KIMBERLY JONES: //Little Dancer Aged Fourteen is an icon, pure and simple. It is one of the most famous sculptures in the world. There are at least 25 posthumous reproductions of this sculpture, but here we have the original.  

KAYWIN FELDMAN: It’s made of beeswax over a metal frame. Degas gave this dancer a cotton bodice, a cotton and silk tutu, and linen slippers. Her human hair is tied back with a silk and linen ribbon. She rests on a wooden base in fourth position with her hands clasped behind her back so as not to flatten her tutu. 

JULIE KENT: She’s thinking, she’s listening, she’s resting. And then she’s about to repeat it all, dance again. //She’s taking it all in, and then you can tell, like in five beats from now, she’s gonna close to fifth, plié and start dancing again.  

KAYWIN FELDMAN: The model is Marie van Goethem. She was known as one of the “little rats of the Opéra” a derogatory term used to describe the many young, working-class students in the dance school at the Paris Opéra. The teenager defiantly holds her head high, chin up. 

KIMBERLY JONES: You get the sense of this prepubescent body, the slightly knobby knees, the long, attenuated arms, the thinness and frailty of her body. 

KAYWIN FELDMAN: Soon after the sculpture was exhibited in 1881, Marie was expelled from the dance school for missing too many practices, and little is known of her life afterward. 

KIMBERLY JONES: In some ways, //who she is has been obscured. She is less Marie van Goethem, ballet rat, and more aspiring young dance student. She’s become something more symbolic, someone who is no longer tied to her biography, and has become something more. 

KAYWIN FELDMAN: For nineteenth-century critics, this sculpture looked too real, even ugly. They weren’t used to seeing sculpture that looked so lifelike, that wasn’t made out of durable materials like bronze or marble... Today that is what is most appealing. We recognize something authentic in her. 

KIMBERLY JONES: And that ultimately was what Degas was most after, the authenticity of the experience is much more important than the details. //Each and every image feels right. 

KAWYIN: And let’s have a dancer give us a final thought.

JULIE KENT: I find it very inspiring. I see young ladies like this every day. But she’s there for the world to sort of acknowledge. And inspire. //She’d be a great spokesperson for us.

Degas at the Opéra, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881

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.

Degas at the Opéra, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881

National Gallery of Art

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