July 2011 - Meryle Secrest, author. In this podcast recorded on June 19, 2011, at the National Gallery of Art, author Meryle Secrest reveals a portrait of one of the twentieth century's master painters and sculptors, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). Secrest is an accomplished biographer of art-world personalities such as Bernard Berenson, Joseph Duveen, Salvador Dali, Kenneth Clark, and Frank Lloyd Wright. In her new book, Modigliani: A Life, Secrest shows to what lengths Modigliani went to hide his tuberculosis and cement his status as a major artist.