As regular readers of this blog may recall, I’ll be giving two lectures in Washington, D.C., early in March. In case you’d like to come to one or both, here’s the official scoop:
– I’ll be delivering a Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute at 5:30 on Monday, March 7. The topic is “The Problem of Political Art”:
Can political art fully satisfy the claims of truth and beauty? Or is it fatally compromised by the passionate desire to persuade? The drama critic of The Wall Street Journal offers a report from the front lines on the increasing politicization of art in 21st-century America–and the growing inclination of contemporary artists to take the political views of their audiences for granted.
For more information, go here.
– I’ll be delivering a Duncan Phillips Lecture under the auspices of the Phillips Collection at 6:30 on Wednesday, March 9. The topic is “Multiple Modernisms: What a Novice Collector Learned from Duncan Phillips”:
For much of the twentieth century, the Museum of Modern Art’s version of modernism dominated American taste. Foremost among the dissenters from its austere canon was Duncan Phillips, whose color-driven, explicitly sensuous “modernism” stands in sharp contrast to the Gospel According to MoMA. Unlike most New Yorkers, critic Terry Teachout formed his tastes by looking at The Phillips Collection, and when he began to collect American art, he kept Duncan Phillips’ precepts firmly in mind. In this lecture, Mr. Teachout looks at Phillips’ alternate canon and speculates on what might have caught Duncan Phillips’ eye if he had lived another quarter century.
The lecture will take place at the Women’s National Democratic Club, and reservations are required. Five pieces from the Teachout Museum, including Milton Avery’s “March at a Table” and John Marin’s “Downtown. The El,” will be on display.
For more information, go here.
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