Talks

Using a simple string technique central to Quandamooka weaving practices, twisting pliable fibers, participants will make a bracelet with freshwater swamp reeds called Ungaire. Traditionally items made from string had a wide variety of uses including binding, fabricating fishing lines and nets, and making items of personal adornment, such as necklaces and belts. This technique was also used to make everyday objects such as tools, weapons, baskets, and objects for many other uses.

Participants will use ghost net materials to make a small basket with a simple coiling technique. Marine debris such as ghost nets and plastic matter that washes up on our beaches impact on marine life and coastal ecosystems.

Participants will be able to complete their creations in the 2-hour workshop.

Workshop leader Sonja Carmichael is a senior Quandamooka weaver. In her practice, she draws inspiration from the many stories connected to traditional Quandamooka weaving and explores contemporary materials and techniques—in particular, discarded ghost nets and fishing lines—that directly respond to concerns about the preservation of the natural environment. An active member of her community, she is a leader in the regeneration of Quandamooka weaving, passing on cultural knowledge and skills through workshops, exhibitions, and field research. She has shown in numerous group exhibitions, including Open Hands (2020), Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia; TarraWarra Biennale: ua usiusi fa’ava’asavili (2023), Tarrawarra Museum of Art; Seeds and Sovereignty (2024), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA); and On Country: Photography from Australia (2025), Recontres d’Arles, France. Her work is held in collections such as the Queensland Art Gallery, Museum of Brisbane, National Gallery of Victoria, National Museum of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, and Redland Art Gallery.

Photo courtesy of Angie Simms and North Stradbroke Island Museum on Minjerrbah

"Threatening Indigenous Sacred Landscapes: The Fight to Save Powhatan’s Birthplace"
With Ashley Spivey, PhD, Executive Director of Kenah Consulting, LLC

Powhatan’s Birthplace at Tree Hill in Henrico County is a sacred Indigenous landscape and historic site tied to Wahunsenacawh, the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom, and centuries of Virginia history. This talk explains the site’s significance, current development threats, tribal concerns about collaboration and access, and ongoing intertribal efforts to protect and preserve the irreplaceable cultural, archaeological, and environmental resources.  This lecture is presented in connection with “Waterways,” a special permanent collection installation of works by American and Indigenous American artists on view in the American Art galleries. The installation considers how waterways are sacred places, keepers of cultural memory, and often sites of contestation and extraction.

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.

Photo courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources

As a participant in CultureWorks' artoberVA, VMFA is offering a "Pay-What-You-Will" ticket price for this talk. Choose your price during the reservation process.

VMFA welcomes Columbia University's Dr. Kellie Jones, who will discuss African American abstract painter Al Loving (1935–2005) and his work, from his earliest explorations of purely optical geometries in the 1960s, to the edges of craft (things made “by hand”) in later years. This talk situates Loving within a universe of other visual artists who found creative freedom in the seemingly boundless terrain of late 20th-century abstract art making. While painting proved to be a core value, sculpture as hard edge also went soft, inspired by bodies in motion, whether in performance or in the world.

To watch from the comfort of home, visit our livestream page. 

IMAGE Square (detail), 1973–74, Al Loving (American, 1935–2005), quilt canvas and mixed media, 93 x 93 in. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Price and Elaine Rogers Collection, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment, and Sydney and Frances Lewis Endowment Fund, 2024.316  
  
About the Speaker
Dr. Kellie Jones is Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology and a Professor in the Department African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. A member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Jones was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2016. She is the author of EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art and South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Her recent edited volumes include October Files: David Hammons and, with Tumelo Mosaka, Black Curators Matter: Conversations on Art and Change.

Join Courtney Morano, Director of Interpretation at VMFA, in exploring the tension between human memory and disaster through three objects from the ancient Roman world that survived through different means. One was preserved by a sudden volcanic eruption, one was buried by earthquake, and one was salvaged from a campaign of political erasure. Together, they help us understand how archaeology pieces together the fragments of the past when human history and nature collide.

https://www.vmfa.museum/programs/3-in-30 

IMAGE: Floor Mosaic with the Four Seasons, AD 250–300, Roman (Antioch), limestone and glass tesserae. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 51.13

Join Courtney Morano, Director of Interpretation at VMFA, in exploring the tension between human memory and disaster through three objects from the ancient Roman world that survived through different means. One was preserved by a sudden volcanic eruption, one was buried by earthquake, and one was salvaged from a campaign of political erasure. Together, they help us understand how archaeology pieces together the fragments of the past when human history and nature collide.

https://www.vmfa.museum/programs/3-in-30 

IMAGE: Floor Mosaic with the Four Seasons, AD 250–300, Roman (Antioch), limestone and glass tesserae. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 51.13

As part of Fine Arts & Flowers, reimagine landscape design as living composition in this talk, "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.

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.

Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon’s signature imprint on interiors is reinvigorated in a new compilation of never-before-seen renderings in The Enchanting Interiors of Bunny Mellon: Paintings by Snowy Campbell. Originally conceived of by Mrs. Mellon herself but never realized in her lifetime, this book brings together Campbell’s paintings for the first time. Three residences—New York City; Washington, DC; and Upperville, Virginia—are featured, with accompanying texts by James Reginato that explore Mrs. Mellon’s decorating style and the ways she and her husband, Paul Mellon, lived within these spaces. Two key contributors to the book, Sir Peter and Elinor Crane of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, will explore select works from the book and reflect on Mrs. Mellon’s enduring influence on interior design, art, and aesthetics. A book signing follows this talk.

This is a free event; tickets required.

With Landscape, St. Thomas (1856) and Coconut Palms by the Sea, St. Thomas (1856), VMFA is among the rare institutions to hold in its collection such early works by the Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro (1830–1903). These paintings, both formerly part of the personal collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, highlight the lesser-known story of a cosmopolitan artist who, born in the capital of the Saint-Thomas archipelago in the Danish West Indies (now part of the US Virgin Islands), established himself as the father of French Impressionism.

Co-curator of The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism (Museum Barberini, Potsdam, June–September 2025; Denver Art Museum, October 2025–February 2026), Dr. Clarisse Fava-Piz will take us through Pissarro’s transatlantic journey and explore how this peripatetic artist constantly challenged artistic expectations, from his early plein air artistic practice in Venezuela, to his leading role in the development of the Impressionist movement in France.

Dr. Clarisse Fava-Piz is Curator of Modern Art at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. She was previously Associate Curator of European and American Art before 1900 at the Denver Art Museum. She has also worked for the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and is a specialist in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sculpture in Europe and the Americas. 

If you cannot attend this lecture in person, enjoy our livestream from the comfort of home.

IMAGE: Coconut Palms by the Sea, St. Thomas, 1856, Camille Pissarro (French, born Danish West Indies [present-day US Virgin Islands], 1830–1903), oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 83.45

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.

Step back in time and experience Impressionism as the provocative, subversive, and defiant production of a renegade group of contemporary artists. Join Dr. Nicole Myers, Chief Curatorial and Research Officer and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art and curator of The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art, as she explores the Impressionist revolution that scandalized Paris and set the course for modern art in the 1870s and beyond.

About the Speaker
Dr. Nicole Myers is The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). Myers joined the DMA in 2016 and leads the Museum’s Curatorial, Conservation, and Library and Archives departments. She also oversees the European art collection and has curated numerous exhibitions at the DMA, including its 2024 presentation of The Impressionist Revolution from Monet to Matisse. A specialist of French painting, she has published and lectured on wide-ranging topics.
 
Myers’s previously held positions at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Saint Louis Art Museum. She completed her MA and PhD in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and her BA in Art History & Archaeology and French at Washington University in St. Louis.

ASL interpretation will be provided during this program.

To watch from the comfort of home, visit our livestream page.
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IMAGE Mont Saint-Michel, Setting Sun (detail), 1897, Paul Signac (French, 1863–1935), oil on canvas, 26 x 32 1/8 in. Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., bequest of Mrs. Eugene McDermott in honor of Bill Booziotis, 2019.67.25.McD. ©️ 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy Dallas Museum of Art

"Modern Woman: Mary Cassatt’s 1893 Mural for Chicago"
with Dr. Annelise K. Madsen, Gilda and Henry Buchbinder Curator, Arts of the Americas, Art Institute of Chicago

In 1892–93, Mary Cassatt seized an unparalleled opportunity to try something new: a monumental mural for the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In "Modern Woman," she transformed the everyday into a grand, symbolic vision of female education and achievement. Although the mural has not survived, it remains one of her greatest works of art. This lecture will explore the remarkable story of Cassatt’s unprecedented public decoration. 

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: Gathering Fruit, 1893, Mary Cassatt (American, 1844-1926), drypoint, etching, and aquatint in colors on laid paper, 16 3/4 x 11 5/8 in. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The J. Harwood and Louise B. Cochrane Fund for American Art, 2023.13.

Have You Seen My Gods? 
Screening & Conversation with Director and Producer  
with Director Amitabh Joshi and Producer Bibhakar Shakya 

Join Bibhakar Shakya and Amitabh Joshi for a special film screening and conversation about their documentary, Have You Seen My Gods? The film recounts Joshi’s quest to locate the stolen gods of Kathmandu, fulfilling his grandmother’s final wish. When a statue of Laxmi Narayan stolen in the 1980s resurfaces in a United States museum, its repatriation, led by local activists, becomes a path through ritual, shrines, and the diaspora. Featuring rare archival footage of 1950s Kathmandu and a quiet investigative thread that uncovers the identity of the art collector who acquired the statue, the film is a lyrical elegy and an act of resistance against colonial theft and cultural erasure. 

 
The roughly one-hour film screening will be followed by a 30-minute interactive conversation and Q&A with Shakya and Joshi. 

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.

Photo courtesy of Bibhakar Shakya.

Tickets coming soon.

Join leading scholars in the field of art history as they explore fresh perspectives on the revolutionary style of Impressionism. At VMFA, Reconsidering Impressionism is a two-day conference inspired primarily by the museum's remarkable Mellon Collection of Impressionism. The conference coincides with the special exhibition The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art. 

The conference begins on Friday at 3 pm. That day's panel is followed by a keynote lecture in the evening. Panels continue Saturday. Separate tickets are required for each day of panels and for the keynote lecture. Check back here for details. The following is a tentative schedule:  

Friday, January 29, 2027
3 pm | Welcome Remarks 
3:10 pm | Panel 1: "Revisiting the Materials and Techniques of the Impressionists" 
4:40 pm | Break 
6 pm | Keynote Lecture (Purchased ticket required.)
 
Saturday, January 30 
9 am | Welcome Remarks 
9:15 am  | Panel 2: "Reexamining Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt" 
10:45 am | Break  
11 am | Panel 3: "Reimagining Impressionism Beyond Paintings" 
12:30 pm | Lunch on your own*
2:30 pm | Panel 4: "Reevaluating Impressionism in the Age of Empire" 
 
*Onsite options: Best Café on Level 1 or Amuse Restaurant on Level  3 (Reservations recommended for Amuse.) 
 
Livestream of the keynote lecture and panels will be available. 
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IMAGE At the Milliner (detail), ca. 1882–85, Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 2001.27

Mark your calendars for the Keynote Lecture. Tickets and details will be available soon.  

Open to the public, Reconsidering Impressionism is a two-day conference inspired primarily by the museum's remarkable Mellon Collection of Impressionism. The conference coincides with the special exhibition The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art. 

Livestream of the keynote lecture and panels will be available. 

IMAGE Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (detail), 1873, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919), oil on canvas, 18 3/8 x 23 1/2 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, Bequest of Anne Parrish Titzell, 1957.614. Photography credit: Allen Phillips/Wadsworth Atheneum 

About the Speaker 
Michael Marrinan is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Stanford University, where he taught the history and theory of 18th and 19th century European art for 30 years. His writings include the books Painting Politics for Louis-Philippe, Romantic Paris, Gustave Caillebotte, and The Culture of Diagram, with John Bender. His published essays include contributions to the exhibition catalogues Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye (Washington National Gallery 2015) and Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men (Chicago Art Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum 2025). He is currently finishing a monograph on the early Impressionism of Claude Monet.