This series of lectures is held on Fridays at 1:30 p.m. with a repeat on Saturdays at 4 p.m. in the Brown Auditorium Theater. A reception to meet the speaker and a "Your Turn to Speak" tour follow each lecture.

March 7-8: "The Techniques of the Impressionists"
The Impressionist painters captured sparkling images of the world around them that seemed spontaneous, direct and effortless. But their apparent artless simplicity was anything but spontaneous: Behind it lay superb technical skill, new ways of handling paint and a brilliant understanding of materials. David Bomford, director of conservation, explores some of the ways in which the Impressionists worked, in the open-air and in the studio and transformed the art of 19th-century painting.

March 14-15: "American Artists in the Gilded Age"
The Gilded Age in America, a period of enormous economic growth during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was fueled largely by the rise of factories and widespread distribution of goods by railroad. The term Gilded Age comes from the title of a book by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, satirizing the thin "gilding" that disguised serious social problems including the almost-nonexistent career opportunities for women. Enter Mary Lawrence, a 25-year-old New York sculptor commissioned to sculpt Christopher Columbus for the Court of Honor at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, making her the only woman with art displayed outside the Woman's Building. Presented by author Mary Tonetti Dorra.

March 21-22: "Made for Magazines"
Great photographs have been made for magazines by legendary photographers from the 1920s to the present. The museum's rich holdings of images — including photographs for feature stories, portraits of celebrities and sports coverage — convey history, popular culture and glamor. Anne Wilkes Tucker explores how the Internet has changed the pictures made now, and how they are different from those made for printed magazines.