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

NARRATOR:
In the early fifteenth century, artists and intellectuals in Italy came to realize that the time they lived in was very different from the centuries before.  There was a revival of interest in the achievements of classical antiquity -- in the art, literature, and architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  They came to see the previous medieval period as a time of darkness after the glories of the classical past, and their own era as a new age in the arts.  

In the 16th century, Giorgio Vasari, an Italian painter best known as the biographer of artists, used the term rinascità—meaning rebirth -- to describe this change in the artist’s vision of the world around him.  Later historians coined the term Renaissance from the French word for rebirth.

The focus of the Middle Ages had been the spiritual world, and the major patron of the arts the Roman Catholic Church.  Painted altarpieces and frescos conveyed the church’s teachings in a form that could be understood even by those who could not read.  During the Renaissance, the Christian religion continued to play an important role in art.  But the masters of the 15th and 16th centuries, like Greek and Roman artists before them, looked to man as the measure of all things.  They based even their spiritual images not on an imaginary world, but on the world around them.  In Italy, the remains of numerous ancient sculptures and monuments, still visible after more than a thousand years, inspired many of the great Renaissance artists whose work is on view here at the National Gallery – including Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. 


Renaissance Overview-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.

Renaissance Overview-English

National Gallery of Art

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