Talks

Get your tickets now to hear Emily Hannam, Curator for South Asia at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, deliver the opening talk in celebration of India's Great Mughals: Art, Power, and Opulence. She will explore the artistic production of one of the wealthiest courts in the world, tracing the development of Mughal art over a century, from 1556 to 1658, across the reigns of three remarkable emperors. The image of the Taj Mahal is recognized across the world, yet the extraordinary paintings and artifacts created for its patron, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, and for his two predecessors, Akbar and Jahangir, remain remarkably little known. During this vibrant period, highly skilled artists and craftsmen in the imperial workshops created a radically new and rapidly evolving approach to design, one that reflected the hybridity and cosmopolitan nature of the Mughal court. Join us for an enriching talk that will enhance your exhibition experience.  To watch from the comfort of home, visit our livestream page.

ASL interpretation will be provided during this program.

About the Speaker
Emily Hannam is Curator for South Asia at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She previously held curatorial positions at British Museum and the Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, and curated exhibitions of South Asian art at the Queen’s Galleries in London and Edinburgh. She is the author of Eastern Encounters: Four Centuries of Paintings and Manuscripts from the Indian Subcontinent (2018) and is co-author of Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniatures and Britain, 1600 to now (2024).

IMAGE A Prince, Perhaps Parviz, with a Female Companion and Attendants (detail), ca. 1605–10, attributed to Bishandas (Indian, ca. 1590–ca.1640), opaque watercolor and gold on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2025.118

Rembrandt and the Mughals: Global Exchange in 17th-Century Works on Paper 

Alyssa Hughes, Works on Paper Specialist for the Frank Raysor Collection at VMFA, will discuss Rembrandt’s drawings after Mughal paintings, which reveal a fascinating moment of cross-cultural exchange between Europe and South Asia in the 17th century. This talk traces how the Dutch artist, working from imported Indian miniatures, reinterpreted the likenesses of Mughal rulers through his own expressive line. Drawing comparisons with other prints in VMFA’s collection, this lecture explores how artists used paper as a medium for experimentation and global connection during a period of unprecedented interaction between East and West.

Fellows Programs are open to all members beginning at the Fellows Society level. Please RSVP for this program by emailing rsvp@vmfa.museum.

IMAGE: Shah Jahan, c. 1656–61, Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 1978.38. Photo courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art

Join Dr. Alyssa Hughes, Works on Paper Specialist for the Frank Raysor Collection, to discuss three still life paintings from the permanent collection. Across centuries and cultures, artists used the rich visual language of flowers as a vehicle for meaning, identity, and exchange. From the collaborative garland paintings of 17th-century Flanders to the abundance of American still life and the vivid emotional style of Van Gogh in Arles, this talk invites you to explore the varied traditions that informed the evolution of flower painting.

IMAGE: Virgin, Child and Saint Anne with Garland, 1620–22, Jan Brueghel, the Elder (Flemish, 1568–1625), oil on wood. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 66.16

Join Dr. Alyssa Hughes, Works on Paper Specialist for the Frank Raysor Collection, to discuss three still life paintings from the permanent collection. Across centuries and cultures, artists used the rich visual language of flowers as a vehicle for meaning, identity, and exchange. From the collaborative garland paintings of 17th-century Flanders to the abundance of American still life and the vivid emotional style of Van Gogh in Arles, this talk invites you to explore the varied traditions that informed the evolution of flower painting.

IMAGE: Virgin, Child and Saint Anne with Garland, 1620–22, Jan Brueghel, the Elder (Flemish, 1568–1625), oil on wood. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 66.16

Join Mika Natif, Associate Professor of Art History at George Washington University, who will examine how women were depicted in Mughal art. Mughal visual culture of the 16th and 17th centuries produced some of the most compelling and celebrated images of women in the early modern Muslim sphere. From the carefully constructed representations of imperial consorts to general depictions of musicians and entertainers, portrayals of women in Mughal painting imbue complex negotiations of gender, status, and imperial ideology. 

This talk draws on examples from the reigns of Akbar through Shah Jahan, a period that is the focus of the VMFA exhibition India's Great Mughals: Art, Power, and Opulence. Natif will consider the tension between private and more public realms, as well as the role of such paintings in asserting dynastic legitimacy and bonds within the imperial household. By situating these images within the broader contexts of Mughal court culture, Indo-Persian literary tradition, and transcultural artistic exchanges, Natif advances a more nuanced account of female visibility in Mughal visual practice. To watch from the comfort of home, visit our livestream page. 

About the Speaker
Mika Natif is Associate Professor of Art History at The George Washington University, specializing in Islamic art and cultural exchanges between Muslim societies and Europe. Her research focuses on Islamic painting and illustrated manuscripts from Mughal India, Central Asia, and Iran. She authored Mughal Occidentalism (2018) and co-edited Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art (2013). Her current work explores women’s portraiture, patronage, and artists in Mughal India, including a forthcoming monograph on Hamida Banu Begam, Emperor Akbar's mother. Natif has held fellowships from MIT, Harvard, the Mellon Foundation, Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, and Dumbarton Oaks.
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IMAGE Page from the Nasir al-Din Shah Album: Portrait of a Mughal Woman (detail), 1630–45, Indian (Shah Jahan period), opaque watercolor and ink on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Paul Mellon

Kudzu Furniture: Growth and Transformation 
with Joyce Lin, Artist and Furniture Maker 

Artist and furniture maker Joyce Lin discusses her recent body of work, the Kudzu series, in which she explores the fast-growing, invasive kudzu vine that has come to define large parts of the American South. Lin transforms this iconic “vine that ate the South” into sculptural furniture forms, examining how a once-introduced outsider becomes interwoven with the landscape and serves as a medium for storytelling within her technically ambitious practice. 

The VMFA Circle Lecture Series is open to all members beginning at the Friends Circle level. This program will be offered in person and virtually, via Zoom. Click here to register for the livestream

IMAGE: Kudzu Chair, 2025, Joyce Lin, pallet wood, oak, kudzu vine, epoxy, cloth, wire, and paint. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Join Dr. John Henry Rice, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art, for a 3 in 30 program connected to the special exhibition India’s Great Mughals: Art, Power, and Opulence. Objects on view in the permanent galleries will explore the fact that as much as the Mughals might appeal to our curiosity, they were equally fascinated by their adopted Indian home.

IMAGE: Two Holy Men Conversing in a Landscape, 1640–50, Payag (Indian, ca. 1591–ca. 1658) opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2025.59

Join Dr. John Henry Rice, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art, for a 3 in 30 program connected to the special exhibition India’s Great Mughals: Art, Power, and Opulence. Objects on view in the permanent galleries will explore the fact that as much as the Mughals might appeal to our curiosity, they were equally fascinated by their adopted Indian home.

IMAGE: Two Holy Men Conversing in a Landscape, 1640–50, Payag (Indian, ca. 1591–ca. 1658) opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2025.59

Explore artworks on view in the largest gallery at VMFA: the museum's open spaces. Join Izzie Fuqua, Interpretation and Digital Project Coordinator, for a discussion of three works of art in the permanent collection that have changed the physical landscape of the museum both inside and out.

IMAGE: Chloe, 2016, Jaume Plensa (Spanish, born 1955), polyester resin, marble dust, and stainless steel. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2017.1. ©️ Jaume Plensa

Explore artworks on view in the largest gallery at VMFA: the museum's open spaces. Join Izzie Fuqua, Interpretation and Digital Project Coordinator, for a discussion of three works of art in the permanent collection that have changed the physical landscape of the museum both inside and out.

IMAGE: Chloe, 2016, Jaume Plensa (Spanish, born 1955), polyester resin, marble dust, and stainless steel. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2017.1. ©️ Jaume Plensa

Join Dr. Sarah Eckhardt, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, to explore the personal relationships between collectors and the contemporary artists they championed. This program highlights how Ludwig and Rosy Fischer in Frankfurt, Germany, and Virginia-born T. Catesby Jones in New York built their collections through direct engagement with artists, often acquiring works soon after they were made and forging lasting personal connections.

IMAGE: Pegasus, 1929, Jacques Lipchitz (French, active in the United States, 1891–1973), bronze. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Anne Catesby Jones in Memory of T. Catesby Jones, 2025.477

Join Dr. Sarah Eckhardt, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, to explore the personal relationships between collectors and the contemporary artists they championed. This program highlights how Ludwig and Rosy Fischer in Frankfurt, Germany, and Virginia-born T. Catesby Jones in New York built their collections through direct engagement with artists, often acquiring works soon after they were made and forging lasting personal connections.

IMAGE: Pegasus, 1929, Jacques Lipchitz (French, active in the United States, 1891–1973), bronze. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Anne Catesby Jones in Memory of T. Catesby Jones, 2025.477

Join us for a special evening with painter, activist, and trailblazer Mary Lovelace O'Neal, whose career has spanned more than six decades. Learn about Lovelace O'Neal's artistic practice and the pivotal decade that is the focus of the VMFA exhibition Mary Lovelace O’Neal: Blacker Than a Hundred Midnights Down in a Cypress Swamp. This fascinating conversation will explore the many highlights of her remarkable career, the exhibition's large-scale paintings, and her use of lampblack, a deep rich pigment made from powdered soot created by burning oil.  
 
About the Artist 
A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Mary Lovelace O'Neal earned her BFA in 1964 from Howard University, where she studied under David Driskell and Lois Mailou Jones. During her time in Washington, DC, she was active in the Civil Rights movement, working closely with Stokely Carmichael and many other political and cultural icons. She was a member of Howard's student-led Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) and an active participant in sit-ins organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
 
During an undergrad residency in 1963 at Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in Maine, she happened upon lampblack pigment. She began to use lampblack in earnest as a graduate student at Columbia University, where she earned an MFA in 1969. While in New York City, she became part of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). Lovelace O'Neal's prolific career as a painter, activist, teacher, and trailblazer has spanned more than six decades. She has lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and abroad in Morocco and Chile, and she currently resides in Oakland, California, and Mérida, Mexico.

Photo of Mary Lovelace O’Neal. Courtesy the artist and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York and San Francisco.

As part of Fine Arts & Flowers, reimagine landscape design as living composition in this talk on the garden as art by Stephen Eich. 

Eich considers landscape design as a deliberate act of composition—where space, light, movement, and time shape experience in collaboration with nature. Drawing from contexts that range from private estates to rooftops and cultural spaces, Hollander Design Partner Stephen Eich explores gardens as curated visual experiences, from collaborations with sculptors to the thoughtful process of creating compositions that evoke memory and feeling. Through luminous photography of the firm’s nationally recognized work, Eich reveals how gardens can function not only as places we inhabit, but as works of art in themselves.

Stephen Eich directs the design, development, and construction of city-based projects ranging from residential terraces and corporate headquarters to hospitality and park redevelopment. Since joining the firm in 2010, Stephen has overseen the design and management of some of the firm’s most highly publicized and notable projects in New York City and abroad. Stephen’s hospitality, residential, and office projects have won accolades from the ASLA, AIA, and ICAA, and recognition in publications such as Elle Décor and Architectural Digest. 

Book signing to follow featuring The Landscape of Home.

Garden Club Presale - April 1-30 only. Must purchase 5 or more tickets for presale rate.

Design with sumptuous old-world charm reminiscent of classical paintings as part of Fine Arts & Flowers.

Natasja Sadi is a celebrated floral designer, artist, photographer, storyteller, fashion designer, baker, and the author of A Sweet Floral Life. 

Originally born in Suriname, she has been captivated by vivid environments filled with light and color throughout her life, leading her to become one of Amsterdam's most renowned floral creatives. The world around Sadi has always been an endless source of intrigue and creative inspiration. These fascinations fuel her work, from her background in creating bridal couture to composing and photographing fresh flower arrangements and sculpting ethereal sugar flowers in the Dutch still life tradition from her home atelier in Amsterdam. 

Sadi's exquisite, lifelike sugar floral sculptures are part of museum collections in the Netherlands and North America. Her work has been featured in international magazines such as Elle Décor USA, Flower Magazine, Victoria, Town & Country, and The World of Interiors. A highly sought-after teacher and lecturer, Sadi has helped people discover the joy of creating and preserving beauty through teaching floral design and the secrets of sugar flower artistry in Europe, Asia, South Africa, and North America.

Book signing to follow featuring Sadi’s A Sweet Floral Life.

Garden Club Presale - April 1-30 only. Must purchase 5 or more tickets for presale rate.

Design with a modern take on traditional interiors as part of Fine Arts & Flowers. 

Caroline Gidiere is an internationally acclaimed interior decorator known for using traditional design to create interiors that are both beautiful and relevant for today’s modern world. She received the Institute of Classical Arts and Architecture’s Philip Trammel Shutze Award for Interior Design in 2023. Veranda named her one of six “Next Legends.” Gidiere has twice been a finalist for ADAC Atlanta’s Designer of the Year and was recently included on Traditional Home’s "New Trad List." Her work has been featured in the pages and digital platforms of Veranda, Vogue, AD Spain, the Wall Street Journal, House & Garden, Southern Living, Flower, and many more. You may know her from her Schumacher Home Tour, which has received more than 1.4 million views. 

Signing to follow featuring Caroline’s book Interiors for a Life in Good Taste, which was released in March 2025 and sold more than 10,000 copies in the first six months.

Garden Club Presale - April 1-30 only. Must purchase 5 or more tickets for presale rate.