810-7165.
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 across three centuries.
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 Washington’s new downtown cultural district. The building features expanded
permanent collection galleries and innovative new public spaces. Collectively, the two
museums and their activities are known as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for
American Art and Portraiture.
Credits
The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American
Art Museum. Photo Credit: David S. Holloway/Reportage by Getty Images for Smithsonian Institution
Thomas Eakins, Walt Whitman, 1888 oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 24 1/4 in., Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia,
General Fund, 1917.1
Gurganus photo credit: Roger Haile
Andy Warhol, Little Electric Chair, 1964-65, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 22 x 28 in., The Andy Warhol Museum,
Pittsburgh, Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. ©2008 Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, New York
Anderson photo credit: Laurie Anderson, Self Portrait (detail), November 2006 © Laurie Anderson
Thomas Eakins, William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River, 1876-77, oil on canvas (mounted
on masonite), 20 1/8 x 26 1/8 in., Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Thomas Eakins and Miss Mary Adeline Williams,
1929
Wills photo credit: Joe Schuyler
Ruth Orkin, member of the Wedding, Opening Night, Ethel Waters, Carson McCullers and Julie Harris, New York City,
1950. ©1981, Ruth Orkin
