Washington, DC History & Culture

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - The American Collection - Art History Series Hosted by Robert Kelleman

You’re invited to join us for a 2-part livestreamed art history series covering the fabulous American art collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, one of the world’s great art museums, and also one my favorite places. : )

The American galleries at the Met feature one of the world’s top collections of American art, with works by Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Frederic Remington, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and more.

Out art history program will highlight “The American Experience”, including various aspects of New York history and culture.

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

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art - The American Collection ...

Part 1 - Art to 1780
Colonial America through the American Revolution (1776-1783)
Friday, May 8

Part 2 - Art from 1780 - 1815
The Federal Period through the War of 1812
Friday, May 15

Future Met Programs:
The Antebellum Period
The Civil War & Reconstruction
The Gilded Age
Early Modern

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the United States. Its permanent collection contains over two million works. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park in Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.
The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes, and accessories, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 to bring art and art education to the American people and is one of the most-visited art museums in the world.

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

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

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Johannes Vermeer (October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. He produced relatively few paintings, primarily earning his living as an art dealer. He was not wealthy; at his death, his wife was left in debt.
Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for making masterful use of light in his work. "Almost all his paintings", Hans Koningsberger wrote, "are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women."
The modest celebrity he enjoyed during his life gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists, published 1718) and, as a result, was omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 works to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown enormously.

The Dutch Golden Age was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the Rampjaar occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific developments, art and overseas colonisation was among the most prominent in Europe. The first half of the period spanned from the beginning of the Eighty Years' War until its conclusion in 1648, with the second half lasting until the outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War. During the period, Dutch colonialists, many of them affiliated with the East India Company and West India Company, established trading posts and colonies in the Americas, Southern Africa and Asia, protected by the powerful Dutch States Navy. The Dutch also dominated the triangular trade and Atlantic slave trade during this period.
Dutch culture flourished during this period as well. However, by the end of the 17th century, conflicts with neighbouring powers as well as declining economic influence led to the end of this period. The process by which the Dutch Republic became one of the foremost maritime and economic powers of the world during the era has been referred to as the "Dutch Miracle" by historian K. W. Swart. The term "Dutch Golden Age" has been controversial in the 21st century due to the extensive Dutch involvement in slavery and colonialism during the period, and it has been deprecated by several museums in the Netherlands, including the Amsterdam Museum.

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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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