A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts

The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts is an annual public lecture series, hosted by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., based on topics in the fine arts. Established in 1949 from an endowed gift from Ailsa Mellon Bruce and her brother, Paul Mellon, the series held its first lecture in 1952. While the series has featured mainly art historians, artists, composers, journalists, musicologists, poets, and scientists have also been invited to speak on art-related topics.

History Established in 1949, the Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts were created as part of an endowed gift to the National Gallery of Art from the Avalon Foundation and the Old Dominion Foundation, ran respectively by Ailsa Mellon Bruce and her brother, Paul Mellon, of the wealthy Mellon family. The series was created in order "to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts," and speakers must be of "exceptional ability, achievement, and reputation." The production of a book based on the talks has been funded by the Bollingen Foundation, run by Paul and his wife, Mary Conover.

The Mellon Lectures began in 1952. Its first speaker was the French philosopher Jacques Maritain of Princeton University, who gave a talk titled "Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry."

Since 1967, the Princeton University Press has published the book based on each talk. In 1969, the foundations merged to form the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In 1987, the Mellon Lecture did not take place for the first time since its inception. It restarted a year later, with 2020 being the only other stoppage. In that year, the French art historian Yve-Alain Bois was named as the annual speaker, but the event was postponed for a later date. Again, the series would restart in the following year.

Speakers + A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts Year Speaker Affiliation Lecture Title 1952 Jacques Maritain Princeton University Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry 1953 Kenneth Clark Arts Council of Great Britain The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art 1954 Herbert Read Harvard University The Art of Sculpture 1955 Étienne Gilson Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Art and Reality 1956 Ernst Gombrich University College London The Visible World and the Language of Art 1957 Sigfried Giedion University of Zurich Constancy and Change in Art and Architecture 1958 Anthony Blunt University of London Nicolas Poussin and French Classicism 1959 Naum Gabo Artist A Sculptor's View of the Fine Arts 1960 Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis Yale University Horace Walpole 1961 André Grabar Collège de France Christian Iconography and the Christian Religion in Antiquity 1962 Kathleen Raine Poet William Blake and Traditional Mythology 1963 John Pope-Hennessy Victoria and Albert Museum Artist and Individual: Some Aspects of the Renaissance Portrait 1964 Jakob Rosenberg Harvard University On Quality in Art: Criteria of Excellence, Past and Present 1965 Isaiah Berlin University of Oxford Sources of Romantic Thought 1966 David Cecil University of Oxford Dreamer or Visionary: A Study of English Romantic Painting 1967 Mario Praz Sapienza University of Rome On the Parallel of Literature and the Visual Arts 1968 Stephen Spender Poet Imaginative Literature and Painting 1969 Jacob Bronowski Scientist Art as a Mode of Knowledge 1970 Nikolaus Pevsner University of London Some Aspects of Nineteenth‑Century Architecture 1971 T. S. R. Boase University of Oxford Vasari: The Man and the Book 1972 Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich LMU Munich Leonardo da Vinci 1973 Jacques Barzun Columbia University The Use and Abuse of Art 1974 H.W. Janson New York University Nineteenth‑Century Sculpture Reconsidered 1975 H. C. Robbins Landon Musicologist Music in Europe in the Year 1776 1976 Peter von Blanckenhagen New York University Aspects of Classical Art 1977 André Chastel Collège de France The Sack of Rome: 1527 1978 Joseph Alsop Journalist The History of Art Collecting 1979 John Rewald City University of New York Paul Cézanne and America 1980 Peter Kidson University of London Principles of Design in Ancient and Medieval Architecture 1981 John Harris Royal Institute of British Architects Palladian Architecture in England, 1615–1760 1982 Leo Steinberg University of Pennsylvania The Burden of Michelangelo's Painting 1983 Vincent Scully Yale University The Shape of France 1984 Richard Wollheim Columbia University Painting as an Art 1985 James S. Ackerman Harvard University The Villa in History 1986 Lukas Foss Brooklyn Philharmonic Confessions of a Twentieth‑Century Composer 1988 John Shearman Princeton University Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance 1989 Oleg Grabar Harvard University Intermediary Demons: Toward a Theory of Ornament 1990 Jennifer Montagu Warburg Institute Gold, Silver, and Bronze: Metal Sculpture of the Roman Baroque 1991 Willibald Sauerländer Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Changing Faces: Art and Physiognomy through the Ages 1992 Anthony Hecht Georgetown University The Laws of the Poetic Art 1993 John Boardman University of Oxford The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity 1994 Jonathan Brown New York University Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe 1995 Arthur Danto Columbia University Contemporary Art and the Pale of History 1996 Pierre Rosenberg Musée du Louvre From Drawing to Painting: Poussin, Watteau, Fragonard, David, Ingres 1997 John Golding Artist Paths to the Absolute 1998 Lothar Ledderose Heidelberg University Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art 1999 Carlo Bertelli Università della Svizzera Italiana Transitions 2000 Marc Fumaroli Collège de France The Quarrel Between the Ancients and the Moderns in the Arts, 1600–1715 2001 Salvatore Settis Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Giorgione and Caravaggio: Art as Revolution 2002 Michael Fried Johns Hopkins University The Moment of Caravaggio 2003 Kirk Varnedoe Institute for Advanced Study Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock 2004 Irving Lavin Princeton University More Than Meets the Eye 2005 Irene J. Winter Harvard University “Great Work”: Terms of Aesthetic Experience in Ancient Mesopotamia 2006 Simon Schama Columbia University Really Old Masters: Age, Infirmity, and Reinvention 2007 Helen Vendler Harvard University Last Looks, Last Books: The Binocular Poetry of Death 2008 Joseph Koerner Harvard University Bosch and Bruegel: Parallel Worlds? 2009 T. J. Clark University of California, Berkeley Picasso and Truth 2010 Mary Miller Yale University Art and Representation in the Ancient New World 2011 Mary Beard University of Cambridge The Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from Ancient Rome to Salvador Dalí 2012 Craig Clunas University of Oxford Chinese Painting and Its Audiences 2013 Barry Bergdoll Columbia University Out of Site in Plain View: A History of Exhibiting Architecture Since 1750 2014 Anthony Grafton Princeton University Past Belief: Visions of Early Christianity in Renaissance and Reformation Europe 2015 Thomas Crow New York University Restoration as Event and Idea: Art in Europe, 1814‒1820 2016 Vidya Dehejia Columbia University The Thief Who Stole My Heart: The Material Life of Chola Bronzes from South India, c. 855‒1280 2017 Alexander Nemerov Stanford University The Forest: America in the 1830s 2018 Hal Foster Princeton University Positive Barbarism: Brutal Aesthetics in the Postwar Period 2019 Wu Hung University of Chicago End as Beginning: Chinese Art and Dynastic Time 2020 Yve-Alain Bois Princeton University Transparence and Ambiguity: The Modern Space of Axonometry 2021 Jennifer Roberts Harvard University Contact: Art and the Pull of Print 2022 Richard J. Powell Duke University Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect 2023 Stephen D. Houston Brown University Vital Signs: The Visual Cultures of Maya Writing2024Anna Deveare SmithNew York University Chasing That Which Is Not Me / Chasing That Which Is Me

A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts

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