Austin, Texas History & Culture - Meet People & Have Fun

Caravaggio & The Italian Baroque - Art History Livestream Hosted by Robert Kelleman

You are invited to join us for an art history livestream program covering the Italian painter Caravaggio, one of the greatest artists in history, especially noted for his dramatic use of light and shadow, and his influence on the Baroque era.
During and after the program you’ll have the opportunity to discuss the art with your fellow art lovers via Zoom.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 - 18 July 1610), known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Caravaggio employed close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro that came to be known as tenebrism. He made the technique a dominant stylistic element, transfixing subjects in bright shafts of light and darkening shadows. Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes, often featuring violent struggles, torture, and death. He worked rapidly with live models, preferring to forgo drawings and work directly onto the canvas. His inspiring effect on the new Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism was profound.
His influence can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Velázquez and Rembrandt.
Caravaggio's innovations inspired Baroque painting, but the latter incorporated the drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy stated: "What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting."

Baroque Painting encompasses a great range of styles, as most important and major painting during the period beginning around 1600 and continuing throughout the 17th century, and into the early 18th century is identified today as Baroque painting. In its most typical manifestations, Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich, deep colour, and intense light and dark shadows, but the classicism of French Baroque painters like Poussin and Dutch genre painters such as Vermeer are also covered by the term, at least in English. As opposed to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, the moment when the action was occurring: Michelangelo, working in the High Renaissance, shows his David composed and still before he battles Goliath; Bernini's Baroque David is caught in the act of hurling the stone at the giant. Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance.
Among the greatest painters of the Baroque period are Velázquez, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin, and Vermeer.

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Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age - Art Program Hosted by Robert Kelleman

You’re invited to join us for an art history livestream featuring Rembrandt van Rijn and the Dutch Golden Age.
While our program will focus on Rembrandt, we’ll also explore several of artists and the overall history and culture of the Dutch Golden Age.
This is the first of a 2-part series on Dutch art, with a separate program featuring Johannes Vermeer (The Girl with the Pearl Earring).

During and after the program you’ll have the opportunity to discuss the topics with your fellow participants via Zoom.

Rock & Roll of The Vietnam War Era: 1965-1973 - Music History Livestream - Hosted by Robert Kelleman

Travel back in time with us to 1965-1973 and hear the distinctive Rock & Roll music of the Vietnam War / Woodstock era in honor of Memorial Day 2026.

We'll explore songs from a variety of iconic 1960's/1970's musical performers, including a few from Motown that we've discussed in our previous sessions.

During and after the program you’re invited to discuss the films with your fellow music lovers via Zoom.

The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975.

Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held from August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, 40 miles (65 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" and alternatively referred to as the Woodstock Rock Festival, it attracted an audience of more than 400,000 attendees. Thirty-two acts performed outdoors despite sporadic rain. It was one of the largest music festivals held in history. The festival has become widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history as well as a defining event for the counterculture generation. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine listed it as number 19 of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll. In 2017, the festival site became listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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Frank Lloyd Wright Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick - Art History Livestream
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Frank Lloyd Wright - American Homes - Art History Livestream
Hosted by Robert Kelleman

We invite you to a special two-part art history program on the life and career of famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Part 1, on Friday, June 5, will be a screening of the PBS film “Frank Lloyd Wright” by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick.
Part 2, on Saturday, June 6, will be an art history lecture on some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most noteworthy American home designs including Falling Water (Pennsylvania), Robie House (Chicago), Pope-Leighey House (Virginia), Taliesin (Wisconsin), Taliesin West (Scottsdale)

During and after both programs you’ll have the opportunity to discuss the topics with your fellow art lovers via Zoom.

Frank Lloyd Wright
A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
Frank Lloyd Wright tells the story of the greatest of all American architects. Wright was an authentic American genius, a man who believed he was destined to redesign the world, creating everything anew. Over the course of his long career, he designed over eight hundred buildings, including such revolutionary structures as the Guggenheim Museum, the Johnson Wax Building, Fallingwater, Unity Temple and Taliesin. His buildings and his ideas changed the way we live, work and see the world around us.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural achievements were often overshadowed by the turbulence of his melodramatic life. In ninety-two tempestuous years, he fathered seven children, married three times, and was almost constantly embroiled in scandal. Some hated him, some loved him, and in the end, few could deny that he was the one of the most important architects in the world.

Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".
Wright was a pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture and also developed the concept of the Usonian home, his vision for urban planning in the United States. Wright also designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums, and other commercial projects. Wright-designed interior elements (including leaded glass windows, floors, furniture and even tableware) were integrated into these structures. He wrote several books and numerous articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time". In 2019, a selection of his work became a listed World Heritage Site under the name The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Raised in rural Wisconsin, Wright studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin and later apprenticed in Chicago, first briefly with Joseph Lyman Silsbee, and then with Louis Sullivan at Adler & Sullivan. Wright opened his own successful Chicago practice in 1893 and established a studio in his Oak Park, Illinois home in 1898.

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