Challenging Gotham: J. Carter Brown’s Transformation of the National Gallery of Art

J. Carter Brown directed the National Gallery from 1969 to 1992. During those years he changed the Gallery’s culture and competed with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for attention and glory. This lecture recounts the strategies he employed to do this, including his planning of the Gallery’s new East Building and his deployment of sensational blockbuster exhibitions, something of a novelty in the 1970s. It will also explore the tensions between Brown and his rival, Thomas Hoving.