Color! Lecture Series | Looking Closely at Robert Weingarten’s Photography of Painters’ Palettes

With Robert Weingarten and Shannon Perich

Robert Weingarten’s series "Palettes," featured as The Rockwell’s spotlight exhibition from September 26 to January 5, 2026, offered an opportunity to explore scale, perception, color, and the history of photography. Shannon Perich, curator, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, has worked closely with Weingarten for almost two decades, bringing together the largest museum collection of his work. The lecture, with Shannon and special guest Robert Weingarten, situates Weingarten’s "Palettes" 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.

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).

About Robert Weingarten | American photographer Robert Weingarten was born in 1941 and raised in New York City. Now based out of Los Angeles, Weingarten’s photographs have been included in over 100 exhibitions worldwide. His work is included in the permanent collections of more than thirty-five museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Whitney Museum of American Art, George Eastman Museum, and National Gallery of Art.

Thank you! The 2025 Color! Lecture Series is made possible by CCU Wealth Strategies.

This virtual lecture was recorded on December 11, 2025.