Episodes
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Van Gogh Light Shows: A Roundtable
If you live in or have visited a major city over the past year, chances are you've come across some version of the various new "immersive" "Van Gogh" "experiences." Staged by for-profit companies and marketed heavily on Facebook, these "environments" promise to bring audiences closer to the…
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Teaser - SEEN: American Psycho
A clip from the newest episode of our SEEN series, a benefit of becoming a patron of the podcast: www.patreon.com/arthistoryhappyhour
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The Revolutionary Language of the Black Square
Back in February 2015, we discussed the history of 19th century French political satire in response to the tragedy of the mass shooting at the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo. In the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol in January 2020, our minds turned once again to the...
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Two Art Historians Discuss NFTs, Part 2: Cryptoart vs. Conceptualism
In this follow-up to our discussion of NFTs and the NFT market, we consider how so-called "cryptoart"--or digital art that is bought and sold with NFTs--relates to the history of Conceptual art, which is often cited by those in the crypto community as its precedent. While most cryptoart is not...
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Teaser - SEEN: The Great
Please enjoy this clip from our forthcoming episode of SEEN focusing on the Hulu series The Great. Become a Patreon member to get full access to our SEEN series: www.patreon.com/arthistoryhappyhour
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(Bonus!) SEEN: Pablo Picasso in Jurassic Park
This is the inaugural episode of our series SEEN, in which we discuss art that appears in movies, TV shows, and the like. For access to future SEEN episodes, become a Patreon subscriber today!
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Two Art Historians Talk about NFTs: Part 1
In this two-part series, we explore the recent explosion of interest around NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and digital art.
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Reboot!
We're back!
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Fascist Aesthetics
In recent months, the term "fascism" has appeared frequently in the media. Many pundits have argued that the political tactics and rhetoric of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump echo those of fascist leaders like Benito Mussolini and Hitler. On the other hand, a smaller number of...
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Fakes and Copies: The Cases of Knoedler and Dafen
In 2011, shock waves erupted in the art world when the long-established New York gallery Knoedler & Company announced it was closing. Knoedler had been in major dealer in modern art, handling works by mid-century American masters like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. The...
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Memorials to Shattered Myths: An Interview with Harriet F. Senie
In this special Memorial Day Weekend episode, we interview Harriet F. Senie, Professor of Art History and Director of the M.A. program in Art History and Art Museum Studies Program at City College of New York, and co-founder of the organization Public Art Dialogue. Our topic is her recent book...
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Japanese Erotica
In today's Valentine's Day-inspired episode, we delve into the history of Japanese erotica, with the help of our friend, Maggie Mustard. Maggie is a PhD Candidate in Art History at Columbia University specializing in Japanese art, and is also the inaugural Teaching Fellow at the New Museum in New...
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Conservation and Restoration
Chances are you probably remember "Beast Jesus"--the fresco painting in a Spanish church that was lovingly "restored" by a local parishioner in 2012, and soon became the laughing-stock of the internet. In today's episode, we discuss this and three other acts of conservation and restoration of…
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KITTEHS! (i.e. Cats and Art)
It's our 20th episode, so we decided to talk about two things that are near and dear to us: cats and art. Listen as we discuss four works of art that feature cats as well recent exhibitions of cat imagery, and ultimately try to answer the question: what can cats tell us about art?
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Dismaland: Art as Politics
This past August-September, a seaside town in England hosted a very different kind of holiday attraction: a dystopian theme park by the anonymous street-artist-turned-legit-artist Banksy. Called "Dismaland," the park, erected on the site of a derelict lido, was actually a curated exhibition of...
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Grand Transit: The MTA and Grand Central Terminal
Continuing with our recent theme of New York City architectural and cultural gems, today's episode delves into one of the most vital elements of the city's infrastructure: its transportation system. Listen as we discuss the Metropolitan Transit Authority's Transit Museum (located in a...
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Turner's Seascapes
Joseph Mallord William Turner has been the subject of a number of projects recently, from the 2014 biopic Mr. Turner to the exhibition J. M. W. Turner: Painting Set Free (currently on view at the De Young Museum in San Francisco). For today's episode, we discuss Turner's depictions of the sea, a...
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NYC's Buried Treasures
It's that time of year (well, one of those times of year) when tourists flood our city of New York. If you're planning a visit, check out today's episode, in which we discuss some of our favorite less-traveled haunts!
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Art Theft and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
On March 18, 1990, two thieves entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and stole 13 objects from the museum's collection. This incident, which has remained largely unsolved, has drawn attention to the problem of art theft in the contemporary world. In today's episode, we discuss the...
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The Seasons
Spring has finally sprung in New York City, so we decided to spend an episode discussing how artists have represented the seasons , using four very different examples: the medieval cathedral at Amiens, 16th-century Netherlandish artist Pieter Bruegel's The Harvesters, François Boucher's series...
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Four Updates
When we started Art History Today and its podcast, State of the Arts, we wanted to show how art and its history make and inform the news. Because many of our topics are stories that have continued to develop, we're using today's episode to review updates to four of our previous episodes. FYI…
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Art and Crisis in the Middle East
The rise of organizations like ISIS (or ISIL) has brought attention to the looting and destruction of ancient artifacts in the Middle East. In today's episode, Colette LeRoux and Gina Konstantopoulos join us to discuss the history of looting and iconoclasm in the Middle East, and how contemporary...
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Charlie Hebdo and the Tradition of French Political Satire
In today's episode we discuss the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, whose offices in Paris were attacked on January 7th, 2015. Charlie Hebdo is no stranger to controversy, having produced cartoons that have invited criticism and even violent action for decades. In its images, we can see the...
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Art Market Mayhem (with special guest Natasha Degen)
On November 12, 2014, the auction house Christie's hosted its annual fall auction of major works of postwar and contemporary art in New York. With sales totaling $852.9 million, the auction now stands as the highest-grossing auction in history, and has led some to speculate that the…
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Thomas Kinkade's Industry of Light
In today's episode, we discuss one of the most popular and controversial artists of the last century, Thomas Kinkade (1958–2012). Kinkade's works often depict a pristine, idyllic, timeless past that continues to resonate with viewers. Many in the art world, however, have consistently criticized...
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Construction Controversies
In this episode, we look at the ongoing debate over the proposed expansion plans of two beloved NYC museums: MoMA and the Frick. - See more at: http://www.arthistory.today/#sthash.200u0nvd.dpuf
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Halloween Special: Romanticism and the Dark Side of Things
Happy Halloween! In today's episode we discuss Romanticism, a period that produced some of our favorite creepy images in the history of art. Romantic artists like Caspar David Friedrich, Francisco Goya, William Blake, and Théodore Géricault explored themes of death, despair, the sublime, and...
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Jeff Koons
The biggest show of the year in New York (and maybe America, or the world) closed this weekend: the retrospective of Jeff Koons at the Whitney Museum of American Art. While Koons is a controversial figure who has achieved more commercial than critical success, the consensus about this show seems…
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Claude Monet and the "Birth" of Impressionism
In August, The Art Newspaper reported that Donald Olson, an astrophysicist at Texas State University, had pinpointed the exact moment that Monet painted his work Impression: Sunrise to 13 November 1872. The report described this moment as the "birth of Impressionism." In today's episode, we…
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Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist and political activist who has been named the most influential artist alive. A retrospective of his work has been touring the U.S., and his name is constantly in the news (whether for his art, his run-ins with Chinese authorities, or his internet memes). While his...
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The Parthenon Marbles
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Parthenon (a temple atop the Acropolis in Athens that was constructed in the 5th century BCE) had fallen into a state of ruin. From 1800 until 1812, Lord Elgin, who had been England's Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed approximately half of the...
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Kara Walker's "A Subtlety"
In today's episode, we discuss New York's summer blockbuster exhibition, Kara Walker's A Subtlety. Walker is a prominent but controversial artist who makes art that comments on social problems related to race and gender; this work was the result of an invitation to make a work inside the defunct...
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The Detroit Institute of Arts
In today's episode, we discuss the current situation with the Detroit Institute of Arts. Since the city of Detroit declared bankruptcy in July 2013, there have been numerous discussions of selling off the DIA's collections in order to pay down the city's debt.
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Teaser Episode!
As we prepare our first episodes, please enjoy this teaser!