Dudley Memorial Lecture: Ann Powers
Schedule
Wed Apr 29 2026 at 06:30 pm to 08:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
Hammer Auditorium, Flagg Building, Corcoran School for the Arts and Design, George Washington University, Please use New York Avenue Door | Washington, DC
About this Event
You are warmly invited to the 2026 Dudley Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, April 29 at 6:30 p.m. in Hammer Auditorium. This year’s speaker, , will present “Signals Through the Din: Music’s Role in a Troubled World.”
Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent. Throughout a long career in music writing she has worked at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice and many other publications.
A former curator at Seattle's Museum of Popular Music, she is the author of (2024); (2017), which was selected as one of the best books of 2017 by the Wall Street Journal, No Depression, NPR, and Buzzfeed; the New York Times best-selling , co-authored with the artist (2005), and (1999), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. With Evelyn McDonnell, she edited the classic anthology (1995). Her essays have been widely anthologized. In 2017 she co-founded NPR’s award-winning , an ongoing project to recenter the popular music canon to be more inclusive of marginalized, underestimated and forgotten voices. She lives in Nashville.
About the Dudley Memorial Lecture
The Dudley Memorial Lecture was established in 1984 at the Corcoran Museum in memory of Argentina Dudley by her husband, Robert Whittier Dudley, and their children to commemorate and perpetuate her life’s work and interests. A talented artist, Argentina devoted her time and energy to the Corcoran for over a quarter of a century. The family’s endowment fund secures the annual lecture in perpetuity. The lecture is not discipline specific. The guidelines are to invite a “a distinguished art historian, critic, humanitarian, or other significant personage in the arts.”
Notable Dudley Lectures
2024: John Troutman, Curator of Music and Musical Instruments at the National Museum of American History
2023: Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
2019: Nao Bustamante, Multimedia and Performance Artist
2018: Wendy MacNaughton, Illustrator and Graphic Journalist
2017: Tom Joyce, MacArthur Fellow and contemporary American artist
2009: Art Spiegelman, Author and illustrator
Where is it happening?
Hammer Auditorium, Flagg Building, Corcoran School for the Arts and Design, George Washington University, Please use New York Avenue Door, 500 17th Street Northwest, Washington, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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