There are new realities in business today. Luckily, they can be unpacked though art. First question: Why? Easy. Temples to art house the victors: those that underpinned their competitors; those that held more brand agency and twitter followers; those that swam faster, and won coveted spots in our shared histories. In a word, the innovators. Businesses that don't innovate become stagnant before the inevitable slow crawl. Leaders that give innovators fields to plough win. Second question: Are we all artists when we create? Yes. Time for a boot-camp to get us thinking creatively, to dare to explore the avant-garde parameters of our systems. 

​

Global CEO Program: A Transformational Journey, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

November 2020

Traveling lecture program for Road Scholar highlighting four art capitals.

On-site lectures "The Russian Avant Garde” and “Modernist Masterworks at the Hermitage,” St. Petersburg; “Never Turning Back: Origins of Parisian Modernism” and “Modern Master: Pablo Picasso,” Paris; “British Modernism,” London.

Gallery presentations at The Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

​

Five-part lecture series Art Afloat 3 (“Origins of American Modernism: The Armory Show and 291 Gallery,” “Skyscraper City: Ashcan and Precisionism,” “Ups and Downs: Harlem Renaissance and American Depression-Era Art,” “The Midas Touch: Art and Consumerism,” and “Who are We? Global Contemporary Art”) aboard the RMS Queen Mary 2. 

​

Guided gallery conversations at Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; Musée d'Orsay, Centre Pompidou, Louvre, Paris; Tate Britain/Modern, National Gallery, Courtauld Gallery, London.

​

St. Petersburg, Paris, London, New York, and on the iconic transatlantic crossing of the QM2

​

2021: September/October; October (postponed)

2020: September/October (postponed)

Traveling lecture program through the South Pacific, part of Road Scholar World Academy. 

​

Fourteen-part lecture series Art Afloat 2 (“Sailors’ Delight: Art and the Ocean,” “Cross-Cultural Currents: Parallel Aesthetics in Oceanic and Modern Art,” “Western Dialogues in Pacific Art Today,” “Is “Exotic” Ok? Picasso’s Primitivising Impulses,” “Gauguin’s Tahitian Paradise,” “Beyond Exotic Masks/Nudes: The Harlem Renaissance,” “Chasing Sunsets: Art, Nature, Sublime,” “Away from Shore: Pollock, Jung, and Transcending Cultural Divides,” “I’ll Follow the Sun: Art and Light,” “The Cost of Being Here: Warhol and Commoditizing Identities,” “Impressionism and Japonisme,” “Tourist Trade: Art, Globalism, and Geo-Politics,” “American Modernism,” “Headed Toward Africa: Art and the African Diaspora”) aboard the MS Amsterdam.

San Antonio, Chile; Easter Island; Pitcairn; Papeete, French Polynesia; Rarotonga, Cook Islands; Nuku Alofa, Tonga; Auckland, New Zealand

February/March 2020

Three straightforward questions. Does art help us learn better? Does participating in the process of experiencing art in a more interactive way help us to get more out of it? Do discoveries with art help us outside the museum, even at work? All data points point to a resounding yes, to all three. Ignoring these realities leaves too much on the table. It’s time to keep pace with an ever-changing world and workplace and come to terms with how to balance top-down with participatory methods. Art tackles these issues head-on and shows us how to become proficient in new ways of thinking better suited to these changing winds. It helps raise awareness and engage cultural change, necessary goals for everyone in the org chart, not just for designated leaders. Time to learn how. 

​

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Global Corporate Learning & Talent Summit, Leadership, Development & Organizational Development Council, Hosted by Microsoft, Bellevue, WA

​

February 2020

Discussion exploring intersections between art and leadership. What can ancient Greek sculptures teach us about our organizational models at work, today? What does Monet say to us about perception, projection, and how not to get trapped in reading data through our own lenses? And, sit on the Met's floor for the first time. Or, do it again. You probably haven't for awhile. 

​

Leadership Development Council, Hosted by The Conference Board at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

​

January 2020

There are new realities in business today. Luckily, they can be unpacked though art. First question: Why? Easy. Temples to art house the victors: those that underpinned their competitors; those that held more brand agency and twitter followers; those that swam faster, and won coveted spots in our shared histories. In a word, the innovators. Businesses that don't innovate become stagnant before the inevitable slow crawl. Leaders that give innovators fields to plough win. Second question: Are we all artists when we create? Yes. Time for a boot-camp to get us thinking creatively, to dare to explore the avant-garde parameters of our systems. 

​

Global CEO Program: A Transformational Journey, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

November 2019

A quiz: Do leaders need to embrace diversity and inclusion? Do they need reminders that perception is one's reality? Can nations and institutions lead with architecture? Should leaders care, like really care, about the outsiders they're leading? Will our leadership card-houses survive in the wind of shifting agencies, from top down to grass-roots? Say it with me: we want our leaders to respect women, right? Can we lead knowing that class is actually still a thing? Does the mass-media lead us? Can we tackle all of this with art as our guide? Yes. To all. 

​

FRED Forum 2019; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

​

November 2019

Are we witnessing a transformation in art museums? Yes. Efforts globally are well underway to shift perceptions about what museums are and what they can become. No one wants impenetrable spaces for the elite. The new frontier is for museums to be inviting, participatory "third-spaces" for 21st century visitors. People like to take in museums at their own speeds and in their own way. Such changes have even shaped recent museum architecture, from the new Whitney to the impressive museums on Saadiyat Island. Strategic goals have changed. So, how should educators talk about art in gallery spaces today, at Stanford and beyond?

Let's unpack this further. Is it time to reexamine those thorny artists with household names? Do we miss things when we look at the same old chestnuts; and should we expect more of the same the older Monet gets? What role does spectatorship play in gallery-based pedagogies? Wait, what's spectatorship? One more. How are 21st century art museums, well, different?

Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

​

October 2019

Traveling lecture program for Road Scholar tracing the major developments in Modern and Contemporary Art after 1863.

Six-part lecture series Art Afloat (“Looking Ahead: Forming Modernism in Late 19th Century France,” “Masters Arrive: Picasso and Matisse," "Visualizing Essences: Abstraction Arrives," "Crossing the Pond: The New York School Triumphs," "Consumer Culture Sets In: The Beat Generation and Pop," "Major Developments After 1970") aboard the RMS Queen Mary 2. 

​

Gallery presentations at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Guided gallery conversations at Tate Britain/Modern, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Courtauld Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum.

​

New York, London, and on the iconic transatlantic crossing of the QM2

​

2020/2021 crossings canceled

2019: May; June; August

2018: June; October

2017: May; October

Lecture series workshop exploring the artists and architects ca. 1900 to the present whose work pushed the limits of the traditional categories of painting, sculpture, and architecture. How are paintings by Ellsworth Kelly and sculptures by Mark di Suvero grounded in architectural concerns? Did Mies van der Rohe make a distinction between pictorial and spatial issues? Is Frank Gehry a sculptor-architect? Trace the history of this line of inquiry, and ask key questions about what the future holds for medium specificity.

​

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

​

September 2019

Lecture series workshop highlighting American vanguard artists during the first half of the 20th century. Dialogues concerning the complexities of city-life, mass immigration, commercialism, shifting identity politics, and America’s role on the world’s stage dominated the period. This workshop explores key innovators and themes of one of the most prolific moments in our history, including Stieglitz’s advocacy for American modernism, Lawrence’s depictions of racial struggles during the Harlem Renaissance, and Hopper’s images of urban solitude.

​

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

​

June 2019

Series of programs highlighting the astounding history of art in Rome, from antiquity to the present.

​

Private gallery talks at Vatican Museums; Galleria Borghese; Sistine Chapel; MAXXI National Museum of the 21st Century Arts; MACRO Via Nizza; National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, Italy

​

April 2019

Lecture series workshop highlighting the history of women in art since ca. 1900. In 1971, art historian Linda Nochlin’s classic essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” reminded readers that women artists – and indeed women – throughout history have had to fight for a seat at the table. 21st century women around the globe continue to persevere. This workshop highlights key contributions in art by women since ca. 1900, from Georgia O’Keeffe and other classic painters to Marina Abramović and key trailblazing innovators from our own time.

​

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

​

March 2019

Our perception of things determines how we understand everything, including what we do at work. Best place for this conversation? in Chicago, in front of Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte (1884), where even our best cognitive processors create dissonance when faced with deceptively simple points of color. In a nearby gallery, a cantankerous disruptor solidified his place in art history by maturing the sketchy Impressionist stroke, which, by 1884, was so last decade. Paul Cézanne still wears a laurel wreath for this. To the victor. Standing on the shoulders of Monet and the other titans of the Parisian avant-garde, Cézanne forged into fresh fields. He created a product that wasn't there before. Such is the fate of important innovators and disruptors. 

​

RISE: United Airlines High Potential Program, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

​

January 2019

The ever-increasing role of art as a vehicle to help train medical practitioners has been steadily gaining in prominence, a partnership that continually yields more and more compelling research and outcomes. This talk underscores the key potential advantages art offers those in the medical community, including sharpened visual acuity, empathy, and sensitivity to both the social constructs and power relationships endemic to artistic and medicinal practices. 

​

Arts in Medicine Initiative, Pre-Health Post-Baccalaureate Program, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

​

November 2018

Lecture series workshop highlighting the profound web of Picasso and his contemporaries. Picasso’s contribution to the history of art was immeasurable. More than a century after Cubism, we are still unpacking his extraordinary career. In this course, we will both trace key moments in Picasso’s oeuvre, and also highlight the impact on his work on his contemporaries. From the Salon Cubists, to Mondrian, Pollock, and so many others, we’ll explore the many complex facets of Picasso’s inestimable nexus.

​

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

​

November 2018

There are new realities in business today. Luckily, they can be unpacked though art. First question: Why? Easy. Temples to art house the victors: those that underpinned their competitors; those that held more brand agency and twitter followers; those that swam faster, and won coveted spots in our shared histories. In a word, the innovators. Businesses that don't innovate become stagnant before the inevitable slow crawl. Leaders that give innovators fields to plough win. Second question: Are we all artists when we create? Yes. Time for a boot-camp to get us thinking creatively, to dare to explore the avant-garde parameters of our systems. 

​

PVH Corporation, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

November 2018

Four-part lecture series workshop highlighting the paradigmatic influence of Japanese art on Impressionism. In the 1850s, trade between France and Japan resumed for the first time in nearly 250 years. The resulting syncretic impact of Japanese art and design on Impressionist art was extraordinary. Investigate how Monet, Whistler, Van Gogh, and others incorporated Japanese themes and imagery into their respective work.

​

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

​

April 2018

Series of programs highlighting the astounding history of art in Paris.

​

Private gallery talks at The Louvre; Versailles Palace; Musée d'Orsay; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

​

March 2018

There are new realities in business today. Luckily, they can be unpacked though art. First question: Why? Easy. Temples to art house the victors: those that underpinned their competitors; those that held more brand agency and twitter followers; those that swam faster, and won coveted spots in our shared histories. In a word, the innovators. Businesses that don't innovate become stagnant before the inevitable slow crawl. Leaders that give innovators fields to plough win. Second question: Are we all artists when we create? Yes. Time for a boot-camp to get us thinking creatively, to dare to explore the avant-garde parameters of our systems. 

​

Global CEO Program: A Transformational Journey, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

March 2018

This talk explores one of the major themes within modernist art, that of the blurred boundaries between painting and architecture. Matisse, Mondrian, Rothko, Pollock, and many other modern masters will be considered to investigate what happens when paintings and architectural space merge.

​

Salke Contemporary Art Study Group, The Renaissance Academy of Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL

January 2018

The ever-increasing role of art as a vehicle to help train medical practitioners has been steadily gaining in prominence, a partnership that continually yields more and more compelling research and outcomes. This talk underscores the key potential advantages art offers those in the medical community, including sharpened visual acuity, empathy, and sensitivity to both the social constructs and power relationships endemic to artistic and medicinal practices. 

​

Arts in Medicine Initiative, Pre-Health Post-Baccalaureate Program, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

​

November 2017

Art Historian Linda Nochlin’s classic essay “Why Have Their Been No Great Women Artists?” (1971) raised the question regarding a patriarchal artistic canon. Nearly fifty years later, that same canon now includes an encyclopedic array of seminal female artists. What do Georgia O’Keeffe’s images of the American southwest reveal about her interest in transcendental and spiritual themes? How did Cindy Sherman’s photographs show us the limited number of roles for women in Hollywood and mass media? What do Lorna Simpson’s images of hair tell us about issues of identity? Indeed, there have been great women artists.

​

Cathedral Village, Philadelphia, PA

November 2017

There are new realities in business today. Luckily, they can be unpacked though art. First question: Why? Easy. Temples to art house the victors: those that underpinned their competitors; those that held more brand agency and twitter followers; those that swam faster, and won coveted spots in our shared histories. In a word, the innovators. Businesses that don't innovate become stagnant before the inevitable slow crawl. Leaders that give innovators fields to plough win. Second question: Are we all artists when we create? Yes. Time for a boot-camp to get us thinking creatively, to dare to explore the avant-garde parameters of our systems. 

​

Global CEO Program: A Transformational Journey, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

March 2017

From the beginning to the end of his career, and at all points between, Matisse imbued his pictorial imagery with architectural motifs, themes, and ultimately with space.

​

Cathedral Village, Philadelphia, PA

March 2017

Four-part lecture series workshop exploring the various links between pictorial imagery and architecture throughout the modernist period.

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

February 2017

As global consumers, we relate to objects and ideas that help us express our respective identities. In an era where, on the one hand, top-down product-placement seems outmoded, and, on the other, consumers are ever-more comfortable with making their own decisions, how we understand ourselves and each other is even more crucial to a healthy marketplace. Art about identities is ideally suited to this task.

​

Calvin Klein Executive Creative Team, New York, NY

December 2016

While some modernists raced to create the flattest canvases, others like Piet Mondrian and Yves Klein, among others, used their canvases to represent something metaphysical. Believing that they had visualized intangible essences or metaphysical sensations, this highly philosophical set of artists created works that, for them, represented a transcendence of objecthood. 

The Cosmopolitan Club, Philadelphia, PA

November 2016

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

PVH Corporation; ​The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

September 2016

Election years naturally galvanize political discussions and make discourse ubiquitous. An examination of geo-politics in art reminds us that this is indeed not a new phenomenon.

​

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

September 2016

The sea and sand have inspired artists since antiquity. 

​

Rehoboth Beach Historical Society and Museum, Rehoboth Beach, DE

August 2016

Understanding how the global supply chain operates requires a keen sensitivity to the anthropological, sociological, and geo-political concerns that govern the nexus of global commerce. Art reveals who we are across boarders and boundaries.

​

Calvin Klein Global Supply Chain, New York; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

July 2016

Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and other kingpins of contemporary blue-chip avant-garde art, raise issues of commodity in their respective work. The art of our time is thus, in this way, an apt mirror for our global fetishization on the marketplace and consumerism. In art, as Claude Monet's career aptly illustrates, surviving at the helm of the vanguard requires constant vigilance, an eye on the future, and a recognition that molds must be broken. Businesses that understand this reality similarly thrive.

Lecture and discussion seminar at Calvin Klein Asia Pacific, Hong Kong; and gallery tour “Monet: Renegade to Household Name" at Claude Monet: The Spirit of Place, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Hong Kong

July 2016

There are new realities in business today. Luckily, they can be unpacked though art. First question: Why? Easy. Temples to art house the victors: those that underpinned their competitors; those that held more brand agency and twitter followers; those that swam faster, and won coveted spots in our shared histories. In a word, the innovators. Businesses that don't innovate become stagnant before the inevitable slow crawl. Leaders that give innovators fields to plough win. Second question: Are we all artists when we create? Yes. Time for a boot-camp to get us thinking creatively, to dare to explore the avant-garde parameters of our systems. 

​

Global CEO Program: A Transformational Journey, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

May 2016

Prologue on Mark Rothko's sense of outsiderness, for the Delaware production of Red by John Logan. 

Resident Ensemble Players, University of Delaware, Newark, DE

April 2016

Mark Rothko's Seagram project underscores his desire, following Matisse, to merge pictorial imagery and architecture. He also had a second motive. Rothko hoped that his paintings would trigger his Seagram audience to experience the darkest "basic human emotions," and in the process theoretically become, in his estimation, more intimate, human, and finally rid of the modern man discourse (spiritual void) Nietzsche described.

Art History on the Steps, Department of Art History, University of Delaware, Newark, DE

April 2016

Four-part lecture series workshop interrogating Picasso's recurrent use of themes of aggression, death, and war. 

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

March and April 2016

Gallery sessions, lecture, and seminar workshop exploring key issues required for the 21st century physician: empathy, a keen sensitivity to identity markers, a sharp visual acuity, and an awareness that respites make better practitioners. 

Med Ed Master’s Program, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

March 2016

​

In the 1950s and 1960s, Pop Art became a global phenomenon, as highlighted in the exhibition International Pop (2016). Pop art marked a decisive shift away from the psychologically-grounded abstract canvases that dominated the avant garde after the Second World War. In contrast, Pop Art was more accessible, more colorful, and met the viewer on his/her own terms, with a type of immediately recognizable, popular, commercial iconography. Offering a mirror of our world, Pop Art reflects the rise of sameness and mass-production endemic to postwar consumer culture. 

​

Tredyffrin Public Library, Tredyffrin, PA

March 2016

Philadelphia is home to many canonical masterpieces from the history of art and architecture, from a wide range of important historic and stylistic periods.  

​

Mt. Airy Learning Tree, and The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

March 2016

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

March 2016

The large scale canvases of the Abstract Expressionists alone suggested a new kind of phenomenological and perceptual experience. When exhibited in relatively small galleries, this effect was underscored, and made the colossal paintings seem more architectural, more like walls. Rothko harnessed this reality, endeavoring to "make a place" within the confines of his canvases, a space within which his viewers might be able to feel something akin to a Jungian archetype. The blurred distinction between painting and architecture is one of the key milestones of the New York School.

​

Cathedral Village, Philadelphia, PA

February 2016

Week-long lecture series, gallery sessions, and seminar workshops grounded in the complex relationship of maintaining creativity despite the pressures of Wall Street's ultimate bottom line. 

​

Stedelijk Museum, and Tommy Hilfiger/Calvin Klein Head Office, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

February 2016

Art and money have always been interwoven, whether conspicuously, or in reaction against a perceived vulgarity of commodity. This is true now more than ever.

​

Salke Contemporary Art Study Group, The Renaissance Academy of Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL

January 2016

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

October 2015

Tracey Rose's depictions of race and gender in Africa, Mariko Mori's images that interrogate gender stereotyping in Japan, and Cai Guo-Qiang's lyrical gunpowder explosions, among many other groundbreaking works, continue to underscore that globalism in art is the new academy.

​

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

October 2015

Pair of lectures (“Contemporary Art from the Americas and Europe” and “African, Asian, and Australian Art of Today”) that highlight key contemporary artist from around the globe.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

October 2015

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

Fellows Program, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

October 2015

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

September 2015

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

PVH Corporation; ​The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

September 2015

With major cultural, political, and social forces synthesizing in Paris in the mid-19th century - including the invention of the daguerreotype, the transformation of the city's topography via Haussmannization, widespread urbanization due to to ever-increasing industrialization, and an emerging bourgeoisie, among other factors - the city became a hotbed for creative output. Celebrating a shift away from a tightly controlled Academic mode of making art, the Impressionists embraced the bohemian spirit of independence and sought to capture the fleeting moments of life. Their pictures capture the essences of what Charles Baudelaire called modernity.

Tredyffrin Public Library, Tredyffrin, PA

June 2015

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

Global CEO program, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

March 2015

Four-part lecture series workshop examining the factors that contributed to the canonization of what we now call modernist art. Key collectors, gallery owners, art dealers, critics, exhibitions, proselytizers, and eventually museums, all played important roles in drawing attention to a form of avant-garde art that contemporaneous conservative critics initially dismissed. As a result, such forward-thinking players laid the foundation for a canon we now embrace.

​

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

February and March 2015

By 1907, Picasso utilized three ingredients to make his pictures ever-more geometric: a stylized flatness he distilled from Iberian and African masks; the combined 2D-3D interplay and emphasis on shape he extrapolated from Paul Cézanne's flattest images; and an awareness of Albert Einstein's newly published Theory of Relativity. Picasso's Cubist grid emerges as a structure that allowed him to analyze people and objects from the visible world, and observe them from multiple perspectives simultaneously. This fourth-dimensional lens laid the foundation for decades of grid-centric modernist art.

Cathedral Village, Philadelphia, PA

February 2015

Lecture series (“The Grand Tour: Civilization’s Largest Structures,” “European Art Before 1900,” “Modern Masterpieces: The Apotheosis of the Canvas,” and “Seeing the Light: Spiritual and Religious Sites”) highlighting some of the great treasures from the history of art and architecture. 

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

February 2015

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

PVH Corporation; ​The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

January 2015

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

Global Strategic Leadership Program, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

December 2014

With the combination of the Ashcan School, the 291 Gallery in New York, and the paradigmatic impact of the Armory Show (1913), American art developed a vanguard that embraced modernist tendencies. 

​

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

November 2014

Four-part lecture series (“Building the Foundation: Early American Architecture,” “Reaching for Illinois: The American Skyscraper,” “From the Saltbox to the McMansion: American Residences,” and “American Architecture after World War II") investigating the many facets of American architecture, from the oldest extant structures to the current resurgence in skyscraper development.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

November 2014

Ever since Andy Warhol made Sleep (1963), a non-narrative film that evolved out of the participatory performance art Happenings of the 1950s, and one that crystallized his interest in exploring the boundaries between the public and private facets of our identities, video art has been a fixture within vanguard art.

Art-at-Lunch, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

October 2014

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

The Lubrizol Corporation; The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

October 2014

Four-part lecture series (“The Daguerreotype and the Popularization of Photography,” “Photography as Art: From Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand to Jeff Wall,” “Documenting and Studying Ourselves: Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Sociological Photography,” and “Photojournalism and Pulitzer Prize Photography") on the many twists and turns of the history of the medium.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

October 2014

Despite his love for kingpins of European modernist painting, Dr. Barnes collected and supported American artists. Key to his collection are his beloved American works.

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

September 2014

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde.

British Petroleum; The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

September 2014

Four-part lecture series (“Discovering Genius: The Blue and Rose Periods,” “Pater Familias: Synthesizing Cubism,” “Picasso Between the Wars,” and “Nearing Apotheosis: Picasso’s Late Works") highlighting the life and work of one of the most iconic artists of the history of art.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

March 2014

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

Global CEO Program, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

March 2014

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

Global CEO Program, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

December 2013

Key artists of The School of Paris in the time of Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Mondrian, and Chagall.

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

November 2013

Four-part lecture series (“Arcadian Revelry: Early Matisse,” “King of the Beasts: Matisse and Fauvism,” “Matisse’s Return to Order After WW1,” and “Journey to the Tree of Life: Matisse’s Late Works") exploring the life and work of Matisse.

​

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

November 2013

Key artists of The School of Paris in the time of Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Mondrian, and Chagall.

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

October 2013

Four-part lecture series (“3D to 2D: Mapping the Grid,” “Less in More: Abstraction’s Apotheosis,” “Finding Ourselves: Art and Identity,” “Art21: Commodity Culture") focusing on main themes in modern and contemporary art.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

October 2013

Four-part lecture series (“Manet and Flatness,” “From Cézanne to Mondrian,” “Abstraction,” and “Pluralism Since 1970") highlighting the major movements of vanguard art since ca. 1863.

Waverly Heights, Gladwyne, PA

October and November 2013

Four gallery programs highlighting central themes of the Constitution through major developments in art.

The James Madison Seminar, American History in Constitutional Context, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

July 2013

From Romantic-era depictions of nature to Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder blossom, a review of how artists over time have abstracted natural forms and sensations.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

January 2013

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

Global CEO Program, The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

March 2013

Four-part lecture series (“The Ashcan School and Urbanism,” “Stieglitz, Steichen, and the 291 Gallery,” “Precisionism and the Machine Age,” and “American Architecture ca. 1900-1935”) highlighting the paradigmatic impact of the Armory Show on American art.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

March 2013

Innovation is central to best business practices, as without ​creativity, institutions fall behind. This central reality is crucial to the historiography of the history of art, especially within the avant-garde. 

​

IBM; The Avery Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

​

December 2012

After modernist painting reached its flattest zenith, ca. 1950, a generation of Neo-Dada artists led by Rauschenberg and Johns led the for the Beat Generation of artists.

Dunwoody Village, Newtown Square, PA

November 2012

Every artwork is an abstraction of something tangible or intangible, something real or imagined. And yet we often use this term to signify something beyond our comprehension or indiscernible. What is abstraction?

Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia, PA

September 2012

Nature has played an extraordinary role in the history of art, from traditional landscape scenes to conceptual works about natural essences.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

July 2012

Lecture to accompany the exhibition Haunting Narratives: Detours from Philadelphia Realism, 1935 to the Present (2012, Matt Palczynski, Curator).

​

Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA

June 2012

Lecture to highlight a nature-themed tradition, in tandem with the Elaine Kurtz retrospective (2012, Woodmere Art Museum). 

Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA

March 2012

Lecture from the Auguste Rodin lecture series, celebrating the life and work of one of the greatest sculptures of art history, and the 2012 re-installation of the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

March 2012

Highlights from Woodmere Art Museum's collection and key collecting strategies for the future.

Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

February 2012

Marginalized in vanguard art for decades, the figure is experiencing a resurgence within the contemporary avant-garde.

Art-at-Lunch, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

February 2012

Four-part lecture series (“Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism,” “Ellsworth Kelly’s Abstractions,” “Andy Warhol and Pop Art,” and “Jeff Koons and Postmodernist Art,") underscoring the importance of four key modernist artists.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

November and December 2011

Investigating major works and moments of Rothko's life and career.

University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA

November 2011

Pair of lectures (“Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Paul Klee” and “Constantin Brâncuşi, Mark Rothko, Yves Klein, Dan Flavin, Bruce Nauman") underscoring a tradition in modernist art to make art about essences and other metaphysical phenomena.

Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA

October 2011

Pair of lectures (“Engaging, Working, Playing: Cultural, Educational, and Civic Buildings” and “For the Marketplace: Residences, Furniture, and Retail Products”) celebrating the first female recipient of the coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize, in conjunction with the exhibition Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion (2011-12) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

October 2011

Pair of lectures (“Philadelphia’s Landmarks” and “Beyond Penn’s Hat: Philadelphia’s Skyscrapers") reviewing key architecture in Philadelphia's rich history.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

October 2011

From the historical houses of Fairmount Park to the rich collection of architectural paintings, sculpture, and decorative accouterments, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is home to crucial works of architecture.

CIGNA, Philadelphia, PA

June 2011

Following the Great Flood of Paris in 1910, during which Paris was under water for two months, the city emerged as an even stronger beacon for artists. In conjunction with the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, this talk highlights one of the most pivotal decades in modernism.

​

Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA

April 2011

Four-part lecture series (“Prismatic Color: Chagall in Paris,” “Chagall and Early Russian Modernism,” “Purim in Munich: Chagall and the Nazi Degenerate Art Exhibition,” and “Forty Years of Peace: Chagall After World War Two”) exploring one of the key masters of modernism. Series in conjunction with the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

April 2011

Four-part lecture series (“Housing the Collection: Architecture and Architectural Works,” “Renaissance and Baroque,” “Defining and Re-Defining Modern,” and “The Art of Today”) underscoring some of the works that make the Philadelphia Museum of Art one of the premier encyclopedic museums and architectural collections worldwide.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

March 2011

Highlights from the career of the one and only Picasso.

Mohawk Valley Community College Cultural Series, Mohawk Valley Community College, Utica, NY

February 2011

Exploration of the work and impact of Marc Chagall and his circle, celebrating the Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibition Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle.

Tredyffrin Public Library, Strafford, PA

February 2011

Examining the seeds of American modernism in late 19th century Philadelphia.

​

University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

February 2011

A look at the impact of architecture in the age of the Pritzker recipients, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Philip Johnson's iconic Munson-Williams-Proctor Museum of Art building. 

​

Munson-Williams-Proctor Museum of Art, Utica, NY

November 2010

Four-part lecture series (“Appropriating History: Angelica Kauffmann, Laurie Simmons, and Kara Walker,” “Coloring Abstraction: Sonia Delaunay, Yayoi Kusama, and Polly Apfelbaum,” “Defining Identity: Berthe Morisot, Carrie Mae Weems, and Mariko Mori,” and “Confronting Normality: Betty Saar, Diane Arbus, and Jenny Holzer") highlighting key themes examined by female artists since the publication of Linda Nochlin's classic essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists" (1971).

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

November 2010

Four-part lecture series (“Looking Forward: Marcel Duchamp and the Impact of the Readymade,” “Flowing Performances: Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, and Yoko Ono,” “Language and Senses: Joseph Kosuth, Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, and Hans Haacke,” and “World Reflections: Michelangelo Pistoletto and Arte Povera") tracing the evolution of conceptual developments in art, beginning with the seismic shift in vanguard art following Marcel Duchamp's readymades.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

October 2010

Three-part lecture series (“What is Impressionism? Manet, Caillebotte, Monet, and Degas,” “Masters of Impressionism Part II: Renoir, Pissarro, Morisot, and Cassatt,” and “Post Impressionism: Seurat, van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne”) designed for teachers, linking themes in canonical art to school curricula. 

Visual Arts as Sources for Teaching, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

July 2010

Two-part lecture series (“Rodin to Bourgeois” and “Duchamp to Nauman”) tracing the role of figuration in modernist sculpture and its impact on contemporary body-themed art.

Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA

May 2010

Four-part lecture series (“The Line/Color Controversy: Nicolas Poussin and Peter Paul Rubens,” “Pathos vs. Ethos: Eugène Delacroix and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres,” “Conflicting Impressions: Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet,” and “Dissolving Boundaries, Creating New Ones: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns”) that underscores how key artistic rivalries inspired masterworks.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

April 2010

What made Auguste Rodin so revolutionary? This talk celebrates the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, through assessments of Rodin's profound life and work.

​

CIGNA, Philadelphia, PA

​

February 2010

On the occasion of the exhibition Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.an, this talk traces the development of the Cubist grid and its legacy. In an effort to advance Paul Cézanne's explorations into space and flatness, Picasso (and Georges Braque) flattened shapes further, ultimately creating a Cubist grid of sharpened planes that seem to fluctuate in and out of 2D/3D/4D space.  

​

Tredyffrin Public Library, Strafford, PA

February 2010

Three-part lecture series (“Galvanizing an Era: The Gilded Age and Philadelphia Artists,” “Immediate Reports: Philadelphia and the Illustrative Tradition,” and “Philadelphia's Phoenix: Reawakening an Artistic Epicenter”) explaining the evolution of the art of Philadelphia.

Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA

February 2010

Four-part lecture series (“Discovering Genius: The Blue and Rose Periods,” “Pater Familias: Synthesizing Cubism,” “Picasso Between the Wars,” and “Nearing Apotheosis: Picasso’s Late Works") highlighting the life and work of one of the most iconic artists of the history of art.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

March 2014

Delving into the life and work of one of the greatest sculptors of all time.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

October 2009

Four-part lecture series (“Also Triumphant: Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and Helen Frankenthaler,” “Being Counted: Georgia O'Keeffe, Alice Neel, Eva Hesse, and Judy Chicago,” “Sculpting Beauty: Louise Bourgeois and Louise Nevelson,” and “Recovering Identity: Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Lorna Simpson, and Lisa Yuskavage”) identifying key female artists in the history of modernist and contemporary art.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

November 2009

Four-part lecture series (“On the Graceful Flight of Constantin Brâncuşi,” “Approaching Abstraction, Reclining in Nature: Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth,” “Scratching the Surface: David Smith, Seymour Lipton, and Mark de Suvero,” and “Considering Objecthood: Donald Judd, Tony Smith, and Dan Flavin”) aimed at translating some of the most profound (yet, often, seemingly impenetrable) non-objective, three-dimensional work. 

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

October 2009

Three-part lecture series (“Automatic & Pure: Surreal & Abstract,” “Ups and Downs: The Jazz Age and Depression-Era Art,” and “Painting [in] the Metropolis”) linking key themes in canonical modernist art to K-12 curricula, designed to inspire teachers to use art in the classroom to elucidate topics within a variety of disciplines.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

July 2009

In 1958-59, Mark Rothko worked on a series of paintings for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York. Rothko ultimately never installed those paintings there, setting in motion subsequent mural series and a host of post-signature work. This talk explores the work Rothko made after the Seagram commission.

​

Art-At-Lunch, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

April 2009

Lecture accompanying screening of Julian Schnabel's film Basquiat (1996), examining the life and work of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

​

One Film, in conjunction with One Book, One Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

March 2009

Lecture accompanying film screening of Edo Bertoglio's film Downtown 81 (1980-81) about the post-punk era Manhattan in the early 1980s.

​

One Film, in conjunction with One Book, One Philadelphia, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

March 2009

What makes a starchitect? Four-part lecture series (“Deconstructing Frank Gehry,” “Gambling with Kitsch: Robert Venturi and the Rhetoric of an Era,” “Building the Pyramid: Geometry in the Work of I.M. Pei,” and “The New Highboy: Philip Johnson and Postmodernism”) investigating the work of four of the most beloved recipients of the Pritzker Prize.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

March 2009

Four-part lecture series (“Editor’s Cut: Cézanne’s Fragmented Space and the Sound Bite of Video Art,” “Returning the Memento mori to the Still Life: Cézanne and Damien Hirst,” “Let the Landscape Decide: Cézanne and Earth Art,” and “Branding a Series: Cézanne and Andy Warhol") highlighting the paradigmatic impact of the work of Paul Cézanne on the occassion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition Cézanne and Beyond.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

February 2009

Lecture highlighting the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition Cézanne and Beyond.

Tredyffrin Public Library, Strafford, PA

February 2009