WASHINGTON, D.C.- The National Gallery of Art announces the release of a new self-guided audio program offered in English and Spanish for the exhibition Goya: Images of Women, which is on view in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art through 2 June 2002. With this Acoustiguide tour, visitors can learn about the exhibition at their own pace, calling up works in any order they choose and tailoring the amount of information to their own interests. The Spanish and English versions contain the same information.

Goya: Images of Women is the first major exhibition in the United States dedicated to an examination of Francisco Goya’s representation of women. Comprising 114 paintings, drawings, prints, tapestry cartoons, and tapestries--some of which have never traveled to the States--the exhibition spans the artist’s career from his arrival at the court of Madrid to his last years in Bordeaux.

’The audio tour provides information and insight directly from the curator and scholars,’ said National Gallery of Art director Earl A. Powell III, who narrated the English-language version. ’Through this self-contained and easy-to-use educational tool we are able to provide many levels of information on Goya, the times in which he lived, his influences on future generations of artists, and his exquisite portraits of many of the most powerful women of Madrid in the 18th and 19th centuries.’

Included among the 32 works highlighted on this audio program are the celebrated Naked Maja (Maja desnuda) (1797-1800) and Clothed Maja (Maja vestida) (1800-1805). Janis A. Tomlinson, guest curator of the exhibition and director of Arts in the Academy at the National Academy of Sciences, provides the curatorial background for the exhibition. Nigel Glendinning, professor emeritus at Queen Mary and Westfield College at the University of London, offers a literary perspective. Aileen Ribeiro, professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and an expert on costume, provides historical explanations on elements of Spanish dress that are featured in Goya’s portraits of María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga, later Countess of Chinchón (1783) and actress Antonia Zárate (1805-1806) among others.

Fred Licht, curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and a specialist in 20th century art, discusses how future generations of artists were influenced by Goya’s genius.

The audio tour also includes musical selections by the Austrian composer Franz Josef Haydn--a particular favorite of the duchess of Osuna who is the subject of the splendid portrait of the Dukes of Osuna and their children, and compositions by Luigi Boccherini, who is thought to be one of the figures represented in The Family of the Infante Don Luis (1784)--a work that is on view for the first time in the United States, from the Fondazione Magnani-Rocca, Parma, Italy.

Several stops on the tour discuss the printmaking processes of lithography and aquatint and explain the subject matter and techniques Goya used in the creation of two series of etchings--The Caprichos and The Disasters of War--while others feature dramatic readings of excerpts from correspondence written by Goya.

The audio program is available for rental at the entrance to the exhibition. The cost is $5 for adults and $4 for senior citizens, students, and individuals in groups of 10 or more.