The MoMA Magazine Podcast

Two women discuss the history and artistry behind manicured nails. In this episode of the Magazine Podcast, we speak with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, a writer and sociologist, about the history of nail art and how it is connected to larger ideas around beauty, power, and freedom. We also hear from Margarita Lizcano Hernandez, a curatorial assistant at MoMA, about how nail art has changed her life...

Join artist and photographer Lola Flash for a six-part podcast series exploring New York City during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s.  In this final episode, Flash takes a quick trip north to Harlem, where Idris Mignott and Pamela Sneed discuss the impact of AIDS on Black and Brown folks in the city. Then, she concludes with a reflection on the state of AIDS today, calling upon the perspec...

Join artist and photographer Lola Flash for a six-part podcast series exploring New York City during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s.  In this penultimate episode, Flash concentrates on a single site: St. Vincent’s Hospital, which, in the 1980s, housed the first and largest AIDS ward on the East Coast. In conversation with friends Pamela Sneed, Idris Mignott, Agosto Machado, and Aldo Herna...

Join artist and photographer Lola Flash for a six-part podcast series exploring New York City during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s.  For episode four, Flash wanders through memories of Christopher Street and the queer histories that took shape there. She’s joined by fellow artist Agosto Machado, as well as familiar friends Pamela Sneed and Idris Mignott, to discuss different places and s...

Join artist and photographer Lola Flash for a six-part podcast series exploring New York City during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s.  Episode three looks at the ways people built community during the epidemic, and how these communities mobilized to spread knowledge, resources, and care. Flash is joined by friends Aldo Hernandez, Pamela Sneed, and Idris Mignott to discuss two organizations...

Join artist and photographer Lola Flash for a six-part series exploring New York City during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s.  Episode two reunites Flash with her longtime friend Aldo Hernandez. They discuss their involvement with ACT UP and two sites that helped shape their activism: the LGBT Center in Greenwich Village and Aldo’s apartment near Tompkins Square Park.  Learn more about Lol...

Join artist and photographer Lola Flash for a six-part series exploring the sites, sounds, and stories of New York City during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s. In this first episode, Flash introduces the series and the people you’ll meet along the way.  Learn more about Lola Flash, her work, and the stories shared in this project at https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/1222

A climate scientist and an architect discuss how design can be a force for positive environmental change. “I certainly remember, as a child growing up in the UK, we had a lot more snow than we do recently,” says UK-based climate scientist Ed Hawkins in this month’s episode of the Magazine podcast . Hawkins’s work, which visualizes the globe’s warming temperatures over the last 160 years, is striki...

Listen to a teen-led conversation with DonChristian Jones, about building spaces for belonging and memory. When artist DonChristian Jones started at MoMA as the inaugural Adobe Creative Resident, they created a vision for working with young people to share their stories about what art and community meant to them. In the summer of 2024, DonChristian—through their Residency at MoMA, along with the n...

Hear from two artists and an educator about how they use improvisation to engage with art. Improvisation informs all kinds of creative practice. But how does chance really play out in an artist’s work? And how might it inform their everyday lives? Choreographer and dancer Mariana Valencia and artist and musician Jazmin “Jazzy” Romero test these ideas in the performance  Jacklean (in rehearsal) . I...

The future of this complex emotion is still being written, but its history can offer interesting insights on our present day. “ Everybody fundamentally wants to be loved…to feel like they belong,” says historian Fay Bound Alberti. “But many people don’t find that, or they think  about romantic love as the answer to all of their problems.” As a result, many of us end up feeling something else entir...

Hear from artists, writers, and therapists about what happens when art and grief collide. When was the last time you grieved? What is for a person or an animal? A place or a thing? Did you experience grief at the loss of something intangible? These questions are not meant to cause pain. Rather, they offer an opportunity to acknowledge the grief that may be hiding within us—even if it’s been severa...

Society ridiculed the modern art she loved, so Lillie P. Bliss set out to create a museum to house it. It might be hard to imagine, but there was a time when the work of modern artists like Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Paul Cézanne was ridiculed by the public. Despite all the criticism, three women founded a museum dedicated to art that was new. In this edition of the Magazine podcast , we...

A hundred years later, a Surrealist artwork continues to inspire curiosity in all who encounter it. “It is an object that—once you’ve seen it, it’s there in your imagination forever,” says former MoMA senior curator Anne Umland about  Meret Oppenheim ’s Surrealist  Object . Objects conservator Caitlin Gozo Richeson had a similar reaction on seeing the fur-lined teacup, saucer, and spoon for the fi...

Jazz in the Garden, Episode Three: “Return to the Garden” An overwhelmingly popular series of jazz concerts in MoMA’s Sculpture Garden in 1985 proved…a little too popular, and it would be nearly a decade before live jazz was once again a regular occurrence at the Museum. In our third and final episode, hear about a new generation of musicians who revived the legacy of jazz at the Museum in the 199...

Hear from current and former teens about their experiences of growing up queer. When was the last time you thought about your teenage self? For a lot of us, our teenage years were an uncomfortable time. Sure, there were some good moments, but there were also a lot of confusing thoughts and big emotions that we couldn't figure out. For Pride 2024, we invite you to enter the world of  Open Art Space...

Jazz in the Garden, Episode Two: “One Magic Summer” After a golden age of big names and big crowds throughout the 1960s, by the mid 1970s live jazz at MoMA had become something of an afterthought. But a magical summer of performances in 1985—including landmark concerts by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, “Butch” Morris, and the “saxophone colossus” himself, Sonny Rollins—put the music back at center s...

Jazz in the Garden, Episode One: “In the Beginning” Our story begins on June 16, 1960, when George Wein and the Storyville Sextet played the first jazz concert in MoMA’s Sculpture Garden—and launched more than a decade of legendary performances and recordings from some of the leading lights of jazz, including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Sonny Rollins. In this episode, you...

Hear how this popular crop is helping craft a more sustainable future in Mexico. What do corn, craft, and Mexico have in common? The answer to this question comes in the form of  Totomoxtle , a project and materials created by designer Fernando Laposse in collaboration with the village of Tonohuixtla. On view through July 7 in the exhibition  Life Cycles: The Materials of Contemporary Design , Tot...

Is art the secret to everlasting love? It’s no secret that some of the most powerful art has been inspired by love, that singular, indescribable feeling that, as it turns out, we are all capable of experiencing. “We all have the 12 brain areas that are critical for love,” says Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo, a leading figure in the neuroscience of social connections. It doesn’t matter if that love we feel...

Join meditation artist Dora Kamau for an eight-minute guided audio meditation that explores the spectrum of emotions and energies associated with each color. We’ll delve into color theory and the psychological and emotional effects colors can have on us. Composer James Pratley Watson, who created the soundscape for this meditation, aligned each color with its respective sonic “healing frequency,”...

A neuroscientist discusses how smell influences everything from emotions and relationships to identity and wellbeing. Our sense of smell is something many of us take for granted, but this sensation is more powerful than you may think. “It literally filters through all aspects of our existence,” explains neuroscientist Rachel Herz, “and the more we deliberately use our sense of smell…the better our...

The founder of Harlem Chocolate Factory reflects on her lifelong journey with chocolate—and why you should never buy it at a low price. Inspired by artists’ inventive uses of chocolate, we interviewed Jessica Spaulding, local chocolatier and cofounder of Harlem Chocolate Factory. For Spaulding, chocolate offers endless opportunity: “I think that being a chocolatier is that space where you get to g...

Beekeepers reflect on how fear transformed into love after they realized the huge impact of these tiny creatures. In 2016, Tim Jackson and Nicole Lindsey founded Detroit Hives , a local organization dedicated to transforming vacant lots into urban bee farms, where they not only produce honey for their communities but also host educational programs about the crucial role of bees. This month’s Ten M...

Hear from the revolutionary artist about his iconic designs for the Black Panther newspaper. Emory Douglas has a battle cry: “Culture is a weapon.” And this chant reverberates throughout everything he does. In 1967, Douglas was chosen as the minister of culture and revolutionary artist for the Black Panther Party, where he designed the layouts and iconic imagery for the Black Panther newspaper. Fo...