Gallery Keynote | Kaywin Feldman on Building a National Collection in a Changing Nation

Gallery Keynote is a series that invites the world’s visionaries, thinkers and industry and opinion leaders to consider issues fundamentally relating to the future of museums and their role in culture and society.

Kaywin Feldman (Director, The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.) leads an institution of intriguing paradox: The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. was founded in 1941 by millionaire Andrew Mellon to educate a monolithic populace and to bestow contemporary ideas of good taste. Mellon’s offering was in fact a grand populist gesture, a true gift that continues to benefit his nation to this day. Yet as societies shift and change, what is the unique but ever-evolving role of a national art museum as it navigates the challenges and opportunities of a dynamic and expanding global audience? What does it mean to be and to become a nation’s art museum during a time of immense global volatility and complexity? Kaywin Feldman shares her insights in a lecture, which is followed by a conversation with Eugene Tan (Director, National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum).