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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 Catalan artist Joan Miró’s painted visual memoir, The Farm.
The last decade has seen a resurgence of research into black holes and observations of their immediate surroundings. Astronomers have tracked the motion of stars around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, made images of the glowing material falling toward the gargantuan black hole M87*, and detected chirps of gravitational waves emanating from merging black holes billions of light-years away. Astrophysicist Joshua Winn of Princeton University reviews the theory of black holes and these recent observational developments.
Just in time for Halloween, indulge your senses in an exploration of the rich history of candy. Candy historian Beth Kimmerle reveals the sweet secrets behind much-loved confections, tracing their origins and explaining the techniques that have shaped the candy-making process over centuries. Learn how to discern flavors, textures, and aromas like an expert.
For Ages 3 to 8. 123 Andrés perform bilingual songs for young audiences, who are encouraged to sing and dance along!
Over the past half century, dwarves, hobbits, magic, dragons, runes, and other staples of fantastic realms have become entrenched in popular culture, from The Lord of the Rings to the Harry Potter series. There are substantive historical inspirations behind these phenomena. Historian Justin M. Jacobs discusses the evolving conceptions of fantastic elements in Eurasian history and lays bare the truth behind what he sees as four distorted myths of fantasy in our culture in this fall series. This session focuses on old Norse runes.
Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina Banks Howell Davis experienced 19th-century political life at its highest levels. They shared similarities, as each was Southern-born, well-educated, a gifted conversationalist, and a mother of young children. Both had their fair share of critics during their husbands’ time in office, and neither woman was one to sit back quietly. Each survived her husband and sought to preserve his memory—and dealt with the numerous challenges in the war’s aftermath in her own way. Kelly Hancock of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond examines the reasons.
What do The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Dukas, Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, Orff’s Carmina Burana, and Weber’s Der Freischütz have in common? All are deliciously spooky excursions into the musical supernatural, eternally popular with classical audiences eager to experience a good scare. Speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin leads a hair-raising tour of some of the best-loved classical music haunts, showcasing works by a coven of composers.
Thousands of years ago, Indigenous peoples in the Andes assessed their climate, geography, and ecology and realized that, to provide better support for agriculture and herding, they needed to harness water. Their solution was to build hydraulic infrastructure, such as canals, terraces, reservoirs, and dams. Archaeologist Kevin Lane reveals the story of canals on the coast and in the Central Andes and explains how these old technologies are being repurposed today to deal with the effects of climate change.
Before Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia invaded the North in 1862, it battled Union forces in the Second Manassas campaign. Civil War tour guide Marc Thompson analyzes the army’s movement from Richmond toward Manassas following the Seven Days Battles and explains how the evolving nature of the Civil War can be seen through the fielding of two kinds of Federal armies in response to the threat posed by Lee’s Confederates.
