While the series has featured mainly art historians, artists, composers, journalists, musicologists, poets, and scientists have also been invited to speak on art-related topics.
The series was created in order "to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts," and speakers must be of "exceptional ability, achievement, and reputation.
"[1] The production of a book based on the talks has been funded by the Bollingen Foundation, run by Paul and his wife, Mary Conover.
Its first speaker was the French philosopher Jacques Maritain of Princeton University, who gave a talk titled "Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry."
In that year, the French art historian Yve-Alain Bois was named as the annual speaker, but the event was postponed for a later date.