Experience the power of reflective writing guided by the founding instructor of the National Gallery of Art’s popular Writing Salon, Mary Hall Surface. Explore new ways to contemplate the gifts of winter inspired by the vibrant Winter Landscape by Wassily Kandinsky, an artist who embraced the transcendent power of color. 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.

For Ages 5 to 10.  Joy, warmth, and community illuminate seasonal holiday festivals the world over.

Participants refine and expand their drawing skills through studio practice in traditional media. Sessions focus on classic subject areas such as landscape, portrait, and figure.

Gain confidence in painting important natural elements in watercolor. Demonstrations and exercises introduce techniques in creating flowing landscapes.

Whether you want to work in digital or film, this course offers a solid foundation for new photographers ready to learn the basics. Topics include camera functions, exposure, metering, working with natural and artificial light, and composition.

For Ages 5 to 10.  Joy, warmth, and community illuminate seasonal holiday festivals the world over.

This introductory course teaches the basic skills needed for drawing. Working with a variety of materials and techniques, including charcoal and pencils, students explore the rendering of geometric forms, volume, and perspective, with an emphasis on personal gesture marks.

Enhance your knowledge and understanding of color theory in watercolor. Learn practical skills such as identifying and mixing colors correctly to create your own cohesive palette.

T.S. Eliot's best-known poem is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but his greatest is The Waste Land. The seminal, hundred-year-old work can intimidate anyone at first reading, even with excellent footnotes. It's worth the effort to come to terms with The Waste Land's stature, and public humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson is ready to serve as a guide. He covers its creation, its enormous debt to previous literature from Dante to John Donne, and walks you through the poem in a way that helps reveal its creative strategies—and meaning.

Tudor monarchs certainly knew how to make the most of a holiday. The Twelve Days of Christmas provided the royal court with opportunities for midwinter merrymaking on a grand scale fit for a king (or queen). Tudor and Renaissance scholar Carol Ann Lloyd-Stanger provides a colorful glimpse into how members of the Tudor dynasty and their courtiers marked the festive season—as well as how the rest of the country celebrated Christmas in their homes.