Episode notes
Copyright law is complicated, especially when it comes to visual art. So there was a lot of fanfare around the Supreme Court’s May ruling involving a celebrity portrait photographer, the pop artist Andy Warhol, and an orange silk screen of the late musician Prince. Would the decision give us some clarity around what’s ‘infringing’ in the world of appropriation art? Lauryn Guttenplan, former deputy general counsel for the Smithsonian, walks us through some high-profile copyright cases from the past, as well as the Supreme Court’s decision. See the artwork we discussed: Obama “Hope” Portrait…
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PORTRAITS
National Portrait Gallery · Arts & Books · English
Art, biography, history and identity collide in this podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Join Director Kim Sajet as she chats with artists, historians, and thought leaders about the big and small ways that portraits shape our world.
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S5 · E13 · 26 Mar 2024 · 28 min
From The Vault: The Woman Who Knocked Science Sideways
We didn’t want to let Women’s History Month pass without a tip of the hat to one of the towering figures we’ve featured here on PORTRAITS. Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu was a rockstar experimental physicist who worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project. She also met the pope, and inspired a Chinese opera. But here in the United States, she didn’t always get the recognition she deserved. At least not until her granddaughter, Jada Yuan, took up her story. This episode originally aired in 2022. See the portraits we discuss: Dr. Wu in the lab Tsung-Dao Lee, Nobel Laureate Chen-Ning Yang , Nobel…
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S5 · E12 · 12 Mar 2024 · 27 min
Brilliant Exiles
Paris in the early 1900s was a magnet for convention-defying American women. It offered a delicious taste of freedom, which they used to explode the gender norms of their day, and to explore new kinds of art, literature, dance and design. In the process, they became arbiters of modernism. This episode, we raise the curtain on the National Portrait Gallery’s “Brilliant Exiles” exhibition with curator Robyn Asleson . It features 60 trailblazing women, including the dancer, singer and spy Josephine Baker, and the bookshop owner Sylvia Beach, who took a chance on James Joyce. Also in the lineup:…
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S5 · E11 · 27 Feb 2024 · 25 min
Mall Art
The National Mall is a great canvas, in part because of all the history embedded there. It’s been a place of protest, celebration and mourning. It also hosts some spectacular monuments. But critic Salamishah Tillet says there is a lot of history missing from the Mall as a commemorative space, like desegregation and the displacement of Indigenous people. Kim speaks with Salamishah about the ‘Beyond Granite’ exhibition she co-curated on the Mall, and also with Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada , the artist who created the largest portrait ever to go on display there. It was a six-acre composite portrait…
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S5 · E10 · 13 Feb 2024 · 24 min
Lincoln Hiding In Plain Sight
A globe turned to Haiti. A glove on the ground. A life-size portrait of President Abraham Lincoln contains intriguing details that can be read as a freeze-frame of race relations at the time of his assassination. It also may be the most lifelike depiction of the 16th president— standing to his full height and in full color. The oil painting by W.F.K. Travers was ‘hidden in plain sight’ for decades at a municipal building in New Jersey. Biographer Ted Widmer played a role in re-discovering the portrait and he speaks with Kim about its place in history. Travers’ Lincoln is currently on display…
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S5 · E9 · 30 Jan 2024 · 21 min
Social Media And The Subway
There are not many portrait artists who get recognized on the street, but it happens to Devon Rodriguez all the time. After quietly honing his skill for a decade, Devon started posting videos of his live drawings of New York City subway commuters to social media. The videos took off, earning him some 50 million followers and placing portraiture in front of a huge new audience. Kim speaks with Devon about the mentors who had his back, and this new model for showing art— not in museums, but on screens. See the portraits we discussed: Kim Sajet, by Devon Rodriguez John Ahearn, by Devon…
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S5 · E7 · 2 Jan 2024 · 33 min
Bonus: The Toxic Book of Faces
Silhouettes were a hugely popular and democratic form of portraiture in the 19th century. So an old ledger book full of cut paper profiles at the National Portrait Gallery caught a conservator’s eye. It promised a rare glimpse at people from all different backgrounds who lived in early America. It also held a surprise: It was laced with poison. Lizzie Peabody, host of the Smithsonian’s Sidedoor podcast , brings us the story of the book, the man who created it, and the web of overlapping stories tucked inside. See William Bache’s book of silhouettes here .
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S5 · E6 · 19 Dec 2023 · 21 min
Me, Online
Digital artist Amalia Soto, also known by the username Molly Soda , wants to show us how we portray ourselves, or perform ourselves, online. She says the images and videos we upload don’t necessarily lie, but they do pose questions about the ways we curate our lives for unseen others. She also believes there is a lot we don’t actually control when we hit the ‘post’ button. With Glenn Kaino . See the artwork we discussed: Who’s Sorry Now? (2017) Inbox Full (2012) My Apology (2022)
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S5 · E5 · 5 Dec 2023 · 24 min
ART-ificial Intelligence
As AI art gets more and more sophisticated, how do we tell the difference between a portrait that’s created by a human being – with a soul – and art that’s created by a complex algorithm? And if we can’t tell the difference, will artists be out of a job? Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explains how AI art works, and why he thinks code can actually help artists to expand their creative universe. But there’s one big question that remains: What does AI art tell us about the inner world of AI itself? See the portraits we discussed: Edmond de Belamy , published by Obvious Art The Next…
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S5 · E4 · 21 Nov 2023 · 27 min
Fakes, the Boxed Wines of the Art World
That glass of fine wine you’re enjoying so much.. What if you were told it came from a box? Would it taste different? According to art fraud investigator Colette Loll , yes, it would. Colette draws on brain science to explain why it’s so easy to be duped by a forged masterpiece, and why even the experts get it wrong sometimes. See the portraits we discuss: Francis Patrick Garvan , by de Philip de László Elmyr de Hory , in the style of Philip de László
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S5 · E3 · 7 Nov 2023 · 25 min
Oppenheimer's Close-Up
The blockbuster Oppenheimer movie focuses on two portrayals of J. Robert Oppenheimer. One is the famous physicist known as the architect of the atomic bomb, and the second is a more vulnerable man, maligned as a communist sympathiser. Then there’s a third portrait. It makes a cameo in the film and it resides right here at the National Portrait Gallery. Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Kai Bird , whose book inspired the movie, takes a look with us. See the portrait we discuss: J. Robert Oppenheimer , Time magazine cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker
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