Lectures, Lecture Series, & Tours

October 13 – November 3 (Mondays) 2-3PM, 92nd St. Y (Streaming)

“Seeing the Sublime: Finding Awe in Modern and Contemporary Art”

Sept 10, Oct 8, Nov 12, Dec 10  6:30-8:30 PM, Rumi Forum and Focolare Forum for Dialogue, Washington, D.C.

“A Sacred Piece of Home”: Four-Part Doc Film Series and Discussion

November 17, 24 1PM Metropolitan Washington Oasis (Streaming)

“A Sacred Piece of Home”: Four-Part Doc Film Series and Discussion (in two parts at each showing)

July 1-5 (Week 2) The AI Revolution: AI Between Past and Future

A series of five morning lectures for Roads Scholars at Chautauqua focused on the idea and history of Artificial Intelligence, how it has been a focus from Plato’s Phaedrus to the story of the Golem of Prague to contemporary film—and the questions that are now being asked with increasing urgency as to its potential positive and negative role ion the human future.

August 5-9 (Week 7) Wonder and Awe Across Time and Space

A series of five morning lectures for Roads Scholars at Chautauqua focused on the idea and history of these two terms. What are they—and how do they differ from each other? How have wonder and awe been thought of at different times within different cultures? What brings wonder or awe about? What are the elements within and what are the elements beyond our human reality that we might refer to by one or both of these terms? How do wonder and awe intersect and/or diverge from concepts like love?

October 30, 2023: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

From Impressionist masterpieces to little-seen Matisses and Picassos, to Mark Rothko and Philip Guston, to Ursula von Rydingsvard and Deborah Butterfield: our emphasis will be on works that are little-seen and little-known, but that are important for any number of reasons.  Surprises will dominate!

November 13, 2023: London’s Tate Galleries

Galleries that are a fourfold network house the UK’s national collection of British masterworks together with international modern and contemporary art.  From Turner to the Rossettis, to David Hockney and Barbara Hepwoth, to Louise Bourgeois, a primary emphasis will be on the importance of Britain as a magnet in the twentieth century for artists from areas as diverse as Eastern Europe, the U.S., and India—from Jacob Epstein to R.B. Kitaj to Anish Kapoor.

December 11, 2023: The Louvre of Paris

After King Louis XIV favored French amateur architect Claude Perrault, rather than the Italian Gian Lorenzo Bernini, to design the new east façade of the Louvre, Paris became the center of the European artworld. By the time of the Impressionists, and for the next 90 years, artists from all corners of the globe came to Paris to make art, and the collections of the Louvre reflect that legacy.  Beyond earlier icons like the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Mona Lisa, the museum’s modern collections range from Georges Braque to Cy Twombly—to I.M. Pei’s renowned glass pyramid that dominates the center of the main inner courtyard of the palatial museum structure.