An Art Gallery For Your Ears
Podcasts that walk you through museums from You’re Gonna Love This Podcast
One of the things that I’ve missed the most during lockdown is being able to casually walk around galleries and museums. I miss the excitement of picking up a map, looking up exhibitions, and wandering from room to room learning the stories behind each exhibit and piece of art. So since we’re approaching spring, which in my opinion is one of the best seasons for visiting exhibitions, I thought that this week I would recommend you three podcasts all about art, culture, and community that will take you on a stunning audio walk around some of the worlds best museums.
A Piece of Work
A Piece of Work is a podcast hosted by Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson that answers the questions about modern art that you were too afraid to ask. From exhibitions about pop culture to abstract experiential art installations, in each episode, Abbi visits a different exhibition in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and explores why those exhibitions exist, the impact they’ve had on those who’ve visited them and how modern art relates to modern life.
In each episode of A Piece of Work, Abbi speaks to both people who work in the museum and famous friends who love the art that lives there. From an episode featuring Ru Paul where she explores feminist performance art to an episode with Questlove where she explores the place of digital symbols like emojis in the modern galleries. A Piece of Work delves into a real variety of forms, styles, and artists to create the kind of podcast that makes you laugh, think and come away from each episode feeling like you understand the world a little bit better.
Start with: Samantha Irby Get’s High on Light or How Questlove Learned to Love Silence.
Museums in Strange Places
Museums in Strange Places is a podcast that takes you on a journey to unique museums from all around the world and explores the different ways that people create, consume and understand art.
In each episode of Museums in Strange Places, it’s host Hannah Hethmon visits a different museum and looks into the unique responsibilities, challenges, and triumphs it faces. From a museum of ordinary things in Reykjavik to a traveling Smithsonian museum in Minnesota, Museums in Strange Places explores the way that museums reflect and influence the communities they represent and the way that art helps people to better understand both their histories and futures. I really like this podcast because it draws on interviews with the people who have made the museums what they have become, and asks really interesting questions about the role that art and culture play in our constantly changing world.
Start with: Museum on Main Street or Slavery in Maryland
Meet Me at The Museum
Meet Me at The Museum is a podcast all about museums, galleries and the way they help us to better understand ourselves and the people around us. In each episode of the podcast, a different well-known figure meets someone they love at a museum or gallery and takes them on a walk through their favorite exhibitions. One of my favorite things about going to a museum or gallery is looking at the art and artifacts and thinking about how they relate back to my life and the lives of those around me and that is what Meet Me at The Museum is all about. As they walk around the exhibitions, each host and their guest talk about the memories they have attached to the artifacts, hear behind-the-scenes stories of how each exhibition came to be and intertwine their personal stories with the stories behind the art they see.
Start with: Mawaan Rizwan at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery
This is article is adapted from the podcast You’re Gonna Love This Podcast which you can listen to here: You’re Gonna Love This Podcast
