Immaterial: 5,000 Years of Art, One Material at a Time
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Time: Keeping Digital Art Alive
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do art conservators save video art from obsolescence? If a painting on canvas rips or a marble sculpture shatters to pieces, art conservators are ...
Wood: The Most Musical Tree in the World
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How did one tree become a world-famous tonewood for guitars? Deep in the forests of Belize, a wood importer from Florida discovered a rare tree that p...
Trash: The Archaeology of Rubbish
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An archaeologist and an artist walk into a dump… For most of us, we throw our garbage to the curb, and it disappears from our lives. But to some, ...
Chia: Beyond Superfoods and Infomercials
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What can the tiny chia seed reveal about the history of oil painting? For centuries, one of the most prized mediums of art at museums like the Met has...
Blankets and Quilts: Threads of Identity
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when our most intimate possessions end up in art museums? Blankets comfort and keep us warm. They accompany us through our lives. They ar...
Space, Part 2: Behind the Scenes at The Met
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is hidden in the 'empty' spaces of an art museum? The Met is more than a museum of art. It is a city unto itself: population 2,000, with a transi...
Space, Part 1: Giving Form to a Feeling
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How does an artist give presence to absence? Bronze, wood, paint, and stone—classic materials for art making. But what if you're trying and struggli...
Stone: Making and Breaking Legacies
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when the unbreakable breaks? Throughout art museums around the world, you’ll find ancient stone statues of rulers and marble monuments ...
Introducing: Immaterial Season 2
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is hiding in the material choices of artists and makers? Immaterial, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s marquee podcast, is back with eight more ...
Bonus Episode: Tarot
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Grab a cup of tea and join us for a bonus episode on tarot. We learn about the cards from their patrician origins to the present day, when tarot is be...
Metals, Part Two
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the second part of our alchemical journey, we meet what ancient philosophers called the “noble” metals: mercury, silver, and gold. How did a ni...
Metals, Part One
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophers and scientists have tried for millennia to crack the code of alchemy: the art of turning lead into gold. But alchemy goes much deeper tha...
Linen
03 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Take a spin through The Met and you’ll find thousands of items made from linen. From a 3,500 year old sheet from Ancient Egypt, to a Giorgio Armani ...
Jade
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Deep in the riverbeds of Aotearoa New Zealand’s South Island, you’ll find a stone that’s as hard as steel and as green as the first breath of th...
Shells
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It all begins with a sea creature—a snail called a conch—and the mathematically perfect spiral it transforms into a home, which we humans then put...
Clay
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In seventeenth-century Europe, some of the wealthiest women in the world were doing something strange with the ceramic jars in their curiosity cabinet...
Concrete
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Concrete is full of contradictions. First it’s dust, then liquid, then hard as stone. It’s both rough and smooth, it’s modern and ancient, it ca...
Paper
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Valentines, comic books, cigarette cards and more—all of these objects can be meaningful, but what does it mean to house them in a museum? Paper hol...
Introducing: Immaterial
08 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Introducing Immaterial, a brand new podcast from The Met. Hosted by poet Camille T. Dungy, Immaterial examines the materials of art and what they can...