Talks

This is a rare opportunity to see these renowned speakers in Virginia, so we are offering the last remaining tickets at a discounted price of $25 each. 

Amy Balsters, The Floral Coach®, teaches artful and inspired floral design as part of Fine Arts & Flowers. 

Balsters is a classically trained, award-winning floral design educator with vast industry experience spanning two decades in retail floristry, weddings, and special events. She specializes in teaching the romantic "loose and airy style" and is the creator of Bouquet Bootcamp®, a comprehensive design course and hands-on workshop. Balsters has taught all over the US and has trained thousands of florists how to design more confidently and efficiently using professional techniques. 

Featured on Design Sponge as one of the 20 Florists to Follow on Instagram, Balsters has won multiple design awards, including Mastery in Principles of Design awarded by the Senior Style Editor of Martha Stewart Living. In 2018, Team Flower named her Designer of the Year. Her work has been featured in major national and international wedding publications, including Martha Stewart Weddings, Once Wed, Florists Review, and many more.

This is a rare opportunity to see these renowned speakers in Virginia, so we are offering the last remaining tickets at a discounted price of $25 each. 

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.

This is a rare opportunity to see these renowned speakers in Virginia, so we are offering the last remaining tickets at a discounted price of $25 each. 

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 Crane 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. 

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

This is a rare opportunity to see these renowned speakers in Virginia, so we are offering the last remaining tickets at a discounted price of $25 each. 

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.

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

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.