Programs

DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES

Two to three times a year, the museum presents public lectures by national and international museum directors, art historians, academicians and other experts who explore the facets of modern art and architecture. The Distinguished Lecture Series is a mainstay of the Bechtler’s educational programming and brings new ideas and fresh perspectives to the Charlotte region.

Next Guest Lecture:

	Kay L. H. Wells Monday, October 28 Assistant Professor of American Art at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Focuses on the role of design and decorative art in modernism, politics, and transcultural exchange. Author of Weaving Modernism: Postwar Tapestry between Paris and New York (forthcoming from Yale University Press). Buy Tickets Here

PREVIOUS GUEST LECTURES

--Nathaniel Kahn, award-winning filmmaker of My Architect and the son of renowned architect Louis Kahn. 

--Alejandra Laviada (b. 1980) is an award-winning photographer residing and working in Mexico City.

--Reinhard Bek, former conservator at Museum Tinguely

--Pepe Karmel, NYU Professor for Alternative Histories: Abstract Art in the Bechtler Collection

--Eames Demetrios, director of the Eames Office, for the lecture Design vs. Style and other Eames Philosophies

--Debra Burchett-Lere, president and CEO of the Sam Francis Foundation, for the lecture Insights Into Sam Francis's Fluid Nature

--Todd Cronan, Professor of Modern Art at Emory University, for the lecture Matisse's Hands

--Milton Esterow, former editor and publisher of ARTnews magazine, for the lecture How to Look at Art Without Feeling Inferior

--Mario Botta, internationally acclaimed Swiss architect and designer of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art building, for a lecture on his 50-year career.

--Dr. Shahram Khoshbin, Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and a neurologist at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, for the lecture A Neurologist's Portrait of Van Gogh

--Roland Wetzel, Director of the Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland, for the lecture Museum Tinguely: A Place in Constant Movement

--Neal Benezra, Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, for the lecture San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Looking Forward

--Michael Shapiro, Director of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, for a lecture on the High exhibition Picasso to Warhol: Fourteen Modern Masters

--Véronique Wiesinger, Director of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation, for the lecture Alberto Giacometti and the Curse of Art Forgery

--Laurent Le Bon, Director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, for a lecture about the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the satellite museum of the renowned Centre Pompidou in Paris.