Color! Lecture Series | Looking Closely at Robert Weingarten’s Photography of Painter’s Palettes with Shannon Perich

Location: The Rockwell Museum

Open to the public | Members: Free, Not-Yet-Members: $10, Students: $5 | Advance registration encouraged 

6 – 7 p.m. | Lecture
7 – 8 p.m. | Members-Only Reception   

Robert Weingarten’s series Palettes offers an opportunity to explore scale, perception, color, and the history of photography, many of which will be featured in Rockwell’s fall spotlight exhibition. Shannon Perich, curator, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, has worked with Weingarten for almost two decades creating the largest museum collection of his work. Her lecture will situate Weingarten’s Palette series within the artist’s larger body of work and the history of photography. As an early adopter of digital photography and printing, Weingarten imagined new ways of seeing and image-making. “Palette” refers to both the mixing surface and range of colors an artist uses. Playing with the multiple definitions as we approach his large-scale close-ups of painter’s palettes invites us to think about the acts of painting, photographic image-making, and our own understanding of how we see. 

Members-Only Post-Lecture Reception  

Rockwell Members are invited to join us for a post-lecture reception on the Museum’s second floor. Meet and speak with Shannon Perich and mingle with fellow members.   

About Shannon Thomas Perich

Shannon Thomas Perich is the curator in the Photographic History Collection, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History where she has served for almost three decades. The author of books, articles, essays, and blogs, her exhibitions have been seen at the museum and across the county in co-curated and traveling exhibitions. Perich has periodically served as an adjunct professor at the Maryland Institute College of Arts in Baltimore. She is currently serving as chair of the July 2026 conference for the International Nineteenth Century Studies Association (INCSA).