Arts & Ideas
1,985 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago - ★★★★ - 268 ratingsLeading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
New Thinking: About Face
January 17, 2020 14:59 - 40 minutes - 37.2 MBWould you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to two researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention. Emily Cock, from the University of Cardiff looks at our relationship with our noses throughout history – from duels and sexual diseases to racial prejudice. Fay Bound Alberti, from the University of York, talks about a project called AboutFace which she is running to look at the emotional ...
Psychohistory: Isaac Asimov and guiding the future
January 16, 2020 23:00 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MB100 years on from Isaac Asimov's birth, Matthew Sweet looks at one of the bigger ideas contained in some of his 500 books; Psychohistory. The idea, from Asimov's Foundation series, was that rather like the behaviour of a gas could be reduced to statistical probabilities of the behaviour of billions of molecules, so the history of billions of human beings across the fictional galactic empire could be predicted through a few laws he called 'Psychohistory'. The idea inspired many to think t...
Why we read and the idea of the "woman writer"
January 16, 2020 13:39 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBDo men and women use the same language when talking about novels they have enjoyed? How have attitudes in publishing changed towards both readers and writers if figures show that women buy 80% of all novels ? Lennie Goodings is Chair of the Virago publishing house and has now written a memoir. She joins New Generation Thinkers Emma Butcher and Joanne Paul; and Helen Taylor, author of Why Women Read Fiction. Naomi Paxton hosts the conversation about writing and reading. Why Women Read Fictio...
Simplify your life
January 15, 2020 22:00 - 53 minutes - 48.7 MBLaurence Scott hears about a pioneer of vegetarianism and advocates for nudism and camping as the academics Elsa Richardson, Annebella Pollen, Ben Anderson and Tiffany Boyle discuss the Life Reform Movement. Ideas included arguments for a basic income, healthy eating, gymnastics, world peace and what a perfect body looked like. The movement emerged in the second half of the 19th century and was a loose collection of groups and individuals who pursued social reform of all kinds and their idea...
Philosophy and Film
January 10, 2020 13:05 - 53 minutes - 49 MBSally Potter joins Rana Mitter to discuss the relationship between philosophy and film. Also in the studio are philosophers Helen Beebee, Max de Gaynesford, and Lucy Bolton. You can find more discussions on the Free Thinking programme website Philosophy playlist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twx Producer: Luke Mulhall
Could there be a private language?
January 09, 2020 15:18 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBHow do I know that anybody else experiences the world in the way I do? Or even if other people experience anything at all? In the 20th century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein responded to this challenge by thinking about whether we can make sense of the idea of a private language, a language understood only by the speaker. His so-called 'private language argument' has the potential to transform both the way philosophy is done, and the way we understand ourselves and our relationship with...
Panpsychism - Is matter conscious?
January 09, 2020 12:01 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBPanpsychism is the view that all matter is conscious. It's a view that's gaining ground in contemporary philosophy, with proponents arguing that it can solve age-old problems about the relationship between mind and body, and also fill in gaps in other areas of our understanding of nature. But is it true? And if it is, how could it change our understanding of ourselves? Matthew Sweet is joined by panpsychists Philip Goff and Hedda Hassel Morch, the neuroscientist Daniel Glaser, who is scepti...
The Strange Case of the Huge Country Pile
December 19, 2019 22:00 - 1 hour - 61.6 MBNosing around Osterley House, currently owned and run by the National Trust, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss our enduring fascination with the grand country estate. Countless stories, films and plays are set in the rarefied and actually very rare setting of the country estate, a world of valets and scullery maids, viscounts and self-mades, Kind Hearts and Coronets. This year has seen the TV series Downtown Abbey become a film. Every weekend hundreds of thousands of us visit the former home...
The culture wars and politics now.
December 18, 2019 19:11 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBPhilip Dodd is joined by Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds, the commentator David Goodhart, the writer and campaigner Beatrix Campbell, and the academic Maya Goodfellow, author of Hostile Environment - How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, to reflect on the role of culture and identity in politics in Europe and post election Britain. Have the so-called culture wars consumed traditional politics? Are debates about race, nation, values and belonging injecting a much-needed dimension...
Extinction Rebellion and the End of the World
December 18, 2019 15:57 - 49 minutes - 44.9 MBRana Mitter looks at the ideologies surrounding climate disaster with guests including Rupert Read of Extinction Rebellion, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, professor of psychosocial theory Lisa Baraitser, and lawyer Tessa Khan. How do we make sense of the idea of ecological collapse, and what are the assumptions hidden in the way we discuss climate disaster? Producer: Luke Mulhall
Telling new sporting stories
December 13, 2019 19:50 - 29 minutes - 27.2 MBThe annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year competition with its different categories presents a very different picture from the newspaper reports studied by Dr Fiona Skillen, which congratulated sportswomen in past times by linking their success to the achievements of their fathers or brothers. And Professor Matthew Smith from the University of Strathclyde has run a project called "Out on the pitch, sport and mental health in LGBT people" which looks at both the positive side of sport and...
New Thinking: Telling new sporting stories
December 13, 2019 19:50 - 29 minutes - 27.2 MBThe annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year competition with its different categories presents a very different picture from the newspaper reports studied by Dr Fiona Skillen, which congratulated sportswomen in past times by linking their success to the achievements of their fathers or brothers. And Professor Matthew Smith from the University of Strathclyde has run a project called "Out on the pitch, sport and mental health in LGBT people" which looks at both the positive side of sport an...
Speaking the right language.
December 13, 2019 12:17 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBMatthew Sweet asks how did the English language grow & what are the key election phrases? He's joined by historian John Gallagher who's written about language in Shakespeare's time and how refugees and migrants to England learnt English. In 1578, the Anglo-Italian writer, teacher, and translator John Florio said of English that it was ‘a language that will do you good in England, but past Dover, it is worth nothing’. Other guests in the studio include researcher Stephanie Hare who writes on ...
The wealth gap, #MeToo and Edith Wharton
December 12, 2019 12:28 - 44 minutes - 41 MBLaurence Scott, Sarah Churchwell, Francesca Segal and Alice Kelly re-read Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence. First published in 1920, it depicts new money in 1870s New York and limited choices for women. Francesca Segal's novel The Innocents, inspired by Edith Wharton's book, won the Costa First Novel Award in 2012. Her latest novel is Mother Ship. Behold America by Sarah Churchwell was published last year. Readings by Florence Roberts. Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Pan-Africanism
December 10, 2019 18:34 - 44 minutes - 41 MBNana Oforiatta Ayim is creating an encyclopedia of online images of Africa to challenge the way it is seen, has curated Ghana's first art pavilion at the Venice Biennale, toured a mobile museum round the country to gather a grass roots history and published her first novel. The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim is out now. Cultural Encyclopaedia is an online resource that includes an A-to-Z index and vertices of clickable images for entries about Africa https://www.culturalencyclopaedia.org/...
The shadow of empire and colonialism
December 05, 2019 22:45 - 49 minutes - 45 MBHistorian William Dalrymple, Wasafiri editor Susheila Nasta and novelist Romesh Gunesekera join Rana Mitter for a conversation looking at the East India company, the socialist economic policies and language battles in Ceylon in the 1960s before it became Sri Lanka and the way writing from around the world has reflected changes of attitude to post colonial history. Sri Lankan-born British author Romesh Gunesekera has just published his ninth novel, Suncatcher, depicting two boys, Jay and Kai...
Feasting, fasting, hospitality, and food security
December 04, 2019 22:00 - 56 minutes - 51.7 MBAuthor Priya Basil and curator Victoria Avery look at food, fasting and feeding guests. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is their host as the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge opens an exhibition and Priya Basil publishes reflections on hospitality which link the free meals offered to all which is part of Sikhism to food clubs in Germany which have welcomed refugees. Maia Elliott of the UK's Global Food Security programme, describes her work to try to make future food supply more reliable for all....
When TV & the information superhighway were new
December 03, 2019 18:43 - 44 minutes - 41 MBNam June Paik made art with TV sets and imagined an information superhighway before the internet was invented. John Giorno organised multi-media and dial-a-poem events. Poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson joins Matthew Sweet to look at the visions of the future conjured up by these artists who were both interested in the influence of mass media and Buddhism. She's joined by artist Haroon Mirza and Tate curator Achim Borchardt-Hume. We dial a poet Vahni Capildeo and hear from Vytaut...
Resting And Rushing
November 28, 2019 22:00 - 48 minutes - 44.2 MBShould we take more breaks at during the working day? Claudia Hammond, Matthew Smith, Sarah Cook and Ayesha Nathoo discuss the art of rest and concentration with Anne McElvoy.
The future of universities
November 27, 2019 18:15 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBEconomist Larry Summers, former President of Harvard lays out his view of a university and Philip Dodd debates with the OU's Josie Fraser, classicist Justin Stover and NESTA's Geoff Mulgan. Has new technology and globalisation signed the death knell for traditional courses in humanities subjects like English literature and philosophy ? You can find Philip talking to academic Camille Paglia here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006t8t to Niall Fergusson about the importance of networks h...
What use is a university arts education?
November 27, 2019 18:15 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBEconomist Larry Summers, former President of Harvard lays out his view of a university and Philip Dodd debates with the OU's Josie Fraser, classicist Justin Stover and NESTA's Geoff Mulgan. Has new technology and globalisation signed the death knell for traditional courses in humanities subjects like English literature and philosophy ? You can find Philip talking to academic Camille Paglia here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006t8t to Niall Fergusson about the importance of networks he...
Is the shadow of Mao still hanging over China?
November 27, 2019 11:10 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBRana Mitter talks to historians of China - Jung Chang and Julia Lovell. Jung Chang's latest book Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister looks at the lives of the first Chinese girls to attend university in the USA. On their return to Shanghai one worked in business, one married a politician and one was involved in high society. Julia Lovell has been awarded one of the most significant history writing prizes - the Cundill - for her latest book Maoism: A Global History. Cindy Yu is a China repor...
Is the Shadow of Mao still hanging over China?
November 26, 2019 18:45 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBRana Mitter talks to historians of China - Jung Chang and Julia Lovell. Jung Chang's latest book Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister looks at the lives of the first Chinese girls to attend university in the USA. On their return to Shanghai one worked in business, one married a politician and one was involved in high society. Julia Lovell has been awarded one of the most significant history writing prizes - the Cundill - for her latest book Maoism: A Global History. Cindy Yu is a China repo...
New Thinking: George Eliot
November 22, 2019 15:29 - 57 minutes - 53 MBShahidha Bari discusses the state of scholarship on George Eliot at her bicentenary with Ruth Livesey and Helen O'Neill, both at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Gail Marshall at the University of Reading. Ruth Livesey's AHRC funded research project on George Eliot is ‘Provincialism: Literature and the Cultural Politics of Middleness in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ https://georgeeliotprovincialism.home.blog/ Gail Marshall's blog on reading Middlemarch is here https://middlemarchin201...
The Mill on the Floss
November 22, 2019 12:24 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBWriter Rebecca Mead, actor Fiona Shaw + academics Dafydd Mills Daniel, Philip Davis & Peggy Reynolds read George Eliot's 1860 novel portraying sibling relationships. Shahidha Bari hosts. George Eliot was born on 22 November 1819. Rebecca Mead is the author of The road to Middlemarch: my life with George Eliot. Dafydd Mills Daniel is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and AHRC to put academic research on the radio. Professor Peggy Reynolds teaches at Queen Mary University ...
Are the arts saving Margate?
November 22, 2019 12:14 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBInvestigating regeneration and gentrification, the Turner Contemporary, the 2019 Turner Prize exhibition, writer Maggie Gee on her novel Blood, & the town in literature. The seaside town of Margate has both struggled and thrived over the past two centuries – it thronged with holidaymakers from the Victorian era onwards but limped through the latter half of the 20th century and was one of the most deprived parts of the UK before the £17.5m Turner Contemporary opened in 2011. Many hoped that ...
Why We Need New News
November 22, 2019 12:05 - 44 minutes - 41 MBNew research looking at at reporting secret assassinations, countering propaganda & how we could update TV news bulletins, from the Being Human Festival, an annual event which involves public events put on by universities across the UK, presented by Shahidha Bari. Steve Poole teaches at the University of the West of England and is involved in a project - Romancing the Gibbet - that uses smartphone apps to evoke memories of C18th hangings hidden in the English landscape Dr Clare George is M...
The Legacy of the Trojan War
November 21, 2019 22:00 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBWhy do the legendary walls of a Bronze Age city in Asia still cast such a long shadow? Novelist and classics expert Natalie Haynes, Alev Scott author of Ottoman Odyssey, archaeologist Naoíse Mac Sweeney and medievalist Hetta Howes join Rana Mitter to share new perspectives on the conflict immortalised in Homer's Iliad as the British Museum opens an exhibition dedicated to Troy. Troy: Myth and Reality runs at the British Museum in London from November 21st to 8th March 2020. Natalie Haynes i...
New Thinking: AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019
November 16, 2019 12:22 - 25 minutes - 23.1 MBHetta Howes is on the red carpet at this year's AHRC Research in Film Awards at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, where she talks to the winners: Laura Hammond of SOAS, Benjamin Dix of PositiveNegatives, and director Osbert Parker, who won Best Social Media Short for their film Life On The Move Shreepali Patel of StoryLab, Anglia Ruskin University, who won in theMental Health & Wellbeing category for The Golden Window Ed Owles of the University of Leeds and his producer Kasi...
Being Human: Love Stories
November 14, 2019 22:00 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBNaomi Paxton assembles a squad of researchers to talk about dating, relationships, and what how we fall in love says about us from the National Archives to London's gay bars. Dr Cordelia Beattie from the University of Edinburgh has unearthed two new manuscripts by the 17th-century woman Mrs Alice Thornton, which put her life, loves and relationship with God in a new light. Now they’re becoming a play in collaboration with writer and performer Debbie Cannon. Dr João Florêncio is from the Un...
The Changing Image of Masculinity.
November 14, 2019 16:58 - 53 minutes - 49 MB"Man Up". "He's Safe" "No Homo" How do men talk and write about masculinity? Laurence Scott talks to authors Ben Lerner, Derek Owusu and JJ Bola about crying, competitiveness, anger - and the pressure to perform. Ben Lerner is the author of Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 and his latest novel is called The Topeka School. He holds a prize commonly called the "genius grant" as a MacArthur Fellow. Derek Owusu's latest novel is called That Reminds Me. He has also presented the podcast Mostly ...
Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret Culture
November 12, 2019 22:00 - 57 minutes - 52.6 MBMatthew Sweet, performers Lucy McCormick and Gateau Chocolat, curator Florence Ostende, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and Gaylene Gould with an audience at London's Barbican Centre From 1919 when the Weimar constitution said all were equal and had the right to freedom of expression, through to the Mbari Writers and Artists club in Nigeria, to the UK today, clubs and cabarets have always been spaces of creativity. The panel consider a series of moments in history to ask when and how clu...
The 2019 Free Thinking Imperial War Museum Remembrance Debate
November 07, 2019 22:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MBWho decides what’s worth saving and what is culturally significant to protect in wartimes and war zones? The panel, hosted by Anne McElvoy, are: Sir Peter Bazalgette - Chairman of ITV and former Chairman of Arts Council England Carrie Reichardt - International Artist and grassroots activist Zahed Tajeddin - Syrian-born Artist and Archaeologist Rebecca Newell - IWM’s Head of Art Recorded with an audience at the Imperial War Museum, London on Weds November 6th. What Remains, an exhibition wi...
Quatermass
November 05, 2019 22:45 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MBDr Who collaborators Mark Gatiss & Stephen Moffat, academics Una McCormack & Claire Langhamer and Matthew Kneale join Matthew Sweet to celebrate Nigel Kneale's groundbreaking 1953 BBC TV sci-fi serial The Quatermass Experiment, which spawned two late 1950s sequels and an ITV final run in autumn 1979. Producer Torquil MacLeod.
New Thinking: Rubble culture to techno in post-war Germany
November 01, 2019 17:46 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBAs the 30th anniversary of the Berlin wall falling is marked on November 9th we rummage for stories amid the rubble. What were school teachers in Berlin pre-occupied with when the checkpoints were overrun? What would happen to the dogs of British forces families if the Cold War kicked off? Why was the poet Stephen Spender tasked with the ‘de-Nazification’ of German universities? And how does any of this relate to a 90s techno club in an air raid shelter? Our host, New Generation Thinker Dr ...
Halloween. Ghost Stories
November 01, 2019 14:40 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBShahidha Bari's guests include author Kirsty Logan and former League of Gentlemen writer and performer Jeremy Dyson, whose play Ghost Stories is back in the West End. Joining them is the film critic and author of a novella called Mothlight, Adam Scovell, poet Nisha Ramayya whose work States of the Body produced by Love speaks of goddesses who symbolise all the attributes of women and British Museum curator and expert on ancient Mesopotamian medicine and magic Irving Finkel.
Cars, Parking and Motorways
October 30, 2019 22:00 - 45 minutes - 42 MBWhere are we? How did we get here, and where are we going? Our relationship with the self-propelled small metal boxes in which we spend so much of our time is not as simple as it feels. Why did we learn to need them? How did they shape our cities, our typewriters and our bacon slicers? Should we now redesign our roads, streets and even our skies for AI driven cars? What do we learn by looking at suburban car parks? A discussion reflecting on speed, automobiles, AI and the 60th anniversary...
Writing Real Life from Brexit to Grenfell
October 30, 2019 17:07 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBAli Smith, Jay Bernard and James Graham join Matthew Sweet at the British Library in a discussion organised with the Royal Society of Literature. Making art from real events is as old to writing as the pen – older. But what happens when the events you are writing about are recent, or happening as you write? What are the writer’s duties to fact? How can writing bear witness to contemporary moments of social upheaval or human disasters? In writing the ‘now’, where does non-fiction stop and fi...
The Way I See It: Steven Pinker and Picasso
October 25, 2019 14:51 - 14 minutes - 13.5 MBArt critic Alastair Sooke, in the company of some of the leading creatives of our age, continues his deep dive into the stunning works in the Museum of Modern Art's collection, whilst exploring what it really means “to see” art. Today's edition features Harvard professor Steven Pinker. As an experimental psychologist, Steven has written extensively about violence - and for his choice from the gallery's collection he has selected two of Pablo Picasso’s most gruesome depictions of man's inhum...
Landmark: The Yorkshire Feminist Winifred Holtby
October 24, 2019 21:00 - 53 minutes - 48.8 MBRachel Reeves MP, Hull academic Jane Thomas and New Generation Thinker Katie Cooper discuss the novel South Riding and the writing and politics of Winifred Holtby with Matthew Sweet and an audience in Hull at the Contains Strong Language Festival. With readings by Rachel Dale. Winifred Holtby (23 June 1898 – 29 September 1935) came from a farming family in Yorkshire, met Vera Brittain at Oxford University and shared a house in London as they began their careers as writers. Brittain went on ...
What to Believe
October 23, 2019 21:00 - 1 hour - 56.7 MBRana Mitter and guests look at the history of atheism and morality. Alec Ryrie's new book 'Unbelievers: an emotional history of doubt' argues that the rationality arguments for non-belief developed after congregations began to doubt the church. The Barber Institute in Birmingham begins a new exhibition into one of the more enigmatic sacred artists of c15 Antwerp, Jan de Beer. Sarah Wise has contributed a chapter on Morality to a new imprint of Charles' Booth's notorious London Poverty Maps. ...
New Thinking: First Encounters
October 23, 2019 15:18 - 1 hour - 55.1 MBShould we really be celebrating the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Cortés and European settlers in Mexico? Is this a "first encounter" - and how do you decipher history when there isn't anything written down? Claudia Rogers compares notes with Nandini Das. Nandini has been re-reading the accounts written by John Rolfe of his marriage to Pocahontas and looking at what we gain when we flip the narrative and see from the point of view of indigenous people. Hosted by New Generation Thinke...
Frieze Free Thinking Museums Debate
October 22, 2019 21:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBHow welcome are selfies in modern art galleries and museums? What kind of labelling should be on display and should more objects be repatriated? Laurence des Cars from the Musée d'Orsay, Kennie Ting from Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore and Philip Tinari from UCCA Beijing join Anne McElvoy and an audience at the Royal Institute of British Architects for this year's Frieze Free Thinking debate about the issues facing museum directors. The Frieze Art Fair ran in London October 3-6 and ret...
Dictators
October 18, 2019 12:20 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBMatthew Sweet on Chaplin's 1941 film and rising populism today with guests including Francesca Santoro L'hoir who acted alongside Chaplin as a child plus Ece Temelkuran, Peter Pomerantsev and Frank Dikotter. Dutch Historian Frank Dikotter, who teaches in China, has published books on The Cultural Revolution, Mao's Famine and most recently How to Be a Dictator: the Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century which looks at Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Ceausescu, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Kim Il Sung and...
The Woolly Episode
October 17, 2019 12:45 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBFrom Sean the Sheep & Damien Hirst to a knitted bikini. Shahidha Bari with a woolly episode talks to writer and knitter Esther Rutter, shepherd Axel Linden, medievalist John Lee and cultural historian Alexandra Harris. Esther Rutter is the author of This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History. Shepherd Axel Linden farms in Ostergotland county in the south east of Sweden and has written On Sheep - Diary of a Swedish Shepherd. Professor Alexandra Harris considers sheep in ...
2019 Booker Prize, The Power of Ancient Artefacts
October 16, 2019 11:25 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBAnne McElvoy talks prehistory with archaeologist Mike Pitts and artist Renee So plus critic Alex Clark gives her take on this year's Booker Prize winners - Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, and director Tinuke Craig discusses putting Gorky on stage in a new version written by Mike Bartlett. Ancient and Modern by Renee So is at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill until 12th January Digging up Britain: Ten discoveries, a million years of history by Mike Pitts is available now Vassa by Gork...
East Meets West
October 10, 2019 22:18 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBAs the British Museum opens an exhibition on orientalism Inspired by the East, Matthew Sweet's guests include Ziauddin Sardar, editor of Critical Muslim, artist Inci Eviner, and historian Tom Holland, whose new book explores the Making of the Western Mind. Plus cultural critic Fatima Bhutto argues that the days of US inspired culture dominating the world are over and art forms from the global south such as Bollywood films, K-Pop and Turkish telenovelas are taking over. Fatima Bhutto's book ...
Myth making, satire and Caryl Churchill
October 10, 2019 19:23 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBCaryl Churchill's C21st Bluebeard, the fragility of a glass girl and other myths reworked in 4 new short dramas. Jen Harvie discusses the storytelling on stage of one of Britain's leading dramatists. Hetta Howes looks back at American author Rachel Ingalls who died earlier this year aged 78. Her novel Mrs Caliban depicts a lonely housewife who befriends a sea monster.The German born US based artist Kiki Smith has produced sculptures, tapestries and artworks looking at pain and bodily decay a...
Modern Dutch Writing
October 09, 2019 21:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBLaurence Scott looks at the way Dutch writers are addressing history and contemporary life with Rodaan Al Galidi, Eva Meijer, Onno Blom, Herman Koch and Toon Tellegen. Eva Meijer is an author, artist, singer, songwriter and philosopher. Her non-fiction study on animal Communication, Animal Languages has been published this year and her first novel to be translated into English Bird Cottage, has been nominated for the BNG and Libris prizes in the Netherlands and is being translated into seve...
The Frieze Masters Free Thinking Conversation about Art
October 08, 2019 15:24 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBMichael Govan, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art outlines the issues facing museum directors talking with Philip Dodd and an audience at the Frieze London Art Fair. They debate the "authority" of museums, the idea of "great" art and he answers critics of his rebuilding plan. Michael Govan took over running LACMA in 2006 following his work at the DIA Art Foundation in New York City. The Los Angeles museum has partnered with Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur Budi Tek to create a ...