Best Tamar Avishai Podcasts (2024)

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Ep. 66 - Bringing Monuments Home (from PRX's Monumental) 1:00:18

2M ago1:00:18

1:00:18

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 lif…

1
BonusEp. 17 - The Hub & Spoke Radio Hour 50:22

2M ago50:22

50:22

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, m…

1
BonusEp. 16: Tamar Avishai interviews Lucy R. Lippard, Art Writer 45:11

4M ago45:11

45:11

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…

1
BonusEp. 15: Tamar Avishai interviews Prudence Peiffer, Author and Content Director, MoMA 55:13

7M ago55:13

55:13

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 fri…

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BonusEp. 14: The Lonely Palette Reads Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word 7:02

7M ago7:02

7:02

Taking a break from writing about astronauts, Tom Wolfe donned his white suit and strolled to the art museums of New York City, letting the incomprehensible literary works of the movement wash over him like a warm bath of clam broth, and producing what, in the words of art critic Rosalind Krauss, "hit the art world like a really bad, MSG-headache-p…

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BonusEp. 13: The Lonely Palette Reads Giorgio Vasari on Sandro Botticelli 21:21

8M ago21:21

21:21

Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) may have gone down in history as the very first Western art historian, but he is also a messy bench who loves drama, and we are here for it. Listen to his take on Sandro Botticelli from “The Lives of the Artists” (Bondanella trans., 1991), particularly his practical jokes, from which no friend or neighbor escaped unscathed.…

1
Ep. 65 - Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" (1485-86) 35:40

8M ago35:40

35:40

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 take on the challenge?See the images:https://bit.ly/3LeIwxuMusic used:Django…

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Ep. 64 - Barbara Kruger's "Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground)" (1989) 30:17

9M ago30:17

30:17

In April 1989, Barbara Kruger - an artist, activist, and former magazine layout editor - created a flyer for a pro-choice women’s march in Washington, DC to protest the Supreme Court’s potential overturning of Roe vs. Wade. But this flyer was never meant to be a picket sign. Instead, it has become a timeless artwork all its own: directly addressing…

1
Ep. 63 - James Abbot McNeill Whistler's "Symphony in White No. 1: The White Girl" (1861-62) 32:40

10M ago32:40

32:40

Whether for his critics, his friends (...?), or his canvases, the Victorian-era, Gilded-age Aesthetic ex-pat painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler had one motto: float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.See the Images:https://bit.ly/3PMpK3oMusic Used:Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger”The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen"The Blue Dot Session…

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Ep. 62 - Helen Frankenthaler's "Madame Butterfly" (2000) 27:08

11M ago27:08

27:08

Splotches, spills, and stains. They can evoke shapes, moods, energy, even music. Yet no one seemed to appreciate their very beauty with the same intuitive, delicate flair as Helen Frankenthaler, who created something fiercely new "between cocktails and dinner," or, more accurately, between the broad shoulders of a relentlessly masculine movement. N…

1
BonusEp. 12 - The Lonely Palette presents Rumble Strip 16:52

11M ago16:52

16:52

The new season of The Lonely Palette is achingly close to starting up on Wednesday, June 7, but in the meantime, this week and next we're giving our feed over to some fellow Hub & Spoke shows that might pique your eardrums.Hub & Spoke, as you know, is our mighty audio collective of proudly independent podcasts. We aim to expand minds, viewpoints, k…

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BonusEp. 11 - The Lonely Palette presents Out There 23:36

11M ago23:36

23:36

The new season of The Lonely Palette is achingly close to starting up on Wednesday, June 7, but in the meantime, this week and next we're giving our feed over to some fellow Hub & Spoke shows that might pique your eardrums.Hub & Spoke, as you know, is our mighty audio collective of proudly independent podcasts. We aim to expand minds, viewpoints, k…

1
BonusEp. 10 - The Lonely Palette Live at On Air Fest (and an update!) 39:29

12M ago39:29

39:29

Happy 7th birthday, The Lonely Palette! We're ringing in our itch with an quick update on next season, which starts in June, and a recording of our live show at On Air Fest, which was held in Brooklyn this past February. Please enjoy this revamped and refreshed episode of Mary Kelly's "Post-Partum Document," smash that subscribe button, and we'll s…

1
Re-ReleaseEp. 36 - Behold The Monkey 40:41

1+ y ago40:41

40:41

We're in THE HOME STRETCH of our Patreon Listener Challenge! This is indeed the time to pull up your socks and start supporting the show, all to the dulcet tones of a re-release of our second and most lauded Patreon listener-supported episode from 2019 on the Ecce Homo restoration fiasco, wherein a well-intentioned, though, uh, untrained parishione…

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Re-ReleaseEp. 26 - C.M. Coolidge's "Dogs Playing Poker" (1903) 39:28

1+ y ago39:28

39:28

Our Patreon Listener Challenge is ongoing! And if you're on the fence about supporting the show, why not sit back with a re-release of our first-ever Patreon listener-supported episode from 2018 on C.M. Coolidge's "Dogs Playing Poker," where we dive into the trials and tribulations of kitsch, the battle between the Sams and Dianes of the world, and…

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BonusEp. 09 - Tamar Avishai interviews Avery Trufelman, Design and Fashion Podcaster 1:10:26

1+ y ago1:10:26

1:10:26

A number of years ago, my Twitter pinged. Then it pinged again. All of a sudden, a whole host of people were following the show, and when I giddily found the source, it was the soulful and stylish Avery Trufelman, longtime 99% Invisible producer, currently of Articles of Interest, and fashionista tastemaker, who had pronounced The Lonely Palette he…

1
Ep. 61 - Under the Midnight Sun 29:12

1+ y ago29:12

29:12

They say that those who can do and those who can’t teach. But “they” don’t seem to have ever met a proper teacher. In honor of the Norwegian town of Bodø’s recognition as a 2024 European Capital of Culture, we dive into Bodø’s most famous artist, Adelsteen Normann, the teacher you’ve never heard of, the picture-postcard modernist who introduced us …

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Ep. 60 - Caravaggio's "The Crucifixion of St. Andrew" (1607) 37:36

1+ y ago37:36

37:36

Light and dark. Frozen action. Angels with dirty faces. Infamously both a hothead punk and one of the most extraordinarily potent and virtuosic painters in the canon, Caravaggio is nothing if not a man of contrasts.See the images:https://bit.ly/3iNqpTYMusic used:Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger”The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen"Charles …

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BonusEp. 08 - Tamar Avishai interviews Dar Williams, Singer-Songwriter 1:13:26

1+ y ago1:13:26

1:13:26

Dar Williams has been described by The New Yorker as “one of America’s very best singer-songwriters,” but to thirteen-year-old Tamar she was, quite simply, a personal hero: a songwriter whose poetry, poignancy, and humor could capture at once the authentic voices of an inner child, a searching young adult, and a wizened sage. We met in person in 20…

1
Preview: "Death of an Artist: Ana Mendieta and Carl Andre Split the Art World" 10:05

1+ y ago10:05

10:05

Hello, friends to art podcasts! I'm giving my feed over today to a preview of a new podcast from Pushkin Industries, Somethin’ Else, and Sony Music Entertainment: "Death of an Artist". The show examines a tragedy in the art world. For more than 35 years, accusations of murder shrouded one of the art world’s most storied couples: was the famous scul…

1
BonusEp. 07 - Tamar Avishai interviews Adam Gopnik, Critic, The New Yorker 1:07:59

1+ y ago1:07:59

1:07:59

There isn’t a single subject that Adam Gopnik’s prose can’t bring to life. As staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986, he has written about almost everything, including, just in the last year, Proust, gun control, the Beatles, and the Marquis de Lafayette. But it’s when he starts writing about art that things get particularly delectable: “the run…

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BonusEp. 06 - Tamar Avishai interviews Dr. Charlotte Mullins, Art Critic and Broadcaster 57:15

1+ y ago57:15

57:15

Art history textbooks, so excellent for flattening curled-up rug corners and holding open doors, are expected to tell us the entire story of our civilization, one painting at a time. It's more than any book, even one that weighs a spine-crunching twenty-five pounds, should be expected to do. And it opens our eyes to the way that history is narrated…

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Re-ReleaseEp. 49 - Claes Oldenburg's "Giant Toothpaste Tube" (1964) 34:31

2y ago34:31

34:31

“I am for the art of underwear and the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete. I am for an art that is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.”Today, the art world - and, as he would attest, the world world too - lost a giant, and we're re-releasing our episode from September 2020 in his honor. RIP, Claes Oldenburg, and …

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Ep. 59 - Sarah Sze's "Fallen Sky" (2021) 31:28

2y ago31:28

31:28

What goes up into the sky must come down into the earth, and fortunately for us we’ve got Sarah Sze, mistress of materials, memory, and meaning, helming the journey.This episode was produced with support from Storm King Art Center.See the images:https://bit.ly/3NRnGmrMusic used:Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger”The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du…

1
Ep. 58 - Odili Donald Odita's "Cut" (2016) 27:05

2y ago27:05

27:05

Betcha never realized how deeply color colored your world - and the world - until you found yourself dancing down the diagonal of this showstopping print. This episode was produced in partnership with the Harvard Art Museums. The exhibition "Prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives: Creative Communities" is on view until July 31, 2022.Music…

1
Ep. 57 - Juno, A Colossal Roman Statue (late 1st c. BCE) 32:43

2y ago32:43

32:43

We stan a queen.This episode was produced in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.See the images:https://bit.ly/3tXx80oMusic used:The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen"The Blue Dot Sessions, “Pigpaddle Creek,” “Temperance,” “Highway 94,” “Floating Whist,” “Danver County,” “Mr. Graves,” “Willow Belle”Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysee…

1
Re-ReleaseEp. 46 - Patty Chang's "Melons (At A Loss)" (1998) 28:22

2y ago28:22

28:22

The Lonely Palette is on maternity leave until early March, which means that we've been turning to the archives to feature episodes specific to the many shades of motherhood. This episode, from March 2020, tackles the noble melons, jugs, and knockers that nourish the gazes and stomachs of the world. So why are we so disgusted when a woman – and spe…

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Re-ReleaseEp. 30 - Donatello's "Madonna of the Clouds" (c. 1425-1435) 26:48

2y ago26:48

26:48

The Lonely Palette is on maternity leave until early March, which means that for the next few weeks, we'll be turning to the archives to feature episodes specific to the many shades of motherhood. This episode, from May 2018, looks at the Virgin Mary and her baby Jesus, and explores how their gentle, intimate relationship - as she gathers her diaph…

1
Re-ReleaseEp. 51 - Mary Kelly's "Post-Partum Document" (1973-79) 37:47

2+ y ago37:47

37:47

The Lonely Palette is on maternity leave until early March, which means that for the next few weeks, we'll be turning to the archives to feature episodes specific to the many shades of motherhood. This episode, from February 2021, speaks not just to the hazy, cozy, time-out-of-joint space that Tamar is currently in, but also to the state of the pan…

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Ep. 56 - Memorials (Collaboration with Hi-Phi Nation) 50:49

2+ y ago50:49

50:49

When tragedy strikes an individual, a nation, or an entire people, artists and architects are tasked with designing a public display that memorializes the event and its victims. But how do you do that? In this episode, we explore the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in DC, the 9/11 Memorial, and othe…

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Ep. 55 - Harriet Powers' "Pictorial Quilt" (1895-98) 28:52

2+ y ago28:52

28:52

Quilts, and textiles in general, have a funny way of being overlooked by the fine art world. They’re dismissed as craft, as outsider, as “women’s work,” or as potentially uninteresting museum exhibits. But some quilts, and some quilters, tell their stories, explain our histories, and simply refuse to be denied.This episode was produced in partnersh…

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Ep. 54 - Grant Wood's "American Gothic" (1930) 31:21

2+ y ago31:21

31:21

A man. A woman. A window. A pitchfork. It’s the most seemingly straightforward double portrait to come out of rural America - and certainly the most famous - yet it’s become synonymous with ambiguity and mystery, parody and polarization. Amazing how hungry we are to turn a portrait of an artist’s hometown spirit into a portrait of a larger American…

1
Re-ReleaseEp. 48 - Anselm Kiefer's "Margarete" and "Sulamith" (1981) 55:42

2+ y ago55:42

55:42

A year ago today, we released our most ambitious episode yet: an exploration of postwar German artist Anselm Kiefer's layered, dense, enormous canvases that themselves respond to the enormity of Holocaust survivor Paul Celan's layered, dense poem, "Todesfugue." In honor of it taking the gold in podcasting at the American Alliance of Museums' MuseWe…

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BonusEp 0.5 - Tamar Avishai interviews Dr. Rachel Saunders, Harvard Art Museums 59:13

3y ago59:13

59:13

Like so many of us, Dr. Rachel Saunders had a tough 2020. As the curator of Asian art at the Harvard Art Museums, she was thrilled to co-curate, with professor Yukio Lippit, the exhibition "Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection," the largest single exhibition the museum had ever mounted. And then, a month after its opening, it was…

1
LookWithYourEarsEp. 0.3: The Urban Sublime 23:17

3y ago23:17

23:17

The Lonely Palette is collaborating with the Addison Gallery of American Art in celebration of the museum's 90th anniversary! In this episode, we're using the Addison's collection to explore the American city in the same way that art history has been looking at landscape since time immemorial: what it represents, what stories it tells us about ours…

1
Ep. 53 - Painting Edo, Post-Pandemic 31:43

3y ago31:43

31:43

The world is reopening just as Harvard's special exhibition "Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection" is permanently closing, having been open to the public for one heartbreakingly short month. But the exhibition, which documented the Edo period in all its diverse, aesthetic richness, doesn't have to be in front of you to describe i…

1
LookWithYourEarsEp. 0.2: The Figure 21:33

3y ago21:33

21:33

The Lonely Palette is collaborating with the Addison Gallery of American Art in celebration of the museum's 90th anniversary! In this episode, we're using the Addison's collection to explore the figure, which, in art history, is almost exclusively the object of the gaze. But what does it mean when the body – that is, the multi-dimensional person wh…

1
LookWithYourEarsEp. 0.1: Abstraction 22:52

3y ago22:52

22:52

The Lonely Palette is collaborating with the Addison Gallery of American Art in celebration of the museum's 90th anniversary! In this episode, we're using the Addison's collection to explore abstraction, i.e. the one guaranteed way to alienate your visitor. Or...maybe not? Maybe, when it comes to art without a fixed meaning, our presence is request…

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TeaserEp 0.3 - Look With Your Ears (in partnership with the Addison Gallery of American Art) 1:55

3y ago1:55

1:55

In honor of the Addison Gallery of American Art's 90th anniversary, we've teamed up to release a three-part podcast series! We'll be taking a thematic view of their diverse and world class collection, exploring abstraction, the figure, and the urban sublime. New episodes will be released on The Lonely Palette feed every two weeks beginning Tuesday,…

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Re-ReleaseEp. 37 - Ansel Adams' "The Tetons and Snake River" (1942) 27:18

3y ago27:18

27:18

In honor of Earth Day 2021, we're re-releasing our episode on quintessential dorm room photographer Ansel Adams, and re-exploring how his own travels around, and documentation of, this complicated, contradictory, beautiful country inspired him to want to preserve it - from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam - in the most ex…

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Ep. 52 - Ólafur Elíasson's "Untitled (Spiral)" (2017) 31:06

3y ago31:06

31:06

The Danish-Icelandic artist Ólafur Elíasson is understandably inspired by the natural elements. But what we might not necessarily glean at first glance - of, say, a gallery pumped full of precipitation, or a simple spinning spiral - is that these elements can inspire us to change the world.Music used:The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen"The…

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Re-ReleaseEp. 28 - Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" (1964) 25:27

3y ago25:27

25:27

In honor of International Women's Day, we're re-releasing our love letter to the inimitable Yoko Ono, who once fell for a musician and has become inextricably - and involuntarily - linked with his band's undoing. But she made some truly exceptional art, both in the years since and particularly the years before she met him. And that art is, ironical…

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Ep. 51 - Mary Kelly's "Post-Partum Document" (1973-79) 36:24

3y ago36:24

36:24

The pandemic, motherhood, and me.See the images:http://bit.ly/3uaWHtaMusic used:The Blue Dot Sessions, “La Inglesa,” “Eggs and Powder,” “Paper Feather,” “Arizona Moon,” ”Lowball,” “Palladian,” “Simple Vale”Joe Dassin's “Les Champs-Elysees" via music box, ft. Calvin gigglesSupport the show:www.patreon.com/lonelypalette…

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Re-ReleaseEp. 20 - Henryk Ross's Photographs of the Lodz Ghetto (1940-44) 24:54

3y ago24:54

24:54

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, and to commemorate a year saturated in grief, we're re-releasing our deeply personal episode on Henryk Ross's photographs of the Lodz Ghetto. We should all be so moved to explore the beauty of individual stories of the lives lived that get swept away in statistics and tribalism. And perhaps we sh…

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BonusEp 0.4 - Tamar Avishai interviews Ralph Steadman 36:57

3+ y ago36:57

36:57

You’ve seen the work of 84-year-old Welsh artist and illustrator Ralph Steadman, even if you haven’t realized it. His searing political caricature and trademark flying ink spatter have illustrated major works of literature and journalism for the past half-century – and most notably the hallucinogenic writing of Hunter S. Thompson, resulting in an a…

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Ep. 50 - Carrie Mae Weems' "Not Manet's Type" (1997) 34:26

3+ y ago34:26

34:26

To appreciate art history is to appreciate that there is a canon: it is constructed by art historians, it guides what is taught, bought, and collected by art museums, it can’t allow people in without keeping other people out. Let's take advantage of this milestone episode (50!!) to explore both this canon and our current moment through the extraord…

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BonusEp 0.3 - Tamar Avishai interviews The Guerrilla Girls 46:51

3+ y ago46:51

46:51

The Guerrilla Girls, the self-professed "Conscience of the Art World," are a band of feminist activist artists, who have been wearing gorilla masks in public and using facts, humor, and outrageous visuals to expose gender bias, ethnic bias, and corruption in the art world since the mid-1980s. Join Tamar for a conversation with two of their founding…

1
Ep. 49 - Claes Oldenburg's "Giant Toothpaste Tube" (1964) 36:15

3+ y ago36:15

36:15

Somewhere between the life of the mind and the boots on the ground sits Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, who wants us to see that both of those worlds are one and the same, and that there's value, and even beauty, to our joy-sparking stuff (and maybe we can finally let ourselves admit it.)See the images:https://bit.ly/3hcHjVqMusic used:Django Reinhardt,…

1
Ep. 48 - Anselm Kiefer's "Margarete" and "Sulamith" (1981) 55:42

3+ y ago55:42

55:42

The art of postwar German artist Anselm Kiefer and the poetry of Holocaust survivor Paul Celan have a lot in common. They’re both layered, dense, hard to read, and most of the time you’re not quite sure if you get it. And while this might seem like an onerous way to understand history, sometimes the best starting point is through the layered, dense…

1
Re-ReleaseEp. - Keepers of the Culture: an Evening with Ekua Holmes and Dr. Barry Gaither 35:48

4y ago35:48

35:48

In honor of Juneteenth, we're re-releasing the audio of a live event from January 2018 at the PRX Podcast Garage, titled "Keepers of the Culture: A Celebration Of Maduna And Holmes." The evening was a celebration of two award-winning artists, collaborators, and friends, whose work was on display at the garage's exhibition space. Their sculptures, m…

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