The Fifty-second A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts 2003
Pictures of Nothing:
Abstract Art since Pollock
Kirk Varnedoe
March–May, 2003
East Building Auditorium
March 30
Why Abstract Art?
View a video segment from Kirk Varnedoe's first A. W. Mellon Lecture, "Why Abstract Art," delivered at the National Gallery of Art on March 30, 2003.
April 6
Survivals and Fresh Starts
May 4
Satire, Irony, and Abstract Art
Kirk Varnedoe was appointed in September 2001 as professor of the history of art in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Prior to that, he had served for thirteen years (1988-2001) as chief curator of the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He also continues to teach, as a visiting lecturer, at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, where he was on the faculty from 1980 to 1988. He received his B.A. from Williams College (1967) and his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1972) from Stanford University. During his graduate years he was awarded a David E. Finley Fellowship by the National Gallery of Art and spent a period in residency at the Gallery as a fellow. He also taught at Columbia University from 1974 to 1980, and in 1992 was the Slade Professor at Oxford University. As a curator, he has organized major exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art and other institutions. Most recently, he was one of the six-member international team of curators that organized Matisse—Picasso, currently on view at MoMAQNS (the Museum of Modern Art's temporary headquarters in Queens, New York). Professor Varnedoe has authored eighteen books, including volumes on many nineteenth-century topics and artists (Gustave Caillebotte, Max Klinger, and Auguste Rodin with Albert Elsen), and later nineteenth-century Scandinavian art as well as monographs on prominent creators of the later twentieth century, including Jackson Pollock (with Pepe Karmel), Cy Twombly, and Jasper Johns. More thematically oriented publications include A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern (1990) and the exhibition catalogue, coauthored with Adam Gopnik, High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture (1990). Professor Varnedoe has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, has received the Royal Order of the Donnebroge from Denmark, and has been awarded the title of Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. He is also the recipient of honorary degrees from Williams College and Pratt Institute, and in 1984 he received a five-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts were established by the National Gallery of Art's Board of Trustees in 1949 "to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts."