Talk to Me, Baby
Frank Gohlke, Grain elevator and lightning flash, Lamesa, Texas, 1975, gelatin silver print, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas ©1975 Frank Gohlke. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
DCist's guide to lectures and discussions in the D.C. area
D.C.'s lectures are back in full swing this week with a bit of everything: Abe, landscape photography, capitalism, Iran, and of course, Obama.
Monday:
>> Tonight at 8 p.m., Sixth and I holds a panel of Jewish entrepeneurs and politicians titled Dollars & Sense: How Business Can Change the World. They'll "tell their stories of their rise to the top as well as their outlook on social and environmental justice." $6.
Tuesday:
>> For $15 at the Spy Museum, you can catch the CIA-affiliated Airborne Infantry Officer Rufus Phillips as he tells his Saigon Stories. The author of Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned will discuss his "experiences in Vietnam, how the SMM operated, the renowned Lansdale, the extraordinary North Vietnamese spy Pham Xuan An, and the real lessons of Vietnam and their applicability today." 6:30 p.m.
>> Or, at 6:45 p.m., head to the S. Dillon Ripley Center for an evening with astrophysicist Mario Livio titled Understanding the Mysteries of Our Physical World. $25.
>> The 14th Street Busboys hosts Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of The Bubble Economy author Dean Baker at 6:30 p.m.
>> At 7 p.m., Politics and Prose has a book signing with Michael Kinsley and his book, Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders.
Wednesday:
>> Abe himself won't be at the Freer, but Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer will be there for a lecture titled President-Elect Abraham Lincoln: Determination and Leadership at 6:45 p.m. He'll be demonstrating how the tall, bearded prez changed "from an isolated prairie politician yet to demonstrate his greatness to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment." $25.
>> Best-selling author Azar Nafisi will be Politics and Prose at 7 p.m. with her new book Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories, which presents "a portrait of a family that spans many periods of change, leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79; a complicated mother; a dreamy unfaithful father; and a homeland racked with political upheaval."
Thursday:
>> Stop by the Corcoran tonight at 7 p.m. for a book signing and lecture with Cynthia Saltzman and her book Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures, which "unveils the complex process by which a nation acquires its culture and its art," focusing on the collectors "who set in motion a transatlantic migration of art at the end of the 19th century." $18.
>> From 6:45 to 8:45 p.m. tonight, the S. Dillon Ripley Center hosts a lecture with professor Marcus Jones on America’s Strategic Bombing Campaign which focuses on the bombing of Germany and Japan between 1942 and 1945. $25.
>> Or, if you'd like a lecture about something a little less violent, head to the SAAM at 7 p.m. for an illustrated lecture with American landscape photographer Frank Gohlke, who will "share his musings on the American landscape and show how his photographs capture the effects of human interaction with nature." Free.
Friday:
>> You've got two lunchtime options. At noon, the African Art Museum will have A Scattering of Pearls: Architecture of the Gold Road and the Mali-Spain Diaspora, and at 12:30 p.m., the Hirshhorn will have their weekly gallery talk with Curatorial Research Associate Ryan Hill on Black Box: Ori Gersht.
Saturday:
>> The S. Dillon Ripley Center has two $120 all day seminars. From 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. is A Turkish Odyssey, and from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. is The Past on the Page: Writing from History with writer and historian Tony Perrottet.
>> NYT's Washington correspondent, David Sanger, will be at the Newseum at 2:30 p.m. today, revealing "stunning inside information gleaned from his reporting on the administration of George W. Bush and its execution of foreign policy," and signing his The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. Later, at 6 p.m., he'll be at Politics and Prose for another signing.