Discover how visual art can inspire creative writing and how writing can offer a powerful way to experience art. Join Mary Hall Surface, the founding instructor of the National Gallery of Art’s popular Writing Salon, for five online workshops that explore essential elements of writing and styles through close looking, word-sketching, and imaginative response to prompts. This writing session is inspired by 20th-century artist Edward Hopper’s People in the Sun.
The most notorious murder of the Middle Ages took place in Canterbury Cathedral, where Archbishop Thomas Becket was killed by four knights of King Henry II in December 1170. Historian Jennifer Paxton explores how the archbishop fell afoul of his king for both personal and political reasons; ignited a political dispute that convulsed church and state for almost a decade; and why Becket’s violent death turned him from a lightning rod for controversy into the most important saint in Europe.
Kevin J. Weddle, a distinguished fellow at the United States Army War College, examines the planning and execution of the desperate boatlift that evacuated British forces from France in May and June 1940, codenamed Operation Dynamo. He analyzes its overall strategic impact on the continuing war effort and presents the full panorama of Dunkirk as a mix of perseverance, hope, tragedy, chance, and deliverance.
From the late 19th century to the present, American glass has undergone remarkable transformations. Art historian Jennie Hirsh explores this dynamic history, focusing on the influential contributions and enduring legacies of key figures such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Frank Lloyd Wright, Harvey Littleton (often regarded as the father of the Studio Glass Movement), Dominick Labino, and Dale Chihuly. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
For more than a century, Hollywood has relied on star power as the most reliable way to draw an audience. Media historian Brian Rose traces the history of movie stardom, from the days when film actors weren’t even identified by name to how Mary Pickford became the first real film star and eventually how actors like Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Denzel Washington ushered in a new definition of stardom during the last few decades.
Guided by the founding instructor of the National Gallery of Art’s Writing Salon, Mary Hall Surface, immerse yourself in the colors, light, and forms of Claude Monet’s exquisite The Japanese Footbridge to explore the bridge as a metaphor for the thresholds and journeys of our lives. Designed for writers of all levels, and for the curious, the workshop invites you to look outwardly at art and to look inwardly through writing.
Amidst the darkness of the Warsaw Ghetto, Irena Stanislawa Sendler, a Polish social worker and nurse emerged as a beacon of hope. Operating through a secret network, Sendler rescued more than 2,000 Jewish children from its confines. Despite arrest, torture, and a looming death sentence, she remained steadfast, never revealing their whereabouts. Historian Ralph Nurnberger sheds light on the extraordinary bravery of Sendler, who risked everything to save the children of the ghetto.
In September 1929, William Faulkner published The Sound and the Fury and the singer-songwriter Charley Patton released a record with the eerily parallel title “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues.” Tim A. Ryan, a professor and author of Yoknapatawpha Blues: Faulkner’s Fiction and Southern Roots Music, examines how working in different media Faulkner and Patton mobilized similar imagery, language, themes, and experimental forms to depict their shared Mississippi world.
