The Lonely Palette

"Art isn't what you see. It's what you help others see." - Edgar Degas | "Close your eyes/sometimes it helps." - Rhianna A little over ten years ago, on May 4th, 2016, I swallowed hard and hit publish on my very first episode of The Lonely Palette . I had the domain, I had the website, I had a mic and closet, and I had a dream. Public radio, someday, but for now, speak the art history lecture I'd...

"The deeper you go, the less indulgent it will be.” - Helena's stickie note Helena De Groot is an audio maker, but, really, she’s an audio artist. Her series, Creation Myth , just dropped in full as part of the CBC’s show, Personally . Personally is about the most personal experiences that audio makers that probe within themselves, laying themselves bare, for our benefit, as the best memoirs do. C...

Earlier this year, I had a really, really great conversation with Dr. Lara Ayad, host of the podcast The Cheeky Scholar - and I'm proud to share it today. We cast our net really wide, talking at first about the role of artists in society, my favorite museums, but then we got into it. We got into it . Because Lara and I are both, in the parlance of the moment, free speech bros. And if you’re going...

It's September, and time to get back to work. That means defending public radio against federal defunding, exploring its core values, and taking an honest look at how we got here.  I'm proud to share this conversation between my Hub & Spoke colleague Erica Heilman, host of the exquisite and unflinching Rumble Strip , and her buddy Jay Allison, founder of Transom , producer of The Moth Radio Hour ,...

"You don't go look at a Rothko; you go inside a Rothko." - Claire, visitor, National Gallery of Art Modern art. Two little words that strike so much fear in the heart of the average museum goer. When you're used to straightforward, legible paintings and sculptures, Modernism can be pretty destabilizing. Pretty weird. Canvases are now spattered with paint, or lined with grids, or barely containing...

"Questions and the search for answers, and the appreciation of beauty, and then wanting to share it with other people, to go look at it closely together. Then you realize you've got something that can feed you for the rest of your life as a career." - Emily Pegues, curator, National Gallery of Art. Museum curators are an intimidating species. Those experts with their degrees. How could they possib...

"There are different levels of looking. And it's exciting to bring people to the different levels."  - Estelle Quain, docent, National Gallery of Art How do YOU feel when you walk into an art museum? Is it familiar? Intimidating? Do you have a guard trying to shush you, or an overly-enthusiastic friend trying to tell you what to like? Are you joyful? Are you sad? Are you… bored? You’re not alone....

“I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.” - Norman Rockwell Whether arguing for soft versus hard taco shells or the Neo-Nazi right to march in Skokie, freedom of speech is a fundamental right we all enjoy as Americans. But it turns out that telling people that is pretty complicated, actually. Thank goodness we have Norman Rockwell, virtuosic photorealist...

"Walter, let's go for a walk."  - Judith Wechsler, in the arcades of Paris. Professor Judith Wechsler is an art historian, filmmaker, writer, researcher, Francophile, and leading expert on Paul Cezanne and Honoré Daumier. She’s the daughter of a major religious philosopher. Her resume reads like a who’s who of 20th century art historians – Meyer Shapiro, Linda Nochlin, Leo Steinberg, Gershom Shole...

“It is not about fixing or mending, but about celebrating the vulnerability of the object and ultimately myself.” - Yee Sookyung Shattered porcelain is impossible to repair. As impossible as fully, and accurately, reconstructing the past. But who needs that pressure? What if, instead of tossing those shards in the dustbin of history, we acknowledged that the thing will never be what it once was? M...

"It's the close focus that draws me into a sound. And then it sort of spreads out and spreads through my body. And I let that happen, and I'm listening in a different way." - Annea Lockwood The artist and composer Annea Lockwood is not just any musician. She is an artist of sound. She is a composer of art. Her music is performance art, and her art is always, always audio-rich and musical. She send...

"The only thing permanent is change." - Felix Gonzalez-Torres There is no way around it. The work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a gay, Cuban-American artist who responded to - and died during - the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s, is sad. His work is a memorial, both to a lost generation and to his own partner, Ross. Yet it is through these seemingly banal, industrial, or every day materials, and the...

“In the end, what interests me is the way art connects with life. Because otherwise, I don’t quite understand what it’s for.” - Sebastian Smee Sebastian Smee has been the art critic for the Washington Post since 2018, but has written extensively about art for every publication you can think of, from here to his native Australia, and winning a Pulitzer prize for criticism along the way. Both his pr...

"My line does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization." - Cy Twombly Critics have described the work of consummate scribbler Cy Twombly as at once "barely there" and overly academic, but what about us art civilians? What is it about these half-baked scraps, scratch, and scrawl that speaks to our own creative impulses, our own inner children dying to grab the crayon and crush the...

This season, we've got a stellar line-up: Cy Twombly, Lawren Harris, Käthe Kollwitz, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, to name just a few. We've got interviews with the Washington Post 's Sebastian Smee, the artist and composer Annea Lockwood, and more. We've got a whole National Gallery residency! So listen and subscribe, rate and review, and fire up your earbuds for another season of looking with your...

Tamar is alive! The Lonely Palette is alive! But in the year since we last spoke, she's been elbow-deep in audio projects galore - good for the pocketbook, but bad for independent art history podcast productivity. But your patience will be rewarded! And in the meantime, a few announcements: - Join me and my fellow H&S colleagues at the PRX Podcast Garage in Allson, MA on Wednesday, November 6 for...

In this special episode of The Lonely Palette, I’m sharing the episode I made for the PRX limited-run podcast series "Monumental," which interrogates the state of monuments across the greater U.S. and what their future says about where we are now and where we’re going. This was the concluding episode, exploring how some monuments are larger than life, dwarfing us, making us feel small relative to...

The Lonely Palette, as you've heard so often, is an enormously proud founding member of the Hub & Spoke Audio Collective, a group of fiercely independent, story-driven, mind-expanding podcasts. Since 2017, we've supported each other while forging our own paths, prioritizing craft and humane storytelling above all else. Now, if you haven't noticed, media in general, and podcasting in particular, is...

Since her arrival on the art scene in the 1960s, legendary art writer Lucy Lippard’s work - searing, novelistic, crisp, and endlessly curious - as well as her insights, activism, entrenchment in the art world, and friendships have secured her role as one of the most important minds in art criticism of her generation. Now, at 86 years old, all of the stuff that she’s collected along the way – photo...

 In the 1950s and 60s, Coenties Slip—an obscure street on the lower tip of Manhattan overlooking the East River—was home to some of the most iconic artists in history, and who would define American Art during their time there: Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. As friends and inspirations to one another, these artis...

www.patreon.com/lonelypalette Music used: Glenn Miller, “Tuxedo Junction” The Blue Dot Sessions, "No Smoking," "Mercurial Vision" Our website: www.thelonelypalette.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a free edition of The Lonely Palette Reads, a perk that will be going out exclusively to Patreon patrons in the future. To become a patron, go to patreon.com/lonelypalette and sign up at any level of support. Thank you! Got suggestions for other intimidating-until-read-aloud-texts for future episodes of The Lonely Palette Reads? Email the show at tamar@thelonelypalette.com . Music used: Gl...

I can't help the way I'm feeling/Goddess of love, please take me to your leader/I can't help, I keep on dancing. - Lady Gaga The neoplatonic ideal of beauty, the girl on the half-shell, the naked chick riding a clam. Her tilted head and fluttery hair are recognized by everyone and their grandma, but no one - experts included - can explain just why in the heck this painting is so iconic. Shell we t...

See the images: bit.ly/45wNrSb Music used: Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger” The Blue Dot Sessions, “Thread Indigo,” “Monder,” “Tall Journey,” “Stephi,” “Morning Glare” Helen Reddy, “I Am Woman” (performed at the Mobilize for Women's Lives Rally in Washington in 1989) Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette Episode sponsors: Jay Handy Financial Services (for artists!) www.signalpointinves...

See the Images: bit.ly/3PMpK3o Music Used: Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger” The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Slate Tracker,” “Laser Focus,” “The Griffiths,” “Crumbtown,” “Discovery Harbor,” “Leave the TV On,” “Pickers,” “Caraval, “Lady Marie” Support Hub & Spoke's Independence Fundraiser: www.hubspokeaudio.org/july4 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. S...