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PODCAST

Curious Objects

The Magazine Antiques

Through interviews with leading figures in the world of fine and decorative arts, Curious Objects—a podcast from The Magazine Antiques—explores the hidden histories, the little-known facts, the intricacies, and the idiosyncrasies that breathe life and energy into historical works of craft and art.

arts

All Episodes

58:29

Collecting Outside the Lines

Curious Objects ·

2023/02/24

A conversation about broadening the scope of collecting practices beyond traditional Anglo-European material, discussing the challenges and opportunities for collectors taking an interest in previously overlooked or under-recognized fields. Led by Ben Miller, featuring Jeremy Simien, collector; and Jesse Erickson, Curator of Printed Books and Bindings, the Morgan Library and Museum. Venue: New York's Winter Show, 2023 edition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

38:07

The Shakers, Pt. 2: Afterlife

Curious Objects ·

2022/12/07

In 1750, a millenarian religious movement, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, arose in England. More commonly known as the Shakers for their ecstatic dance, today this movement can claim only two living exponents. But the legacy of Shakerism—ideals such as equality between the sexes and among races, sublime music, and simple furniture that seems to prefigure modernism—lives on. In the second and final part of Curious Objects’ exploration of Shakerism, host Benjamin Miller

en

42:28

The Shakers, Pt. 1: Faith and Furniture

Curious Objects ·

2022/11/29

In 1750, a millenarian religious movement, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, arose in England. More commonly known as the Shakers for their ecstatic dance, today this movement can claim only two living exponents. But the legacy of Shakerism—ideals such as equality between the sexes and among races, sublime music, and simple furniture that seems to prefigure modernism—lives on. In part one of a two-part exploration, Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller considers the Shakers

en

23:39

The Story of Bélizaire, Pt. 3: The End; or, A New...

Curious Objects ·

2022/11/17

In 1837 a family group that flew in the face of convention was committed to canvas, presumably by portraitist Jacques Guillame Lucien Amans. It showed four children. Three were white, dressed in their Sunday best and gazing placidly at the viewer. The fourth, standing behind them in a Brooks Brothers livery coat, was a Black teenager. This is Bélizaire, and at some point around the turn of the twentieth century—for reasons unknown—his portrait was covered up. In this final installment of the

en

43:20

The Story of Bélizaire, Pt. 2: Provenance

Curious Objects ·

2022/11/10

In 1837 a family group that flew in the face of convention was committed to canvas, presumably by portraitist Jacques Guillame Lucien Amans. It showed four children. Three were white, dressed in their Sunday best and gazing placidly at the viewer. The fourth, standing behind them in a Brooks Brothers livery coat, was a Black teenager. This is Bélizaire, and at some point around the turn of the twentieth century—for reasons unknown—his portrait was covered up. Last week we took a close look at

en

49:34

The Story of Bélizaire, Pt. 1: Biography

Curious Objects ·

2022/11/02

Sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, the Black child at the rear of this 1837 family portrait was painted out. Why? Benjamin Miller sits down with the painting’s owner—and its primary advocate—Jeremy Simien, as well as scholars, collectors, and other experts in the field involved with the painting’s journey from museum castoff to much-fêted cipher for the Antebellum South, and attempts to nail down why its eponymous figure was forgotten for so long. Part 1 of a 3-part series on the

en

53:26

Bonus Episode: Craft in the Age of Mechanical...

Curious Objects ·

2022/06/29

As you await the upcoming season of Curious Objects, please enjoy this special bonus episode, in which Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Abraham Thomas, ceramist Roxanne Jackson, and painter Andrew LaMar Hopkins join host Benjamin Miller onstage at the 2022 edition of the Winter Show to grapple with the legacy of Walter Benjamin’s famous 1935 essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” How have Benjamin’s contentions about “aura” fared in the ensuing eighty-odd years since its publication

en

29:12

Once Upon a Bowl

Curious Objects ·

2022/01/25

Everybody’s got that object in their life: something that's been around for awhile, maybe since you were a kid, maybe you got it from your parents, maybe they got it from theirs, and somewhere along the line everyone kind of forgot where it came from in the first place. Wouldn't it be nice to know? Don't you wish someone had kept a receipt? This is the story of that once-in-a-lifetime moment when an object whose origins disappeared suddenly got its history back. And since that object’s history

en

47:58

The Case for Silver Tableware

Curious Objects ·

2021/12/15

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And in the antiques world the sincerest form of imitation is reproduction: the humble and studious attempt to conserve the lessons of the past because of their timeless value. One firm that’s well-versed in this particular form of historical homage is James Robinson, Inc., whose hundred-year partnership with a legacy silver workshop in Sheffield, England, has resulted in what Curious Objects host Ben Miller calls “the best historical-style

en

38:10

This Chair Is Made of America

Curious Objects ·

2021/10/06

Ben speaks with Ellery Foutch, assistant professor in American studies at Middlebury College, about a “relic Windsor chair” assembled by Henry Sheldon (founder of the Middlebury museum named in his honor) in 1884. This unusual piece of furniture was built with woods salvaged from structures with local or national significance—such as the warship Old Ironsides, the William Penn House in Philadelphia, and a colonial whipping post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

51:00

How to Make a Modern Home (with Antiques), featuring...

Curious Objects ·

2021/08/25

Time was, many top interior designers sought to conjure a perfectly seamless décor—whether it be all Louis XV furniture, all early American, or all modern. The results could be beautiful—but also somewhat boring, and certainly impersonal. Interior decorator Thomas Jayne suggests another way to put together the spaces we live in: by using creative combinations of striking art and objects from across time to derive a style that’s endlessly evocative, livable, and fresh. In this episode, Ben Miller

en

37:04

O’Keeffe on the Block

Curious Objects ·

2021/07/28

In mid-May, two paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe sold at auction, one in each of the world’s top sales rooms. Green Oak Leaves fetched $1.15 million at Sotheby’s, while Autumn Leaf with White Flower brought nearly $5 million at Christie’s. This month on our Curious Objects podcast, we bring you Reagan Upshaw—critic, dealer, appraiser, and all-around bon vivant—to expound on the lovely filaments, sepals, and stamens of O’Keeffe's oeuvre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

46:28

The WPA Origins of the American Doll, with Allison...

Curious Objects ·

2021/06/29

During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration funded an interracial labor program in Wisconsin that employed over five thousand women to craft handmade goods: the Milwaukee Handicraft Project. Especially noteworthy among the rugs, quilts, costumes, and books that the women produced is a run of exquisitely crafted and clothed toddler-sized dolls. Host Benjamin Miller learns from scholar Allison Robinson about how these dolls—made to represent different ethnic groups both foreign and

en

41:08

English Glass/Chinese Craft

Curious Objects ·

2021/05/26

The technique of reverse-painting was introduced to China in the late 1600s by its European trading partners, who manufactured and shipped the plate glass necessary for its production. By the middle of the following century artists specializing in producing images for foreign markets were well-established at China’s primary international port, Guangzhou, or Canton, as well as the capital of Beijing. In this episode, Corning Museum of Glass curator Christopher Maxwell introduces a superlative example

en

36:38

Bill Traylor on the Silver Screen, with filmmakers...

Curious Objects ·

2021/05/05

In April of 1853 a child was born into slavery on an Alabama cotton plantation owned by George Traylor. His first name was Bill and he would take the plantation owner’s last name for himself. A sharecropper and laborer for most of his life, in the decades since his death in 1949 Bill Traylor has became known to the world as an artist. Now, a new documentary tells Bill Traylor’s story on film for the first time. Ben Miller speaks with executive producer Sam Pollard and director Jeffrey Wolf about

en

71:49

Museums and the Lure of the Sell-Off, with the PMA’s...

Curious Objects ·

2021/04/22

The Association of Art Museum Directors killed something of a sacred cow last year when it ruled that museums will be permitted to use funds from deaccessioned artworks—previously strictly controlled—to pay for a wider array of institutional costs. On the occasion of this year’s virtual Philadelphia Show, Ben Miller speaks with the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s director and CEO Timothy Rub about the AAMD’s ruling and ripple effects it might have throughout the museum world. In a wide-ranging

en

25:32

The Book of Hours: A Medieval Best-Seller

Curious Objects ·

2021/04/14

More popular than the Bible: that’s what the richly illustrated volumes known as books of hours—which helped worshipers keep track of each day’s seven canonical prayer periods—were during the Middle Ages. A trove of these objects from the Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg collection is up for sale on April 23 at Christie’s, and in this special episode of the podcast Ben and Christie’s specialist Eugenio Donadoni zoom in on a particularly opulent example illuminated by the mysterious Master of the Paris

en

44:22

Corot’s Impressionist Lunchbox

Curious Objects ·

2021/03/31

Only nine times in his seventy-eight years did Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot paint on anything other than canvas, paper, and panel. On one occasion, offended by the crude wooden lunchbox carried by his friend Alfred Robaut, Corot had a new one constructed, which he decorated with a plein air painting, "Fraîcheurs matinales" ("Morning Freshness"). It’s a mini-masterpiece made all the more charming by its humble setting, a breezy landscape of trees and hills awash with sunlight and enlivened by one of

en

47:50

Five Hundred Years of American Craft, with Glenn Adamson

Curious Objects ·

2021/02/24

Glenn Adamson makes his second appearance on Curious Objects to discuss his new book, Craft: An American History. As his research shows, artisans from Paul Revere and Betsy Ross to Patrocino Barela and George Barris played a crucial and under-examined role in the formation of the United States’ national character. And what’s more, he tells us, the communal-slash-individual nature of craftwork could represent an antidote to the country’s current polarization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

en

41:45

Blended Spirits: A Curious Objects Cocktail Hour at...

Curious Objects ·

2021/01/29

From an early Renaissance list of statutes stipulating the amount of wine that every man, woman, and child of Bologna would receive daily, to a chunky twentieth-century cocktail ring, you’ll hear about wacky objects and the wild stories behind them from some of the Winter Show’s most irreverent dealers: Daniel Crouch (Daniel Crouch Rare Books), Carrie Imberman (Kentshire), and Keegan Goepfert (Les Enluminures). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

124 results

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