Talks

Watercolor: The American Medium?
with Dr. Kathleen A. Foster, the Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator and Head of American Art, and Director, Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The American art world discovered watercolor painting in the 1870s with the rise of artists such as Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. Enthusiasm grew in the 1880s as talent from all corners took up the medium—illustrators, decorators, “Impressionists,” and many women artists. By the early 20th century, watercolor societies were proliferating, museums and collectors were competing for the work of John Singer Sargent, and a new generation of modernists had embraced watercolor as the quintessential American medium.

Curator's Choice Programs are open to all members beginning at the Supporters Circle level. Please RSVP for this program by emailing rsvp@vmfa.museum. This program will be offered in person and virtually, via Zoom. Click here to register for the livestream. 

IMAGE: Handkerchief Point, 1896–97, Maurice Brazil Prendergast (American, born Canada, 1858–1924), watercolor and pencil on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, James W. and Frances Gibson McGlothlin Collection, L2015.13.43.

Join Siera Hyte, VMFA's Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art in a discussion on three works in Waterways, a special installation on view in the American Art Galleries. This conversation will foreground Indigenous American artists whose work reflects on reverence for and protection of waterways.

IMAGE Dappled Light Shadows (Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape), 1993, George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe, 1919–2000), acrylic on canvas board in artist's frame. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2025.304

Join Siera Hyte, VMFA's Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art in a discussion on three works in Waterways, a special installation on view in the American Art Galleries. This conversation will foreground Indigenous American artists whose work reflects on reverence for and protection of waterways.

IMAGE Dappled Light Shadows (Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape), 1993, George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe, 1919–2000), acrylic on canvas board in artist's frame. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2025.304

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. 

Established in memory of Paul Mellon—the museum’s longest serving trustee and one of its most generous benefactors—the Paul Mellon Lecture is presented annually by a distinguished scholar to foster the study and appreciation of the arts and is supported by the Paul Mellon Endowment.

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

IMAGE: Landscape, 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, 83.46

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.

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 break*
2:30 pm | Panel 4: "Reevaluating Impressionism in the Age of Empire" 
 
*Lunch is not included with conference registration. Onsite options:

   - Boxed Lunch (available Saturday only): Pre-order ($20 per lunch) when you reserve your free conference ticket. Pick up boxed lunches in the Atrium.
   -  Best Café, Level 1
   - Amuse Restaurant, Level 3 (reservations recommended)
 
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

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.

Explore the official recognition of Impressionism in France through the history of the national collections now held at Paris's Musée d’Orsay where Paul Perrin, our guest speaker, is Chief Curator and Director of Collections. Perrin will focus on the decisive role of Gustave Caillebotte’s bequest of 1894, as well as on the gifts and bequests of artists, collectors and their heirs during the 20th century. Trace the changing institutional homes of these works, from the Musée du Luxembourg to the Louvre, the Musée du Jeu de Paume, and finally the Musée d’Orsay since 1986. 

Also consider how the Musée d’Orsay has itself contributed to questioning and redefining the place of Impressionism within the broader history of 19th-century art, particularly in relation to academic and other contemporary artistic traditions. Through selected recent exhibitions, acquisitions or restoration projects, Perrin examines how the museum continues, in the 21st century, to reassess the movement and its place in its collections today. This talk is presented during the run of VMFA's exhibition The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art. 

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

About the Speaker
Paul Perrin is Chief Curator and Director of Collections at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. A graduate of the École du Louvre and the Institut national du patrimoine (Paris), he served as Curator of Paintings at the Musée d’Orsay from 2014 to 2023 before being appointed to his current position. A specialist in 19th-century French painting—particularly Impressionism—he is recognized for his expertise on Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte, and Frédéric Bazille. He has curated several major international exhibitions at the Musée d’Orsay, including Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870): The Youth of Impressionism (2016), James Tissot (1836–1902): Ambiguously Modern (2021), Caillebotte: Painting Men (2024), and most recently John Singer Sargent: Dazzling Paris (2025), Renoir Drawings (2026), as well as the accompanying exhibition Renoir and Love (2026), which traveled from Paris to the National Gallery, London, and is now at the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston.