Talks + Lectures

Thu, Dec 5, 2024
6:30–7:30 pm
$8 (VMFA members, $5)
Leslie Cheek Theater
Livestream available

In conjunction with the exhibition, A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, join us for an evening with artist and writer Sally Mann, who will read an excerpt from her forthcoming book.

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IMAGE Sally Mann standing in a field in the Delta. Photo by Dave Munn and courtesy of Sally Mann.

Fri, Dec 13, 2024
6:30–7:30 pm
Reynolds Lecture Hall
$8 (VMFA members, $5)

Join artists Rahim Fortune, Wendy Ewald, and Jim Goldberg for a conversation about the meaning of community portraiture in Southern photography. Dr. Sarah Kennel, who is VMFA’s Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center, and Ashley Kistler, an independent curator and writer, will lead the discussion.

Dr. Kennel is curator of the exhibition A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, which features photographs by the artists participating in this conversation.

Livestream will be available.

IMAGE Billy and Minzly, Buda, Texas, 2020, printed 2024, Rahim Fortune (American, born 1994), Gelatin Silver print, courtesy of Sash Wolf Projects.
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PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Rahim Fortune was raised in Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. His documentary photo practice focuses on culture, geography and self-expression in the American landscape. He currently lives and works between Austin, Texas, and Brooklyn, New York. 
 
Wendy Ewald has collaborated in art projects with children, families, women, and teachers around the world for 50 years. She was a senior fellow at The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and an artist in residence at Amherst College, where she taught Collaborative Art: The Practice and Theory of Working with Communities. 
 
Jim Goldberg’s innovative use of image and text make him a landmark photographer of our times. He received the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2011. Goldberg’s works are in numerous museum collections in the United States and Europe. He is represented by Casemore Kirkeby Gallery in San Francisco and is a member of Magnum Photos.

Thu, Jan 9, 2025
6:30–7:30 pm
$8 (VMFA members $5)
Leslie Cheek Theater
Livestream will be available.

Join artists Jill Frank, Tommy Kha, and José Ibarra Rizo who will be in conversation about the meaning of portraiture and identity in Southern photography. Co-curators of A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, Sarah Kennel, VMFA's Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center, and Greg Harris, High Museum of Art's Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Curator of Photography, will lead the discussion with these artists, whose works are featured in the special exhibition.  
 
PARTICPANTS BIOS
Jill Frank is an Atlanta-based artist and educator. She is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at Georgia State University. Frank was a 2021 Artadia Award recipient and a 2022 Warhol Nexus Grant recipient. Reviews of her work have appeared in Art Forum, Art in America, and The Paris Review. She has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia. She attended School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA studio art) and Bard College (BA Photography).  
 
Gregory J. Harris is the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. He is a specialist in contemporary photography with a particular interest in documentary practice. Since joining the High Museum in 2016, Harris has curated more than a dozen exhibitions that consider an array of topics including social justice, the intersections of photography and self-taught art, and distinct history of photography in the South. 
 
Tommy Kha, born in Memphis, Tennessee, received his Photography MFA from Yale University. He is the recipient of the Hayes Prize, Next Step Award, Foam Talent, Creator Labs Photo Fund, NYSCA/NYFA Photography Fellow.  His first major publication, Half, Full, Quarter, was published by Aperture in February 2023.  He currently teaches at Yale School of Art, and occasionally serves as a critic in the MFA photography program. His first museum show will open at the Addison Gallery of American Art in September 2025. 
 
José Ibarra Rizo is a Mexican American multidisciplinary artist based in Atlanta. His work primarily focuses on identity, with an emphasis on the migrant experience in the American South. Rizo is the recipient of the inaugural MINT + ACP Emerging Artist Fellowship. He is one of three awardees for the 2022 Atlanta Artadia Awards and one of three winners of the 2023–24 Working Artist Project for MOCA GA. His work lives in the permanent collections of multiple museums, including VMFA and the High Museum of Art.

Thu, Jan 23, 2025
6:30–7:30 pm
Leslie Cheek Theater
$8 (VMFA members $5)

Explore the wildly creative but often misunderstood period in the life of Hungarian-born American photographer André Kertész. Interweaving Kertész’s photographs, particularly self-portraits, with the artist’s life story, Robert Gurbo, President of the André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, will unveil a powerful and brooding body of art hidden beneath the surface of seemingly simple images. The exhibition American, born Hungary: Kertész, Capa, and the Hungarian American Photographic Legacyis on view at VMFA Oct 5, 2024–Jan 26, 2025.

Livestream option for this talk is available.
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Robert Gurbo Bio
President and managing director of the Estate of André Kertész and The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Robert Gurbo met Kertész while working as a photographer on the CCF-CETA Artists Project in 1978. He worked with Kertész during the last seven years of the photographer's life and has spent the last 39 years meticulously combing through his archive. Gurbo is the co-author of the catalogue that accompanied the 2005 National Gallery exhibition, André Kertész, published by Princeton University Press. He is also the editor and author of André Kertész: The Early Years and André Kertész: The Polaroids. In addition, he organized the reissue of Kertész’s seminal book, On Reading. He has contributed to numerous publications and catalogues; lectured on André Kertész throughout the world; and is an advisor to museum curators, gallerists, and collectors. 
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IMAGE Lost Cloud, 1937, André Kertész (Kertész Andor), (American, born Hungary, 1894–1985), gelatin silver print, 8 1/2 x 5 3/8 in. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of the Artist, 312.1965 ©️ 2024 Estate of André Kertész

The Rough and the Smooth in 17th-century Dutch Painting
With Dr. Ronni Baer, the Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum

Wed, Jan 29, 2025
6:30–7:30 pm
$8 (VMFA members $5)
Leslie Cheek Theater

Join us for the inaugural Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III Lecture, presented by Dr. Ronni Baer, the Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum. Dr. Baer will explore work by 17th-century Dutch artists Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, and Gerrit Dou. Paintings by Hals and Dou are currently on view in the Saunders Collection. 

In the 17th century, Dutch art theorists discussed two distinct styles of painting: the neat or smooth and the rough or loose. Neat painting was believed to engage the viewer for a long time, delighting the eye. By contrast, the rough style was considered “modern” and said to have the power to move the observer. Participants will be encouraged to look closely at works of art and consider the choices the artists made at the easel.

The Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III Distinguished Lecture is presented by a scholar annually to foster the study and appreciation of European art. It is made possible through the generous support of the Saunders family.

Livestream available

RESCHEDULED: The lecture will now take place on Wed, Jan 29, 2025. It was originally scheduled for Wed, Sep 25, 2024. 

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IMAGE Man Writing in an Artist’s Studio, 1631–32, Gerrit Dou (Dutch, 1613–1675), oil on panel. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Jordan and Thomas A Saunders III Collection
 

Thu, Feb 27, 2025
6:30–7:30 pm
$8 (VMFA members, $5)
Cheek Theater

Last year, VMFA became the first major US art museum to lend a work from its permanent collection to a sub-Saharan African institution. This talk details the collaboration between the museum and the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League art collective located in the remote village of Lusanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo that led to this loan. Dr. Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, Curator of African Art, will explain how this historic collaborative engagement came about and recount the long and fascinating journey that he and VMFA's sculpture made.