lectures

1 November 2011, Conference Centre, British Library

Why do we have such contradictory views of young people? Fear and mistrust one minute; recognition and celebration the next. Are our perceptions of young people distorted? And what impact do our perceptions of young people and youth culture have on policy decisions? 

The speakers were Professor Ken Roberts, AcSS, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool and Dr Mary Jane Kehily, Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth Studies at The Open University. The discussion was chaired by  Ross Hendry, Director of Policy, Office of the Children's Commissioner, England.




Myths and Realities 11: Young people - troubled, troublesome or terrific?

Panel discussion with

Jane Ellison (Commissioning Editor, Radio 4, BBC),

Matthew Cock (Head of Web, British Museum),

Bill Thompson (Technology writer and Head of Partnership Development, BBC Archive Development) 

History on the Internet

Professor Stephen Hawking offers his own perspective on theories about the origin of the Universe, with a talk entitled "Fire in the Equations".

Stephen Hawking: COSMO Public Symposium 2013

Professor Ian Roberts will explore how languages shape human culture and human thought. Some languages have shaped our world more than others and some of them are not as obvious as you might think. This talk offers a sample of those languages, from Sanskrit to Singlish, via French and Esperanto, with one or two real surprises along the way.

Ideas and languages: 10 languages that changed the world

DAVID BROWN:
“The Feast of the Gods was completed by Giovanni Bellini, the dean of 15th-century Venetian painters, only two years before his death, when he was in his mid-eighties.  On the wooden tub at the far right, you can see an illusionistic scrap of paper with his signature, and the date – 1514.”

“The subject is a bacchanal, really a kind of orgy.  For Bellini, it was a radical departure from the madonnas, saints and portraits he had focused on throughout his long career.  But risqué mythological themes had become very important to the younger generation of Renaissance painters, many of whom had been his pupils.  When Bellini took up this subject, he was in effect becoming their rival.”

“Bellini chose to represent the bacchanal as a kind of picnic out in nature in which the Olympian gods drink and eat and nod off.  They include Mercury lounging at the left with his helmet and staff, and just to the right, Jupiter, ruler of the gods.  He’s identified by an imperial eagle.  There are some mildly titillating moments – for example, in the lower right, the lustful Priapus slyly lifts the gown of the sleeping nymph Lotis.”
“But his attempt will be foiled by the braying of the ass at the far left – which will wake up the entire assembly.  In a moment, Priapus will be ridiculed, and before he flees in embarrassment, he will demand the yearly sacrifice of an ass to make up for his humiliation.”

“The elderly Bellini may not have felt entirely comfortable with the erotic overtones of his subject matter.  But the subject is almost secondary because he painted it in such a beautiful way.  In fact, I’ve seen many visitors stop to admire the glorious symphony of pinks, whites, blues, and yellows, the lush landscape, and the ravishing still-life details here – such as the bowl of fruit at the feet of the gods, the various wreaths that crown their hair or, at the left, the wine pouring from a keg into a clear glass jug.  People walk off in awe without paying attention to the meaning of the picture at all.”

“The landscape behind the figures was altered:  in Bellini’s original work, the trees over on the right extended all the way across the canvas.  Years later, his brilliant pupil Titian replaced many of them with the craggy mountain that now looms at the left, perhaps to suit other pictures hanging nearby, three of which he painted himself.  So this masterpiece is really a dual effort: a figure painting by Bellini, and a landscape largely by Titian.”

DAVID BULL:
“I set out to clean the painting in 1985, determined to investigate the findings of John Walker, who as director of the National Gallery had published a pioneering book about this work in 1954.  It included an x-radiograph that revealed Bellini’s original composition of 1514, where he had painted a continuous row of tree trunks behind the figures.” 

“The painting hadn’t been cleaned since the early 19th century.  It was covered with a deep yellow-brown varnish that had also lost much of its transparency.  Removing the varnish revealed a wonderful range of Venetian color and the details became much clearer.”

“I concluded that the first alteration of the landscape had been made by the court painter Dosso Dossi.  Titian’s alterations covered over most of Dosso’s, but he left the pheasant in the tree at the upper right, and the bright green foliage just above the bird.  We don’t know why Titian left this small area of Dosso’s work, but we do know that the Duke of Ferrar, who had commissioned the painting, had such a passion for pheasants that he wouldn’t allow them to be eaten in his court.  So perhaps the Duke didn’t want his precious pheasant disturbed – or perhaps and more likely, Titian might have wanted to avoid hurting Dosso’s feelings.  Walker also suggested that Titian had made seventeen alterations to the figure themselves.  I found that Titian hadn’t made any alterations to the figures.” 

“We worked all this out through x-radiographs, infrared reflectography, and taking minute paint samples.  Under a microscope, I was able to distinguish the successive layers of paint.  In some places there are as many as fourteen layers; and in others, only three.  By analyzing the paint and comparing information I managed to determine which layers belonged to which painter.  The varnish removal and investigation took four-and-a-half years – a long time.  And I aged about twenty-five.  But the result, I think you’ll agree, is a painting of remarkable beauty.”


The Feast of the Gods, Bellini and Titian-English

The Life Scientific - Child Developmental Psychology with Annette Karmiloff-Smith

Teju Cole, artist, curator, novelist, photography critic for New York Times Magazine (2015–2019), and Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing, Harvard University, in conversation with Fazal Sheikh, artist and Artist-in-Residence at the Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University Teju Cole was born in the United States in 1975. The son of Nigerian parents, he was raised in Lagos. He returned to the US to complete a BA at Kalamazoo College in Michigan followed by studies in art history at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London as well as at Columbia University. Cole’s work examines race, gender, migration, culture, and privilege. Born in New York City in 1965, Fazal Sheikh earned his BA from Princeton University in 1987 and has since worked as a photographer documenting the lives of individuals in displaced and marginalized communities. Upon witnessing an increase in xenophobia and authoritarian politics on a global scale, Sheikh turned to Cole for a collaboration that would reinforce their commitment to a compassionate global community and to the importance of individual courage. Through Cole’s words and Sheikh’s photos in the resulting book, Human Archipelago (Steidl, 2018), we are confronted with fundamental and pressing questions of coexistence. Their work asks us to consider, “Who is my neighbor? Who is kin to me?” 

In 2020 Cole and Sheikh created a free, online version of Human Archipelago. Amidst a devastating pandemic and uprisings against racial injustice, its questions are more relevant than ever. In this conversation, recorded on January 19, 2021, Cole and Sheikh discuss their collaborative efforts “to find a new way of speaking to the startling reappearance of some very old problems.”

The National Gallery has been honored to present The Arnold Newman Lecture Series on Photography since 2016 with the support of the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation. The National Gallery is thrilled to share that the Newman Foundation, which has funded the series annually since its inaugural offering, endowed it with a major gift in 2020 in order to make such conversations available to the public for years to come. We are deeply grateful for the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation’s generosity.

Arnold Newman Lecture Series on Photography: Teju Cole and Fazal Sheikh

The National Gallery of Art was created in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress, accepting the gift of financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. During the 1920s, Mr. Mellon began collecting with the intention of forming a gallery of art for the nation in Washington. In 1937, the year of his death, he promised his collection to the United States. Funds for the construction of the West Building were provided by The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. On March 17, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the completed building and the collections on behalf of the people of the United States of America.

The paintings and works of sculpture given by Andrew Mellon have formed a nucleus of high quality around which the collections have grown. Mr. Mellon's hope that the newly created National Gallery would attract gifts from other collectors was soon realized in the form of major donations of art from Samuel H. Kress, Rush H. Kress, Joseph Widener, Chester Dale, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, and Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch as well as individual gifts from hundreds of other donors.

The Gallery's East Building, located on land set aside in the original Congressional resolution, was opened in 1978. It accommodates the Gallery's growing collections and expanded exhibition schedule and houses an advanced research center, administrative offices, a great library, and a burgeoning collection of drawings and prints. The building was accepted for the nation on June 1, 1978, by President Jimmy Carter. Funds for construction were given by Paul Mellon and the late Ailsa Mellon Bruce, the son and daughter of the founder, and by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

On May 23, 1999 the Gallery opened an outdoor sculpture garden designed to offer year-round enjoyment to the public. Located in the 6.1-acre block adjacent to the West Building at 7th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., the garden provides an informal, yet elegant setting for works of modern and contemporary sculpture.

The Collectors Committee, an advisory group of private citizens, has made it possible to acquire paintings and sculpture of the twentieth century. Key works of art have also come to the Gallery through the Patrons' Permanent Fund. In addition, members of the Circle of the National Gallery of Art have provided funds for many special programs and projects. The Sculpture Garden is a gift to the nation from The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.

The Feast of the Gods, Bellini and Titian-English

National Gallery of Art

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