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PODCAST

New Books in Art

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

arts visual arts

All Episodes

00:49:09

The Connoisseur: A Cultural History with Peter Burke...

New Books in Art ·

2026/09/27

Eminent historian Peter Burke joins Jana Byars to discuss his new book, The Connoisseur: A Cultural History (Reaktion, 2026), considering the art connoisseur from the Renaissance to the present day. Connoisseurs have been an influential, if somewhat mysterious, figure in the history of art, responsible for making or breaking high-profile collections and reputations and influencing taste, the art market, and the field of art history with their pronouncements. But what did it take to become a

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01:38:08

Glenn Peers, "Strange and Familiar History of...

New Books in Art ·

2026/09/21

Strange and Familiar History of Byzantine Ar: Interpretation, Risk, and Empathy (ARC Humanities Press, 2026) represents a risky experiment in art-history writing. It takes objects of Byzantine art—manuscript illustration, frescos, mosaic, sculpture—and reads them through the lenses of disability studies, media studies, and gender studies in order to reveal something about their significance not only in that historical culture, but also in our own. Moreover, it uses lenses of personal history and

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01:11:38

Joe Jackson, "Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual...

New Books in Art ·

2026/09/20

Kahlil Joseph has collaborated with musicians FKA twigs, Flying Lotus, Sampha and Shabazz Palaces among many others. He has directed numerous films, music videos and advertisements across Africa, America and Europe. The award-winning filmmaker's disruptive style – which frequently merges visual representations of transcontinental experiences with the countercultural energies of Afrodiasporic music – challenges the Eurocentric biases underpinning Western media. At the same time, his works generate

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39:14

Marjolijn Bol, "The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting...

New Books in Art ·

2026/09/11

Panel painters in both the middle ages and the fifteenth century created works that evoke the luster of precious stones, the sheen of polished gold and silver, and the colorful radiance of stained glass. Yet their approaches to rendering these materials were markedly different. InThe Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500(UChicago Press, 2023), Dr. Marjolijn Bol explores some of the reasons behind this radical transformation by telling the history of the two oil painting

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58:22

Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the...

New Books in Art ·

2026/09/09

In a world obsessed with expertise and control, the figure of the idiot illuminates deeper truths about society.In this interview,Morteza Hajizadeh interviewsLeonhard Emmerling about his bookThe Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus(Seagull Books, 2026)Dostoevsky and Nietzsche wrote about him; Dadaists and punks idolized him; artists like Warhol and Beuys made him their icon. From holy fool to punk rebel, the idiot—a figure that traces its roots back to the Greekidiotes, a person who was

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31:44

Duty, Banality, and Hopefulness with Alex Cain

New Books in Art ·

2026/09/01

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Alex Cain.Dr Alex Cain researches in the fields of political theory and ethical theory, with a particular focus on the work of Hannah Arendt, among other figures in the history of philosophy. Her work in this field has so far mostly focussed on the topics of friendship, political action, judgement and the role of experience in philosophical inquiry. They discuss Sidney Nolan’s duty to paint the concentration camps, the hopefulness of Hannah Arendt, and the

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68:31

Transcending Disciplinary Confinements With(in)...

New Books in Art ·

2026/08/25

Thisis Dr. Swati Joshi's inaugural episode on theNew Books Network. In this episode, she interviews Dr. Lucy Jeffery about her monograph,Transdisciplinary Beckett: Visual Arts, Music, and the Creative Process(ibidem Press,2021). She is also co-editor and author ofReplaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production, published by CEU Press and AUP in 2026. She is co-founder of the Replaying Communism project, which received funding from the AHRC SWW-DTP (2023) and the Visegrad

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60:09

Ellery E. Foutch, "A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art...

New Books in Art ·

2026/08/14

Cultural studies of the nineteenth century often categorize their subjects as being motivated by one of two opposing notions: a wholehearted embrace of progress or an antimodernist nostalgia.A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century(UMinnesota Press, 2026) centers a different kind of response to the period’s newly intensified awareness of temporality and history: an obsession with preserving perfection. Engaging a diverse set of case studies, Dr. Ellery E. Foutch

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41:31

Sara Pappas, "Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French...

New Books in Art ·

2026/08/05

Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century(University of Toronto Press, 2024) examines one of the most revered art historical narratives of Western art: the famous turning point for painting and sculpture usually emblematized by the works of Édouard Manet and then the Impressionists. Instead of the usual revaluation of this turning point, Sara Pappas argues for the importance of the failure to find a cohesive story for the art world in the period itself, a

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51:35

Paulina Banas, "Visualizing Egypt: European Travel,...

New Books in Art ·

2026/08/02

Following Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and Islamic architecture and catering to a growing European fascination with the East. In her debut book,Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth

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64:56

Meredith Gamer, "City of the Gallows: Art and...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/27

City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London(Yale UP, 2026) uncovers the complex and often unexpected connections between eighteenth-century London’s sites of punishment and its spaces of art-making, instruction, and display. Drawing together a wide range of images, objects, and texts – from popular woodcuts and anatomical sculptures to moral tracts and dictionaries of slang – it offers new readings of works by major artists, such as William Hogarth, Johan Zoffany, and Joseph

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64:39

Victoria Donovan, "Life in Spite of Everything: Tales...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/26

Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East(Daunt Books Publishing, 2025)isa unique reflection on the much-mythologised Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Ukrainian east, the old and recent history of the region as seen by an esteemed academic multi-disciplinary scholar Victoria Donovan in her numerous travels to the region prior to the full-scale invasion. Seen through a deeply empathetic lens of conversations with local curators, historians, museum workers, and artists, the

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51:07

David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks,...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/22

What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with acclaimed cultural critic David Denby to discuss his book Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer(Henry Holt, 2025), a vibrant portrait of four extraordinary Americans whose Jewish identities helped shape the modern United States. Though they worked in vastly different fields, Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer shared a

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67:11

Lucy D. Curzon, "Art and Citizenship in Conflict:...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/20

Art and Citizenship in Conflict: British Women War Artists, 1939-45(Manchester UP, 2026) by Dr. Lucy Curzon examines the work of women war artists in order to highlight the complexity of citizenship and gender in Britain during the Second World War. Evelyn Dunbar, Mary Kessell, Ethel Gabain, Stella Schmolle, and Laura Knight, among others, were commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) to document the millions of women who took up sometimes unconventional roles-in agriculture, the

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45:35

Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/19

InFemale Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001(Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the pivotal role of Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre, where women were instrumental in forging a

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39:29

Matthew Campbell, "The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/16

On June 10, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned two pieces of artwork to Cambodia: an Angkor statue and a sandstone lintel. It’s the latest repatriation effort by the U.S.’s premier art museum, and the third time the Met has had to give up Cambodian artifacts specifically. Matthew Campbell’sThe Man Who Stole The Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy(Penguin, 2026)dives into the story of the Cambodian antiquities trade, from looted temples in the

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54:58

Wednesdae Reim Ifrach, "Queer Expressions: Expressive...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/13

A creative, body-based guide to healing for queer, trans, and gender-expansive readers—somatic tools and expressive arts to feel safer in your body, rewrite your story, and sustain connection. Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma (North Atlantic Books, 2026)is a practical, consent-centered guide to healing body trauma through embodiment and creativity. Drawing on somatic therapy—grounding, breath, orientation, gentle movement—and expressive

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54:43

Cécile Bishop, "Forms of Blackness: Race and...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/11

What does Blackness look like? In Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World (Duke University Press, 2026), Cécile Bishop argues that this seemingly simple question has no straightforward answer. Instead of treating race as something immediately visible, she explores how Blackness emerges through the interplay of perception, language, and history. A central theme of the book is that visibility is never neutral. Through examples ranging from photographs of the

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58:59

Rachel Silveri, "The Art of Living in Avant-Garde...

New Books in Art ·

2026/07/04

With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life, an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical avant-gardes. She reveals how many early twentieth-century artists saw their own everyday lives—their bodies, identities, and relationships—as a type of creative material and a central component to their avant-garde

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43:20

John Kapusta, "Self-Realization Nation: How Artists...

New Books in Art ·

2026/06/27

John Kapusta's Self-Realization Nation: How Artists of the Creative Counterculture Made a New America (U California Press, 2026) is the story of an unexpected group of performing artists who led one of the most influential artistic movements in contemporary American history. After World War II, personal fulfillment emerged as a defining American cultural ideal. Self-realization--the quest to become our authentic selves--remains a powerful part of American culture and arts today. In Self-Realization

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