Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

Donatello’s statue of David, just like the story, seems straightforward and simple at first glance, but with great art, there is always more than meets the eye. His bronze statue of the boy who slayed the giant depicts a figure who seems young and vulnerable yet with confidence and a bit of swagger. This was the first life-sized, free-standing nude statue since antiquity. Donatello and his David w...

Cirque du Soleil combines acrobatics, theater, music, and dance to create a magical experience that pushes the boundaries of our imagination and inspires the audience to rethink what is possible. There are no animals or ringmasters because Cirque does not seek to tame nature but rather to push boundaries and invites viewers to stand in awe. Performers undertake stunts that are dangerous and as spe...

Machu Picchu would translate to “old mountain” but it isn’t that old. While stone ruins are often associated with ancient civilizations thousands of years old, Machu Picchu is relatively young having been built in the middle of the 15th century. Nestled high in the Andes mountains of Peru, this ancient Incan citadel is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a bucket-list destination for travelers from a...

Jack Kirby created some of the biggest names in the golden age of comics including: Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man, Black Panther, The Incredible Hulk. He basically populated the Marvel Universe. In 1970 though he felt like he wasn't getting the credit he deserved there and left Marvel for DC. There he created a series, Fourth World which I imagine he thought would demonstrate his brilliance...

Origami is the Japanese art of folded paper sculpture. It is a tradition that is basically as old as paper. In the 6th century CE, Buddhist monks brought paper from China to Japan. While origami has been practiced for hundreds of years, it has gone through some drastic changes in the way it was perceived by people. Early on when paper was really expensive and labor intensive to produce, origami wa...

Romare Bearden grew up during the Harlem Renaissance. He enlisted in the army during World War 2 and in addition to painting, he made collages, he wrote and he loved music. One of my favorite works of Bearden's is based on a Renaissance painting imagining the return of Odysseus. In his work, Bearden puts black people into classic mythology because representation matters and he wants a diverse audi...

Hilma Af Klint was making abstract paintings before Kandinsky and Mondrian. She was exploring automatic writing and drawing guided by the subconscious decades before the surrealists. The term avant-garde literally refers to those going ahead of the rest. Hilma Af Klint was among the greatest avant-garde artists in history. Hilma Af Klint’s long time in relative obscurity is partly due to the stipu...

It was early evening just a few minutes from closing time at the National Museum when suddenly the normally peaceful museum took on the aesthetic of an action movie. An armed intruder walked in yelling at the guards and patrons to be still and calm which I have to assume had the exact opposite effect. He had two accomplices already in the space and they apparently were trained on the guards. Meanw...

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most popular contemporary artists with her infinity rooms drawing massive crowds wherever they are installed. In the infinity rooms, the walls are covered in mirrors creating reflections of reflections that seem to go on forever. This idea of playing with reflections was a fixture in Kusama’s work pretty much from the start. As I covered in my previous episode about Yayo...

For this week's fun fact friday, you can learn about everyone's first and favorite modular building material Lego, and how in 2009 on man (with the help of corporate sponsors and a few thousand volunteers) built a livable house out of Lego complete with working plumbing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Impressionists are probably best known for their loose brush work, that painterly style that allows reminds us paint is not only a noun, but a verb. The Impressionists had great ideas and tremendous talents, but ideas and talent alone won’t pay the bills. When Caillebotte joined the movement, he not only learned from the other painters, he supported them. He was a good friend and engaged with...

The Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in southern China had over 140 works stolen from their collection, but nobody noticed for years. This is because the thief replaced every item he stole… with his own paintings. Now some guy working in a museum quietly helping himself to the collection of artworks then replacing them with his own copies seems pretty strange and bold, but this next bit brings the s...

This is an encore presentation of my episode about Satoshi Tajiri and Pokemon is one of the biggest games in modern history. For over 25 years, hundreds of millions of people around the world have enjoyed videogames, card games, cartoons, and movies. But how did it all get started? For that we need to go back a little further than the 25 years of Pokemon, back to the 1960s and 70s in Machida Tokyo...

Fun fact: almost as soon as people started walking on the moon, they started to put art on the moon. In 1969, Nasa landed the first astronauts on the moon. It was a relatively short stay given the distance they had traveled to get there and the years of work preparing for the voyage. Most people don’t know this, but just a few years later, the Apollo 15 crew left an astronaut behind to remain on t...

Walt Disney started making silly fun cartoon shorts, but he had a vision to elevate animation to the status of a feature film capturing the full scope of human emotions. Nobody believed he could do it. While there had been some feature length animations in other countries, they flopped. Disney pioneered new techniques to draw audiences into his fairy tale world. Learn how Disney's Folly became Dis...

This is an encore presentation of my episode sharing some fun facts about Salvador Dali and a little bit about his most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory. I am taking a break as I finish up the school year, and I am planning some new episodes to start coming into the feed in June. Check out my other podcast Art Smart | Rainbow Putty Science Lab Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast. If yo...

This is an encore presentation of my first foray into the fashion world as Goldie Robinson helped me understand the brilliance of Alexander McQueen's 2010 collection. Specifically we looked at his Jellyfish Ensemble. Check out my other podcast Art Smart | Rainbow Putty Science Lab Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast. If you are interested in advertising on this or any other Airwave Media show, e...

This is an encore presentation of my episode about Matt Groening and Homer Simpson. With Mother's Day coming up, I thought it would be a great time to rebroadcast the episode I recorded with my mother as we talked about a show I loved growing up and some of my questionable artistic choices that she always found a way to look at with a loving eye. As the school year winds down I am re-broadcasting...

There are only 36 Vermeer paintings in the world today and one was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1991. The case remains unsolved to this day. In this episode, Emily Fiedler and I discussed the museum heist along with the Vermeer painting that has been missing for the last 30 years. Check out my other podcast Art Smart | Rainbow Putty Science Lab Who ARTed is an Airwave Media P...

As I know many high school students around the US are prepping for the AP Art History test, I thought it would be nice to put out an episode on one of the required works from the AP Art History curriculum. One Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous works is not housed in a museum. It is in the Convent of Santa Maria in Milan Italy. It seems totally fitting for a depiction of the last supper was painted o...

My guest this week was Paula Liz, founder of Anti-Racist Art Teachers. I invited Paula to come to talk to me about one of her favorite artists, and she picked Luisa Ignacia Roldán the Spanish Baroque-era sculptor. I had a great time learning about an artist I hadn't known much about prior to preparing for this episode. In the episode, Paula referenced a wonderful video about this sculpture. You ca...

The Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful man-made structures in the world. It is a UNESCO world heritage site considered to be one of the modern wonders of the world. The story behind its construction is equally beautiful as it is a tale of love and devotion between Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal who passed away shortly after giving birth to their fourteenth child. The Taj Mahal has a mass...

My son has been watching me record podcasts for years and he has worked hard to produce his own. Rainbow Puppy Science Lab is a kids and family podcast dedicated to the study of everything awesome. Every week the show will focus on a different topic, but only the good stuff. It is filled with fun facts and trivia games the whole family can enjoy. Enjoy this sneak peak (the official launch for the...

This is a#funfactfriday mini-episode about Edmonia Lewis and her sculpture The Death of Cleopatra. After it was exhibited in Philadelphia for the Centennial Exhibition, it was put into storage in Chicago. It would later sit in a saloon, mark the grave of a horse, and serve as an arts and crafts project for some local Boy Scouts before finally being professionally restored and displayed at the Smit...

Berthe Morisot was among the most successful French Impressionist painters during her lifetime. Today she is less well known than her peers like Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, but in the 19th century, she was the more bankable artist. She was accepted in the Paris Salon, but ultimately she left the salon to participate in the first exhibition of the Impressionists. In this episode we disc...