Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Thursday, June 7, 2018 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery, HART, Lectures, News, Student/Alumni, Vanderbilt University, VRC.

The Nashville Chapter of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association invites alumni, families, parents and friends to Cohen Memorial Hall on Thursday evening, June 14, for a Commodore Classroom with Joseph Mella, director and curator of the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery. The event begins with a reception in the atrium and viewing of the featured gallery exhibit, Everett Raymond Kinstler: America’s Portrait Painter, followed by Mella’s lecture at 7 pm.

Mella will discuss the varied and colorful history of Everett Raymond Kinstler, now 91 years old and America’s foremost portrait painter. From his early years inking cartoons at the age of sixteen in 1942, to his work as an illustrator for pulp novels and eventual career as a portraitist responsible for painting every U.S. president from Gerald Ford to George W. Bush, Kinstler is truly an American treasure and a master storyteller in words as well as images. Mella will focus on the Fine Arts Gallery’s current exhibition that highlights the many creative leaders in the arts painted by Kinstler over the course of his lengthy career: Katharine Hepburn, James Cagney, Christopher Plummer, Tony Bennett, Alexander Calder, Norman Rockwell, Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Tom Wolfe, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and many others.

The cost is $20 per person, including appetizers, beer, wine and non-alcoholic beverages; for Vanderbilt graduates of the last decade, the cost is $15. Kindly RSVP to Emily Korab (emily.korab@vanderbilt.edu) by Wednesday, June 13.

The Fine Arts Gallery is housed on the second floor of Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South, on the western edge of the Peabody College campus. Visitors to the gallery event may park, free of charge, anywhere in Lot 95, accessible from 21st Avenue South.

*Everett Raymond Kinstler (b. 1926). Portrait of Tom Wolfe, 1987, oil on canvas, 50 x 27 inches. Collection of the artist.