In this episode, Jonquil O'Reilly talks to Elizabeth Cleland and Adam Eaker, the curators of "Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about their exhibition and transporting the viewer back to the 16th century through tapestries, embroideries, goldwork and portraits full of enigmatic symbols.

This episode of Athena Asks focuses on race, representation and colonialism in 19th-century Victorian sculpture. It is hosted by Dr Adrienne Childs, co-curator of the new exhibition The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture, now showing at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, UK (also co-curated by the Director of Athena Art Foundation, Nicola Jennings). Childs talks with two brilliant guests, Dr Caitlin Beach (Assistant Professor of Art History at Fordham University) and Dr Mia L. Bagneris (Associate Professor in African Diaspora Art and Studies of Race in Western Art at Tulane University), about race, representation, colonialism and the legacy of slavery in 19th-century Victorian sculpture.

In this episode of Athena Asks, host Dr Madeleine Haddon talks to Elyse Nelson (Assistant Curator in European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Met in New York) about the current show Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast, co-curated by Nelson and Wendy S. Walters.

Organised around a single object, the marble bust Why Born Enslaved! by 19th-century French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, this is the first exhibition at The Met to explore Western sculpture in relation to the histories of transatlantic slavery, colonialism and empire.

The thematic labels were written by:


What is abolition? Farah Peterson

What is representation? Fabienne Kanor

Who narrates history? Lisa Farrington

What is the legacy of the Black figure in Western art? Elizabeth Colomba