The MoMA Magazine Podcast

What is the relationship between literature and modern art?  Join Adam F. Bradley, English professor and co-editor of Ralph Ellison's unfinished second novel, for a discussion about race and invisibility on the written page and beyond. Discover Ellison's iconic book Invisible Man and the ways it continues to resonate with readers (and artists) 70 years after its original publication.   Access a transcript of the conversation here: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/751

Hear how a publisher decided to “create the world that we want to see” by founding the first natural-hair magazine. In this Ten Minutes podcast episode, we talk to Lindsey Farrar, who cofounded CRWNMAG in 2016 with Nkrumah Farrar. The print and digital publication is dedicated to celebrating the diversity of Black women and the beauty of their natural hair textures. Hear Farrar talk about about CRWNMAG, the natural hair movement, and the possibilities of changing society through media. Access a transcript of the conversation here: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/852

Listen to the acclaimed writer talk about Elizabeth Catlett’s sculpture Mother and Child, and its connections to rest, intimacy, and reproductive justice. In this Ten Minutes podcast episode, Hall reflects on a childhood wrapped in the embrace of Black community and an adulthood of “relearning how to hold” three generations of women in her family. Through tender descriptions of this sculpture and lyrical insights that weave together the personal and political, Hall conjures the spirit of Catlett and the many Black mothers who came before and after. Access a transcript of the conversation here: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/732

A tech ethnographer explains some key terms and ideas behind the future of the Internet. In Unsupervised, Refik Anadol’s new installation at MoMA, the artist makes use of a core part of the Web3 technology: blockchain. What is blockchain technology and how does it relate to Web3? More importantly, why should we care about any of this? In this Ten Minutes podcast, we explore these questions with Tricia Wang, a tech ethnographer who studies the ways technology shapes our humanity. For Wang, Web3 offers enormous creative potential. In this new vision for the Web, we can tell new stories, explore our identities, and build more equitable communities.

Discover how architecture can unite communities divided by an international border. Political theorist Fonna Forman and architect and visual artist Teddy Cruz talk about Manufactured Sites, an architectural project based on the flow of material waste between border cities in the United States and Mexico. Tires, garage doors, and even entire homes make their way from San Diego to Tijuana, where migrants seeking entry into the US reconfigure the parts into emergency housing. But the project doesn’t stop there—it also presents new possibilities for safer emergency housing. In this Ten-Minutes podcast, we hear about the ways communities can collaborate across international borders and the possibility of creating a safe home for everyone.

Can junk be transformed into art? Discover the life and work of John Outterbridge, an artist who combined discarded objects and found materials into complex works of art. Hear from architect Mabel O. Wilson about her uncle's salvaging practice and the ways it brought him closer to his family, community, and visions for a better future.

The artist and writer David Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992 at age of 37 from complications of AIDS, is best remembered for his political activism and his vibrant, confrontational paintings. Yet in her 2016 book The Lonely City, author Olivia Laing writes movingly about Wojnarowicz as a figure haunted by loneliness, a condition that inspired to him to fashion his work into a vehicle for visibility and connection. As part of our celebration of Pride month, writer Alex Halberstadt recently spoke with Laing—whose latest is Everybody: A Book About Freedom—about David Wojnarowicz’s life, legacy, and the desire for connection that animated his incandescent writing and art. 

What does it mean for bodies of water, animals, and all of nature to be granted legal rights? In this episode of the Broken Nature series, host Paola Antonelli explores how the law can help us conceive of nature differently, and maybe even curb our destructive instincts. Author Nathaniel Rich tells the story "Dark Waters" about how environmental regulations in the United States have fallen short, activist Vimlandu Jha describes how he fights the pollution of India's Yamuna river, and Belkis Izquierdo describes her role as a magistrate in Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a judicial body created to investigate and judge the crimes committed during the country’s decades-long civil war. For more on this episode, visit moma.org/magazine.

Humans depend on certain conditions to survive on Earth: oxygen, water, food, and the atmosphere’s protection from the sun’s most dangerous rays. But what happens when these conditions begin to change? Host Paola Antonelli is joined by Sarah Henderson, Scientific Director of Environmental Health Services at the British Columbia Center for Disease Control, geneticist Christopher Mason, and Nathalie Cabrol, Director of the SETI Institute at the Carl Sagan Center for Research, to investigate the how the climate crisis affects the most intimate system in our lives: our own body. For more information on this episode, visit moma.org/magazine.

This episode of The MoMA Magazine Podcast's Broken Nature series explores the global secondhand clothing landscape: who participates in it, who benefits from it, who suffers because of it, and whether it is in fact a sustainable alternative to the excessive consumption encouraged by the fashion industry. Host Paola Antonelli is joined by Andrew Brooks, the author of Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes, Katekani Moreku, a South African fashion designer who uses discarded clothing to create new garments, and Julie Wainwright, founder and CEO of The RealReal, a business focused on luxury consignment.