Tucker Hall, Tucker Theater

Join us for an illustrated lecture by Charles Palermo, professor of art history at William & Mary. Contemporary art theory takes very seriously the idea that an artist can make anything art by choosing it. Photographic theory takes similarly seriously the idea that a photographer makes the world into a picture by pointing a camera at it. This lecture aims to complicate these ideas by discussing work by two contemporary photographers, Tacita Dean and Phil Chang. This lecture will take place in Tucker Hall Auditorium (127A). Reserved parking for attendees will be available on James Blair Drive. Street parking is…

Join us for the first lecture in our spring Selected Topics in Architecture series, which will focus on museum design through the ages. David Brashear, Director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art, will present "The Invention of the Museum as Public Institution in the 18th and 19th Centuries." The concept of the modern museum was born in the Enlightenment that swept across Europe in the 18th century. The idea of a public museum gained traction in France in the 1770s, and designs by Étienne-Louis Boullée and Jean-Nicholas-Louis Durand paved the way for the remaking of the Louvre as a public…

David Brashear, Director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art, will set the stage for our spring Muscarelle Explorations series, Modern Masters at the Margins. As the United States worked its way through the Great Depression, an artistic energy was developed in New York, in part driven by the WPA's public art program. A group of artists, working both uptown and downtown, began to move away from representational art and focus their efforts on new approaches to abstraction. Some were more established, and some were relative newcomers. Some were older, and some were younger. Many were men, but some were women…

Art historian and scholar Gail Levin will join us for the third talk in our spring Muscarelle Explorations series, Modern Masters at the Margins. Lee Krasner once said, “I think my painting is so autobiographical, if anyone can take the trouble to read it.” Her friend and biographer, art historian Gail Levin, who first interviewed the artist when she was a twenty-two year-old graduate student, guides us on an illustrated journey from Krasner’s birth in 1908 Brooklyn to her love of nature on the Eastern End of New York’s Long Island. Levin will not only give art historical analysis, but…

Dr. Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Curator of Native American Art at the Muscarelle, will present the final talk in our spring Muscarelle Explorations series, Modern Masters at the Margins, with a talk about artist George Morrison. Born and raised near the Grand Portage Indian Reservation in Minnesota, George Morrison (Ojibwe) had a long and distinguished career as an Abstract Expressionist painter and sculptor. This presentation will follow Morrison's life story and his foray into the inner circle of some of the most prominent American expressionists of the day, including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and his return to Minnesota during the…

This semester, our Muscarelle Explorations lecture series will dive into the people, the art and the stories that have defined the Muscarelle over the past 40 years. The earliest advocate for a campus museum was William & Mary Chancellor Professor Emeritus Miles Chappell, who surveyed what was called the “College Art Collection” in the early 1970s. Chappell’s project revealed that over nearly 300 years, the university had amassed a sizeable collection of art, and there was a clear need for a museum to preserve and protect the works. Join us for a casual conversation between Muscarelle Director David Brashear and…

This semester, our Muscarelle Explorations lecture series will dive into the people, the art and the stories that have defined the Muscarelle over the past 40 years. One of the most iconic elements of the Muscarelle Museum of Art is the large installation of colorful illuminated tubes on its front facade. The work, entitled Sun Sonata, features color arrangements designed by artist Gene Davis, a central figure of the Washington Color School, a movement epitomized by color field painting and centered in Washington, D.C. Learn more about the artist and the movement in this lecture by Jack Rasmussen of the American University…

This semester, our Muscarelle Explorations lecture series will dive into the people, the art and the stories that have defined the Muscarelle over the past 40 years — and into the future. One of the great privileges of being the Director of an art museum is the opportunity to guide the expansion of the permanent collection and chart its direction. The Muscarelle is currently focused on expanding the representation in our collection, with a special emphasis on adding works by women and artists of color. Join Director David Brashear as he surveys the progress the Muscarelle team is making toward…

This semester, our Muscarelle Explorations lecture series will dive into the people, the art and the stories that have defined the Muscarelle over the past 40 years. In the 1930s, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller donated what is possibly the most famous work in the Museum's collection, White Flower, by Georgia O'Keeffe. She hoped her gift would be seen "not only as an aesthetic gesture but also as an inspiration to the young women who are students at William & Mary." Barbara Buhler Lynes, the preeminent scholar on O'Keeffe, will visit campus to discuss the life and work of the artist. Since 1946, the…

In spring 2024, the Muscarelle is partnering with the Department of Art & Art History to bring the exhibition Nascent Themes from a Conversation of Fragments; Recent Collages by Clive Knights, to the W&M campus. The exhibition examines the roles of creativity and cognition through the collage work of English artist and architect Clive Knights. Join us for a lecture by Knights in Tucker Hall Theatre, followed by a reception and viewing of the exhibition in the Daily Grind. By way of introduction to a life in collage, illustrated with work created across several decades, the presentation will articulate Knights's…

The Muscarelle's spring Selected Topics in Architecture lecture series will focus on the flourishing Renaissance period, when architectural innovation resulted in some of the world's most breathtaking and magnificent structures. Join us for our first lecture, given by Adriano Marinazzo, Curator of Special Projects at the Muscarelle. Michelangelo is the author of one of the most famous frescoes in the world (The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel) and one of the most admired statues (the David). Yet the great artist is also regarded as one of the most influential architects in history. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the foremost architect…

The Muscarelle’s spring Selected Topics in Architecture lecture series will focus on the flourishing Renaissance period, when architectural innovation resulted in some of the world’s most breathtaking and magnificent structures. Director David Brashear will present Masterpieces of Italian Renaissance Architecture on April 3 in Tucker Hall Theatre. Perhaps more than in any other art form, the Italian Renaissance in architecture was rooted in a revival — a revisiting and reinterpretation of the buildings of classical antiquity. The buildings conceived by Italian artists in the 15th and 16th centuries, who were frequently pressed into architectural duty, were a collective reflection of the great…