Exhibition on Screen: Free art films at Gaston County Public Library

John Singer Sargent: Fashion & Swagger
Monday, June 16, 2025
6 to 8 p.m.
Free

John Singer Sargent is known as the greatest portrait artist of his era. What made his ‘swagger’ portraits remarkable was his power over his sitters, what they wore and how they were presented to the audience. Through interviews with curators, contemporary fashionistas and style influencers, Exhibition on Screen’s film will examine how Sargent’s unique practice has influenced modern art, culture and fashion.

Sunflowers: The Mystery of Van Gogh’s Greatest Masterworks
Monday, June 30, 2025
6 to 8 p.m.
Free

Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers are among his most famous works, and are some of the most iconic paintings in the world. In an extraordinary exhibition, the Van Gogh Museum took a new and revealing look at the five publicly-owned versions of sunflowers in a vase. And once again, the Van Gogh museum opened its doors exclusively to Exhibition on Screen.

They are immediately recognizable, but our film goes beyond the surface to explore the many questions and mysteries that surround these works. Why, for example, did Van Gogh choose the exotic sunflower with its long stem and golden crown? Indeed, when did the flower itself arrive in Europe and how had previous artists reacted to it? What was Van Gogh trying to say with his works and how does that differ from version to version? And what secrets did scientists discover when they analyzed the work in detail? All is revealed in this fascinating film, which travelled beyond Amsterdam to Tokyo, Philadelphia, London and Munich to film, in incredible high-definition detail, all five of the works.

Mary Cassatt: Painting the Modern Woman
Monday, July 14, 2025
6 to 8 p.m.
Free

Mary Cassatt made a career painting the lives of the women around her. Her radical images showed them as intellectual, feminine and real, which was a major shift in the way women appeared in art. Presenting her astonishing prints, pastels and paintings, this film introduces us to the oftenoverlooked Impressionist whose own career was as full of contradiction as the women she painted. She printed, sketched, and painted dozens of images of mothers and children yet she never married or had children herself. She was a classically trained artist but chose to join a group of Parisian radicals – the Impressionists – a movement that transformed the language of art. The world’s most eminent Cassatt curators and scholars help tell this riveting tale of great social and cultural change; a time when women were f ighting for their rights and the language of art was completely re-written. Mary Cassatt and her modern women were at the heart of it all