Art + Ideas

Reflections: Idurre Alonso on the Natural History of Brazil

Hear a curator travel to Brazil through the page of a book.

Listen as a curator explores the detailed story carved into an ancient gem.

Insights into the trade, migrations, and consolidations of power that transformed the premodern world.

A curator meditates on crafts, manuscripts, and the passage of time.

Hear what a curator learned from seeing two heroes playing games on an ancient vase.

How one architect’s experience during a civil war shaped her approach to understanding architecture and urban space.

Listen to a curator consider photographs of LA's empty streets.

Understanding the cosmopolitan career of a master 17th-century artist through the writings of his contemporaries.

Hear a curator on monkeys, owls, and our upside-down world.

Listen to a curator consider how our pets link us to the Middle Ages.

Three biographies written shortly after the artist’s death shine light on his tragically short career.

Hear a curator discuss the unexpected poignancy of laundry drying.