Leo Villareal, artist, in conversation with Molly Donovan, associate curator of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery of Art

Nancy Anderson, curator of American and British paintings, National Gallery of Art
Book signing of George de Forest Brush: The Indian Paintings follows

Helen Tangires, administrator, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art
Book signing of Public Markets follows

Rafael Moneo, architect; Miguel Zugaza, director, Museo Nacional del Prado; and Selma Holo, director of Fisher Gallery and professor of art history, University of Southern California

John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, Museum of Modern Art

Charles Palermo, associate professor of art history, The College of William and Mary
Book signing of Fixed Ecstasy: Joan Miró in the 1920s follows

Carol Mattusch, Mathy Professor of Art History, George Mason University

Martin M. Winkler, professor of classics at George Mason University and editor of the recent essay collections Gladiator: Film and History, Troy: From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic, and Spartacus: Film and History, will present an illustrated lecture on the destruction of Pompeii as impulse for the popular imagination, focusing especially on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii and its adaptations to stage and screen.

Arthur Wheelock, curator of northern baroque paintings, National Gallery of Art
Stephanie S. Dickey, Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art, Queen’s University

Peter Schjeldahl, senior art critic, New Yorker magazine
Book signing of Let’s See: Writings on Art from the New Yorker follows

Paul Zanker, professor of art history, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

Collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel in conversation with Ruth Fine, curator of special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art

Calvin Tomkins, author and staff writer of The New Yorker, in conversation with Harry Cooper, curator of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery of Art
Book signing of Lives of the Artists follows

Marcello Simonetta, writer and historian
Book signing of The Montefeltro Conspiracy: A Renaissance Mystery Decoded follows

Péter Forgács, filmmaker

Conrad Rudolph, professor of medieval art history, University of California at Riverside

Harry Cooper, curator and head of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery of Art

John Hand, curator of northern Renaissance paintings, National Gallery of Art

Rosamond Mack, independent scholar

Douglas Brine, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art

Kimberly Schenck, head of paper conservation, National Gallery of Art

Jennifer Wagelie, department of academic programs, National Gallery of Art

Conrad Rudolph, professor of medieval art history, University of California at Riverside

Rachel Whiteread, artist, in conversation with Molly Donovan, associate curator of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery of Art

British sculptor Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) has enjoyed international acclaim for her provocative sculptural practice. Beginning in the early 1990s with her positive casts of empty architectural spaces and household objects, Whiteread has continued to articulate typically unseen, immaterial space in increasingly public settings. Her breakthrough work, Ghost (1990), on view on the Mezzanine of the East Building, was given to the National Gallery of Art in 2004 by The Glenstone Foundation. With this work, cast in plaster from the interior of a Victorian parlor, Whiteread creates a mausoleum-like structure from a living space. Opposites conjoin to make Ghost the powerful work that it is: one simultaneously about presence and absence, interior and exterior, concision and complexity.

This conversation will cover all aspects of Whiteread’s career with a particular focus on Ghost.

Jeffrey M. Davis, MSCE, EIT
Materials Research Engineer, NIST

Traditional X-ray fluorescence has been a mainstay of analytical chemistry and microanalysis for over 40 years. The ability to extract quantitative surface information from a sample non-destructively is useful in such diverse fields as metallurgy, cement manufacturing, and forensics. With the application of capillary optics to X-ray sources, it becomes possible to focus the X-ray beam into a spot 40 μm in diameter or smaller with little loss in signal intensity. These finer beams allow users to generate elemental X-ray images carrying fine scale microstructural information. This talk will focus on the applications of mXRF imaging (also known as X-ray Spectrum Imaging) to inks, paints, and a variety of other materials. It will also provide a comprehensive overview of the theory of X-ray imaging and mapping.

Speakers include:
Nancy Anderson, National Gallery of Art

Ned Blackhawk, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Philip Deloria, University of Michigan

Leah Dilworth, Long Island University

Kate Flint, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Michael Gaudio, University of Minnesota

Katherine Manthorne, The City University of New York

Jolene Rickard, Cornell University

Paul Chaat Smith, National Museum of the American Indian

William Truettner, Smithsonian American Art Museum