The MoMA Magazine Podcast

Showing up in food, cosmetics, fuel, medicine, and even the air we breathe, corn has become one of the most ubiquitous presences in our lives. In this episode of The Broken Nature Series, host Paola Antonelli talked to Bex, who runs the blog Corn Allergy Girl, cultural anthropologist Alyshia Galvez, and community organizers Yira Vallejo and Jonathan Barbieri about the proliferation of corn and its consequences for our health, environment, and communities. For more about the guests in this episode, visit moma.org/magazine

What are some of the most urgent challenges facing our planet? And how can design help us meet them? Join Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA, for Broken Nature, a four-episode podcast series in conjunction with MoMA’s current exhibition, that explores our fragile but fundamental ties to the rest of nature and the world around us. Antonelli and her guests—bloggers, anthropologists, judges, entrepreneurs, and more—will look at systems that sustain and permeate our lives, from food to fashion and the law, and ask how we might redesign them to make them fairer to all humans and other species. Join us next Monday, April 26, for the launch of Episode 1: Is Corn Feeding a Lie?

MoMA PS1’s new exhibition Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration features artists who were incarcerated or impacted by the US prison system, and who address these issues in their work. In this episode, Dr. Nicole Fleetwood speaks with artists James Hough, Rowan Renee, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter aka Isis tha Saviour, and Halim Flowers about the relationship between art and freedom, the failures of the American justice system, and their visions for a future without prisons.

On June 14, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests and the COVID 19 pandemic, more than 15,000 people gathered in front of the Brooklyn Museum in New York City to protest the violence, harassment, and discrimination faced by Black trans people in the United States. The Brooklyn Liberation march, the brainchild of drag queen West Dakota, turned out to be the largest event for Black trans rights in history. Last month, Alex Halberstadt spoke over Zoom to four people with key roles in the event: West Dakota, who tells us what nightlife and political organizing have in common; Mohammed Fayaz, whose images work as a call to community; Ceyenne Doroshow, who looks back with decades of perspective; and Raquel Willis, who gave one of the day’s most powerful speeches. He asked them to reflect on this historic event, how it fits into the larger struggle for equity and justice, and the future of Black trans people in this country.

Harry Belafonte once wrote that artist Charles White's work “is a testimony to the vitality of American culture.” In this conversation with WQXR host Terrance McKnight, who worked with curator Esther Adler to select music and other audio for Charles White: A Retrospective, Belafonte describes his relationship with White and their commitment to celebrating and advancing black culture.

Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash recently created a playlist to accompany Taking a Thread for a Walk, an exhibition of textiles and fiber art from MoMA’s collection. We spoke with her about her thoughts in choosing these songs and about the connections between weaving, making art, and writing music.

Across her long career, pioneering photographer Dorothea Lange grappled with the relationship between words and pictures, the subject of MoMA’s recent exhibition. The Creative Team’s Prudence Peiffer sat down with poet Tess Taylor to discuss Taylor’s engagement with Lange and words in her book, Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange.

Love can be complicated, messy, and inspiring—and has shaped the history of art more than we knew. In this episode of the Magazine podcast, we’re bringing love stories to light. From Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, who “felt magnified” by one another as struggling young artists in New York; to a recent love story sparked at the Museum; to Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who found that love could conquer fate and even death, these stories prove that love can mean many things, and each definition can affect the way we make, view, and understand art.

After 50 years of making music, singer, songwriter, and composer Beverly Glenn-Copeland's genre-bending compositions are finally being celebrated. When he left New York in the early 1960s, he believed the future he was fixated on could not exist for him in the US. Copeland, a transgender black man whose obscure electronic sound and non-binary beliefs were ahead of their time, continued to create music from abroad while acting on the Canadian children’s show Mr. Dressup and writing for Sesame Street. On this episode of MoMA’s Magazine Podcast, Taja Cheek, assistant curator at MoMA PS1, sat down with Copeland the day after his sold out VW Sunday Sessions performance at MoMA PS1, to discuss his first return to the US in over 50 years, his father’s piano, and why he considers himself a grandparent to young creatives.

Many mysteries surround Florine Stettheimer’s Four Panel Screen: its title, the date it was made, and even how it should be displayed. In the latest episode of the Magazine podcast, we spoke to the team that rediscovered this work in MoMA’s storage facility, including senior curator Anne Umland, curatorial assistant Jenny Harris, and curatorial fellow Charmaine Branch. Senior conservator Anny Aviram joined the conversation to detail the extensive efforts made to restore the work after years in storage. Hear more about this work, the world of Stettheimer, and the journey to document and uncover the many lives of her Four Panel Screen.