Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Mar 24 2023 12 ep. 39 mins 102

Behind the Scenes at the Museum Podcast artwork

Tiffany Jenkins talks to key players in the cultural world, charting the trends and dissecting the controversies. She rummages around the store cupboard to find out what has and hasn't made the pedestal.

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The British Empire and Us: Nigel Biggar and James Heartfield disagree

Mar 24 2023 77 mins

The British Empire and Us: a civilised disagreement with Nigel Biggar and James Heartfield Over the last five to ten years, factious arguments about the British empire, about toppling the monuments that mark it, about making reparations for it, and about to teach it in schools, have swept through our public discourse. This is a relatively new thing. We didn’t used to talk ab

The Museum of Other People - an interview with anthropologist Adam Kuper

Feb 20 2023 34 mins

Tiffany Jenkins interviews the anthropologist Adam Kuper about his new book, The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Exhibitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions. Adam talks about the history of anthropology museums and the crisis in which they find themselves today. They discuss the collections of human remains, and objects that were taken in imperial wars. They talk about the Benin

A Conversation with Sir Peter Bazalgette

Feb 26 2020 37 mins

Sir Peter Bazalgette has had a long and productive career in the arts. He is currently non-executive chairman of ITV, where we meet for a wide-ranging conversation. He has been Chairman of English National Opera and Chair of Arts Council England (2012 until 2016). He is Chair of the the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, and author of The Empathy Instinct: How to Create a More

Cancelled! Censorship and self-censorship in the arts

Jan 23 2020 57 mins

Censorship of the arts is on the increase: both that imposed from above, by the state, but also from below, with artists calling for works to be taken down from display. This episode of Behind the Scenes of the Museum brings together three experts – Julia Farrington, Associate Arts Producer at Index on Censorship, artists mentor Manick Govinda, and the art critic JJ Charlesworth

"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better." New York's Tenement Museum

Nov 27 2019 35 mins

Tiffany visits the Tenement Museum in New York with its President, Kevin Jennings. Located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the museum is formed from two historical tenement buildings, which were home to an estimated 15,000 immigrants from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 2011. Starting in 97 Orchard street, they discuss the aims of the Tenement Mu

How to solve a problem like Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia: rehanging paintings in the age of #MeToo

Nov 06 2019 53 mins

Tiffany Jenkins goes to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to talk to its director Luke Syson, art historian Jill Burke and Michael Savage (aka Grumpy Art Historian) about Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia, and rehanging paintings in the age of #MeToo. ► ART WORK DISCUSSED John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs Raphael’s Lucretia Sandro Botticelli's The Story of Lu

Vera Worth's Schiaparelli

Jul 10 2019 28 mins

Vera Worth was a good looking shop girl from Bristol, who followed fashion with a passion. In the 1930s, after marrying John, she scrimped and saved to buy a glamorous gown fit for a film star, and wore it to an important company dinner dance. The knockout dress and its jacket were designed by flamboyant designer to the stars, Elsa Schiaparelli. Photographs of Vera in the dress (av

The Last Colonial Museum

Jun 06 2019 35 mins

The Africa Museum in Brussels reopened at the end of 2018 after a 5 year renovation. Tiffany Jenkins and Fiammetta Rocco, culture correspondent at The Economist, tour the museum with its Director-General, Guido Gryseels, and assess its attempts to come to terms with a horrific past. The Africa Museum (officially called the Royal Museum for Central Africa) grew out of the Brussels

Sackler sponsorship: should art be on the side of the angels?

Apr 25 2019 42 mins

Tiffany is joined by the art critic and TV documentary maker, Waldemar Januszczak, the writer Michael Savage (Grumpy Art Historian), and the ex-museum director, Tom Freudenheim (Old Fart Thoughts On Museums) to discuss whether arts sponsorship should be ethical. They reflect on the significance of the decision taken in March 2019 by the National Portrait Gallery and the Sackler Tr

Everything you didn't know about the Renaissance Nude, with Jill Burke

Apr 08 2019 42 mins

Tiffany Jenkins talks to Jill Burke, a prize-winning researcher in Italian Renaissance art history, senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and associate editor of Renaissance Studies, about the Renaissance Nude. They discuss the hidden influences and impact of the Renaissance nude upon the social and political reality of Italy – why did representations of the nude proli