The National Gallery of Art’s A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts program has long been one of the most prestigious forums for discussion of the visual arts. Kirk Varnedoe, renowned art curator, teacher and writer, is this year’s featured speaker. He will lecture on “Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock” starting tomorrow.
The six-part series, given on consecutive Sundays at 2 p.m. through May 11 (except April 20), will comprise “Why Abstract Art?”; “Survivals and Fresh Starts”; “Minimalism”; “After Minimalism”; “Satire, Irony, and Abstract Art”; and “Abstract Art Now.”
Mr. Varnedoe made his reputation as head of exhibitions at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and recently moved to Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. His lectures are sure to clarify the murky picture of postwar abstraction.
It is not known whether Mr. Varnedoe will write a book from his talks a la E.H. Gombrich, whose Mellon lectures were adapted in 1956 as “Art and Illusion,” a classic text of art criticism. Arthur C. Danto, art critic for the Nation, talked on “Contemporary Art and the Pale of History” in 1995 at the gallery.
Joanna Shaw-Eagle
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